Chick’s Drive-In

COLLECTION HISTORY

The people behind the place.

Joseph E. “Chick” Celentano and his father began selling hamburgers and hot dogs from their garage in October 1950 to motorists heading toward Savin Rock. The business grew into a Beach Street seafood restaurant known for split grilled hot dogs, lobster rolls, and fried seafood. Its founder’s July 2015 obituary situates the restaurant within a lifetime of local business and public activity. [WHCD-006]

Chick’s became a destination for motorists as well as beachgoers. The 2015 closure report calls it a cruising destination and includes a customer’s recollection of riding there with friends on motorcycles. This supports its role in shorefront vehicle culture. It does not authenticate any particular car-show photograph; event date, location, photographer, and reuse permission still need to accompany a photograph before it enters this archive. [WHCD-004]

Tropical Storm Irene badly damaged the restaurant in August 2011. Contemporary reporting describes broken windows, water inside the building, and a workforce that arrived to help clean up. Customers offered equipment and assistance, while restoration of electric power limited how quickly business could resume. The response provides a specific, documented example of the attachment between Chick’s and the people who worked and ate there. [WHCD-005]

After Celentano’s death, the restaurant’s future became a major local story. The Register’s year-end review identified the closure announcement among its most-read reports of 2015 and described customers returning for a final meal before November 15. Later reporting confirms that Chick’s closed that year in accordance with its proprietor’s wishes. Its long run had outlasted the amusement park that first brought customers along Beach Street. [WHCD-009] [WHCD-010]

The photographs in this collection show the restaurant in May 2017: the customer slogan still above the entrance, the roadside sign still standing, and an empty parking area behind barriers. They document a closed business, not its busy operating years. Their capture date comes from the photographer’s metadata; the later Flickr and Wikimedia upload dates do not date the scenes. [WHCD-011]

Redevelopment eventually changed the site. Reporting describes the sign’s removal and demolition of the restaurant in 2023, with twelve townhouses occupying former parking space. In July 2025, the owner of Riva Bar & Restaurant announced a July 16 soft opening and August 1 grand opening at the former Chick’s location, with Sandy Point Creamery opening alongside it. These are subsequent uses of the property, not a continuation of Chick’s. [WHCD-010] [WHCD-008]

Chick’s long operation connected Beach Street’s resort history with later generations of local customers. Its 2015 closing belongs to the business’s story, while the 2017 photographs document the property after service ended. The standing slogan and sign make that interval visible: familiar commercial features survived even when customers could no longer enter for a meal. Later removal, demolition and replacement uses are separate property-history events. Reading the sequence prevents a photograph of an empty restaurant from being presented as evidence of its ordinary working day. Menus, advertisements and dated customer accounts can recover the activity that the post-closure images no longer show. [WHCD-006] [WHCD-004] [WHCD-005]