3 10 100 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/3a12ccb3c7c2764eca687d5031d7746c.jpg d3b9777c3142a594c14ec26a2ae3a8cb https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/87e37318d82fa64e9dcf0967d322c7e9.jpg 3c7963464a504b72fa3c8c4c80266914 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/8f3f217f460f620d275a824cf8a311a1.jpg 1cd76384a1344dceb1e6bd837d5f1546 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Architectural style Originally a Greek Revival rowhouse, modified with Italianate influences and bay windows during the early twentieth century (prior to 1926). Date of construction 1853 History In March 1853 the Philadelphia Public Ledger observed, "Mr. Atwood has nearly finished two exquisitely, ornamentally and conveniently arranged dwelling houses on Cooper Street. They are fine additions to the improvements of that part of the city." With this brief note, the newspaper documented the construction of 415 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a> Cooper Street. "Mr. Atwood" was Jesse Atwood, a Philadelphia-based artist whose wife, Hannah, had purchased property on the north side of Cooper Street from the Cooper family in 1845 and 1846. The frontage of the property accommodated three houses, initially a wood-frame house at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> Cooper Street followed by the two brick houses erected in 1853. The Atwoods also developed four smaller dwellings on the back of the property, facing Lawrence Street. For most of the century following their construction, the houses at 415 and 417 Cooper Street were jointly owned with one or both treated as investment properties rented out to others. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a> derived a steady rental income as her husband pursued his career as an itinerant artist, and she bequeathed the houses to her granddaughter for the same purpose in 1883. The family sold the houses to others, but they remained rental properties. It is possible that the Atwoods lived in either 413, 415, or 417 Cooper Street between 1853 and 1860, as they appear in city directories at "Cooper above Fourth." But for nearly eighty years, 415 Cooper Street had just two long-term resident families: the Brownings (c. 1860-1901) and the Franklins (1904-1938). Widowhood and Boarders Jerusha Browning, who headed the household at 415 Cooper Street by 1860, was a member by marriage of the prominent Browning family of South Jersey. Her husband, Lawrence, had 17 siblings born from his father's two marriages, which gave Jerusha a vast network of relations while she lived on Cooper Street for more than two decades after the death of her husband. By marriage or lineage, her relatives included the Doughtons and Hollinsheads next door (413 Cooper), the Hinchmans (417), and other Browning households across the street (414) and in the 500 and 600 blocks. Jerusha apparently rented the three-story brick row house from its original owners, who relocated to Philadelphia but retained title until the 1880s. We cannot know why she made this choice, given that she and her son, Abraham, had inherited considerable property after her husband's death in 1858. If the $12,000 in inherited real estate lay in the South Jersey countryside, where the Brownings were extensive land holders, she may have opted for the proximity to neighbors or the potential to support the household by taking in boarders. In 1860, the residents at 415 Cooper Street included Jerusha, then age 60, Abraham, 26, another son, George, 22, daughter Margaret H., 30, and a servant, Margaret Welsh, 20. During the 1860s and 1870s, various other Browning relatives lived with Jerusha's family for short periods of time. They also continued to employ servants, including Lydia Pernell, who was African American, in 1874. Over time, however, Jerusha and her daughter Margaret began to accept boarders in their home. This began in a genteel manner by 1876, when Jerusha was 76 and her daughter 46, and their boarders included the English-born architect <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/47" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arthur Truscott</a> and his two brothers in the insurance business, James and Millwood. They would have been low-risk boarders, given that they were nephews of an insurance man already established in Camden. Of the three Truscott brothers, the architect remained with the Brownings the longest, for at least twelve years between 1876 and 1888. During this period, he established his architecture practice in Philadelphia and designed the <a href="https://www.preservationnj.org/listings/new-jersey-safe-deposit-and-trust-company/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New Jersey Safe Deposit & Trust Company building</a> at Third and Market Streets in Camden (1887). Later he served as a supervising architect during construction of the Camden High School built on Park Boulevard 1916-18. His firm Baily and Truscott also contributed new buildings to Cooper Street with the Chateauesque trio of houses at 538-42 Cooper Street (c. 1892)--later retained as facades for the LEAP Academy Charter School--and the Colonial Revival house at 514 Cooper (1903). After Jerusha Browning died in 1884, Margaret continued to operate the boarding house and to advertise it actively in Camden newspapers. She offered rooms for boarders on the second and third floor, in some cases connecting rooms that could be rented together. She remained in the home and in the boarding house business into her 70s. The Browning family association with 415 Cooper Street ended at the turn of the twentieth century, with Margaret H. Browning's death in 1901. From Horses to Automobiles The next long-term occupant of 415 Cooper Street, Joshua B. (for Benjamin) Franklin, purchased this house as well as the adjacent 417 Cooper Street in 1903. Franklin and his family lived in 415 Cooper while renting out the house next door. He improved the properties by adding wood front porches in 1913, in keeping with similar additions elsewhere on the block. He may have added the bay windows to the second and third floors, which are evident in an aerial photograph of Camden taken c. 1926 but not in a photograph of the block earlier in the twentieth century. Franklin, born in 1861, moved from his family's farm in Burlington County to Camden during the city's fast-growing 1880s, when he was 21. He went to work for his uncle Joseph Franklin at the livery stable on Second Street between Cooper and Market and continued the business after his uncle's death. The Franklins became well known in Camden as they rented horses and carriages to the city's social and political elite. The business had a good location close to the Delaware River ferry crossings to Philadelphia and apparently yielded a good living, as Joshua Franklin purchased two other homes, at 224 Linden Street and 116 Cooper Street, before acquiring 415 and 417 Cooper. He joined fraternal organizations, including Lodge 15 of the Free and Accepted Masons. When Franklin moved into 415 Cooper Street, his family consisted of his wife of 15 years, Mollie, and their 4-year-old daughter Edith. He was a notable enough in the community to cause his daughter's fifth birthday party to be reported in the Camden Courier Post. His personal fortunes soon took a tragic turn, however. Little Edith contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1907 at the age of 8, news that "came as a painful shock to various sections of the city where the family is well known," the Courier-Post lamented. By the end of the same year, Mollie Franklin also died, from the effects of a longstanding heart ailment. She was 38 years old. In the wake of these personal tragedies Joshua Franklin remained at 415 Cooper Street, and his community connections may explain the prominent tenants he attracted to his investment property next door: the dentist Elmer Bower, for example, and the medical inspector for Camden schools, Henry Davis. In 1909, Joshua Franklin was married for a second time, to Chellie Smith, a widow who had been working as a saleswoman for several years since her husband's death. Joshua and Chellie continued to live at 415 Cooper Street for the next 25 years, at times renting rooms to others. At the livery stable, Joshua Franklin suffered two serious injuries: in 1913, a severely broken arm that was treated by Dr. E.A.Y. Schellenger at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/72" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fifth and Cooper Streets</a>, and in 1914 a near-electrocution that occurred during a Nor'easter when a live wire fell onto a telephone before Franklin picked up the receiver. The burns required treatment at Cooper Hospital. The appearance of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/automobiles/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automobiles</a> in Camden during the first two decades of the twentieth century brought change and eventually the end of Franklin's livery stable. As his customers preferred their new automobiles to carriages pulled by horses, Franklin's business dealt more often with commercial clients, such as the city newspapers who still used horses to pull their delivery trucks. Franklin himself entered the automobile business with partners between 1921 and 1923, but by then in his 60s he retired and closed the stables as well. He continued to live at 415 Cooper Street with his wife, Chellie, until he died at home in 1938. In reporting his death, the Camden Morning Post recounted how his 78 years of life had spanned the age of liverymen to the age of the automobile. Professionals and Entrepreneurs The sale of 415 Cooper Street from the Franklin family to Dr. Benjamin Gross in 1943 marked a transition of uses to rented offices and apartments. Gross, a proctologist who lived in Merchantville, based his practice at 425 Cooper Street for about ten years before relocating the office to Collingswood. Other office tenants through the second half of the twentieth century included an accountant, a lawyer, and a dental practice. In the early twenty-first century, 415 Cooper Street gained new life as a restaurant location, at first operated by Rutgers-Camden graduate Elizabeth Ashley, then living in Cinnaminson. In addition to opening Lizzie's Cooper Street Cafe in 2003, she bought and renovated 417 Cooper Street next door to offer rental apartments to Rutgers-Camden students. Two other restaurants subsequently operated at 415 Cooper Street: McCargo's Restaurant (2006), a project of Camden native Aaron McCargo Jr., later a winner of Next Food Network Star, and another cafe (2007) operated by Ramona Breggeta. In 2007 Rutgers University purchased 415 Cooper Street from its most recent owner, Karen J. Giroux of Highland Park, N.J., for $500,000. Illustrations 1. 415 Cooper Street, 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner) 2. 415 Cooper Street, early twentieth century, prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society) 3. 415 and 415 Cooper Street with additions of front porches and bay windows on 415, detail from c. 1926 aerial photograph. (Library Company of Philadelphia) Significance 415 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district's nomination for the National Register identifies significance in part through architecture and transitions of use: "The buildings within the district include Camden's best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." Together with the adjoining buildings 413-21 Cooper Street, 415 is one of the nineteenth-century homes that qualified Cooper Street for the National Register. Its notable history includes a connection to the prominent Browning family of South Jersey and to the architect Arthur Truscott, who lived in 415 Cooper Street as a boarder for at least twelve years. Lives of residents at 415 Cooper Street also illustrate matters of illness and death and changes in technologies of transportation. The home also embodies the pattern of transition from residential and professional to commercial uses identified as justification for listing the Cooper Street Historic District on the National Register. Rutgers purchased 415 Cooper Street in 2007. Associated Individuals For details about occupants of 415 Cooper Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Database</a> and scroll down to 415. