CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY
Drinking in Camden
A Look at the Bars, Taverns, Nightclubs & Social Clubs
UPDATED - 10/22/2008
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Any look at Camden that purports to be real has to first accept that Camden is a place where real people lived and still live. This town, ANY town, is more than its buildings, more than its churches, more than it politicians, and more than its schools. The bars, taverns, and social clubs of Camden provided entertainment opportunities for social activities for their patrons and members. The bars would sponsor sports teams, and provide financial support for other social activities, as evidenced in the advertising sections of programs ranging from banquets to high school and college yearbooks. In times when Camden was the place to be, it can also be said that Camden was the place to be in a social sense for the many who cared to step out for a taste after a hard days work! |
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HELP!!!!!!! If you can help me fill in the blanks, PLEASE e-mail me! I'm also looking for pictures of these bars, both inside and out. THANKS in advance! |
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A very long and very good book could probably be written about Prohibition in Camden. While some tavern owners sold out and others switched to other lines of work, many business owners, with wives and children to support, found there way around the unpopular laws against alcoholic beverages. A diluted brew of beer was legal, and many of Camden's taverns became "soft drink" houses. Needless to say, the demands of the public for real beer and alcohol and the needs of the businessmen to make a living often met somewhere outside the letter of the law! Camden Courier-Post columnist James M. O'Neill, writing under the byline of "JIMINY" noted in the February 2, 1933 edition of the paper that" "Twenty-seven of the 142 so-called "soft drink" establishments which were granted a Camden license for 1933, were raided by federal agents during the past year. . . So who was the mayor who said some months ago that Camden was beerless?" While Camden may not have been a "wide open" town in the 1920s and early 1930s, it undoubtedly was "interesting". Philadelphia gangster Mickey Duffy controlled the Camden brewery until he was gunned down in an Atlantic City hotel room, and the saloons and speakeasies of the city in many cases were tipped off about raids. Many stills also were noted in newspapers of the day. On
April 7, 1933, it became legal to serve beer once again in New Jersey. An
interesting article appeared in the June 9, 1933 Camden Courier-Post
concerning the effects that legalization had on the bars and the
speakeasies in and around Camden.
The next day, however, word came from city hall, and all was well at the saloons!
Meanwhile,
court cases were still pending and sentences were still being given out
in Federal Court
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Take a ride through any neighborhood in Camden, and if you are observant you will notice that at one time there must have been a lot of bars! In a time when the neighborhood bar was not a luxury, but almost as much a necessity as the corner grocery and barbershop, Camden had its share. In August of 1936 there were 213 liquor licenses. Many of the bars are gone, a sign of changing times, attitudes, and the cost of doing business in these modern times. The same thing happened to shoe repair shop- in 1947 Camden had 78 of them.... there may be 2 left in the city in 2004. |
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In order to get a handle on the many bars and taverns the city once had and those it still has, I've divided the city up into several sections, drawn partly on geographical lines, and partly on "neighborhood" lines.
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Camden
Bars Between 1919 and 1933 there were no legally operating bars as we know them in Camden, as the country was operating under Prohibition. There had been, of course, many such establishments open prior to 1919. Some closed shop forever, others remained open as restaurants, or in related businesses such as soft drink bottling. Some stayed in business operating on a "soft drink" permit, serving near beer. I've attempted to include some of the pre-1918 saloons here. The coverage on these establishments will be addressed in time. |
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One of the older sections of Camden, much of North Camden was fully built up prior to World War I. While no neighborhood was ever exclusively dominated by any ethnic group, in the older days much of North Camden was populated by people of Irish, German, and English descent, with a small Italian neighborhood near 2nd and Main and a black section in the east of 10th Street around Penn Street. The bars reflected the people in the neighborhood. Best remembered are Kelly's at the foot of State Street, Mancine's at 3rd and Elm, Nittingers at North 7th and Birch Street, Anne's Tavern on Vine Street, and Ford's Cafe at 941 Pearl Street, along with the State Bar, the last of the North Camden bars. The sources used below are the 1946 Camden City Directory, and the Bell Telephone Books for 1956, 1959, 1966, 1970 & 1977. For 1990 and 2004 personal research was done!
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Originally part of Stockton Township, Cramer Hill was made part of Camden City in 1899. There was a strong German community, but for the most part Cramer Hill was white, but ethnically diverse. Today there is a strong Latino presence, and some of the old bars remain, under new management, reflecting the present community. My memories of Cramer Hill were that there were A LOT of bars, and one could literally drink one's way up River Road, and have a pretty good head on by the time you hit 36th Street!
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EAST CAMDEN Also part of Stockton Township, most of East Camden's Bars lay along Federal Street, the main corridor, with a few on 27th Street leading in to Cramer Hill. East Camden has been my home pretty much since the mid-70s.... I've had some pretty good times here!
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More than a few bars and clubs did business on the Boulevard before Governor Whitman razed everything on the south side in 1999 and 2000. The Boulevard's reputation was far, far worse than the reality..... the price of being located across the river from Philadelphia, where the media constantly paint's Camden in the worst of colors on order to diminish the many, many shortcomings of that blighted city. The reality is that there were never more than five bars serving liquor on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden, and no more than three liquor stores, at any time. Given the location, and the State Store situation in Pennsylvania, the liquor stores were (and the two that remain) very profitable. Of the four bars that did business on the boulevard, three featured dancers clad in the state minimum which consists of a bikini. That's right, in New Jersey, you can't serve a beer and see a nipple at the same time! Not exactly one's conception of a den of iniquity. What the boulevard did feature were three motels, which by the 1970s had devolved into "by the hour" joints. A certain degree of prostitution took place, and the bars and other legitimate businesses on the Boulevard paid the price, reputation-wise, for that. It did not help that one of the bars, the Oasis, was located in the same building and owned by the same people who owned the Oasis Motel. Oh yes, we can't forget the infamous "LIVE NUDE SHOW" that Camden was always blamed for. It was on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard..... in PENNSAUKEN.
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CENTER CITY CAMDEN In the days when Camden's downtown was thriving, downtown Camden, defined here as the area between Linden Street and the "Chinese Wall" elevated rail lines at Mickle Street, the Delaware River and the Federal Street Bridge had many bars and restaurants. Some left to declining business, others were forced out in the assorted urban renewal projects that did as much to destroy Camden as revitalize it.
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