NORTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa — It’s a Friday night in March at the world’s oldest working drive-in: time to bundle up, butter the popcorn, and watch a pre-“Friends” Jennifer Aniston battle a murderous leprechaun.
One reviewer said 1993’s “Leprechaun” included “bad sets, bad acting, and bad direction,” a trifecta tailor-made for drive-ins. When the lights — the sun — dimmed at Shankweiler’s Drive-In around 7:09 p.m., co-owner Matt McClanahan’s voice came over the loudspeaker and through the radios of the few dozen cars parked in front of the screen.
“Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show,” he said before the projector lit up.
Pennsylvania is home to 27 drive-ins — one fewer than New York — according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association. New Jersey has just one, the Delsea Drive-In, in Vineland. There are none in Delaware.
“I think it’s something about our culture here in Pennsylvania that loves passing things down, generation to generation,” McClanahan said.
Shankweiler’s, which opened on April 15, 1934, in Lehigh County, is about 60 miles north of Philadelphia. The only drive-in that pre-dates it debuted closer to the city, in 1933, on the Camden-Pennsauken border, but it closed by 1940.
Inspired by the Camden County theater, Wilson Shankweiler built his drive-in as an attraction for his popular restaurant and inn. 90 years later, Shankweiler’s will celebrate its anniversary today by bringing in 1930s vehicles and re-enacting vintage drive-in DIY, including hanging a bedsheet between two poles for a screen.
In the heyday of post-World War II America, car culture reigned and drive-ins popped up countrywide. There were approximately 4,000 by the end of the 1950s.
Drive-ins started facing leaner years when America took a harder turn toward suburbia for housing, shopping, and movie multiplexes in the 1970s and ’80s. Real estate prices rose, often making the land more valuable than the theater. Over a period of decades, neon marquees from Long Island to California went dark and developers kept knocking, looking for land for self-storage facilities or shopping centers.
The couple bought the property in 2022, paying just over $1 million becoming Shankweiler’s fourth owners since 1934. At that point, the theater had been on the market for years. Its previous owners and neighbors, according to McClanahan, were hoping some film buffs/dreamers like themselves would fend off the warehouses popping up all over Lehigh County.
McClanahan and McChesney now keep Shankweiler’s open year-round.