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Second corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Sources Camden City Directories, New Jersey and U.S. Census Records, 1860-1940 (Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers, 1850-2007 (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Property Report, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office (2006). Structure Survey, New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Note on sources: Historic structures surveys identify this house as constructed c. 1846, consistent with the deed for purchase for the land. This research updates and corrects the date of construction for the home. Questions / needs for additional research Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 415 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 400 Block 415 Cooper Street Accountants Architects Attorneys Automobiles Boarding House Boarding House Operator Burlington County Childhood Collingswood Death Dentists Doctors Extended Family Horses Illness Injuries Investment Livery Stable Merchantville Porches Renovations Restaurants Rutgers-Camden Typhoid Fever Widowers Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/dbdacc8f82072b50e2629ff34d1cf557.jpg b8e4443e9fb43c31437edf1dfcb1e280 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance At this location, a wood-framed house numbered 416 Lawrence Street, built in 1847, formed part of a row of working-class rental properties erected behind the grander homes of Cooper Street during the nineteenth century. The later garage, built sometime between 1926 and 1950, documents the introduction of automobiles to Camden in the twentieth century. Date of construction 1847 (house); c. 1926-50 (garage). History At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States. 416 Lawrence Street A two-story, wood-frame house stood at 416 Lawrence Street from 1847 until 1884. Its status as a back building associated with <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/admin/items/show/70">413 Cooper Street</a> was described in an advertisement in the Philadelphia Public Ledger that offered both properties for sale on April 9, 1847: “For Sale – A modern built three-story Frame House, with two-story Back Building, with a choice lot of Fruit Trees in the yard.” An additional advertisement in December described the Lawrence Street house as “a small two-story Frame Building on the Alley, built about six months since.” The absence of house numbering prior to 1861 prevents identifying tenants of 416 Lawrence Street in city directories in earlier years. However, one clue about unfortunate circumstances appeared in a Public Ledger advertisement in 1859. The notice sought an adoptive parent for “a healthy male Child nine months old” and directed inquiries to “Lawrence Street, first house above Fourth, between Cooper and Penn, Camden.” By 1865, tenants at 416 Lawrence included Sophia Fairfowl (or Fairfield), a widow; Abby Hammell, possibly also a widow; and Watson Wertsel (variously spelled Wartsel or Wertzell), a wheelwright and veteran of the Civil War. Wertsel’s household likely included his wife, Rebecca, whom he had married in 1860. By 1870, 416 Lawrence Street had become home to a family of six people (plus an additional unrelated tenant) whose occupations reflected the significance of Camden in the region’s transportation networks and industrial growth. George Mapes, a white man 45 years old, born in New Jersey, worked as an engineer on one of the ferries that traversed the Delaware River between Camden and Philadelphia. His wife Rebecca, 40 years old, also white and born in New Jersey, kept house and raised their four children. She could not read or write, but that would not be the case for at least two of the next generation: Charles Mapes, age 8, and Sarah Mapes, 13, were both recorded by the 1870 Census as attending school. An older son, Jacob, age 15, was not in school that year and not recorded as working. An older daughter, Mary, age 20, worked in a pen factory—likely the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back">Esterbrook Steel Pen</a> factory on Cooper Street. Esterbrook, which crafted and shipped steel pen nibs around the world, signaled the future development of heavy industry on Camden’s waterfront. By 1876, new tenants at 416 Cooper Street, the McLaughlins, also included two women working at the pen factory. By 1880, a new family at 416 Lawrence Street illustrated the changing composition of Camden’s population as people moved to the growing city. Martin Holahan (in other records, Hallahan or Hollahan), a 43-year-old white male, was born in Massachusetts. A Civil War veteran, he worked as a carpenter and headed a household of six other people: His wife, Sarah, a 26-year-old white woman, had been in born in Canada to parents who immigrated from England. Her mother, English-born Elizabeth Whartle, 54 years old and unable to read or write, lived with the family and worked in domestic service. Martin and Sarah’s family also included four children ranging from 9 months to 9 years old, the oldest two attending school. Another carpenter, John Ferrell, lived at 416 Lawrence Street in the early 1880s, but during 1883 and 1884, the home was listed for sale. By this time, heirs of Hannah Atwood had sold her properties. The wood-framed 416 Lawrence Street and 413 Cooper Street transferred to a farmer-turned-inventor, Restore B. Lamb, who built <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/admin/items/show/70">a new brick house at 413 Cooper Street</a> in 1883. By 1885, 416 Lawrence Street had been demolished. The lot stood vacant until the erection of a one-story garage sometime between 1926 and 1950. The garage documents the introduction of automobiles to Camden in the twentieth century. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 416 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to street numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia newspapers. Camden County and Gloucester County deeds. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. Census, 1870 and 1880. Research by Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 416 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Garage (built c. 1926-50) on former site of wood-framed house, 1847-84. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 413 Cooper Street 416 Lawrence Street Artists Canada Carpenters Childhood Children Civil War Demolition England Esterbrook Steel Pen Company Ferries Garage Lawrence Street Massachusetts Veterans Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/09cd35ef0f9280cb684e371c56c009e2.jpg 275f0ce37413d87ba9bd2a455e661118 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/a831a01502a6088c87ab18727d45bd01.jpg 3fe2b67ee7bfa6870aa8e9d830ad511f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance 417 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Together with others in the row 415-21 Cooper Street, 417 represents a significant transition in the evolution of Camden during the 1840s and 1850s as homes were built for the first time on land formerly owned by the Cooper family on the north side of the street. The building is are among the nineteenth-century structures that support the nomination of the Cooper Street Historic District for the National Register: "The buildings within the district include Camden's best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." This transition is illustrated by 417 Cooper Street, where residents over time also reflect histories of public health, public safety, the experiences of widows as boarding house operators, and connections between Camden and Philadelphia. Rutgers purchased the building in 2010. Architectural style Greek Revival Date of construction 1853 History In March 1853 the Philadelphia Public Ledger observed, "Mr. Atwood has nearly finished two exquisitely, ornamentally and conveniently arranged dwelling houses on Cooper Street. They are fine additions to the improvements of that part of the city." With this brief note, the newspaper documented the construction of 417 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/45" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">415</a> Cooper Street. "Mr. Atwood" was Jesse Atwood, a Philadelphia-based artist whose wife, Hannah, had purchased property on the north side of Cooper Street from the Cooper family in 1845 and 1846. The frontage of the property accommodated three houses, initially a wood-frame house at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> Cooper Street followed by the two brick houses erected in 1853. The Atwoods also developed four smaller dwellings on the back of the property, facing Lawrence Street. For most of the century following their construction, the houses at 417 and 415 Cooper Street were jointly owned with one or both treated as investment properties rented out to others. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a> derived a steady rental income as her husband pursued his career as an itinerant artist, and she bequeathed the houses to her granddaughter for the same purpose in 1883. The family sold the houses to others, but they remained rental properties. It is possible that the Atwoods lived in either 413, 415, or 417 Cooper Street between 1853 and 1860, as they appear in city directories at "Cooper above Fourth." Starting in 1860, the house at 417 was rented to others, first to a bookkeeper, William Farr, his wife Adelaide, and their three young children. The household also included a domestic servant, Rachael Askins, identified in the 1860 Census as "mulatto." Little is known about the next tenant, a dealer in boots and shoes named James J. Morrison, but in 1868 a public sale of contents of the home provided a glimpse of the Victorian-era ambiance at this address. As advertised in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the sale revealed a home with rosewood and brocatelle drawing-room furniture made in Philadelphia, velvet carpets, a marble-topped center table, and a fireplace with a French-plate mantel and pier mirror. Music filled the home from a seven-octave pianoforte made by the Philadelphia firm Schomacker & Co., which had been founded by a Viennese craftsman. The contents of 417 Cooper Street included dining room and chamber furniture, beds and bedding, china, glassware, and kitchen utensils. The furnishings provide a glimpse of domestic life on Cooper Street in the second half of the nineteenth century. Philadelphia Connections By 1870 and continuing until at least 1874, 417 Cooper Street became home for the extended family of William Jenks, a produce dealer on the Philadelphia waterfront. In addition to his Irish-born wife, Kate, the household included Kate's sister Mary Cassidy, a music teacher; and her widowed mother, Catharine Cassidy. The household also included Henry Cooper, a bricklayer, who might have been a boarder. Domestic servants--Maggie Harrison in 1870 and Mary Mullene in 1873--worked and lived in the home. Another family with Philadelphia ties followed in the early 1880s: Robert E. Thompson, a Philadelphia insurance agent with his wife, Sarah, their adult son Charles (a clerk), and Sara's sister. They moved to this address from up the street, at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/52" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">425 Cooper</a>, and stayed at least four years, from 1881 to 1885. Personal Losses, Property Losses In the late 1880s, 417 Cooper Street became an owner-occupied home when Willard Hinchman, a fish merchant on the Philadelphia waterfront, purchased the house at this address as well as the house next door, 415 Cooper. While the Hinchman family lived in 417 Cooper, 415 continued to be a boarding house operated by a relative who had long lived at the address, Margaret Browning. The Hinchmans had other family connections in Camden as well, especially through Hinchman's wife, M. Ella Hinchman, one of six children of prominent local businessman John