On Thursday afternoon, on the Admiral Twin Drive-In theater‘s Facebook page, it said construction workers had started installing panels for the double movie screen at the Tulsa landmark.
Sure enough, they did. The gate was locked by early evening, but I shot this image over the fence:
The concrete structure below the screen skeleton will be the concession stand and rest rooms. It’s hoped the drive-in will be reopened by mid-summer.
The historic double-screen was destroyed in a fire in September 2010.
The drive-in first opened in 1951, and its second screen was built a year later. The Admiral Twin sits just off the older Admiral Place alignment of Route 66.
Even as the number of drive-ins in the United States dropped over the decades, the Admiral Twin continued to show first-run movies.
In addition to its association with Route 66, the Admiral Twin served as an inspiration during a scene in Tulsa native S.E. Hinton’s famous novel, “The Outsiders.”