April 02, 2024
Courtesy/Shankweiler's
Shankweiler's Drive-In Theatre in Orefield will mark its 90th anniversary with a community event on April 14.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect Shankweiler's Drive-In Theatre's event has been moved from Saturday, April 13, to Sunday, April 14.
When Wilson Shankweiler first set up a drive-in behind his restaurant and inn in 1934, it was nothing more than a "bedsheet hung between two poles."
Now, Shankweiler's Drive-In Theatre in Orefield is the oldest drive-in movie theater in the country and it's celebrating its 90th birthday this month. Owners Matt McClanahan and Lauren McChesney are marking the occasion with a birthday event for the community on Saturday, April 14.
To celebrate, Shankweiler's will be reenacting its early days, including recreating the original drive-in setup and bringing in antique cars from Allentown's NB Center for American Automotive Heritage. The event will also include photo ops, face painting, magic from Mark Mysterrio and themed cocktails from County Seat Spirits. Attendees can nab special glasses that look like the theater's road sign.
"That's really the big thing that we're doing, that throwback to the original setup and homage to our founders' vision," McClanahan said.
Shankweiler's will be showing a double feature, one of which will be "Godzilla vs. Kong." The other will be a classic film, McClanahan said, but he's keeping it under wraps until plans are finalized. The event starts at 5 p.m. and the first movie starts around 8 p.m.
Shankweiler's opened as the second drive-in in the country. The first drive-in opened in Camden in 1933 but closed not too long after, making Shankweiler's the oldest continuously operating drive-in in the county, according to the owners.
After running a mobile movie theater called Moving Picture Cinema, McClanahan and McChesney purchased the theater in 2022 to become its fourth owners and they made it a year-round option for locals. Since they've taken over, McClanahan said a lot of their work has been trying to give the theater new life with event programming and local vendors.
But it's also been a lot of tracking down the original stories of the theater and what it has meant to the community.
"We have a limited amount of information to go on, so we're doing our best to piece everything together," McClanahan said. "There's been a lot of discovery and peeling back the myth behind this place, because it's all passed down stories."