Stockham. He had made a fortune during the Civil War by importing Carolina pine from the South and then selling it to the U.S. government. By the 1880s, Stockham had retired to a Maryland farm, but he previously lived at 215 Cooper Street. The Hinchmans' early years at 417 Cooper were years of loss. First, John Stockham died in 1887 at the age of 70, and his funeral took place at the Hinchman home. Just three years later, the Hinchmans' infant son named for his grandfather, John Stockham Hinchman, also died at just eight months of age. His funeral, too, took place at 417 Cooper Street. Shortly thereafter, they rented out 417 Cooper to others; in 1896 both 417 and 415 Cooper Street went to sheriff's sale. The Hinchmans left New Jersey to farm on Stockham family land in Maryland, although they returned by 1905 to a rented home in Haddonfield. Health Professionals At the turn of the twentieth century, 417 Cooper Street was an investment property that belonged to the new owner-occupant of the house next door at 415, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/46" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Joshua B. Franklin</a>. The owner of a livery stable near the Camden waterfront, Franklin had become well-known as he rented horses and carriages to the city's social and political elites. This may have helped him attract tenants for 417 Cooper. He also improved the properties with wood front porches (added in 1913 but later removed). Cooper Street's evolution into a location for medical offices became evident at 417 Cooper Street with the tenants of the early twentieth century. For more than a decade, between 1908 and 1919, Franklin rented to the extended family of Dr. Elmer Bower, a dentist who previously had both home and office at two other Cooper Street addresses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a>). When Bower arrived in Camden in the 1880s, he had been fresh out of dental school at the University of Pennsylvania. Now, at 417 Cooper Street, he continued his practice from age 46 until retirement and shared the home with his wife, Catherine; his newly married son, Chester, and Chester's wife, Mary; and an adult daughter, Sarah. Dr. Bower was active in the Camden Republican Club, then at 312 Cooper Street, and his accomplishments as a fisherman occasionally made the Camden papers. When Bower retired in 1919 for health reasons, he moved briefly to another address in Camden and then returned to his birthplace, Berks County, Pennsylvania. The Bower family's successor at 417 Cooper Street also was culminating a long career in health care, particularly public health and the treatment of infectious disease. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/51" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Henry Hill Davis</a>, 70 years old when he rented 417 Cooper, lived at this address with his wife, Harriett, for about five years while serving as medical inspector for Camden's public schools. He had been appointed to the position at the turn of the century--the first post of its kind in New Jersey and only the second in the nation, after New York City. Davis instituted annual physical examinations for Camden pupils and required vaccinations before any child could be admitted to school. While continuing in this work, he was among the leaders in founding a new Camden Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases, which opened in 1916, and he served for twenty years as president of the Camden Board of Health. Over his long career, he led Camden's responses to smallpox oubreaks and the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. When he retired from his Camden schools position in 1925, the city honored him not only with a pension but also by giving his name to a new public school--still operating in 2020 as the <a href="http://camdencitydavis.ss12.sharpschool.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Henry H. Davis Family School</a> in East Camden. A street near the former site of the Municipal Hospital <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-streets/CamdenNJ-Streets-DavisStreet.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">also bears his name</a>. A Widow's Boarding House Emma Jarvis experienced two deep losses in the mid-1920s: the death by suicide of her brother, John Knott, who lived on Point Street, and the death of her husband, Edgar, who operated an auto repair shop in North Camden. Perhaps it was the automotive business connected her with 417 Cooper Street, whose owner next door also sold and serviced automobiles as they gained in popularity during the 1920s. By 1927, perhaps a year or two earlier, Emma Jarvis moved from her earlier home in the 700 block of Lawrence Street to operate a boarding house at 417 Cooper. Unusual documentation of Jarvis's new address appeared in the Camden Courier-Post of January 28, 1929: a <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/49" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">testimonial advertisement</a> featuring her photograph. name, and address, with the headline "Woman Cries Aloud with Joy When Rheumatic Pain Goes." The advertisement purported to describe Jarvis's excruciating pain and the miraculous cure afforded by a powder called Nurito, available nearby at Weiser's Pharmacy, Fifth and Market Streets. This was, however, one of many such advertisements that appeared across the country to tout the Chicago-manufactured product. The ads soon attracted the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, which found the powder to be akin to aspirin and ordered the ads to be discontinued. For her more sustained venture, the boarding house, Jarvis rented 417 Cooper Street for $60 a month from the owner next door, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/46" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Joshua Franklin</a>. The 1930 U.S. Census found her at this address at age 59 with two of her four adult children (David, 35, an auto repairman, and Marion, 26, a book keeper) and six boarders. The boarders included a cook, a laundry manager, a saleswoman and a salesman, and a newspaper reporter. Many of the home's occupants shared the experience of being children of immigrants to the United States. Jarvis had been born in Pennsylvania to a father who immigrated from Germany (her mother had been born in Delaware). Jarvis's late husband had been born England. Among her boarders in 1930, one had parents born in Germany and another had parents born in Ireland. Two others demonstrated the fluidity of movement within the country; one had been born in New York and another, while born in New Jersey, had a father born in Montana. Jarvis operated the boarding house until at least 1931 (when she was listed in the last Camden city directory published during the 1930s) and likely longer, as advertisements offering furnished rooms or apartments at 417 Cooper Street continued to appear in Camden newspapers until 1938. In the late 1930s, she moved to Haddonfield to live with her daughter, Marion, who was employed there as a book keeper. Physician's Office, Retirement Home By 1939, 417 Cooper Street had a new owner and transitioned to a common pattern of use for Cooper Street houses during the remaining decades of the twentieth century. The new owner, Dr. Edmund Hessert, lived in Collingswood (and later Rancocas) while maintaining his office on the first floor of the building he had purchased in Camden. He rented out the two floors above as apartments. The building remained in part a family home, however, because the most long-term occupants of the second-floor apartment were Hessert's in-laws, Thomas J. and Anna Murphy, both in their 70s, together with one and sometimes two of their adult sons. Thomas J. Murphy was retired from the Camden police force; his son Thomas P. Murphy had followed him onto the force and also retired in 1943. The other son living at 417 Cooper periodically, John, served in Europe during World War II and then returned to his office job with RCA (in Camden, later in Cherry Hill). Maintaining a home for the Murphys seems to have been a factor in Hessert's continued ownership of 417 Cooper Street through the 1950s. A year after the death of Anna Murphy in 1958, at the age of 86, the building was advertised "for quick sale." The listing promised the buyer professional offices on the first floor and two apartments, completely modernized, including Venetian blinds and carpeting. Professional Services and Apartments In the second half of the twentieth century, 417 Cooper Street transitioned to an office building for insurance and legal services, with rental apartments above. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/43" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Richard C. Hardenbergh</a> operated his insurance agency at this address beginning in 1961, and in 1963 he bought the building. Although living in Haddon Township, he remained active in Camden civic activities, for example collecting registration forms for the Spring Queen competition held in Johnson Park in 1961. His business grew to twelve employees in Camden, with an additional office in Willingboro by 1966. During Hardenbergh's ownership, the tenants in the building included a training school for data processing equipment operators. A lawyer, Barry Weinberg, owned 417 Cooper in the 1970s and 1980s, when office tenants also included an accounting firm. Thereafter the building passed through a sequence of absentee and corporate owners and often appeared in notices for sheriff's sales to satisfy back taxes. In 2002, a Rutgers-Camden graduate, Elizabeth Ashley, bought the building and rehabilitated it into apartments for students while also opening a restaurant in the house next door (215). After one more change of ownership, to a Philadelphia entity Park Properties Unlimited, Rutgers University purchased the building in 2010 for $367,000. Associated Individuals For a list of individuals and businesses associated with this address, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Database</a> and scroll down to 417. Illustrations 1. 417 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner) 2. 400 block of Cooper Street, early twentieth century prior to 1913, with arrow indicating 417. (Camden County Historical Society) Sources Camden City Directories (Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Geneaology Bank). National Register for Historic Places, Cooper Street Historic District Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services Structures Surveys (1985) and Office of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office, Property Reports (2007). U.S. Census, 1850-1950; New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915. Note on sources: Historic structures surveys identify this house as constructed c. 1846, consistent with the deed for purchase for the land. This research updates and corrects the date of construction for the home. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 417 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 400 Block 417 Cooper Street Accountants Aging Apartments Boarding House Boarding House Operator Childhood Collingswood Death Dentists Doctors Domestic Life England Germany Haddon Township Haddonfield Insurance Interiors Investment Ireland Merchants Montana New York Philadelphia Police Rancocas RCA Rutgers-Camden Toms River Widows World War II https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b55a13a9a133de768d0275a76e37f86e.jpg c474a6d5d51a21eec55173d5cda2573c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance 418 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.” Date of construction c. early 1850s History At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States. 