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The Hunterdon that was

27 places in Hunterdon County that are gone: the movie houses, the diners, the factories, the groceries, the racetrack. Each pin says what it was, when it closed, and, where we could confirm it, what stands there now.

Verified August 8, 2026

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Before 1970 1970s and 1980s 1990s and 2000s 2010 onward Closing year not confirmed

Every pin sits at an approximate spot: a street address or a town center, not a surveyed point.

Every place on the map, by town

Flemington 9

  • Closed 2006

    A family-owned cut-glass and crystal gift shop on Main Street, founded in 1908.

    Closed in 2006 after 98 years, when the site was rezoned for redevelopment.

    What's there now: The site was slated for a condominium tract under the downtown redevelopment plan. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: NJBIZ

  • Closed 2019

    A family-owned fur retailer and Flemington landmark for nearly a century.

    The flagship store closed in 2019 after a liquidation sale announced by letter to customers.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: New Jersey 101.5 · TAPinto Flemington/Raritan

  • Closed September 16, 1993

    A single-screen movie theater at the corner of Route 31 and Church Street.

    Closed September 16, 1993. The building was demolished in 2006.

    What's there now: Demolished and redeveloped. The current tenant is not confirmed in our sources. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Cinema Treasures

  • Closed 2022

    The nation's first large-scale designer outlet mall, opened in 1981 with more than 40 name-brand shops.

    The last stores, Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor, shut by late 2022. The site was fully demolished by September 2025.

    What's there now: Cleared ground, with a townhome community planned. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: WFMZ · News 12 New Jersey

  • Closed 1970s

    A Main Street outpost of a Trenton-based department store chain, formed when Nevius Bros. bought the Voorhees store next door.

    Closed in the 1970s, as the flagship Trenton and New Brunswick stores lost customers to suburban malls and the satellite stores could not carry on without them.

    Today's Flemington Department Store on Route 31 is a separate business, founded in 1956.

    The exact closing year is decade-level, not year-level.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: 78 Main Street Flemington · That's the Press, Baby

  • Closed About 1956

    A Main Street movie house dating to the silent-film era.

    Closed about 1956. Its last listing was in the 1951 Film Daily Yearbook.

    What's there now: The building houses the Shaker Cafe. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Cinema Treasures

  • Closed November 1978

    A New Jersey pottery maker whose Flemington building became one of the country's first factory retail outlets, later run as a Pfaltzgraff store.

    Stangl manufacturing ended in November 1978. The Pfaltzgraff outlet in the same building closed and the space sat vacant by the mid-2000s.

    What's there now: The historic kiln building reopened in 2000 as the Hill-Fulper-Stangl Museum, and in 2012 the wider factory became The Stangl Factory, a creative-arts and event space. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Historical Marker Database · New Jersey Business Magazine

  • Closed 1997

    Flemington's Main Street supermarket, built as a small Acme in 1951 and later the site of Hunterdon's first ShopRite.

    Acme operated downtown until 1997. ShopRite had briefly taken over the site in the mid-1960s before moving out to a car-oriented shopping center in Raritan Township, where it still is.

    What's there now: The building spent years as a ceramics and housewares store, then sat vacant. The town has discussed bringing a grocer back downtown. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Strong Towns · Market Report Blog

  • Closed 2008

    An 1814 hotel and restaurant at 76 Main Street, where reporters and the sequestered jury both stayed during the 1935 Lindbergh trial.

    Closed to patrons in 2008 after the owner said the restaurant had been losing money for years, then sat dark for more than a decade.

    What's there now: Reopened July 15, 2024 as a boutique Marriott Tribute Portfolio hotel after a ground-up restoration. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: WFMZ · Wikipedia

Lambertville 5

  • Closed 2024

    The Coryell Street hardware and supply house that called itself the world's most unusual supply house, in the same building since 1917.

    Closed at the end of 2024, after 107 years in business.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Bucks County Herald

  • Closed 1925

    A North Union Street maker of bathroom fixtures that grew from 2 kilns in 1909 to 12 kilns by 1922.

    Closed in 1925. Without sinks and bathtubs to pair with its toilets and tanks, it could not compete.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Lambertville Historical Society

  • Closed About 1909

    Twin rubber manufacturers that anchored part of Lambertville's industrial riverfront.

    Closed around 1909, when large Firestone rubber plantations drove prices down and ended domestic competitiveness.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Lambertville Historical Society

  • Closed June 11, 2023

    A generations-old luncheonette counter in Lambertville.

    Served its last day June 11, 2023.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location, town center. Sources: Patch

  • Closed 1922

    A Lambertville plant turning out roughly 15 tons of hairpins a week.

    Opened in 1901 and closed in 1922, when women began bobbing their hair.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location, town center. Sources: Lambertville Historical Society

Clinton 3

  • Closed 1970s

    Clinton's downtown A&P grocery, a 17,000-square-foot store with a distinctive barrel roof.

