I lived at the south end of Ocean Avenue at the Bayonne City Line when I was a kid (‘50s-60s). Probably went to the Cameo to see a flick a handful of times. My pals and I got into it with an usher one Saturday afternoon and he was trying to chase us out. But we had perfected our usher-evading skills in the huge Journal Square movie palaces: the Loew’s,the State, and the Stanley. This particular afternoon, we hit the men’s room and tried crawling out the barred windows,(still visible in recent photos) so we couldn’t jump out as planned. We just ran back into the auditorium, grabbed a seat, slunked down, and shut our mouths. (At the time the Cameo was cater-corner to New York Bay Ceremony and a Jersey City Police precinct house, now long demolished with the property added to the cemetery. I remember the building best as the Cameo Bowl-o, after its bowling alley conversion. There used to be a row of low-slung retail in what’s now the parking lot. The lobby is now a fruit store and the auditorium is Peckman’s Pharmacy which, before the conversion, was located a couple of blocks further north on Ocean Avenue.
I remember the Murry’s Steaks years – an affordable, frozen, packaged meat and grocery store. Occupied the auditorium. Smallish chain, had another few stores in the area.
Yes, there’s definitely a BP gas station on that corner. The buildings to the left of the old Rialto came down along with the theater to make way for the gas pumps, but the buildings to the right remain standing. There is still a veterinarian’s office a few doors north of the Rialto on the same side of the street. It was Dr. Manziano’s when I was a kid back in the 50s and early 60s. It’s called Animal Hospital of Jersey City today.
The former Orient Theater (I remember it pretty well, I grew up on Ocean Avenue in the 1950s and my Grandmother lived in a cold-water railroad flat on Armstrong Avenue, between what was then Jackson Avenue and Ocean Avenue) is not actually the Our Lady of Sorrows Church building: that’s a few blocks away, on Clerk Street. On May 28, 1958 the Archbishop of Newark approved the purchase of the Orient Theatre on Ocean Avenue to be renovated as the parish auditorium. It is still used for weekly bingo games and social events. Frank and Nancy Sinatra were married at OLS on February 4, 1939. My grandmother and I used to wait for the Greenville-Lafayette bus at the corner of Ocean and Cleremont, across the street from the OLS auditorium after our Saturday visits to Woolworth’s on Jackson (now MLK Drive) and Cleremont.
They would pull that curtain up at the beginning of every movie and drop it again at the end. I used to marvel at its wrinkles after 60-odd years of multiple up-and-downs every day of the week.
I lived at the south end of Ocean Avenue at the Bayonne City Line when I was a kid (‘50s-60s). Probably went to the Cameo to see a flick a handful of times. My pals and I got into it with an usher one Saturday afternoon and he was trying to chase us out. But we had perfected our usher-evading skills in the huge Journal Square movie palaces: the Loew’s,the State, and the Stanley. This particular afternoon, we hit the men’s room and tried crawling out the barred windows,(still visible in recent photos) so we couldn’t jump out as planned. We just ran back into the auditorium, grabbed a seat, slunked down, and shut our mouths. (At the time the Cameo was cater-corner to New York Bay Ceremony and a Jersey City Police precinct house, now long demolished with the property added to the cemetery. I remember the building best as the Cameo Bowl-o, after its bowling alley conversion. There used to be a row of low-slung retail in what’s now the parking lot. The lobby is now a fruit store and the auditorium is Peckman’s Pharmacy which, before the conversion, was located a couple of blocks further north on Ocean Avenue.
I remember the Murry’s Steaks years – an affordable, frozen, packaged meat and grocery store. Occupied the auditorium. Smallish chain, had another few stores in the area.
https://trademarks.justia.com/736/28/murry-s-your-quality-value-food-stores-73628882.html
Yes, there’s definitely a BP gas station on that corner. The buildings to the left of the old Rialto came down along with the theater to make way for the gas pumps, but the buildings to the right remain standing. There is still a veterinarian’s office a few doors north of the Rialto on the same side of the street. It was Dr. Manziano’s when I was a kid back in the 50s and early 60s. It’s called Animal Hospital of Jersey City today.
The former Orient Theater (I remember it pretty well, I grew up on Ocean Avenue in the 1950s and my Grandmother lived in a cold-water railroad flat on Armstrong Avenue, between what was then Jackson Avenue and Ocean Avenue) is not actually the Our Lady of Sorrows Church building: that’s a few blocks away, on Clerk Street. On May 28, 1958 the Archbishop of Newark approved the purchase of the Orient Theatre on Ocean Avenue to be renovated as the parish auditorium. It is still used for weekly bingo games and social events. Frank and Nancy Sinatra were married at OLS on February 4, 1939. My grandmother and I used to wait for the Greenville-Lafayette bus at the corner of Ocean and Cleremont, across the street from the OLS auditorium after our Saturday visits to Woolworth’s on Jackson (now MLK Drive) and Cleremont.
They would pull that curtain up at the beginning of every movie and drop it again at the end. I used to marvel at its wrinkles after 60-odd years of multiple up-and-downs every day of the week.