418 Lawrence Street The two-story, four-room brick house at 418 Lawrence Street likely dates to the early 1850s, when other similar houses are known to have been built in the same row. The absence of house numbering prevents identifying tenants by address prior to 1861, but city directories document people living in this block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. Directories during the 1860s and 1870s identify laborers and skilled tradespeople among the occupants of 418 Lawrence Street, including a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a machinist. By 1878, 418 Lawrence Street became home to a family headed by Catharine Benbow, a widow who took in washing to earn a living. Benbow, a white woman who had immigrated from England in the late 1860s, had struggled to support herself and at least five children since arriving in Camden. The fate of her husband, Richard, is unknown; four of their children were born in England prior to 1866, and the last in New York around 1868. In Camden County by 1870, living in Stockton Township near Merchantville, Catharine at 35 years old was widowed and had just two of her children living with her: her oldest, then 10 years old, and the youngest, 2 years old. Three others, then ages 4, 6, and 8, had been placed in the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/historical-accounts/a-brief-history-of-the-camden-home-for-children-spcc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>, a charitable institution at Fifth and Federal Streets which had been chartered in 1865 to shelter “friendless and destitute children.” The family partially reunited by the time Catharine moved to 418 Lawrence Street. There, Benbow’s household included three of her sons, two of them retrieved from the children’s home and by then old enough (ages 16 and 18) to contribute to the family economy. Those two sons worked as laborers and another, the oldest son (21 years old), as a farmer. The Benbows further supplemented their incomes by taking in a boarder at 418 Lawrence Street. They lived at this address from 1878 until 1884, leaving around the time when Hannah Atwood’s heirs sold her Cooper and Lawrence Street properties to new owners. At their next address, a daughter who had been placed in the Home for Friendless Children also returned to the family. For the rest of the nineteenth century, 418 Lawrence Street housed tenants who worked as laborers and in a range of skilled and semi-skilled occupations, including cabinet maker, blacksmith, and cook. At the turn of the twentieth century, Census records offer additional glimpses into family life on Lawrence Street: In 1900, William and Annie Decon (or Decou) headed a household of five, supported by William’s work as an express driver. Both born in New Jersey, William was a white man, then age 33, and Annie was 27, unable to read or write. Married for eleven years, they had three daughters aged 8 and younger, the oldest attending school. In 1903, the house was put up for sale together with the adjoining 420 Lawrence Street. The agent advertised that the houses “will show a good investment, either for the man who is seeking a home or investment, and are real bargains.” Both houses remained rental properties, with 418 Lawrence Street occupied by the McDonald family, headed by Irish immigrants. Phillip McDonald, 50 years old, was a stonemason and his wife, Elizabeth, at 42 years of age was a pen worker, likely for the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Esterbrook Steel Pen Company</a> on Cooper Street. Their four children, ranging in age from 4 to 18, had all been born in the United States, and those of school age were attending school. The home remained a rental property through the first half of the twentieth century, but more often occupied by married couples or smaller families. The challenges of work and child-rearing surfaced again in 1916, when this ad appeared in the “Board Wanted” column of the Camden Morning Post: “Home wanted for 6-year-old boy; lady works all the time; will pay small board. Call evenings. 418 Lawrence Street.” Tenant occupations between 1910 and 1950 included cabinet maker, chauffeur, wrapper, ship joiner, decorator, watchman, and tool grinder. Many of the residents were New Jersey-born, but tenants during these years also included first- and second-generation Irish, one Scot, and one German. By 1957, the house at 418 Lawrence Street had been conveyed to an investment company, and its tenant at that time took the opportunity to buy the home as well as adjacent 420 Lawrence Street. Alice Pharo, a white woman, had rented 418 Lawrence since 1950 and chose to stay despite a 1952 incident of a man breaking through the window of her kitchen. Divorced and living independently, Pharo served as secretary of the Burlington-Camden-Gloucester Society for Crippled Children and Adults. She rented out 420 Lawrence Street to tenants while living at 418 Lawrence until her death in 1977, a two-decade-long period that ranked as the longest period of residence for anyone at this address up to that time. Through the 1960s, she had a direct view of the urban renewal demolition that created a new campus for Rutgers University-Camden in the blocks north of her house. The next owners, Eric and Ellen Eifert, acquired both 418 and 420 Lawrence Street from Alice Pharo’s estate in 1984. In 2005, Eric Eifert successfully argued before Camden City Council that 418 Lawrence Street had historic value and should not be allowed to be taken by eminent domain for further expansion of Rutgers. In 2007, Rutgers instead purchased 418, 420, and 422 Lawrence Street from the Eiferts. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 418 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to street numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. Note on sources: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 418 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2010s 2020s 418 Lawrence Street Blacksmiths Cabinet Makers Camden Home for Friendless Children Carpenters Childhood Children Cooks Drivers Esterbrook Steel Pen Company Farmers Investment Ireland Laborers Laundries Lawrence Street Machinists Rutgers-Camden Secretaries Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/e6d095749280003cc512cb78a109e073.jpg 788b6862485144125bd6fb1fc623ed4a https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/bfc6a7b032eccf390cca76cc9a9c3947.jpg fec7335650ea1fdd808c433f8678f688 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance 419 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district is defined as representing broad patterns of American history, including the importance of ferry connections between Camden and Philadelphia: "By its geographic location, Cooper Street literally became South Jersey's thoroughfare to downtown Philadelphia. The fortune of Cooper Street, and of Camden as a whole, rose when people and goods moved through them to board ferries to the larger city across the Delaware River." This is amply illustrated by the history of 419 Cooper Street, which through the nineteenth century housed a series of families with livelihoods tied to business in Philadelphia. As an investment property generating income, 419 Cooper Street also represents financial strategies of widows during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The building's twentieth century history reflects the historic district's stated significance as a place of "change from residential and professional to commercial." Rutgers connections to this property extend to the 1960s, when Rutgers students were among apartment tenants in the building. Rutgers purchased the property in 2007. Architectural style Originally a Greek Revival rowhouse; new brick facing added after 1985, when the original facade is visible in a photograph taken that year for structures surveys by the New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Date of construction c. 1848 Illustrations 1. 419 Cooper Street, photograph taken September 2010. 2. 419 Cooper Street, early twentieth century prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society) History The adjoining rowhouses at 419 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a> Cooper Street were among the first to be built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family descendants began to divide and sell their inherited property during the 1840s and 1850s. A broker and volunteer firefighter living in Philadelphia, Joseph R. Paulson, and his wife Mildred K. Paulson bought these lots in 1847. At least one house existed on the property by the end of 1848, when Joseph Paulson, at the age of 36, drew up an agreement that revealed expectations of an early death: he placed the properties in trust with his mother-in-law, Hester Keen, with instructions that she collect rents to support his wife and children, a son also named Joseph (then 13 years old) and daughter Emily (then age 5). A death notice for Joseph R. Paulson appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 29, 1849. The family invited relatives, friends, and members of the Humane Engine Company in Philadelphia to his funeral “from his late residence, Cooper Street, near Fifth, Camden, N.J.” They proceeded from there back to Philadelphia on the Arch Street ferry for his burial at Monument Cemetery. His cause of death was not made public. The property on Cooper Street, as he intended, remained a source of rental income and periodically a home for his descendants for the next 75 years. Philadelphia Commuters Some of the nineteenth-century tenants of 419 Cooper Street demonstrate the historic importance of Camden, and Cooper Street in particular, as a transportation corridor between South Jersey and Philadelphia. Homes on Cooper Street allowed for a short walk to the Delaware River ferries for commuting to Philadelphia. By 1862, during the Civil War, 419 Cooper Street had become home to Joseph Fearon, a wholesale grocer who had his business at 19 S. Water Street in Philadelphia. In addition to Joseph's wife, Catharine, the Fearon household included five children aged 12 and younger and two Irish-born domestic servants. Another Philadelphia-based food merchant, fruit importer Silas Warner, and his family lived at 419 Cooper for several years during the 1870s (c. 1871-73). Family Legacy As the original owner, Joseph Paulson, intended, the Cooper Street property supported his wife during her lifetime and upon her death conveyed to their two children. The siblings, adults by the time of their mother’s death in 1875, then divided ownership of the houses on their inherited land. Joseph Paulson's daughter, Emily, became the owner of 419 Cooper Street and a smaller house at the back of the property facing Lawrence Street. The homes continued to be rented to tenants. Camden, Philadelphia, and the World In 1880, Census takers encountered an unusually international family who rented 419 Cooper Street for at least two years (c. 1880-82): The head of household, widowed Matilda Evans, age 54, reported her birthplace as Germany. Her three adult sons and one daughter, all in their twenties, reported having been born in South America and that their father was from New York. The household also included a servant, Jane Laverty, who had been born in Ireland. Some Camden city directories identified the adult children as boarders, suggesting that 419 Cooper may have operated as boarding house during this period. From c. 1883 to 1897, a Philadelphia manufacturer of silk and wool hats, Robert S. Nickerson, resided at 419 Cooper Street with his wife Elizabeth and adult daughter Jennie Gay while commuting to his business across the river at 63 N. Second Street. The move marked a significant change for Nickerson, whose business had been operating in Philadelphia since 1836. But during the 1880s, Camden was growing rapidly and houses near the Delaware River waterfront offered attractive prices and easy access to the ferries. The sometimes-frantic nature of ferry commuting is suggested by a report in the Camden Morning Post on May 26, 1888, which described Nickerson attempting to leap onto a ferry departing from Philadelphia while clutching an umbrella and bottle of pickles. He ended up in the river, still clutching his possessions when rescued. The Nickersons, who previously lived in Philadelphia, occupied 419 Cooper longer than most other nineteenth-century occupants, almost 15 years. They typically employed one live-in domestic servant, for at least five years Annie Redgate, a daughter of Irish immigrants living elsewhere in Camden. In 1897, Jennie Gay Nickerson's