Airline Drive-In
Houston, Texas1950-1981
Shop Airline Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. The tower was painted bright yellow with blue trim, red bullseyes down both sides and three big open squares in red, orange and blue. A commenter remembered an earlier mural of a plane flying over downtown Houston. The full Airline history is further down the page, below the styles. Every shirt is printed to order in the USA and carries the memories of bygone places and teams.
4 products
Airline Drive-In History
The Airline Drive-In in Houston, Texas, opened at 7:00 p.m. on June 10, 1950, at 4507 Airline Drive, with Canadian Pacific and Randolph Scott. It advertised a playground and a snack bar with car service. It had one screen and parked 600 cars, and Lone Star Theatres owned it in 1956.
Airline Drive was once U.S. 75, the road to Dallas. A commenter who lived in Houston in the 1950s remembered a mural on the back of the tower, with a plane flying over downtown and the Ship Channel, and very good neon. By January 1977, when John Margolies photographed it for what became a Library of Congress collection, the plane was gone. The tower was painted bright yellow with blue trim, red bullseyes ran down both sides, and three big open squares in red, orange and blue overlapped in the middle. No source says who painted either one.
Tercar Theatres ran it late in its life. The last program was a six-movie show on February 15, 1981. A 1981 aerial shows the lot already cleared, with the North Freeway Business Center going up.