Read time: 12 min.

Muncie has always loved movies. From the days of open-air nickelodeons to today’s cavernous AMC 12, people flocked to places like the Lyric, the Wysor Grand, the Delaware Cinema, and Movies at Muncie Mall to see the latest flickers, talkies, and blockbusters! Although few remember it, the city’s first drive-in was called the Auto Park Theater. Nothing remains of it today.

For many, drive-in movie theaters are little more than a nostalgic anachronism in 2023. Thanks to streaming services, we can call up whatever we want to watch from the comfort of our recliners! I was astounded to learn that twenty drive-ins were still open across Indiana as recently as last year¹. Aside from the Auto Park, Delaware County was home to the long-lasting Ski-Hi and Muncie Drive-In for more than forty years. People from Muncie also saw movies at the Anderson’s North Drive-In, or -if you could get them to admit it- the notorious Blackford Drive-In porno house just miles from the county’s borders.

Although drive-in theaters date to the early twentieth century when attempts at the format were made in Las Cruces, New Mexico², and Comanche, Texas³, Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. is generally credited as inventing the concept. He experimented with different parking arrangements and sound systems until he finally patented the drive-in theater in 1933. Shortly afterward, he established a drive-in theater in Camden County, New Jersey, dubbed the Automobile Movie Theatre⁴.

The theater consisted of a 40×50 foot screen tower with three 6×6 foot speakers mounted to the sides. The venture wasn’t a success: after three years without a profit, Hollingshead sold it to a businessman who moved its equipment to Union, New Jersey, where the concept took off⁵. Families and couples flocked to the places to enjoy movies under the stars, complete with concession stands and playgrounds for the kids. By 1947, a hundred and fifty-five drive-ins existed across the country!

The Auto Park was one of them. In 1946, a group of entrepreneurs decided that Muncie would be the perfect place for a drive-in, so Clarence Taylor, Ray Barker, Forest Morrow, and Maurice Harrison built a 30×40-foot screen near the southwest corner of Tillotson Avenue and State Road 32. A concrete block booth projected a 27×36-foot image onto the Auto Park’s massive screen, and the theater was spacious enough to accommodate 400 cars⁶. It opened on July 27, 1946, showing a double feature of Barbara Stanwyck in My Reputation and Jimmy Cagney in Frisco Kid. 

The concept of watching a movie from the comfort of their cars was so novel that people around the Midwest didn’t know what to call the places. Although some referred to the theaters as drive-ins, others called them open-air theaters, which traditionally referred to something completely different. Open-air theaters were early movie houses established before 1920 that showed silent movies⁷ or occasional vaudeville productions⁸ outside. Patrons sat on wooden bench seats at places like the Coliseum Airdome on the south side of Adams Street between Walnut and High, or at the Lyric Theater at 204 South Walnut, which had its own “Airdome.”

Muncie was home to a variety of open-air theaters around World War I, including one at the corner of Hoyt and Eighth, another in the Industry neighborhood⁹, and a third in Normal City at the 400 block of North Martin Avenue¹⁰. They were popular places! On July 4, 1915, the Coliseum Airdrome showed “a pleasing and appropriate program,” while the Lyric featured “The Vampire Woman” Theda Bara in The Clemenceau Case. 

The Auto Park Theater was different. It was huge compared to the alleys open-air theaters typically operated from! Nevertheless, the early drive-in was primitive compared to others that began to sprout up. For one thing, sound from the movie followed Hollingshead’s model, blaring from loudspeakers near the screen tower instead of through individual, car-side speakers which had been developed in 1941. The arrangement led to issues with phasing and latency, which meant patrons parked at the rear of the grounds heard a movie’s action after they’d seen it play out onscreen¹¹.

Another problem for the Auto-Park was that the people who lived nearby hated the place. Today, the intersection of Tillotson and Kilgore is pretty busy, but that wasn’t the case in 1946 when Tillotson crossed the White River over a one-lane iron bridge¹²! Back then, only a smattering of houses existed southwest of the Auto Park, and residents alleged that its owners were maintaining a common nuisance. Three months after the theater opened, prosecutor Guy Ogle filed suit on their behalf¹³.

The Auto Park’s rocky start never improved since a bigger problem loomed about thirty feet tall. Its towering screen faced north, which meant anyone who was content to put up with a lack of sound could park along the riverbank to watch movies for free¹⁴. As if all that wasn’t enough, the Muncie Drive-In Land Company, backed by directors based in Dayton, Ohio, filed articles of incorporation ten months after the Auto Park opened¹⁵. The company intended to build a new drive-in of their own two miles west, and what later became the Muncie Drive-In opened on July 3, 1947.

The Muncie Drive-In and the Auto Park competed for theatergoers’ attention for most of the summer by advertising their respective selling points. The Muncie Drive-In offered a first-run newsreel with every showing and midnight shows every Saturday, but the Auto Park differentiated itself through its admission price, only 30 cents for adults and 9 cents for kids- $4.10 and $1.23 in 2023 money, respectively.

For just over a year, patrons headed to the Auto Park from Yorktown saw its screen tower rising north of State Road 32 as they neared Tillotson Avenue. Unfortunately, the competition was too much for it to withstand. By August, the Muncie Drive-In began running ads touting its “in-a-car speakers,” first-run newsreels, color cartoons, and midnight Saturday shows¹⁶. The Auto Park, which offered none of those things, held its final showing on Saturday, August 9, 1947, with Last Crooked Mile and Wagon Wheels Westward as a double feature. The theater was sold in September 1947, after just over a year of operation¹⁷.

