Campus Cinemas
454 Russell Street,
Hadley,
MA
01035
454 Russell Street,
Hadley,
MA
01035
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Campus Cinemas was built in 1965 as part of the new Campus Plaza shopping center. The building was adjacent to the Zyre’s department store.
The three auditoriums each seated about 500 people, walls were golden curtains over a cinderblock construction. They immediately became the primary cinemas in the area (2nd run, as the region was not yet a first run market), relegating the nearby Amherst and Calvin cinemas to 3rd run status.
When the Mountain Farms Four Cinemas opened in 1974 at a nearby mall, Campus Cinemas struggled to compete, eventually resorting to 3rd run films and later X-Rated movies, until finally closing in 1976.
The building sat vacant with a leaky roof soaking the interior until it was demolished in 1983. In the late-1990’s, a T.J. Maxx department store was built on the site.
Contributed by
AlLarkin, David A. Litterer
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Recent comments (view all 3 comments)
The Hadley Twins were in the Stop & Shop/Zayre plaza on Route 9, a little further up from the Mountain Farms Mall. It was a standalone building, located in the corner of the lot to the left of the strip mall. The theater itself closed in the late 70s after the Mountain Farms Four Theatres opened. It showed single-X films in its last stage of life which is why I never got to see any movies there, being an Impressionable Youth during the glorious Disco Era and all.
The theater building itself lay dormant until I believe the mid-80s, when Zayre moved out of the plaza and Stop & Shop expanded into what was one of their first “Super Stop & Shop” stores, demolishing the building in the process even though it was situated well away from the store.
A TJ Maxx retail store now stands where the Hadley Twins used to be.
Since at least 1969, this was known as Campus Cinemas and it was actually a triplex.
The auditoriums each held just over 500 seats, with golden draperies on the sides (felt like they were made of fiberglass, behind them were cinderblock walls), and steps up to emergency exits on each side of the screen. They were identical in size and layout except Cinema 1 had a separate inner lobby (I don’t know why – perhaps that one had been added later, but from the outside rear of the building it looked like it was all a single construction) They were the main cinemas for Amherst at the time (being approx. 600 feet from the line between Amherst and Hadley) but it was all 2nd run. They opened in 1965, when the rest of Campus Plaza was built.
After the Mountain Farms Four Theatres opened in early 1974, they struggled to compete, eventually dropping to 3rd run and finally porno flicks before closing in 1976.
Zayre’s closed in 1981, and Stop & Shop moved into their space in the spring of 1983. That summer, the Campus Cinemas were demolished. About ten years later, the Stop & Ship expanded west and connected with the new T. J. Maxx store which was built on the site of the cinemas.
The Campus Cinemas were a lot nicer that the Mountain Farms Four theatres – larger and with bigger screens. Too bad they were not able to compete.
The November 6, 1967, issue of Boxoffice Magazine published an article saying that the the first two auditoriums of the Campus Cinemas were scheduled to open about mid-November. The third auditorium was slated for a spring, 1968, opening. The owners of the independent house were Robert Waldman and David Dick.
The theater was being decorated in a colonial style by Janet Field. A pair of antique copper lamps that once hung in Charing Cross Road in London were affixed to the facade. Cinema 1 was equipped with 35mm and 70mm projectors, and Cinema 2 with 35mm and 16mm projectors, the latter to be used for movies presented in conjunction with local film societies and the various colleges in the area. Programs of independent and experimental films were contemplated as well.