The History of the Southington Drive-In

1950-1955 · Section I

Origins

Before there was a drive-in there was a five-year fight to build one.

In 1950, a developer named James A. Holmes filed for approval to build an 800-car drive-in on what was then a wooded stretch of the Meriden-Waterbury Turnpike. The neighboring property owners objected and kept objecting. The hearings were said to be among the longest the town had ever held. Holmes estimated the project at roughly $100,000. It took five years to break ground.[1][2]

When it finally opened, the project had passed to Perakos Theater Associates, a Connecticut exhibition family already running theaters across the state. The reported cost had doubled to $200,000. Peter G. Perakos was president. His brother Sperie was general manager. A resident manager named Melvin Siegal ran the day-to-day. The premiere on Wednesday, May 18, 1955 paired George Montgomery in Seminole Uprising with Glenn Ford in Blackboard Jungle, the rock-and-roll juvenile-delinquency picture that had already started a small national panic.[1][2]

"Before there was a drive-in there was a five-year fight to build one."

1955-1965 · Section II

The Eisenhower years

The early Southington Drive-In was a big lot. The 1955-56 Theatre Catalog listed it at 950 cars. By 1961 the count was up to 1,100. The screen was a giant curved Cinemascope, the modern format of the moment, and the lot was wired for in-car heaters so the season could stretch deeper into the cold than most drive-ins ever attempted. A period advertisement promised the heaters made winter showings "loads of fun."[2]

Out front sat a neon roadside sign of the kind every American highway had at least one of in 1955. It survived in its original form into the late 1970s before being downsized. The Perakos family kept ownership the whole time, and a generation of Southington kids grew up assuming that of course the lot would always be there.[2]

"A period advertisement promised the heaters made winter showings loads of fun."

1958-2002 · Section III

The decline of the drive-in

In 1958 there were 4,063 drive-ins running in the United States. It was the peak. After that the format spent four decades being slowly dismantled by television, by the multiplex, by the 1973 oil crisis and the daylight-saving rules that pushed sunset later, by the VCR, by cable, and most of all by land prices. A flat ten-acre lot ten miles from a city was worth more as a strip mall than as a screen. Across the country, drive-ins disappeared at a rate of about a hundred a year. Today fewer than 300 still operate.[8][9]

Southington tried to outlast the curve. In June 1978 the Planning and Zoning Commission approved John Perakos' request for a second screen. By July 13, 1979 the marquee read SOUTHINGTON TWIN. For a while, the doubled capacity kept the books in the black. In 1992 the family offered the whole property to the town for $2.75 million. The town passed. In 1995 Sperie Perakos told a reporter the family had no plans to sell, that they had just remodeled, that the drive-in was fine.[2]

Seven years later it wasn't fine. In October 2002 the Perakos family sold the Elm Theater in West Hartford. Southington was the only screen they had left, and the family members running it were already in their eighties. After the 2002 season they couldn't find the staff to open again. The lot went dark.[2]

"A flat ten-acre lot ten miles from a city was worth more as a strip mall than as a screen."

2002-2010 · Section IV

The community takeover

For two years the lot sat empty behind its trees on the turnpike. A FOR SALE sign went up in 2003 with attorney Peter Perakos II handling the listing. The family was open to a buyer who would keep it as a drive-in. There were no buyers like that.[2]

In April 2004 the town put the question on a referendum: should Southington spend $1.61 million to buy the roughly forty-acre property and annex it to Recreation Park. The vote was 2,299 to 1,087 in favor. It is one of the cleaner mandates in the town's recent civic history.[2][3]

Six years passed before anyone actually turned the projector back on. The town owned the land. It didn't have an operator. In early 2010 a group of locals organized themselves as the Southington Drive-In Committee, partnered with the Southington Land Conservation Trust and the local Rotary Club, and rebuilt the model from the ground up as a nonprofit. The committee describes itself as New England's first nonprofit drive-in theatre. On June 26, 2010, the lot opened again, single screen now, about 300 cars instead of the old 1,100, the snack bar back in operation, the radio audio coming through your dashboard.[1][7]

"Six years passed before anyone actually turned the projector back on."

2010-present · Section V

Modern era

The model is straightforward and a little radical. The Town of Southington owns the land and lets the Drive-In Committee run it. Every Saturday night through the summer, a different local nonprofit hosts the show, staffs the gate, works the lot, and shares the proceeds. The snack bar is operated separately by the Southington High School DECA Club, which keeps its own take to fund the chapter's activities. The lead season sponsor for more than a decade has been Richard Chevrolet, the family-owned dealership a few miles up the road.[5][4]

The math is small and the math works. In the first four seasons after the 2010 reopening, the committee distributed more than $50,000 to a dozen local civic organizations. By the end of its eighth season the cumulative total was past $192,000. The 2026 season is the seventeenth, opening on May 30 with Jaws, closing on September 17 with Wicked, fifteen Saturdays in between, $20 a vehicle at the gate.[4][7]

"The math is small and the math works."

Through the seasons · Section VI

Notable moments

Opening night, 1955: a delegation of Northeastern film executives drove out from New York to watch the Perakos brothers light the screen for the first time. Blackboard Jungleran second on the bill. Most of the lot had probably never heard "Rock Around the Clock" on speakers that big.[1]

July 13, 1979: the second screen lit for the first time. The lot was the SOUTHINGTON TWIN for the next two decades.[2]

June 26, 2010: the first show after the closure. A community-owned drive-in had never been tried in New England before that night.[1][7]

Every October since the reopening, the lot turns into the Halloween Festival, hosted by the LIONS Club and Southington Community Cultural Arts: hay rides in the afternoon, pumpkin painting on tailgates, trunk-or-treat in the parking aisles, a children's cartoon at dusk, then a feature like Hotel Transylvania after dark.[4]

May 30, 2026: the seventeenth season of the rebuilt drive-in opens with Jaws. It is the same picture Steven Spielberg released in the summer of 1975, the summer that invented the blockbuster, the summer most of the country was choosing the multiplex over the drive-in for the first time. It is showing again here on the same kind of asphalt where it would have shown then. That feels like it means something.[4]

"A community-owned drive-in had never been tried in New England before that night."

Why it still matters · Section VII

Cultural significance

Connecticut once had more than twenty drive-ins. The Meadows in Hartford, which opened the same summer as Southington in 1955, covered thirty-two acres, parked 2,500 cars, and called itself the largest drive-in in the world. It closed in 1975. Pleasant Valley in Barkhamsted ran for twenty-seven years and shut down in December 2022. Today there are two left in the state. One of them is the Mansfield Drive-In, which keeps its books in the black partly by running a weekend flea market on the same lot. The other is Southington, which keeps its books in the black by giving the lot away to a different nonprofit every Saturday.[10][11]

That is the part that makes Southington different. It survived not because it found the right operator but because the town decided it was worth keeping and the volunteers decided it was worth running. Most drive-ins that closed are empty fields with broken speaker poles. This one is a Saturday-night place for the LIONS to sell hamburgers, for the Land Trust to raise money for open space, for DECA kids to learn how to run a counter, for the Italian-American Festival to take precedence the one weekend in July it conflicts.[4]

The screen still catches the same light it did in 1955. The popcorn is still salty. The radio still works. The trees on the turnpike still hide the lot from anyone who doesn't know it's there. Bring a car. Tune to 89.9 FM. The seventeenth season starts on a Saturday.

"Most drive-ins that closed are empty fields with broken speaker poles. This one is a Saturday-night place for the LIONS to sell hamburgers, for the Land Trust to raise money for open space, for DECA kids to learn how to run a counter."