Lorain Drive-in Aerial View, Then & Now

Here's a photo scanned from my copy of the Black River Historical Society's Images of America book on Lorain. It's a nice photo of the Lorain Drive-in from 1955. (Click on it for a closer look.) As you can see, the area was still mainly farmland, at least on the south side of US 6.

And here's a Google Earth screen shot of the Hold It Self Storage property today along with the real estate shown in the 1955 photo (roughly).

It's interesting just how much development has sprung up in the last fifty-five years. The lake side hasn't changed too much in that area, but the south side has exploded with apartment complexes, such as the West Lake Apartments (immediately east of the drive-in in the photo) and residences.

Lorain Drive-in Ad 1957

I just can't seem to finish up with this topic – I keep finding more stuff that I want to put up here!

Here's a newspaper ad for the Lorain Drive-in that ran on August 3, 1957. I like it because of the classic ad art. The Lorain Drive-in logo used here is nice in its simplicity, and I really like the old style movie ads, with the bold typography and good use of figure-ground relationship.

It's quite a smorgasbord of movies making up the triple feature: Walt Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase, The Doolins of Oklahoma and Boy on a Dolphin. So you have a western, a civil war story and Sophia Loren – something for everybody!

The next pair of movies are strange bedfellows: the epic Giant, with Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean, and Spook Chasers, with the Bowery Boys (a favorite of mine). I have to chuckle at the Spook Chasers ad, because by that time, Leo Gorcey had left the movie series, leaving Huntz Hall to carry on without him for a few more movies.

Believe it or not, Boy on a Dolphin and Spook Chasers were the only current movies. The others were either a year old or older (the Doolins being the oldest – from 1949.)

Lorain Drive-in Pizza

Here's a newspaper ad for the Lorain Drive-in from June 15, 1960. It's interesting because it doesn't list the names of the movies being shown, as it is a special Appreciation Night promotion. It also advertises that every 15th car gets a free pizza.

That got me thinking about transplanted Lorainite Alan Hopewell's blog, which is called Pointing the Cannon, and his story about the first time he ever had pizza – which according to his story was at the Lorain Drive-in. Want to read the story? Then head over to his blog and enjoy this story and many more thoughtful essays about growing up in Lorain.

Lorain Drive-in Site Today

As one of my regular readers pointed out in a posted comment, the Lorain Drive-in property has been the home of Hold It Self Storage since 1990. (Click on the photo at left for a larger view from US 6.) The old drive-in marquee is still there, retrofitted as the company sign, and that's just a hint that the owners of the company realize that the site of their company is something special. But more on that in a minute.

Former drive-in locations, usually surrounded by fences with only one way in and out, must make good storage facilities, because the site of another Lorain County drive-in, the Tower Drive-in over at 6187 Lake Avenue, was also converted into one. Today the Tower Drive-in is now R & M Tower Mini Storage.

But let's get back to Hold It Self Storage. The company website is unique in that it has a nice section entitled Drive in Nostalgia which reveals that the drive-in's concession stand, projection booth, and entrance/exit booth are still part of the property.

Here's a photo of the entrance/exit booth as it looks now. (Give it a click!)

I'm going to have to contact the owners about that sign; if they ever decide to repaint it, they need to get the date right on it! Readers of this blog (you lucky devils) know that it should read 1946 instead of 1956!

Anyway, it's nice that Hold It has decided to maintain a bit of Lorain history and help keep the memories of the Lorain Drive-in 'alive'.

Memorial Day 2010

Although many people believe Memorial Day is a day to remember all of the nation's dead, the holiday actually honors those who fell while in service to our country. Here's a great website (maintained by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War) that is dedicated to restoring the original meaning of the holiday.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day.

Lorain Drive-in Closing Day, 1986

My last few posts were about opening weekends of the Lorain Drive-in through the years. This one's about the closing weekend.

(Before I could post anything, though, I had to figure out exactly when it did close. There's not exactly a lot of sources for things like this. Even my morgue of newspaper clippings through the years only indicated it was either 1986 or 1987. So I headed back to the microfilm reader at the library and slowly began take note of when the theater was in the theater listings and when it wasn't. One stiff neck later, I had my answer!)

I can now safely say that the Lorain Drive-in's final weekend was September 5, 6 and 7, 1986. Here is the ad that ran in the Journal's entertainment tabloid on Friday, Sept. 5

Actually the double feature for Screen 1 looked like a pretty good one: Armed & Dangerous with John Candy and Eugene Levy, and Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield. I'm not so sure about Screen 2's double feature of No Retreat, No Surrender with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Runaway Train with Jon Voight.

I looked at the Journals from before and after the drive-in's closing to see if there was any sort of article about it. As far as I could see, there wasn't. Which was too bad.

Strangely enough, the Lorain Drive-in did show up the 1987 city directory, seemingly just to make it tougher for me in my research. But the show was definitely over by then. My stiff neck confirms it.

Lorain Drive-in Opening Day, 1948

Here's an ad for the 1948 opening weekend of the Lorain Drive-in. It ran in the newspaper on April 16. (Sorry for the rather crummy quality of the ad, which is from the library's microfilm.) At least the 1948 opener was probably a little bit warmer than it was on the 1955 opening weekend, which I told you about here.

I'm fairly impressed with the marketing that the Lorain Drive-in employed to generate interest two years after it opened. The fireworks are a great idea.

It's easy to forget that drive-ins didn't always show monster flicks and teenage epics as popular culture and nostalgia seem to imply; that came later. In the early days, they showed a lot of B-movies. In this case, the drive-in's feature was The Bachelor's Daughters, a movie that was already 2 years old!)