Blairstown Museum

Blairstown Museum is a former local history museum at 26 Main Street in Blairstown, Warren County, New Jersey, USA. The museum occupied a nineteenth-century commercial building, one of the last surviving structures from a group of properties historically known as Roy’s Row. The two-storey wooden building is distinguished by its traditional shopfronts and a full-width upper veranda with decorative white railings and wooden columns. In 2016, Jeanette and Tony Iurato opened the Blairstown Museum following an extensive restoration of the previously vacant property. The museum exhibited artefacts documenting the history of Blairstown, including material relating to local businessman John Insley Blair and the town’s early railway development. Its exhibitions also celebrated the area’s connection with Friday the 13th (1980), which was filmed in and around Blairstown in 1979. A separate Friday the 13th Museum opened across the street at 27 Main Street in September 2019, displaying memorabilia, photographs and props associated with the horror franchise. Both museums closed in January 2023, although the original building remains standing within Blairstown’s historic Main Street.

Blairstown Museum has appeared in Friday the 13th (1980) and Crystal Lake (2026). In the original film, the building serves as the exterior of the general store where Annie Phillips stops to ask for directions to Camp Crystal Lake. More than four decades later, the same building was used as the exterior of Hartung’s Diner in the television prequel Crystal Lake, returning the franchise to one of its original New Jersey filming locations.

In Friday the 13th (1980), directed by Sean S. Cunningham, the building appears during the opening sequence involving Annie Phillips (Robbi Morgan), a young woman travelling to Camp Crystal Lake to work as the camp’s cook. After arriving in Blairstown, Annie walks through the town, crossing the bridge over Blair Creek and passing several local landmarks, including the Old Mill and Blairstown Theatre. She eventually approaches the general store on Main Street to ask for directions to the camp. The building’s wooden frontage and distinctive upper veranda are visible as she reaches the entrance.

Although Annie appears to enter the store at 26 Main Street, the interior sequence was filmed approximately ten kilometres away at Hartung’s General Store on High Street in Hope, New Jersey. Inside, Annie asks how to reach Camp Crystal Lake, but the people in the store react uneasily when she mentions her destination. She learns that the camp has a disturbing reputation and is offered a lift by truck driver Enos (Rex Everhart). The exterior in Blairstown and the interior in Hope were edited together to represent a single business. The building at 26 Main Street has retained its recognisable upper veranda and general proportions since the filming, although its ground-floor businesses and signage have changed over the years.

In Crystal Lake (2026), the television prequel to Friday the 13th, the building returns as part of the fictional town of Crystal Lake. The series, created by Brad Caleb Kane and starring Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, takes place during the years leading up to the events of the original film. The former Blairstown Museum was transformed into the exterior of Hartung’s Diner, a local establishment within the fictional community. The familiar wooden façade and upper veranda remain recognisable beneath the period signage introduced for the production.

The diner interiors were filmed separately in a vacant commercial space in Boonton, New Jersey, allowing the production to recreate a period restaurant without altering the historic Blairstown building. The choice of location also creates a direct connection with the original Friday the 13th, as the same building had previously represented the exterior of the store visited by Annie Phillips. The name Hartung’s recalls the actual general store in Hope where that film’s interior scenes were recorded. Crystal Lake returned to several streets and landmarks around Blairstown, with comparatively few alterations required to make the town resemble its appearance during the late 1970s.

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