    Closed in the 1970s, when a replacement store was built next door.

    What's there now: The building became an Eckerd, then a Rite Aid, and most recently a Walgreens. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Market Report Blog

  • Closed Before 1957

    Clinton's Acme grocery, about two-thirds the size of the A&P that later replaced it a block away.

    Closed before the A&P opened in 1957. The exact year is not pinned down.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Market Report Blog

  • Closed 2023

    A health-food restaurant at 49 Main Street with a steady following.

    Closed abruptly in 2023 after eight years. The owners said they intended to pivot to a meal-delivery concept.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Daily Voice

Raritan Township 3

  • Closed 2011

    The county's last operating movie theater, in a building that started life as a 1970s car dealership.

    Closed in 2011.

    What's there now: Redeveloped into a CVS, a PNC Bank, and a Starbucks. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Cinema Treasures

  • Closed 1999

    The county's agricultural fairgrounds, home of the Flemington Fair and, briefly during the Civil War, a Union Army encampment called Camp Fair Oaks.

    The Flemington Fair ended in 1999. The county 4-H fair kept running at the old Flemington fairgrounds until 2003, then moved in 2004 to a county site in East Amwell, out toward Ringoes.

    What's there now: A Wal-Mart and Lowe's big-box complex, approved in 2006. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Preservation New Jersey · Hunterdon County Fair

  • Closed November 8, 2002

    A half-mile oval that ran horse racing from 1848, auto racing from 1915, and NASCAR Winston Modified Tour races from 1991, once called the fastest half-mile in the country.

    The last race ran November 8, 2002. The grandstand came down in January 2005.

    What's there now: The Raritan Town Center shopping complex, including a Lowe's. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Wikipedia · The US Sun

Frenchtown 2

  • Closed July 30, 2023

    A cheese and specialty-goods shop on Race Street.

    Closed July 30, 2023 after nine years, when a deal to buy the store fell through and the building owner did not renew the lease.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Daily Voice

  • Closed Closing year not confirmed

    A bowling alley on Route 12 that drew families from across the Flemington and Frenchtown area for decades.

    The business keeps an in-memoriam website confirming it has closed, but no year is stated there or anywhere else we found.

    If you know the year it closed, send it in below.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: West Hunterdon Lanes

High Bridge 1

  • Closed 1970

    One of the longest continually operating iron and steel companies in the country, tracing back to the 1742 Union Iron Works, with the town of High Bridge grown up around it.

    The plant closed in 1970, though some accounts say 1972. Harsco Corporation had acquired the company after its 210th anniversary in 1952.

    What's there now: The historic office building still stands and is listed as an endangered historic structure. The Taylor Steelworkers Greenway runs through the former works. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: NJ Skylands · Hagley Museum finding aid

Lebanon Borough 1

  • Closed February 2006

    The diner-building company, started in Newark in 1927 and later run from Hunterdon County, that built an estimated 1,500 eateries over eight decades, including New Jersey's classic stainless-steel diners.

    Diner manufacturing ended with Robert Kullman's sale of the company in February 2006. The successor Kullman Building Corporation filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

    What's there now: We have not confirmed what is in the space today. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Wikipedia · Diner Hotline

Milford 1

  • Closed Before early 2024

    New Jersey's first brewpub after Prohibition, in a Bridge Street building that had earlier been a town tavern serving Riegel paper mill workers.

    Closed as The Ship Inn when the owners who had run it since 2017 sold. The building reopened under new ownership in early 2024.

    What's there now: Operating as Descendants Brewing Company in the same building. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: New Jersey Monthly

Stockton 1

  • Closed 2014

    One of the area's oldest inns, on land bought in 1710, which ran as an inn and restaurant for centuries and inspired the Rodgers and Hart song There's a Small Hotel.

    Shuttered in 2014 for the first time in its long run, then sat empty for eight years.

    What's there now: Reopened in 2024 after a full restoration by new local owners. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Stockton Inn · Yelp

Whitehouse Station 1

  • Closed 2007

    A late-1700s building turned fine-dining restaurant, where chef Craig Shelton won the James Beard Mid-Atlantic award in 2000.

    Closed in 2007, after a burst pipe and a cracked load-bearing beam led to foreclosure.

    What's there now: Reopened in October 2012 under Landmark Hospitality and operates today as Landmark Tavern at the Ryland Inn, a different concept under different ownership. View on Google Street View

    Approximate location. Sources: Wikipedia · Industry Magazine

How this list was built

Every entry here is a place a source says has closed, with the closing date and the current use taken from that same source and linked on the card. Where a source gives only a decade, the card says a decade. Coordinates are approximate, worked out from a street address or a town center, so a pin marks a block and not a doorstep. If you remember a place that belongs here, or you can pin down a date we left open, send it in below.

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