wedding took place in the home. In a Society of Friends ceremony, she married Richard Albert Wills, a widowed insurance agent. Robert and Elizabeth Nickerson, then in their late 50s, moved with their daughter into Wills' home farther east in Camden, at 752 Wright Avenue, where they formed an extended family with a granddaughter born in 1899 and Wills' two older sons. Dentistry on Cooper Street When Cooper Hospital opened during the 1880s, medical professionals increasingly lived and practiced in homes on nearby Cooper Street. Among them, for more than thirty years Dr. Elmer E. Bower had his dental practice in the 400 block. Bower, a native of Berks County, established his practice in fast-growing Camden immediately after finishing dental school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1888. He and his wife Katherine raised a family in a series of three homes that also served as Elmer's dental office--419 Cooper Street, where they lived and worked between 1899-1908, was the second of the three (after <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405</a> Cooper, 1889-1898, and before moving next door to <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>, 1908-c.1920). By the time the Bowers moved into 419 Cooper, their family had grown to three children: a son Chester, age 16, and daughters Helen, 12, and Sarah, 8. In the decade they spent at this address, the Bowers experienced both tragedy and joy. Much of the family's attention turned to the poor health of daughter Helen, whose particular illness is not known from public records. For the benefit of her health they relocated between 1904 and 1906 to more rural Hammonton, then well-known as the location of the Hammonton Sanitarium operated by Dr. James Peebles, a specialist in chronic illnesses. The move was to no avail, however. Helen Adaline Bower died in Hammonton on September 15, 1906, at the age of 20. The next family milestone occurred two years later, when the Bowers' son Chester Bertalette (his mother's maiden name) married and established his home next door to his parents, at 417 Cooper Street. The elder Bowers and their daughter Sarah soon moved there as well, creating an extended two-generation family. Elmer Bower continued his dental practice at the 417 Cooper address until he retired around 1920. A Widow's Family Home While 419 Cooper Street housed a series of renters during the nineteenth century, it passed by inheritance to the descendants of Joseph R. Paulson. Thus it offered an available refuge when <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary A. Paulson</a>--the widow of Joseph R. Paulson's son (also named Joseph R.)--established a new home for herself and three children following the death of her husband in 1911. The family had most recently lived in Haddonfield, but before that, from 1897 to 1907, they had resided in another Paulson family property, 421 Cooper Street. When the widowed Mary Paulson returned to Camden in 1912, she generated income for her family by renting out the 421 property while living next door in 419 with her children Joseph Jr., then age 19; Charles, then 17; and daughter Ruth, 9. The Paulsons' extended family at 419 Cooper also included Emily L. Paulson, the sister of Mary's late husband, who had inherited the home as well as the smaller house behind it at 424 Lawrence Street. Born c. 1841, Emily lived much of her adult life with her mother, Mildred, and then her brother. But for at least ten years, while in her 60s c. 1900-1910, Emily had lived as a patient at the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane. The nature of her mental illness is not known from public records, but at this West Philadelphia institution she would have experienced the "moral treatment" philosophy advocated by the founder of the hospital, Quaker physician <a href="https://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/timeline/1801/tline14.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride</a>. Kirkbride's philosophy advocated humane treatment in beautiful surroundings, and the institution in Philadelphia inspired many other "Kirkbride Plan" hospitals around the country. In this era, causes for admission to the institution could range from grief and anxiety to severe forms of insanity. At the time of Emily's residence, the hospital's roster of patients included wives and daughters of merchants, lawyers, and other people of prominence. At age 70, Emily returned to Camden as a member of Mary Paulson's household, and the Paulsons remained at this address for the next two decades. The two teen-aged sons, both musically inclined, opened a music studio in the home to teach other young men how to play the mandolin or violin. Soon they faced more life-altering choices as the Great War began in Europe and especially when the United States entered the conflict in 1917. By then, the oldest son, Joseph Jr., still claimed 419 Cooper Street as his home address but had landed a job as an orchestra leader for a theater in Juneau, Alaska. He served as a musician in the U.S. Navy, 1918-19. His younger brother Charles served closer to home, in the quartermaster's office of the U.S. Army in Sea Girt, New Jersey, 1917-18. Both returned home to 419 Cooper Street: Charles by 1920, when the household consisted of his mother, age 54, aunt Emily, 77, and 17-year-old sister Ruth, who later became a teacher at Hatch Junior High School. Joseph returned home during the 1920s after a brief wartime marriage and later divorce. The Paulson family's association with 419 Cooper Street lasted until the 1930s. Transfer of the property from Emily to Mary Paulson for $1 in 1931 suggests that Emily had died, and by 1937 the house was up for sale. In the midst of the Great Depression, the original price of $10,000 plummeted by more than half over three years until the house finally ended up listed for sheriff's sale to satisfy back taxes. Charles Paulson made his living as a salesman and shopkeeper, married, and began his own family in Camden and later Haddonfield; by 1940, Joseph Paulson worked as a musician at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Mary Paulson, meanwhile, went to live with her by-then-married daughter Ruth Soistmann in Merchantville, ending the era of 419 Cooper Street as a single-family home. Apartments and Offices In 1940, with new owners Richard Gebbie, who owned a radio shop, and his wife Alice, a nurse, 419 Cooper Street began its transition to multi-family housing and commercial uses. While living in the home, the Gebbies rented apartments to at least two other families. By the 1950s they moved to Moorestown but retained ownership of the building until 1960 and rented to a series of office tenants, including a doctor, an attorney, and real estate agents. Brokers Mortgage Service, a mortgage company located in the nearby Wilson Building, next held title to 419 Cooper Street while renting out apartments and offices. Among the renters in the early 1960s, Rutgers student Joan Jarema made news as a finalist for sweetheart of the Kappa Sigma Upsilon fraternity. She later married another Rutgers South Jersey student, Anthony Santerlas. Real estate and legal offices continued to occupy 419 Cooper Street from the 1960s to the 1980s as the building passed from ownership of attorneys William Keown and Philip Daniels, who had their office in the building from 1965 to 1982, to a series of absentee investors. In the mid-1980s, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/james-florio/F000215?r=11&q=%7B%22house-committee%22%3A%22Energy+and+Commerce%22%2C%22subject%22%3A%22Finance+and+Financial+Sector%22%7D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Congressman James J. Florio</a> had an office on the first floor. AKJ Investment, based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, sold the building to Rutgers University in 2007 for $510,000. Associated Individuals For all known occupants of 419 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Database</a>. Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Communicate corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Sources Camden City Directories (Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). National Register for Historic Places, Cooper Street Historic District Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services Structures Surveys (1985) and Office of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office, Property Reports (2007). U.S. Census, 1850-1930; New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915; and U.S. Military Records (Ancestry.com). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 419 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 400 Block 419 Cooper Street 424 Lawrence Street Aging Apartments Attorneys Congressional Office Death Dentists Extended Family Germany Greek Revival Grocers Haddonfield Hammonton Health and Medicine Ireland Manufacturers Mental Illness Merchantville Moorestown Musicians New York City Philadelphia Real Estate Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Society of Friends South America Teachers Weddings Widows World War I https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/9279210ee7027c9b10f6f92ba48f9376.jpg 1c483d5b832d770366c2aacb798371c5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance 420 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history" and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.” Date of construction c. early 1850s History At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States. 420 Lawrence Street The two-story, four-room brick house at 420 Lawrence Street likely dates to the early 1850s, when other similar houses are known to have been built in the same row. The absence of house numbering prevents identifying tenants by address prior to 1861, but city directories documented people living in this block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. Directories during the 1860s identify skilled tradespeople among the occupants of 420 Lawrence Street, including a butcher and a glazier (glass fitter). Between 1865 and 1870, a butcher’s family lived at 420 Lawrence Street. The butcher, Peter C. Cliver, was a white man born in New Jersey, 53 years old in 1870. His household that year included at least six other people: his wife, Hannah, a white woman, 49 years old; four children ranging in age from 13 to 22 years of age; and an unrelated 25-year-old man who may have been a boarder. The Clivers’ oldest son worked as a box maker, and a 16-year-old son worked as a store clerk. For two years, 1869-70, city directories also list 420 Lawrence Street as the residence of Elizabeth A. Mood, a widow and dressmaker. If that listing is correct, she may have been the next tenant after the Clivers or co-inhabited the house with one or more of them. (The Census of 1870 found her at a different location, on Market Street.) Mood headed an extended family of five people. A white woman 46 years old, born in New Jersey, Mood lived with her three children, two of whom were old enough to contribute to the family economy: William, 18 years old, was an apprentice carpenter, and Lewis, 15, worked as a clerk in a grocery store. The household also included Mood’s 11-year-old daughter, Annie, and 63-year-old Ann Penn, likely Mood’s mother. Longer-term tenants moved into 420 Lawrence Street by 1877. A laborer, John Stow, a white man in his late 30s, arrived that year with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Mary; they occupied the home until 1890. The 1880 Census recorded that the parents could not write (but apparently could read). Their daughter was attending school and had a “wounded hip,” the Census recorded. The next year, 1881, 11-year-old Mary’s life began to diverge from her parents when she was baptized at <a href="https://stpaulschurchcamden.