Adult Movie Theatres in New York

Open on Staten Island, in Manhattan and in Queens

Manhattan’s cinemas went in waves

Deep Throat opened at the World Theater on 12 June 1972. In 2016 the Rialto Report set out before-and-after photographs of 34 former grindhouses in the Times Square area.

The first wave was in the East Village. In February 1989 the city closed the Bijou at 100 Third Avenue and the Variety Photoplays at 110 Third Avenue.

The Show Palace stood at 670 Eighth Avenue. Its last day was 11 June 1995. The Eros at 732 Eighth Avenue ran from 1969 to 1997, and the Venus at 728 from 1970 to about 1996.

The Playpen was at 693 Eighth Avenue, at 44th Street. It was sold to Tishman Realty in July 2007, closed that year and was demolished that December. The InterContinental hotel stands on the site.

One unadvertised cinema outlasted them: a basement of about 100 seats at 82 East 4th Street, which closed in late April 2019.

Queens and Brooklyn

The Polk, at 93-09 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, opened in 1938 with 598 seats. Harold Gussin ran it for 45 years, and for about 40 of them it showed adult films. It closed in 2006 and was demolished in February 2008.

The Queens Theatre, 219-36 Jamaica Avenue in Queens Village, had about 2,500 seats and showed adult films from March 1974 to February 1989.

Cinema Kings Highway, at 711 Kings Highway in Brooklyn, had two small screening rooms, an upstairs room for classic films and private booths in 2011. Nick Nicolaou, by his own account, took it over from the widow of its 1960s owner, ran it with no signs outside, and agreed to sell it to a neighbour. It closed in 2020.

One of the outer-borough houses is still trading: the Fair Theatre in East Elmhurst. Todd Verow and Charles Lum made a short film about it in 2015, Been Too Long at the Fair.

The adult zoning of 1995 and 2001

On 25 October 1995 the City Council adopted new zoning for adult establishments across the city. On 24 February 1998 the New York Court of Appeals upheld the rules. Rudolph Giuliani, then mayor, said they would leave no more than five adult stores in Times Square, and that in his view one was too many. The same year, in Buzzetti v. City of New York, the federal appeals court counted 500 sites where adult businesses could go.

From 1998 to 2001, many stores selling adult material kept it under 40 per cent of their stock. On 31 October 2001 the Council narrowed that route.

The rules get the credit for Times Square, but the Show Palace, the Venus and the Eros had all gone before the Court of Appeals ruled. Urban planners told the Associated Press in 2007 that the change came out of decades of work begun before Giuliani was elected.