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Historic place

Northwest Highway Drive-In

6729 W Northwest Hwy, Dallas, TX

Billed as Dallas' first drive-in theater, with room for 552 cars and a clown's head mural.

📅 1941–1963🏛️ TheaterDemolished
Open on the mapSlide back to 1941

The story

The Northwest Highway Drive-In opened in 1941 and Cinema Treasures calls it Dallas' first drive-in theater. It had one screen and room for 552 cars and was run by Claude Ezell and Associates. A second theater from the same operators, the Chalk Hill Drive-In, opened two weeks later.

Commenters recall a clown's head mural on the screen tower. The theater closed in 1963 and was torn down in the early 1960s, according to a commenter. It appeared in the 2001 documentary Drive-In Movie Memories. Commenters say a Kip's Big Boy restaurant went up on the site after demolition, followed by a shopping strip. Cinema Treasures lists the address as 6729 W. Northwest Highway, and the operators ran it alongside Chalk Hill as a pair that opened in the summer of 1941.

What's There Now

Commenters say a strip mall now sits where it stood.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Cinema Treasures lists it as one screen, 552 cars.
It was mentioned in the 2001 documentary Drive-In Movie Memories.
Commenters recall the clown mural was still there at closing.

Nearby history

Campisi's Egyptian Restaurant

5610 E Mockingbird Ln · 3.7 km away
The Egyptian Lounge sign stayed up because the Campisis could not afford a new one, and Jack Ruby ate steak here the nig

The Old Plantation

3911 Cedar Springs Rd · 6.5 km away
Moved to Cedar Springs from downtown after its land went to the Dallas Museum of Art.

Sons of Hermann Hall

3414 Elm St · 8.9 km away
A German fraternal lodge on Elm Street with a dance hall and bowling alley that later gave older roots musicians a stage

Trees

2709 Elm St · 9.0 km away
A Deep Ellum club named for its trunk-like support beams, where Nirvana's 1991 show ended in a scuffle with security.

Majestic Theatre

1925 Elm St · 9.2 km away
The last survivor of Dallas's Theater Row went dark in 1973 after Live and Let Die, then came back as a performing arts

Adair's Saloon

2624 Commerce St · 9.3 km away
A hamburger-and-jukebox bar that started on Cedar Springs in 1963 and moved to Deep Ellum in 1983, still with free live

Know something about Northwest Highway Drive-In? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?

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Sourceshttps://cinematreasures.org/theaters/25270