Adult Movie Theatres in Camden

What is still open

One format, six businesses

South Jersey’s back rooms run to a standard. Six separate businesses, each with a small shop at the front, a flat fee at the counter or in a box on the wall, and theatres or booths behind it.

The fee gets you to the films. At four of the six, the booths cost again once you are inside.

The first drive-in was in Pennsauken

The first drive-in cinema anywhere opened on 6 June 1933 on Admiral Wilson Boulevard, near Central Airport. It was called the Camden Drive-In, but it stood over the line in Pennsauken Township.

Downtown went one house at a time. The Towers opened on 23 November 1914, showed its last film, Montana Belle, on 3 March 1953 and was demolished in 1955. The Stanley at 605 Market Street opened on 19 February 1926, was up for sale by late 1964, and closed and came down in 1965 for a Holiday Inn that was never built. The Midway on Broadway was leased to a promoter in 1978 for Spanish-language films and was then pulled down for the Walter Rand Transportation Center.

Adult films came to the edges. The Crescent on Mount Ephraim Avenue in West Collingswood reopened in 1971 as the Venus Art Theatre; it closed in the mid-1980s and by 1986 the building was a tyre and car service shop. Advertisements for the National Adult Movie Club between 1973 and 1977 list the Venus Art and a Mini-Twin Adult Theatre in Camden itself. The Route 295 Cinema on Haddonfield-Berlin Road in Cherry Hill showed adult films from about 1975 until June 1978.

Banned in the city, fought over in the suburbs

Camden’s zoning code, at section 870-37 A, puts “Adult entertainment uses” first on its list of uses prohibited in every district.

New Jersey’s law of 16 August 1995 keeps a sexually oriented business 1,000 feet from another one, a place of worship, a school or school bus stop, a playground, a hospital, a child care centre or a residential zone, unless a town’s zoning says otherwise. A business already trading keeps its place if one of those, other than a place of worship, arrives later. Outside it may have two signs: its name, up to 40 square feet, and one saying minors are not admitted. The state Supreme Court upheld the sign rule on 21 July 1998, reading it to let the name sign carry the street number, phone number, hours and the kind of business too.

Pennsauken went further. In September 1995 two adult businesses there, one on Admiral Wilson Boulevard, put backlit displays in their windows, and the township prosecuted under its own sign ordinance. On 28 July 1999 the Supreme Court held that the ordinance reached displays meant to be seen from outside.

In Cherry Hill, saying no cost $612,500. An applicant the township turned down sued in 2005. In 2009 the township’s insurer settled, he accepted a deed restriction barring any sexually oriented business from his land, and the township drew two zones where such businesses may open, neither near homes.