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Paul’s Episcopal Church</a> on Market Street under the sponsorship of another adult. By 1885, Mary lived with another family in Stockton Township, possibly as a domestic servant. Her parents remained at 420 Lawrence Street until John Stow’s death in 1890, at the age of 51, from causes not publicly reported. A succession of other tenants followed during the 1890s, including laborers, a gardener, a bricklayer, a packer, a coachman, and a washerwoman. In 1896, hostler Herbert Batey and his wife, Emma, suffered the death of their infant son Horace while living at 420 Lawrence Street. At the turn of the twentieth century, a large family headed by German immigrants moved into the small house. William Heider, a 37-year-old baker, had immigrated to the United States in in 1878; his wife, 36-year-old Lena, came later, in 1883. When recorded in the Census of 1900, they had been married fourteen years and had seven children ranging in age from 3 months to 13 years, two of them twin daughters. Two other children had not survived. The Heiders lived at 420 Lawrence Street from 1900 until 1903, when the house was put up for sale together with the adjoining <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence Street</a>. The agent advertised that the houses “will show a good investment, either for the man who is seeking a home or investment, and are real bargains.” The house remained a rental property, occupied by 1905 by a household headed by a 48-year-old Irish immigrant, a widow named Nora Healey (or Haley). Her two daughters, ages 17 and 22, worked in lace making and later in domestic service, and a 15-year-old son worked in farming. In the early decades of the twentieth century, tenants at 420 Lawrence Street included a succession of married couples in their 20s and 30s, with occupations including salesman, shoemaker, chef, timekeeper, and laborer. Another large family moved into the home in 1920, headed by shipyard worker Thomas A. Montgomery, a white man 45 years old. He and his wife, Sadie, were both born in Pennsylvania but had lived in New Jersey for most of their married life. By 1920, their two oldest sons, ages 20 and 17, worked as truck drivers for a laundry; an 8-year-old daughter was attending school. Two younger children, ages 1 and 4, completed the family of seven. They remained at 420 Lawrence Street for seven years, followed by another household headed by a shipyard worker, a rigger named Lawrence Lauinger and his wife, Helen. Records of tenants during the Great Depression are sparse because city directories were not published in Camden between 1931 and 1940. The decade opened with a 45-year-old white woman, Margaret Peterson, who was divorced, renting the home for herself and her 18-year old son, who operated machines at a laundry. By 1940, Earl Nelson, a 36-year-old immigrant from Norway who worked as a railroad machinist, shared the home with a family of lodgers. His lodgers were a family of five headed by Paul E. Rube, an immigrant from Sweden, 54 years old, who worked as a car cleaner; with his wife, Catherine (who was born in Pennsylvania), he had three children ranging in age from 1 to 8. The lodgers also included a 12-year-old boy, Joseph Armstrong, whose age suggests he may have been Catherine Rube’s son from a previous marriage. By 1942, the house was vacant and put up for sale along with adjacent 418 and 422 Lawrence Streets. Under new ownership, during World War II the sequence of next tenants included a wounded Army private and a welder. Another large family moved into the home in 1950, headed by a 45-year-old white woman, Mary Brennan, who told Census takers she was separated from her husband. She shared the house with four sons ranging in age from 16 to 20, her 20-year-old daughter, and a 4-year-old granddaughter. Several tenants later, by 1957 the house at 420 Lawrence Street had been conveyed to an investment company, and a woman who rented the house next door at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence</a> took the opportunity to buy both properties. Alice Pharo, a white woman, had rented 418 Lawrence since 1950 and chose to stay despite a 1952 incident of a man breaking through the window of her kitchen. Divorced and living independently, Pharo served as secretary of the Burlington-Camden-Gloucester Society for Crippled Children and Adults. She rented out 420 Lawrence Street to tenants while living at 418 Lawrence until her death in 1977. The next owners, Eric and Ellen Eifert, acquired both <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a> and 420 Lawrence Street from Alice Pharo’s estate in 1984. In 2007, the Eiferts sold 418, 420, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422 Lawrence Street</a> to Rutgers University. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 420 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. Note on sources: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 420 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 420 Lawrence Street Artists Butchers Carpenters Childhood Children Clerks Dressmakers Extended Family Farmers Germany Glaziers Immigrants Immigration Infant Mortality Injuries Investment Ireland Laborers Laundries Lawrence Street Lodgers Norway Rutgers-Camden Salesmen Secretaries Shipyard Workers Shoemakers St. Paul's Episcopal Church Sweden Veterans Widows World War II https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/bccf2be593494953528898fa92b4a99a.jpg d34376f3b4da30b37055cb4a19f090d2 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/9d3e59ea1482fc62da01e3035b708308.jpg f1e123e52e6c1ac1142a7e8b04fbc5d5 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/5f894fd3ae04bf37fbdcb639ecceacb5.jpg b360f4fd1bdc23c4ae7b84d6441ac541 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/e1f81fe58d97f03a530b4074c3ec01c1.jpg f9329f8aa7bf2c05257b0caffed7ff20 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance 421 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. One of the earliest houses to be built on the north side of Cooper Street, the house is distinctive in representing financial strategies of widows during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The house also reflects the historic district's statement of significance that Cooper Street demonstrates "change from residential and professional to commercial." The 421 Cooper Street building began as a family home then turned to professional and commercial uses in the twentieth century. The Mission Revival renovation, likely completed within the district's stated period of significance (1810-1937), invokes Spanish influences and represents the home's adapted use as an office building. The building also has a notable history associated with women's entrepreneurship on Cooper Street, the experiences of childhood and youth, and health services (for sight and hearing). A graduate of Rutgers Law School had an office at this address for many years, and during a period in the 1970s Rutgers students lived in dormitory-style space upstairs. Rutgers acquired the building in 1999. Architectural style Originally a Greek Revival row house, 421 Cooper Street has been embellished by Mission Revival details added during the twentieth century renovation of the building for business uses. Date of construction c. 1848, remodeled c. 1926 History The adjoining rowhouses at 421 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> Cooper Street were among the first to be built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family descendants began to divide and sell their inherited property during the 1840s and 1850s. A broker and volunteer firefighter living in Philadelphia, Joseph R. Paulson, and his wife Mildred K. Paulson bought these lots in 1847. At least one house existed on the property by the end of 1848, when Joseph Paulson, at the age of 36, drew up an agreement that revealed expectations of an early death: he placed the properties in trust with his mother-in-law, Hester Keen, with instructions that she collect rents to support his wife and children, a son also named Joseph (then 13 years old) and daughter Emily (then age 5). A death notice for Joseph R. Paulson appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 29, 1849. The family invited relatives, friends, and members of the Humane Engine Company in Philadelphia to his funeral “from his late residence, Cooper Street, near Fifth, Camden, N.J.” They proceeded from there back to Philadelphia on the Arch Street ferry for his burial at Monument Cemetery. His cause of death was not made public. The property on Cooper Street, as he intended, remained a source of rental income and periodically a home for his descendants for the next 75 years. A Soldier's Family during the Civil War From 1863 (perhaps earlier) until at least 1869, 421 Cooper Street was the rented home of the Harbert family: Samuel C. Harbert, a dealer in agricultural implements in Philadelphia; his wife, Georgianna; and daughters Mary Virginia and Ella. During the first two years of the Civil War, Harbert served as regimental quartermaster in the New Jersey Fourth Infantry Regiment. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0004RI01" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New Jersey Fourth</a> participated in the defense of Washington until March 1862 and then advanced into Virginia and saw action in battles that included Yorktown, Bull Run, and Fredericksburg. Another Camden soldier, 17-year-old Thomas James Howell, demonstrated affection for Harbert's daughter Mary in <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/This_Will_Make_a_Man_of_Me/LyJsDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letters he wrote home</a> before being killed at the Battle of Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862. Harbert mustered out of the New Jersey Fourth in January 1863 and thereafter served as an officer in the U.S. Volunteers Paymaster's Department Infantry Regiment until November 1865, reaching the rank of major. He also served on the Camden City Council from 1869 to 1871, when the family relocated to Philadelphia, his place of business. Samuel (1818-1888), Georgianna (1821-92), and the daughters are buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia. Family Legacy As the original owner, Joseph Paulson, intended, the Cooper Street property supported his wife during her lifetime and upon her death conveyed to their two children. The siblings, adults by the time of their mother’s death in 1875, then divided ownership of the houses on their inherited land. Joseph Paulson, bearing the same name as his father, became the owner of 421 Cooper Street and a smaller house at the back of the property facing Lawrence Street. The homes continued to be rented to tenants. Hazards of Youth in the 1880s From around 1883 until 1892, the home at 421 Cooper Street was rented by the Kean family (sometimes spelled Keen, but apparently not related to the property owners). William C. Kean, a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and his wife Sarah, headed a family with two daughters and five sons living at home during this period. Sarah Kean's brother, Robert W. Downing, served as Comptroller for the Pennsylvania Railroad, which by 1888 also employed one of the Kean sons, then 17-year-old Charles A., as a clerk. Camden newspapers recorded some of the experiences of the Kean sons, illustrating some of the hazards of youth the late nineteenth century. In 1884, 18-year-old Edmund suffered a severe contusion of his foot during a rough ride on a ferry boat in fog. In 1885, he made the news again for impertinence to the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, which expelled him. In 1888, 15-year-old Harry and 13-year-old Joseph (known as Josie) were involved in a tree-cutting accident at their grandparents' farm near Woodbury, with Josie suffering axe cuts to his ankle. ("The shoe saved the foot from being entirely cut off, " the Camden Morning Post reported.) One of the boys, Robert (known as Bertie) did not live to adulthood. He died in the 421 Cooper Street home in July 1890 at the age of 13 from causes not publicly reported. The Camden Morning Post described him as "a bright and promising lad and his affection nature made him a favorite with his companions." As customary, his funeral service also took place at home. In 1893, the Camden city directory announced the Kean sons as "removed to Philadelphia," and their parents were also across the river by the time of the 1900 Census (at 527 Broad Street, an area favored by transportation magnates). One of the Kean sons, William Jr., became a real estate developer of homes in the Germantown section of Northwest Philadelphia. Security for a Widow The Paulson family returned to 421 Cooper Street by 1897, opening a new period when the house again served as a source of income for a widow with young children. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary A. Maxwell</a> was 27 years old when she married a widower 30 years her senior, Joseph R. Paulson—the son of first owner of 421 Cooper Street. Joseph lived in Philadelphia, listed in public records variously as an optician, cutlery maker, and jewelry merchant. With Joseph, Mary had two children and together they moved back to Camden and the 421 Cooper Street home. By the 1900 Census, the household consisted of Joseph, age 64; Mary, age 34; their sons Joseph Jr., age 6, and Charles, age 5, and a housekeeper, 55-year-old Clara Brewer. By 1905, Brewer's place had been taken by 21-year-old Rachel Ball, an African American who like many others in the early twentieth century had migrated north from Virginia. The family also added a daughter, Ruth, born 1902. The Paulsons lived at 421 Cooper Street for at least a decade and then, by 1910, made another move to the more fashionable suburb of Haddonfield. Still, they retained ownership of 421 Cooper Street. In 1911, when Joseph died, the family's former home became a source of financial security for Mary and her children. Mary rented out 421 Cooper Street to other families while living next door at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419 Cooper Street</a>, the other half of the Paulson family property that had passed to Joseph’s sister, Emily. The house at 421 for almost a decade became the rented home for another extended family headed by a widow, Clara Starn, until that family moved in 1920 to Merchantville. It remained a source of income for Mary Paulson and her family until 1925; its change of ownership that year warranted a story in the Camden Courier-Post to note that the property had been in the hands of only two families--the Paulsons and the Coopers--since Camden's earliest history. 1920s Disruption, Opportunity, and Renovation During the 1920s, a series of disruptions and transitions led Camden boosters to view Cooper Street as a potential business corridor. Construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), completed in 1926, caused demolition of nineteenth-century homes in nearby blocks. Near the Delaware waterfront, the Victor Talking Machine Company demolished a block of Cooper Street homes to expand its factories. Commercial-scale buildings such as the Wilson Building, Camden's first skyscraper (620 Cooper, completed 1925), and the Plaza Hotel (500 Cooper, completed 1927), began to appear. Controversially for longtime residents, Cooper Street was widened in anticipation of increasing automobile traffic. In the midst of these transitions, 421 Cooper Street changed from a family home to an office building. It was one of a series of renovation projects managed by Julia M. Carey, a 26-year-old daughter of Irish immigrants who had worked as a stenographer and notary before finding new opportunity in real estate sales during the 1920s. On behalf of the Bell-Oliver Corporation, she sold three Cooper Street houses--321, 421, and 521--to investors and stayed on to manage and remodel them. The renovations by the "energetic realty lady" were reported in the Camden Courier-Post of September 11, 1926: at 421 Cooper Street, Carey turned the home into an office building, and leased an office there for herself. (Meanwhile, she turned 321 Cooper Street into an eight-unit apartment house and 521 into offices for lawyers.) It appears likely that Carey was responsible for the Mission Revival-style ornament that obscured the original facade of 421 Cooper Street. This Spanish-influenced style, which originated on the West Coast, had been rare in Camden but made two other appearances on Cooper Street during the 1920s: in a new commercial building at 525 Cooper and in the Chalcar Apartments building in the 200 block. The renovation of 421 Cooper Street, with enlarged windows and structural changes necessary to install the new Mission Revival ornament, is visible in an aerial photograph of the vicinity of the Delaware River Bridge approach taken c. 1926. The completed renovation can also be seen in the 1947 advertisement published at the top of this page. Julia M. Carey lived at least briefly, c. 1929-1931, in one of the apartments she created at 321 Cooper Street. She remained involved with the neighborhood until at least 1940, when the Camden city directory listed her as having a real estate office at 521 Cooper. Helen's Beauty Shop After the renovation of 421 Cooper, the building had a variety of office tenants, including an insurance agency and promoters of the new Arlington Mausoleum in Pennsauken. But the business tenant who became most well-known to Camden during the 1930s and 1940s arrived in 1933, when <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/39" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Helen Waters</a> opened a beauty shop on the second floor. She vigorously promoted her business with display advertising and flattering promotional articles in the Camden newspapers, encouraging the women of Camden to come to her for the latest in hairstyling and cosmetics. By the time Helen opened her shop at 421 Cooper, she had been widowed and her work as a beautician supported two daughters. The 1930 Census found her at age 30 living at the Harding Villa Apartments on Federal Street while her daughters Patricia and Dorothy, then aged 9 and 10, lived with her parents Daniel and Lida Chester elsewhere in Camden. Helen, who had an eighth-grade education, worked as a beautician for Binder's Beauty Shop in Philadelphia before opening her own establishment at 421 Cooper Street, where she and her daughters also came to live. In 1938, Waters added cosmetics and facials to her business. Her daughters both graduated from high school, including at least one year at Mount St. Mary's Academy run by the Sisters of Mercy in Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1940, living with their mother at 421 Cooper, Dorothy worked as a typist and Patricia as a telephone operator. Patricia actively promoted a women's basketball league in Camden for former high school players. Other businesses and organizations, including the Camden County Real Estate Board and the Camden County Democratic Party, had offices in 421 Cooper while Helen operated the shop and lived upstairs. In 1945, after both of her daughters had married, Helen bought the building but retained ownership only until 1947. When she put 421 Cooper Street up for sale, it offered an office suite on the first floor, additional office space on the second floor, "plus three nicely planned apartments with modern tile baths." Helen continued to operate her beauty salon in the building until at least 1950, but after its sale she moved behind it to 426 Lawrence Street. Residential, Professional, Commercial During the second half of the twentieth century, 421 Cooper Street served all elements of the transitions noted in the justification for naming Cooper Street a historic district on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places in 1989. Its next owner, Ernest F. Birbeck, was an optician who moved his practice from the Plaza Hotel, then nearby at Fifth and Cooper Street, into 421 Cooper in 1950. He commuted from Pennsauken until he retired in 1967. His business tenants included a hearing aid center and a eyewear shop whose co-owner, B. Morozin, became the next owner of 421 Cooper. Under Morozin's ownership in the early 1970s, Rutgers-Camden students lived upstairs in space advertised as "dorm style" with a kitchen, dining room and air conditioning, for up to 10 people. The Rutgers connection to 421 Cooper Street continued when another office tenant, lawyer Joseph Liebman, purchased the building in 1977. Liebman, a graduate of Rutgers Law School in Camden, lived in Philadelphia but according to information published in the Courier-Post had an office in 421 Cooper Street for fifty-five years. After one more change of ownership to another Philadelphia attorney/investor, Raymond Quaglia, Rutgers acquired the building in 1999. On February 27, 2020, the Camden Historic Preservation Commission voted unanimously to dismiss with prejudice an application by Rutgers to demolish 421 Cooper Street. It further recommended reconstruction of the building, including restoring the facade. On March 6, 2020, a request from Rutgers for emergency demolition of 421 Cooper Street was declined by the Historic Preservation Office of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on the basis that the building's condition resulted from long-term deterioration. On June 11, 2020, the Camden City Planning Board voted unanimously to deny Rutgers' request to demolish 421 Cooper Street. Illustrations 1. 421 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner) 2. 421 Cooper Street, indicated by arrow, early twentieth century prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society) 3. 421 Cooper Street, circled, c. 1926, showing renovation. (<a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A61821?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=5ef67e7ccf54ba06b0c8&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Photograph detail</a>, Library Company of Philadelphia) 4. Advertisement, Camden Courier-Post, September 20, 1947. Associated Individuals All known residents and businesses are listed in the Cooper Street Database: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">click here</a> and scroll to 421. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. Digital Photographs Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. New Jersey State Census, 1885, 1895, 1915, and U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Property Report, 421 Cooper Street, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Structures Survey, 421 Cooper Street, New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Note on sources: The historic structure report for this property dates it as “before 1885.” This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Charlene Mires, Kaya Durkee Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 421 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 400 Block 421 Cooper Street African Americans Apartments Attorneys Beauticians Bridge Impact Childhood Civil War Cosmetics Death Domestic Life Extended Family Greek Revival Haddonfield Health and Medicine Injuries Merchantville Mission Revival Opticians Pennsauken Philadelphia Railroad Workers Real Estate Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/7dc1b16dc1b0c4bce1ef2e640276b543.jpg e37d1e248475778690ee7e30374e3adf Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance 422 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history" and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden." 422 Lawrence Street is notable for its connections with many of the waves of migration and immigration that formed Camden's diverse population. Date of construction c. early 1850s History At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States. 