After the Auto Park closed, the site was used as a lookout post where volunteers with binoculars watched for enemy aircraft during the Cold War¹⁸. In 1956, the theater’s ramps and projection building were still partially visible, but by 1967, nothing was left aside from its entrance just south of the new Tillotson Avenue bridge.

Here’s how the theater was laid out, the best I can tell from a blurry aerial photo from 1948 that Ron Gross of Michigan Drive-Ins.com annotated on the Facebook group Lost Muncie¹⁹. The yellow lines mark the theater’s bounds; patrons entered from the east side of the property and parked on ramps indicated roughly by the arced red lines. The screen tower stood between today’s Riverview Center and Riverview Square plazas, and the projection booth sat just south of their northern entrance.

I haven’t seen any evidence that official theater infrastructure existed on the north side of the river, but rows of bleachers may have been set up nearby, as some people recall²⁰. Today, the site is unrecognizable after the Tillotson Avenue overpass bisected the property in the 1970s²¹ and much of it was paved over. Here’s a view of toward the screen, which stood near the tree, from the approximate location of the projection building.

After it muscled out the Auto Park, the Muncie Drive-In went on to operate for forty years before it closed during the spring of 1987 after years of lagging attendance. “The drive-in business has been walking on a ragged edge for years,” Vern Young of Theatrical Managers, Incorporated said in the newspaper. “People aren’t going to drive-ins like they were even five years ago²².”

The Muncie Drive-In property was later purchased by the Muncie Sanitary District²³. In 1994, a local construction firm was awarded $1.3 million to build an 18,000-square-foot facility²⁴. Most of the site is still owned by the City of Muncie. Although portions of its old car ramps and the foundation of the concession stand can be seen in aerial imagery, the only street-side evidence that the theater existed is its old marquee, now used by SSS Auto Sales.

Muncie’s other well-known drive-in, the Ski-Hi, came onto the scene at the corner of State Roads 3 and 28 in 1950. After a series of openings and closings, the theater showed its last movie in 2005²⁵. Despite a grassroots effort to preserve the dilapidated structure, county officials ordered its demolition in 2016²⁶.

Just as with the Muncie Drive-In, the earthen ramps used to angle cars towards the Ski-Hi’s screen tower are still visible on satellite imagery, as is pavement left over from the theater’s entrances. Unfortunately, a peeling marquee is the only evidence of its existence from the road. The nearby Blackford and North Drive-Ins closed in during the late 1980s, and are visible only from the air. Unfortunately, that’s more than can be said for the Auto-Park.

Sources Cited
1 Bongiovanni, D. (2022, June 15). 20 drive-in theaters in Indiana where you can see new and retro movies. The Indianapolis Star. Web. Retrieved June 3, 2023.
2 Thomas, D. (2015). Screen With A Voice – A History of Moving Pictures in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Doc45 Publishing [New Mexico]. Book.
3 Claude Caver Dies at Home (1959, February 20). The Dallas Morning News. p. 5.
4 Arbuckle, A.Q. (n.d.) The first drive-ins. Mashable. Web. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
5 Fox, M. (2018, June 1). “DRIVE-IN THEATRES, TECHNOLOGY, AND CULTURAL CHA”. Gale Academic Onefile.
6 Greene, D. (1946, July 25). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 6.
7 Greene, D. (1977, May 23). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
8 Coliseum Airdome (1916, August 2). Muncie Evening Press. p. 3.
9 Three New Open Air Theaters (1913, April 25). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 3.
10 Spurgeon, B. (1985, July 31). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
11 (See footnote 7).
12 Spurgeon, B. (1997, October 28). Former Civil Defense director of Muncie was a true patriot. The Muncie Star Press. p. 20.
13 Owners of Open Air Theater Face Chargers (1946, September 30). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 7.
14 Spurgeon, B. (1994, November 2). Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
15 Drive – In Movie Firm Founded (1947, April 30). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 17.
16 Drive-In Theatre (1947, August 9). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 7.
17 Auto-Park Theater (1947, September 26). The Muncie Star. p. 30.
18 (See footnote 12).
19 Gross, R. Lost Muncie (2017, August 9). I labeled this aerial myself. It’s part of a project to document every drive-in theater in the US. [Comment]. Facebook.
20 Lucas, M. Lost Muncie (2020, March 24). I remember going there with my uncle but it seems we sat outside on bleachers, not in a car. [Comment]. Facebook.
21 Heline, M. (1975, December 2). Overpass opening slated for Dec. 12. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1.
22 Roysdon, K. (1987, April 9). Muncie Drive-In Theatre won’t reopen. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 20.
23 Yencer, R. (1993, March 5)5 sites under consideration for new city street garage. The Muncie Star. p. 3.
24 Yencer, R. (1994, June 23). Garage contract awarded. The Muncie Star. p. 9.
25 Roysdon, K. (2016, January 28). County moves ahead on drive-in demolition plans. The Muncie Star Press. p. A1.
26 Spurgeon, B. (1997, October 28). Former Civil Defense director of Muncie was a true patriot. The Muncie Star Press. p. 20.