Eric Twin at Independence Mall

John on January 2, 2009 at 5:07 am

Hondo59 is right: only PART of the mall was torn down. He’s also right about its possibility of closing with the I-295 construction in the 80’s. Sorry to have left those out but thank you to Hondo59! Touching on the mall’s unsavory reputation, can anyone verify what I had always heard as a kid: a young woman was mugged and killed there, in one of those awful, dark corridors? For an open-air mall, it could be – even during daylight, mind you! – ridiculously foreboding and downright scary. Any word on how the Destinta is doing? We moved from the area in 2003.

hondo59 on February 21, 2008 at 10:36 am

The comments by John are very true. The last film I saw here was “Messenger of Death”. There’s not much to say about it other than it had dirty drapes and sticky floors. I recall that there were rocking chairs in the rear of the auditorium. I believe it was built as a single screen theater along with the Eric Lawrence in the Lawrence Shopping Center in another suburb of Trenton.

It almost fell victim to the contruction of I-295 in the mid-eighties. The interstate eventually abutted the SE side of the building. As indicated above, the entire Independence Mall (open air) hit hard times and ended up mostly abandoned. It used to house S. P. Dunham’s and Hurley-Tobin Department stores (both buildings still stand) and a Murphy’s (razed). Only part of the mall was torn down. The Eric was completely razed and a strip center was built on that portion of the lot.

The RKO Hamilton on South Broad Street (now a church) is nearby.