61st Street Drive-In
3201 S. 61st Street,
Philadelphia,
PA
19153
3201 S. 61st Street,
Philadelphia,
PA
19153
3 people
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research i did was that 1983 was the last season. Another thing is. they showed almost every low budget horror movie that come along..Looks like it was the horror movie drive -in. to name a few, Amityville horror nightmares. blood beach. phantasm. Humongous. Prom Night. the fog. dont go in the house. the fifth floor. the boogey man… to name a few…
Went to this theater 2 times. Once in the 60’s and saw a double feature The Cincinatti Kid and The Hill and again in 1983 and saw Snow WHite and another Disney movies. Both times all films were flat. B+NEver saw a scope movie on there big screen.
This was hte last drive in in the Phila area to open. I was 6 years old.
research i conducted is that the theater closed in 1983. can’t find any ads for it after that.. if this photo is from the mid 80’s it would make sense.. Lots of low budget horror b flicks shown here during the late 70’s early 80’s..
I posted a vintage pic of the sign.
if u go to google earth and type in 3220 s 61st street philadelphia pa, u will see the rotted frame of the old sign. it is next to an aluminum building and trees are growing around it. u can barely make out what looks like a red arrow pointing to what used to be the drive in entrance. it’s eerie.
does anyone have a photo of the 61st Street DI sign? i work for a sign company and i want to recreate it, on a smaller scale of course.
I was talking once with a projectionist that worked practically every DI in the area-he mentioned how much of a problem the rats were here. Another projectionist kept one in the booth for company! Was this the DI theater that had several speakers outside the fence on the street side? The screen was angled toward the other direction, though, so they wouldn’t see much!
“TINY” portion!!
There is still an inty portion of the “61st Street Drive-In” sign still standing amidst the other rubble to this day. It’s mainly yellow with (I think) blue and red lettering. Saw it en route to work one day and wanted to hop off the bus to photograph it, but 61st St. is a very busy stretch of road.
Here is a new link for the 1963 photo.
The photo is hosted on Drive-ins.com. That website is doing updates so you might not be able to see the photo for awhile.
No picture at this site
A small picture of this drive-in can be seen here.
O Yes, the 61 Street D-I. Built between several junk yards. This D-I was built to handle the overflow from the Airport D-I. Both operated by Budco Theaters. The screen tower was built on marsh land, need I say more. One night with a VERY strong wind the right side of the tower started to pull out of the ground. We had to FIND and then rent a crane to secure the upper right of the tower sooo it would NOT come down. This is just one of many fun nights at the 61 Street D-I. It was a great time working for Budco when D-I’s were D-I’s. rg