Introduction
28 Haddon Avenue was open as a saloon as early as 1892. Joseph Felden was then the licensee. John W. Sutton is listed in census records and in the Camden City Directories as operating the bar in the years 1914 through 1921. John W. Sutton appears to have been the business name of John W. Suthel, who is listed as the building’s owner in the 1920 and 1930 Census. Suthel, or Sutton, was 82 years old at the time of the 1930 census. Also living there was his wife Stella, then 54, a son John B. Suthel, and John B.’s wife Margaret.
John W. Suthel was born in Delaware around 1848. The Suthel family was in Camden by the spring of 1860. The surname Sutton seems to have originated when his brother James H. Suthel went off to fight during the Civil War. As James H. Sutton, he was a charter member of the Camden Fire Department when it went into service in December of 1869.
John W. Suthel was appointed to the Camden Fire Department in April of 1876, served for one year. He operated saloons at several addresses in Camden over the following decades, eventually settling at 28 Haddon Avenue around 1910. John W. Sutton died on January 10, 1936, and was buried at Harleigh Cemetery.
By 1931, H. Roy Steele was in business at 28 Haddon Avenue. Within a few years he had acquired a nearby bar at 560 Carman Street and would do business through at least 1959 there under the name Roy Steele’s Tavern. The Camden Courier-Post reported in June of 1939 that Mrs. Delia Suthel had received a liquor license renewal for 28 Haddon Avenue, and the 1943 Camden City Directory shows a Stella Suthel at the location.
When the next directory was published, for 1947, the bar had been named the Century Bar. Sidney E. Herold and Morrey Lachtman were named as the proprietors. The Century Bar remained in business at this location through at least 1967. In June of 1967, a Marguerite DuRocher applied for the liquor license renewal as president of Dobur, Inc.
The property was razed in one of the urban renewal projects of the 1970s. A New Jersey State Office Building, built around 1990, now occupies the site.