Adult Movie Theatres in Richmond

What is open right now

The case about what a magistrate has to look at

The Lee Art Theatre stood at 934 West Grace Street. In the 1960s the police seized two films from it, and its operator was convicted in the Hustings Court of Richmond of possessing and exhibiting lewd and obscene motion pictures, under section 18.1-228 of the Code of Virginia.

The films were taken under a warrant, and a justice of the peace signed that warrant on the strength of one police officer’s affidavit. Here is everything that affidavit contained.

On 17 June 1968 the Supreme Court reversed, per curiam, in Lee Art Theatre, Inc. v. Virginia. The problem was not that the officer was wrong about the films. It was that the justice of the peace never asked him a single question about what was in them. He took the conclusion and issued the warrant, and seizing expression on that basis falls short of what the constitution requires.

It is a small case and it is barely two pages long, which is part of why it matters. Most of the fights in this directory are about whether something may be shown at all. This one is about the paperwork in between a police officer’s opinion and a locked door, and that is where nearly all of them were actually won and lost.

And then the best ending any of them got

The Lee Art closed in 1993. Virginia Commonwealth University bought the building, renovated it, and reopened it in February 1996 as the Grace Street Theater. It houses the university’s dance programme and it is still a working theatre today.

Set that against the rest of this site. The Princess in Milwaukee was 1,119 seats and is a car park. The Forum in Philadelphia is a car park. The Washington Street houses in Boston came down in 1990 and 1996.

Richmond’s went to the Supreme Court of the United States, survived another twenty-five years, and is now a room where people are taught to dance. Of the thirty-one cities on this site it is the only adult cinema that got a second life rather than a demolition permit.