Drive east of the District, across the Bay Bridge and past the farmlands and outlet malls of Eastern Maryland, and you’ll eventually arrive at the Shore Drive-In, a relic of a bygone era. What was once a bustling, 500-car drive-in movie theatre is now, well, a forest.
The Shore opened in 1954, right at the peak of drive-in mania. Some 4,000 drive-ins were operational at that point, a number that’s plummeted to under 400 in 2014. Done in by skyrocketing real estate prices, color televisions, changing tastes and even daylight savings time, the Shore Drive-In served its last customer in September of 1976.
A flea market was held on the grounds in the late ’70s, before a fire wiped many of the theater’s remaining structures out in 1982. Left to its own devices, the drive-in was quickly reclaimed by the forest around it. Birch and pine trees have sprouted up, their trunks blending in perfectly with the iron speaker posts that still dot the grounds.
The drive-in’s massive screen is in shambles, but it still stands. It doesn’t seem out of place — far from it, actually. It is, after all, entirely made out of wood. The dozen or so massive, tar-covered telephone poles that support the screen are now covered in moss, while the plywood panels of the viewing surface itself are falling away one by one. Though grand in stature, the whole structure is nearly invisible until it’s right on top of you, only adding to the etherial quality of the place.
If the great outdoors aren’t your thing, you can always travel two hours north to Ciné Mart, Wilmington, Del.’s premiere abandoned cinema. It, too, has been out of commission for quite some time — it closed in 1980 — and now sits abandoned and gutted out in one of Wilmington’s worst neighborhoods.
Ciné Mart enjoyed a brief run of success. Situated across the street from what was once Wilmington’s busiest shopping mall (which is now nearly abandoned), it was done in by the opening of a nearby theatre and shopping complex, the Concord Mall. In the years before its closing, the cinema struggled to keep its head above water, often sprinkling X-Rated films into its rotation — come for Hello Dolly, stay for Debbie Does Dallas.
Both theaters are unmistakable, even in ruin. Defined by their very shape, they’re easy to spot. From above, the remains of the drive-in stick out like a sore thumb; the vegetation that’s sprouted up since the theater’s closure mirrors the triangular shape of what was once a massive parking lot. A small white line is visible at the northernmost end of the lot — the screen.
The Ciné Mart is also easily identifiable. Movie theaters, of course, have their own unique shapes and angles, from the gentle slope of their floors to the curvature of their walls. Even without its seats, carpeting and other assorted trappings, the room itself still feels very much like a cinema.
It’s enough to make a man want to set up a few lawn chairs and take in a show, something that’s not advisable at either site. At the Shore Drive-In, you may find yourself on the wrong end of a shotgun, confused for a deer. In Wilmington, the neighborhood itself might do you in.
Let’s just stick to Gallery Place, shall we?
