With its flat topography and rich soil, the far East side of Indianapolis was well suited for farming since it began as a settlement around the 1830s in what was then called the Northwest Territory. The National Road (US 40) originated in Cumberland MD in 1811 and reached Indianapolis in the mid 1830s, spurring a wave of growth. By the time Al Greens was built, many if not most local small farms were still equipped with well and outhouse. The development along US 40 nearby included pre-World War II modest-to-middle-income homes, a mortuary, cemetery, bowling alley, elementary school, restaurants and motels. (See the Indy Nostalgia page on Facebook.) Nearly all of these businesses would be demolished and built over starting in the 1950s and continuing though the 1980s.

According to the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, the first Indianapolis restaurant to serve patrons in cars was the Peacock, which opened in 1930 at the corner of 38th and Massachusetts. Another was the Tee Pee, opened in 1932 next to the Fair Grounds on Fall Creek Parkway.

Shortly after World War II, Al Green returned home from the war, having been a cook in the army. His father, who was likely an immigrant, possibly from Russia, purchased a parcel of land at the intersection of Shadeland and Shortridge for the restaurant. By 1947 the restaurant was ready to open. The nation was in a mood to celebrate and Al Greens was eager to join the party. New manufacturing plants were sprouting up nearby, including Chrysler, Western Electric, Jenn-Air, RCA, Ford, Kroger, International Harvester, and others.

The state highway commission also built its first “cloverleaf” intersection at Shadeland and US 40 on land purchased from the Greens (at least that's what I remember reading in the newspapers years ago.) There was one problem, however. The restaurant would have to seal off its access to eastbound Washington. It would have been too close to the cloverleaf ramp. This was going to be a problem, said Al Green. He wanted compensation, which is what he got. An undisclosed amount of money would be paid to the Greens for as long as they “occupied the premises,” according to rumor.

Although there were dozens of drive-in restaurants throughout the city, Al Green’s seems to have been among the top two or three. It's free movies, outsized tenderloins, and curb service by phone were some of its advantages. Other leading drive-ins included the Tee Pee, which had North and South locations, and a few others indicated in the illustration.

Drive-in restaurants were particularly popular with teenagers in search of a destination They apparently didn’t mind driving long distances to reach the better spots. Crosstown adventure driving was a fairly new phenomenon, made possible by affordable American-made cars and extremely cheap gasoline, selling in the $0.25 per gallon range during most of the 1950s. It wasn't until the 1973 Israeli War that the specter of $1 per gallon gas was suddenly seen as a possibility and then a reality. Today we are haunted by the specter of $5 per gallon gas, and beyond that, the eventual end of personal vehicles burning fossil fuels.

Directly across from Al Green’s on US 40 was Eastgate shopping center, one of the state’s first malls, for many years second only to Glendale mall in prestige. Eastgate began as an open-air mall and was enclosed sometime in the mid 1970s. Last I heard it was vacant and scheduled for auction.

Al Green's is nominally located in Warren Park, one of the small towns that Indianapolis annexed at it expanded. Most maps show Warren Park in the same typeface as Speedway and Beech Grove, two other towns that were annexed. With their older commercial district, these towns have retained a much stronger identity than Warren Park, whose core was located near 10th and Arlington but is now just a corner with strip malls and gas stations with no distinct character of its own. This may be part of the reason people living in Warren Park identify themselves as residents of Indianapolis, not Warren Park. Without a visible place to identify with, the town’s identity has literally vanished. It lives primarily as a name on a map, not a place in people’s hearts. Speedway, on the other hand, remains the famous capital of the racing world due to the Indy 500, probably more famous than Indianapolis.

True to its name, Warren Park was once park-like and forested and retains a good deal of forest or at least foliage. But as Warren Park was being planned, a low priority was placed on retaining public parkland, possibly based on the reasoning that residential lots in the area were larger than traditional urban lots and thus residents would have less need for public parks. Warren Park's single major public park remains Ellenberger, a fairly impressive park roughly 35 acres in size two miles West of Al Green's, built perhaps in the 1920s. It was popular for school and youth sports but did not seem to attract people from the outlying suburbs in great numbers during the 60s-70s. Jake Greene Park, a mile and a half Northeast of Al Green's, opened in the early 1970s but it still retained some of its cornfield character, flat and uninviting, lacking natural forestation or any major amenities. So, Al Green's did not have to seriously compete with public parks. With Warren Park's shortage of public spaces, either natural or urban, Al Green's was as good a solution as any for young people looking for fun and adventure in a world that presented some very limited choices.

Besides its shortage of parks and open spaces, Warren Park has also had a shortage of bars, nightclubs, and entertainment venues. The nightclubs were downtown or on Pendelton Pike, for the most par. There were a few theaters, the Arlington indoor theater and Pendelton Pike movie drive-in, for example, both highly popular in their day. But Al Green's was virtually unchallenged within a radius of several miles for the type of service it offered. Possibly the nearest major drive-in restaurant was Steer-Inn a few miles to the west. It was popular but lacked the expansive feel and free movies of Al Green's. The Steer-Inn remains open to this day as a sit-down restaurant, one of the few survivors from that era.

Below is the Al Greens site as it appears today, occupied by a car dealership.