Gardiners Road Drive-In, November 1948

Going to see a movie at the drive-in is a fun summer pastime. Kingston’s first drive-in movie theatre, as shown in this photograph by George Lilley in November 1948, was located at the corner of Bath Road and Gardiners Road. There was certainly a lot more farmland there than there is today! You’ll notice that the quality of this photograph is poor. That’s because the negative’s acetate is disintegrating, and is warping the negative. This is known as “vinegar syndrome” for disintegrating acetate negatives strongly smell like vinegar. Unfortunately, this is the only known image we have of Kingston’s first drive-in, so we are freezing the negative to try to prevent it from warping any further.