Ventnor Twin Theatre
5211 Ventnor Avenue,
Ventnor City,
NJ
08406
5211 Ventnor Avenue,
Ventnor City,
NJ
08406
4 people
favorited this theater
Situated in the heart of Ventnor City, New Jersey, the Ventnor Twin is the last remaining movie theater on Absecon Island. All of the others have either burned or were demolished. It stands today as a magnificent example of the Art Deco style.
In its beginning, it was a single screen theater and was later remodeled into a twin in the late 1960’s.
It had been closed for a few years after a city inspection revealed that it was on the verge of collapse in 1998. Many thought that it could not be saved. Fortunately, it was purchased at a very nominal cost and to everyone’s amazement, it was fully restored within just one year. However, by the end of 2004, the Ventnor had closed once more.
Contributed by
Dan Sempsey
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Recent comments (view all 54 comments)
There’s only one theater listed in Ventnor, but I saw a few movies in the late seventies at a shopping mall twin cinema there. If you took the Black Horse Pike and turned right before crossing the bridge, just after the Two Guys store, there was a shopping center about two miles down the road. I think there was a Jamesway there. I saw Airplane, Oh God, and maybe three other films there. No idea if the movie theaters are still there.
I think that would have been the Ventnor Plaza shopping center on Wellington Avenue—don’t remember what the theaters were called.
Please let me know what the current status of the theater is. If it’s facing demolition, I have an idea that’s truly “outside of the box.”
the franks allow the theater to sit, it closed down after the summer of 04, i remember seeing bewitched after a hockey tournament in atlantic city
i drove past a week or 2 ago and its boarded up. not a bad area to have a summer run movie house that works outside the box from the regular summer shows
Hi Newt, Thank you for the update! When you drove by, did you notice if the windows are boarded up, and if a wooden fence is surrouding the theater? Is the building being prepped for demolition? If so, and it won’t be landmarked, then I will notify the party who may “transport” the theater elsewhere. Please let me know as many specifics as you possibly can. Thank you!
Boxoffice Magazine reveals the date the Ventnor reopened with Armand Carroll’s handsome deco-moderne interior (seen in the 1936 photos linked in Warren G. Harris’s comment of May 15, 2008, comment above.)
The September 26, 1936, issue of Boxoffice ran an article about theater grosses in the Atlantic City area. One line reads “…and Ventnor in Ventor city also reported grosses topped previous season despite the fact that the Ventnor house was only rebuilt and opened on July 4, missing a month of good business.”
The Boxoffice item corroborates Warren’s 1936 trade journal photos as to the year the Ventnor reopened, but this Cinema Treasures news post says the house was reopened in 1938, after the original 1921 theater was destroyed by a fire. Unless the place was rebuilt twice in two years, the claim of a 1938 reopening must be an error. Unfortunately, the news post doesn’t cite a source for the date or for the information about a fire.
The wording of the Boxoffice article doesn’t make clear if the Ventnor was closed for only a month for rebuilding (an awfully brief time for a major project) or had merely lost a month’s business from the busy summer season, but it does use the word “rebuilt,” suggesting that, at the least, the house had been gutted, so a fire is a possibility. A planned rebuilding probably would not have been scheduled at a time that might keep the house closed during its busiest season.
This message board page includes some discussion of the Ventnor Theatre, and some pictures of the facade.
1981 Photo
Here is a 1987 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/yadrceq
Ken – the theatre at Ventnor Plaza was called “The Ventnor Plaza Twin.” I lived a few blocks away, and saw a lot of movies there. Last time I was there, it was a video rental store about to close.
Needed a much larger marquee to do the movie titles justice.In 1981 picture.