40 East Drive-In
8659 E. Main Street,
Reynoldsburg,
OH
43068
8659 E. Main Street,
Reynoldsburg,
OH
43068
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Opened as Torch Drive-in on 8/6/1961 with “The lost World” and “Esther and the king”. Name changed to 40 East Drive-in and opened with 9/7/1967 with “The singing nun” and “The wheeler dealers”. 400 cars. Closed and sold in 2003. Demolished(date unknown?), except for the snack bar which still stands.
The Google map for this location has been corrected.
Rambo, I’m going by the map from the Reynoldsburg webpage listed above. Reynoldsburg is the area in white, and that includes the theatre located next to the fire academy and east of Taylor Road.
It is possible, though, that this is an area that Reynoldsburg that was annexed in the last few years after the theatre was built.
I haven’t gotten to this theatre yet in my Columbus theatre research. I show an opening date for this location as 7/24/1961.
The drive-in was indeed outside Reynoldsburg city limits.
Original name was TORCH DRIVE-IN. Name changed to 40-East when taken over by Frank Yassenoff in 1967.
I tracked down a city map of Reynoldsburg (http://www.visitreynoldsburg.com/maps/REYNOLDSBURG.pdf) and the theatre was located within the Reynoldsburg city limits.
Google Maps has an incorrect location for the theatre and Fire Academy. They are located east of Taylor Road. Google has them west of Taylor Road next to the cemetery.
http://www.drive-ins.com/theater/oht40ea gives the address as 8659 E. Main St in Reynoldsburg, and links to several photos of the drive-in at http://www.drive-ins.com/gallery/oht40ea .
http://www.forgottenoh.com/driveinlist.html lists the location as Pataskala rather than Reynoldsburg. I’m not sure which is correct.
http://www.forgottenoh.com/DriveIns/40east.html has many photos of the drive-in, and says that the last films were shown here on August 14, 2003. The adjoining Ohio Division of Fire training center purchased the property. From that page:
“The Fire Department training center buts right up against the theater property, which is why they eventually decided to buy it out for $1.4 million. They conduct firefighter training courses there—the kind of thing where they set something on fire deliberately and have the trainees put it out. Sometimes they stage explosions. They did a good deal of this while movies were playing right across the low divider wall at the 40 East, which caused some disturbance among theater patrons. ”