Belford Drive-In
Rockford, Illinois1965-1995
Shop Belford Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. It opened on December 23, 1965, with one outdoor screen and a 1,000-seat indoor auditorium above and behind the concession stand. The sign had two small tabs above the movie board marked INDOOR and OUT DOOR. The full Belford 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.
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Belford Drive-In History
The Belford Drive-In in Rockford, Illinois, opened on December 23, 1965, at 8301 East State Street. A December opening is an odd choice for an outdoor theater in northern Illinois, but the Belford was built with a way around the weather. It had one outdoor screen and one indoor screen, and the indoor auditorium, with 1,000 seats, sat above and behind the drive-in's booth and concession stand. Both screens opened with the same double bill, Pinocchio in Outer Space and Harum Scarum.
Kerasotes Theatres ran it, and the place kept growing until it had six screens. The sign kept up with the setup: a long red arrow, a block of multicolored letters spelling the name, a red THEATRE panel, and two small tabs above the movie board marked INDOOR and OUT DOOR. A local moviegoer remembers the indoor side as a good second-run house with 99-cent tickets. The site lay east of Rockford toward Belvidere, which may explain the name, though no source says so.
The Belford closed on September 17, 1995, at the end of a 20-year lease. Kerasotes tore it down and built the ShowPlace 16 on the land, which opened in 1997 without the old name. The site is now an AMC multiplex. So the lot is still showing movies, and the cars now park outside.