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Syracuse

Adult Movie Theatres in Syracuse

New York · last checked 20 October 2026

Nothing in Syracuse has booths or a screen. What the city has instead is the most determined ending in this directory: a cinema owner who beat the obscenity charges every time they were brought, turned down a deal to walk free if he stopped, paid the fine, and kept going, until the city gave up and bought his building in order to shut it.

What is still open

Nothing this directory counts. Four places were checked individually and none of them has a room. Adult World at 2870 Erie Boulevard East, (315) 446-2613, trades 10am to 10pm and is plainly alive, with the owner answering reviews in August 2026. Along the same boulevard, Boulevard Books at 2576 runs until 11pm. Salt City Book & Video up in North Syracuse opens at eight in the morning. All shops.

The nearest arcade anyone describes is an Adult World fifty miles east at Yorkville, out by Utica, which is too far to call Syracuse.

Four ways to close a cinema

The Franklin opened at 237 South Avenue on 26 April 1914 with The Passion Play, which is a fair way to start a building that ends up here. Five hundred and thirty-five seats. It spent decades as a neighbourhood house running double and triple bills, became the Franklin Art in 1968 showing foreign films, and from there went to adult pictures.

  1. 1Prosecute himObscenity charges, more than once. By the account in the record he won each time.
  2. 2Offer him a dealOn 24 August 1973 Judge William J. Burke offered a discharge on condition he stopped showing X-rated films. Hausman refused.
  3. 3Fine him instead$26,878, for showing Deep Throat. He paid it and carried on.
  4. 4Buy the buildingThe city purchased the Franklin Art outright in order to close it. It shut on 11 June 1989 and was demolished on 23 November 1992.
Every other city in this directory stopped at step one or two.

Be clear about the sourcing, because this is the centrepiece of the page. The fine, the judge’s name and the date come from a contributor quoting an Associated Press bulletin, and the claim that the city bought the building because the prosecutions kept failing comes from a second contributor. The closing and demolition dates are in the main record. We have not seen the court file.

Twenty-six thousand dollars, in 1973

The number is worth sitting with. $26,878 in 1973 was a house. Hausman was offered a way out of it: stop showing X-rated films and the matter goes away. He said no.

Nothing else in this directory contains a decision like that. Owners elsewhere changed the name over the door, moved out of downtown, took the booths out, became an antique shop. Here a man paid the price of a house to keep a programme running, and the authorities eventually concluded that the only reliable way to stop him was to become his landlord.

And the other one, on South Salina

The Adam and Eve at 572 South Salina Street had more names than any building on this site. It opened around 1917 as Palace Hall and was in turn the Top, the System and the Syracuse Theatre before settling as the Civic in 1933.

In 1961 it became the Civic Follies and ran adult films alongside burlesque, which is an unusually early date for that combination. It took the name Adam and Eve in 1981 and was demolished in 1987.

The rest of downtown had already gone. The RKO Keith’s and the Paramount were pulled down together in the autumn of 1967, and the old Loew’s State survived only because a preservation campaign formed in 1975 to save it. It is the Landmark now, and it is the last of them.

Sources

Something here wrong or out of date? Tell us and we will check it.

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