Hollowbrook Drive-In

Hollowbrook Drive-In sign at Anne’s Anteex in Peoria Illinois. Facebook post link with image.

https://www.facebook.com/Annes-Anteex-1195465870482039/photos/pcb.4298328223529106/4298327026862559

A more accurate address for this theater is 1200 Oregon Rd, Cortlandt, NY 10567. Jay Rd just east of this was the entrance road.

Please update.

Many fond memories of going to this place with Dad. Loved visiting Carvel across the street. Saw Prom Night, The Shining, C.H.U.D., Texas Chainsaw Massacre.. Loved walking around before it started and trying to find the best sounding window speaker. Eventually it turned to radio speaker.

Saw the Movie “Frogs” there in 1972. I also remember the “FOGMAN” who used that DDT for pest control. What were they thinking? Also the movie “They came from within”. The long windy road at night was scary for a lad of 9.

Thanks Ken and Mike.

Bernie Brooks was the owner of the Hollowbrook in 1958. Here is a 1974 aerial photo:
http://tinyurl.com/ygwzzlv

I am looking for information about the ORIGINAL Hollowbrook golf course that was in or around the area of the cinema. The course was abandoned, possibly during the Depression years of the 1930’s. If anyone can provide information, photos, possible information sources, etc. about the original golf course I will be grateful.

I also grew up in Peekskill during the 60s, and the drive-in was a regular feature of my weekends. I saw the first half-dozen of the James Bond films on their screens. I learned to fish in the stream that run along one side of the theater, and I can also remember running through the DDT Fog that they used for mosquito control, all three of my children have the normal number of fingers and toes, and otherwise seem normal. Well, sort of normal, at least for teenage human-beings.

I believe that the “Lakeland Acres” referenced in the Robeson incident might have at one time been the semi-private swim club located a half-mile or so southeast of the drive-in. The area looks like it is part of the Golf Club now.

I’ve lived down the street from the old theater for some time now. Remember taking my wife there numerous times. One of the last in the area. I watched it torn down and replaced with a housing development. Yes indeed the Carvel is still in business.
Folk singer Pete Seeger was one of those stoned while the local cops watched from a distance. Pete still recalls those days.
GT

I apologize for the vulgarity — I hesitated to do it, but was quoting what the original sources said. And I’m afraid we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this, since I am familiar with the history you present, but my interpretation of it is different than yours. Suffice it to say there has long been a cultural divide in Peekskill, as there has in the rest of the country. My position remains that political disagreements are never a justification for violence — especially violence whose sole goal is to restrict freedom of expression. Whether you agree or disagree with the positions being expressed does not make the attempt to stifle them any less “shameful.” And my opinion is based, not simply on my own view, but on the fact that most people in the Peekskill area have long refused to acknowledge the Hollowbrook incident. At this point, it’s pretty much forgotten, but it was also something few people would talk about years ago. I think we can safely surmise that it was not a part of their history of which most people were proud — which, to me, is synonymous with being “ashamed.” At any rate, the Hollowbrook Drive-In, which was on the site of the picnic grounds, is apparently now being turned into a housing development, and this was merely a footnote to the history of the drive-in. So I think we’ve sufficiently beaten the story into the ground, and I will not bring it up again.

R.H., I don’t really want to get into this here, but you’re using contemporary information to discuss historical context. Nobody knew at the time that Stalin’s atrocities ranked “with those of Hitler,” which is in itself a questionable statement. Stalin had been our valued ally just four years previously, and had certainly never attacked the U.S. What informed the local populace at the time had nothing to do with thoughts of nuclear annihilation and everything to do with the anti-union politics of the local newspaper, the Peekskill Star, which inflamed its readership and incited the riot. The fact that mobs gathered announcing they would drive all the “Jews and niggers” out of town is all anybody needs to know about the nature of this event. If this wasn’t “shameful,” nothing is.

I am not absolutely certain, but I believe this was the venue for one of the most shameful episodes in Westchester (and American) history: the infamous “Peekskill riots” that occurred in 1949 when Paul Robeson was invited to perform at a concert. The information I’ve been able to dig up says the concert was first scheduled for August 27 at “a picnic grounds called Lakeland Acres” or “The Lakeland Picnic Grounds, a former golf course.” Violence caused that concert to be cancelled; a rescheduled concert was successfully held on Sept. 4, but the attendees were subsequently stoned as they attempted to leave via the single road out — which had to have been Oregon Road. I’ve read elsewhere that the Drive-In was the site, but I’m now unable to confirm this. Whether it was or not would depend on when the Drive-In actually opened — if it was after 1949, it could be on this site. If not, then they were neighbors on Oregon Road. Anybody know?

I have the road sign of this Drive-in, on the door of the projection booth of my screening room which I found on ebay.