Super Castle Drive-In
2501 W. State Street,
New Castle,
PA
16101
2501 W. State Street,
New Castle,
PA
16101
2 people
favorited this theater
The Super Castle Drive-In was opened on April 16, 1948 with Joe E. Brown in “Riding on Air” & William Boyd in “Hopalong Casidy Returns”. It was a single screen drive-in just outside of New Castle PA in Union. It was interesting, because the screen was done up like a castle, and had big turrets on each end. It was still open in the 1960’s
Contributed by
orangebug
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Recent comments (view all 12 comments)
Here is a June 1955 ad from the New Castle News:
http://tinyurl.com/yl5avpy
The ad just posted pretty much confirms the location I pointed out on 8/24/09. 3 Miles West of New Castle on Hwy 224. There is a Wal-Mart SuperCenter a few blocks away, but not at the old drive-in property.
I would say the Franklin address is incorrect.
Guess I need to retract parts of my comments. Looking at 1993 imagery on Google Earth, there was a larger drive-in on the SW corner of 224 and 60, East of Winter Rd. Less than ½ mile apart from the other drive-in. Yes, a Wal-Mart occupies the site.
It was owned in 1956 by Co-Op which ran a lot of drive-ins in that state.
O.K.
The Super Castle was certainly the nicer of the two area drive-ins. It had a larger field, a large concession stand and very large block and concrete screen tower. Screens “wings†were added for cinemascope in the mid-50’s. By the 60’s the Super Castle was running first-run product with the Penn Theatre, downtown. Often the filmco’s would allocate a single print for the town. Ushers would take one reel (20 minutes) from the Penn projection booth and swap it for a reel at the drive-in. The two theatres were more than 5 miles apart. Timing was very important and too many red lights or a train would result in a dark screen until the usher could make it back to one theatre or another. This “bicycling prints†program continued until a train hit an usher’s car, hurting him and destroying his car. After that there were always enough prints available and nobody had to share.
PLEASE UPDATE ADDRESS TO 2501 W. State St.
the wal mart sits where the castle was…..the drivein about ½ west from there was the Parkstown, it was located next to a roller rink and across from Rileys fun spot. ( all are gone now)
Just uploaded a aerial from 1958..
Plus one for the Skyline down the road
During its last few years of operation, the theater screened X-rated films, and had a variety of vehicle accidents and robberies. It was closed in 1972.