A fire that broke out Wednesday at Riverside’s historic drive-in move theater damaged a projection building and left one of the screens smeared with smoke and ash but “intact.”
The non-injury blaze was reported at 11:25 a.m. at the Van Buren Drive-in near the intersection of Van Buren Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue, on the west end of the city, according to the Riverside Fire Department.
The agency said three engine crews and a truck company, numbering just over a dozen personnel, were sent to the location and encountered heavy smoke rising in front of one of the three screens.
“The first arriving unit found a working fire inside the theater screen building,” Battalion Chief Garrett Coryell said. “Crews quickly made entry to the building and were able to hold the fire to one portion of a storage area. The majority of the screen remains intact with only smoke damage.”
The blaze was completely knocked down at 11:45 a.m., Coryell said.
“The arson investigation unit arrived and found the cause of the fire to be undetermined,” he said.
The drive-in opened in 1964, originally with only one screen, but that was expanded to three a decade later. The business has undergone several renovations in the last 60 years and also serves as the hub for weekend swap meets during daylight hours.
Only a few hundred drive-ins remain in operation nationwide, most of them in the eastern half of the country.