Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
DRIVE-INS
DRIVE-INS. Popular site of motion picture entertainment. Dubuque entered the drive-in business later than many communities. The Dubuque Drive-In opened in 1950.
Dubuque's second drive in, the Super 20, was built in 1964 by N. J. YIANNIAS on a site of on Kennedy Road just north of BIRD CHEVROLET. It has one screen and a capacity of 600 cars. (1) When KENNEDY MALL opened, Yiannias moved the drive-in west on Highway 20 and added a second screen. The theater was equipped with a 70mm projector, one of only a dozen used in outdoor theaters across the nation at the time and the only one in Iowa.
By 1984 the two Dubuque drive-ins were among fifty-one remaining in Iowa and an estimated 2,900 still in operation in the United States. The peak of the drive-in business came in 1958 when an estimated 4,063 were in operation.
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1. Cinema Treasures. Online: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/47474