Maple City Drive-In
2812 S. Cochran Road,
Charlotte,
MI
48813
2812 S. Cochran Road,
Charlotte,
MI
48813
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Just before the Korean War indirectly caused a pause in most drive-in construction…
Boxoffice, Oct. 14, 1950: “Charlott, Mich. - Cash R. Beechler, proprietor of the two theatres here and the New Rapids Theatre in Eaton Rapids, is again expanding his business activities by building a drive-in south of town. Beechler has bought about 16 acres of the former Parm Whitcomb farm on U.S. 27. The surveying work has been done, also the engineering work on the ramps. It is planned to complete the theatre this fall and have it ready for opening in the spring.”
Opened on 30/6/1953. Remains of the projector booth and the rences remain too.
Those Kodachrome slides look beautiful! :)
My grandfather Al Johnson owned the Johnson Construction Company and built dozens of Michigan theaters and drive-ins. According to family records, the Maple City Drive-In in Charlotte was his sixth drive-in job. Al took several color 35mm slides in the fall of 1952 which I’ve uploaded to this webpage.
These images provide a rare look into the early phases of a drive-in project: site clearing, layout, applying tar to the lower blockwork of the concession/projection building, constructing the foundation for the tower, and tower framing and assembly.
One slide shows car speaker posts with precast concrete bases. These later will be interconnected and set in place, then the concrete bases will be covered with gravel prior to the final grading of the parking area.
The same slide shows several timbers soaking in drums of creosote for protection against rot. Some of the timbers piled in the back will be cut to length and bolted together with long wooden gussets (on other projects steel gussets were used) to form vertical trusses. These will provide the primary structure of the tower.
A series of slides shows the workers raising one of these tower trusses into place using ropes, block and tackle. Once in place, these vertical members will be connected to adjacent trusses with horizontal timbers to form a rigid framework.
Though not shown in these slides, the final step of the tower construction involved sheathing the whole tower frame with plywood, applying one or more coats of paint, and then covering the whole tower with a final layer of asbestos panels.
The waterwinterwonderland.com site provides this history: “The Maple City Drive-In opened in June of 1953 and closed around 1990. This single screen drive-in had a capacity for 500 cars.” The site also reveals that, as of 2013, the projection/concession building and a very damaged marquee were all that remained on the site.
The Maple City Drive-In was located at 2812 S. Cochran Avenue. I’ve been unable to find any contemporary photos of the completed drive-in. A current Google Maps view shows part of the parking area and the remains of the concession/projection building in the rear of the site.
More information HEREWater Winter Wonderland
Operated by Beechler Theaters in the early sixties.
Here is a link:
http://www.michigandriveins.com/detail.asp?id=21