Casa View Drive-In
5299 Gus Thomasson Road,
Dallas,
TX
75228
5299 Gus Thomasson Road,
Dallas,
TX
75228
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Contributed by
Billy Holcomb / Billy Smith / Don Lewis
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Recent comments (view all 24 comments)
I am not sure, my niece got it for me as a Christmas present since she knows my love for the theatre research. She was on vacation in San Antonia and found it at a second hand book store.
Matt, In the book it states that the Samuel Blvd. Drive-In opened as the East Pike Drive-In. It doesn’t say when it changed names. But it does give a different address than what is listed in the header on the page for the Samuel Boulevard Drive-In.
Oh, it feels like we’re on to something…funtime!
Me too matt and there was the Kaufman Pike Drive In at 175 & Jim Miller Rd in Dallas.
The address that the book gives for the East Pike Drive-In is 4200 Samuel Boulevard, Dallas, TX. I think this address is about 5 blocks from the address listed on the Samuel Boulevard Drive-In
Chuck, Historical Aerials 1958 view confirms the 4617 address as correct for the Samuell Blvd D/I – no trace in 1958 view at 4200.
Don, as I stated earlier, East Pike makes sense as original name for Samuell Blvd. due to designation of that part of Samuell Blvd. as U.S. Highway 80 coming into Dallas from the east back in those days. Many of the streets in that part of town must have run different back in those days – for example, the original address of the nearby Lone Star D/I is listed in early materials as “near Military Pkwy and Forney Road.” No mention of Lawnview Ave., which is exactly where the Lone Star sat, at 4600.
Street view is wrong. This theatre was not located at the intersection of Gus Thomasson and Ferguson, as that would have put it smack in the middle of one of Casa View Shopping Center’s huge parking lots; it was actually located farther west on Gus Thomasson, at its intersection with Maylee Blvd. It occupied the present site of Larry Smith Elementary School.
We lost some of the comments when we switched over to the new format – one of them being that the Casa View originally opened in (IIRC) 1954 as the White Rock Drive-In. Still called White Rock as late as 1959. Exactly when name changed, I don’t know but from the time my family first started attending (ca. 1961), it was already the Casa View.
The last time I remember visiting this drive-in was in 1970, to see a double feature of “Giant” (which had just had a national reissue in badly faded WarnerColor prints) and “Return of the Seven.” Long night.
This drive-in opened in 1954 as the White Rock Drive-In; name changed to Casa View in 1961. An educated guess would be that, by the late 50’s, the neighborhood & shopping center that grew up around St. Pius X Parish (est. 1954) had taken on an identity quite separate and apart from the general White Rock area.