422 Lawrence Street The two-story, four-room brick house at 422 Lawrence Street likely dates to the early 1850s, when other similar houses are known to have been built in the same row. The absence of house numbering limits the identification of tenants by address prior to 1861, but city directories documented people living in this block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. The earliest tenant of 422 Lawrence Street who can be identified from public records was Charles Storm, a hat finisher, who rented the house in 1860-61. Storm, 42 years old in 1860, was a white man born in New York who headed a household of six people at this address: his wife, Ann, a white woman also 42 years old, who was born in Philadelphia, and four children ranging in age from 2 to 22. The oldest daughter, Catharine, worked as a dressmaker. By 1862, a veteran of the Civil War headed the family who rented 422 Lawrence Street. Montraville Williams served as a drum major with the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0003RI01" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Third New Jersey Volunteer Infantry</a>. Born in Massachusetts in 1832, Williams was educated at the private, nonsectarian Leicester Academy and worked as a bootmaker before relocating to Camden in the mid-1850s. While working as a cordwainer (shoemaker), in 1855 he married Pennsylvania-born Fanny Riley in Camden’s Third Street Methodist Episcopal Church. By the time of the 1860 Census, they lived in Camden and their family had grown to include three daughters, the oldest 11 years old (apparently born to one of the parents prior to their marriage) and two younger girls ages 1 and 3. By the time he went off to war, Montraville Williams identified his occupation as musician, and his military role as a principal musician meant that he trained drummers who beat cadences for troops in the field. During his enlistment from May 1861 until October 1862, his unit participated in the defense of Washington, D.C., and advanced into Virginia and Maryland with the Army of the Potomac. Williams mustered out of service following the Battle of Antietam with an unspecified disability. At home, meanwhile, Fanny fought battles of her own. She dealt with the death of their 2-year-old daughter Ella, who contracted smallpox and died in November 1861. Sometime within the next year, she and her surviving girls moved into the 422 Lawrence Street house, and she gave birth to another daughter there in October 1862, around the same time her husband returned from the war. Disruptions and losses continued for the Williams family during the next six to seven years at the Lawrence Street address. In 1863 another of their daughters, six-year-old Ida, died of scarlet fever while on a visit to her father’s hometown in Massachusetts. By 1869, Montraville apparently left the family and Camden. Fanny appeared alone at 422 Lawrence Street in the Camden city directory in 1869, an indication of the absence of a male head of household. Thereafter, she moved to other addresses in Camden as she sought to support herself and her daughters as a tailoress and music teacher. She struggled in later life, including the public embarrassment of an eviction for nonpayment of rent that was reported in two Camden newspapers in 1888. Montraville, meanwhile, moved west. He may have lived in Chicago for a time, and he was later rumored to be in California. He died in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1905. That year, his long-estranged wife filed for a widow’s pension based upon her husband’s service during the Civil War. Migrants to Camden: From Europe, the South, the Midwest, and Puerto Rico Industrialization and immigration to Camden are evident in the next series of tenants at 422 Lawrence Street. By 1870 a miller named Joseph Webster headed a household of six people, including two grown daughters who worked in a shoe factory. By 1880, an immigrant from Germany, Charles Kemmick, worked as a gardener and headed a family of four including his wife Caroline, whose parents were German immigrants, a 4-year-old son, and infant daughter. Occupations represented among the often-changing tenants of 422 Lawrence Street during this period included laborers, shoe cutters, drivers, bookkeepers, and a clerk. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, 422 Lawrence Street had Black tenants for the first time – among the few Black residents at this or any other house in the Lawrence Street row. Records may not account for the full extent of these African American households, but they document the presence in 1896 of Martha Woolford, a Black widow who had recently been employed as a domestic at nearby <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/77" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">407 Cooper Street</a>. After a short tenancy by a white family, the next two renters between 1899 and 1903 were Black food service workers. John and Addie Davis, a married couple in their late twenties, had both been born in Virginia and migrated by 1894 to Philadelphia. By 1899 they were in Camden and renting the house at 422 Lawrence Street. John Davis worked as a baker. The next tenant, a caterer, had been a lodger with another Black family in Camden prior to moving to Lawrence Street with one young son. At their previous address in 1900, Lena Duvall had been recorded as 40 years old, born in Delaware, and her son Leo was then three years old. The Census takers did not find Lena’s husband of eight years at home, although he apparently lived at least intermittently with his family in both locations. In 1901, he was accused of bigamy in Philadelphia after marrying another woman, and Lena crossed the river to present documentation of her marriage in court. She remained on Lawrence Street until 1903. The fluidity of Camden’s population as industry expanded on the city’s waterfront is reflected by the tenants at 422 Lawrence Street by 1910, when a packer working at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a> headed the family at this address. Charles L. Rhodes, a white man 54 years old, had been born in New York. His wife of seventeen years, 51-year-old Marietta, had been born in Georgia. They had one son, Arthur, who was sixteen years old in 1910 and attending school. The expansion of shipbuilding on the Delaware River also brought tenants to 422 Lawrence Street: throughout the 1920s, it became home to a family headed by a riveter, Albert Adams, a white man who was born in Ohio to parents who had immigrated from France and Germany. Forty years old in 1920, his household included his wife, Mabel, who was five years younger, also born in Ohio but to parents who had both been born in Virginia. Mabel’s mother and brother lived with the couple; her brother also worked in a shipyard on the Delaware. While Mabel’s brother moved on at some time during the 1920s, the rest of the family stayed on Lawrence Street through at least 1930. The house at 422 Lawrence Street remained a rental property through the Great Depression, although the identities of tenants are scarce because Camden did not publish city directories between 1931 and 1940. In 1940, the tenants included Charles Smith, a white man who worked as a church janitor, and his wife, a presser in a factory. Thereafter, however, the occupants of the house reflected the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/puerto-rican-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rising presence of Puerto Ricans</a> in Camden. From 1943 until at least 1950, Puerto-Rican born Santos and Lucy Martinez headed a family of six at this address; at some point, they also purchased the home. The 1950 Census recorded Santos as 47 years old, white, and working as an electrician in a shipyard; Lucy, ten years younger than her husband, also white, operated a sewing machine in a dress factory. Their children, all of whom had been born in Puerto Rico, included four at home ranging in age from 15 to 21, in addition to an oldest son attending William Penn College in Iowa. Margarita, the oldest of their offspring at home, worked as a mender in a hosiery mill, and a nineteen-year-old son was a pin boy in a bowling alley. Another son, Nestor, turned eighteen in 1950, enlisted in the Army, and departed that year for basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina. The history of 422 Lawrence Street next appears in the public record in the 1970s, when periodic missed tax payments put the property at risk of sheriff’s sale. In 1978, Santos and Lucy Martinez, who by then lived in suburban Woodlynne, sold the house Eric and Ellen Eifert, who then lived at 418 Lawrence Street. The Eiferts, who later purchased <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">420</a> Lawrence Street as well, sold all three properties to Rutgers University in 2007. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 422 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. Note on sources: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. One woman employed as a domestic servant on Cooper Street lived at 422 Lawrence Street; for other tenants, this research updates and corrects the record. Research by Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 422 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 422 Lawrence Street African Americans Artists Bakers Bigamy Black Migration Bookkeepers Caterers Childhood Children Civil War Clerks Death Disability Drivers Electricians Factory Workers France Gardeners Georgia Germany Immigrants Immigration Investment Janitor Laborers Lawrence Street Massachusetts Millers Musicians Ohio Philadelphia Puerto Ricans Rutgers-Camden Scarlet Fever Servants Shipyard Workers Shoemakers Smallpox Veterans Victor Talking Machine Company Virginia Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/1a58545206a4032c8a0b31422adb830d.jpg b4d8fa46048454ef5ab9b406158ecd92 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Early twentieth-century photograph, Camden County Historical Society. Significance 423 Cooper Street was the site of a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district is defined as representing broad patterns of American history, including: "The buildings within the district include Camden's best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." The latter transition was well illustrated by 423 Cooper Street, which began as a family home then became a funeral home from the 1920s through the 1960s. The house was demolished in the early 1990s. Date of construction c. 1847, renovated 1875. History The house that stood at 423 Cooper Street for nearly 150 years was among the first houses built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family heirs sold their land for development. When they began to divide their land into building lots in the 1840s, Camden was seeking new status as the seat of government for newly designated Camden County, formed from Gloucester County in 1844. Building Lives in Camden Jesse Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, came to Camden in 1847, two years after they were married at the Byberry Friends Meeting in the rural northern reaches of Philadelphia. They had one infant daughter when Jesse took a job as a clerk at the State Bank of Camden, one of the institutions that marked the emergence of Camden as a city in its own right, not merely a satellite of Philadelphia across the river. The Townsends purchased the 423 Cooper Street lot and in their new house, likely a Greek Revival brick rowhouse like others in the 400 block, their family grew during the 1850s to include five children – four girls and a boy – in addition to Elizabeth Townsend’s mother, Mary Wilson. Jesse Townsend ascended to cashier of the bank. When he also entered into partnership in a flour and grain business, his business partner Caleb Parry also lived with the family for a time. In 1862, the Townsend family sold the house and moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank at Second and Market Streets. New owners who lived in Woodbury rented out the house for the rest of that decade. Notably, in 1870 the tenants of the house included Richard and Mary Esterbrook, immigrants from England. Richard Esterbrook was the founder of the Esterbrook Steel Pen Company, founded in Camden in 1858 and on its way to becoming one of the world’s leading producers of steel pen nibs. The house underwent a major renovation by its next owner, Frederick Rex, a bank clerk in his 20s who later became a prominent attorney. When advertised for sale by its previous owners from Woodbury, the house was described as having “six chambers, and bath room, parlor, dining room and kitchen; water and gas in the house which is in good order.” Rex apparently saw room for improvement and contracted with a builder in 1875 to “tear down, build up, and repair” the 30-year-old rowhouse. The result was a home that stood out from others on the block with Italianate details. Rex then sold the house to the family who also lived there with him, feed and flour dealer Charles C. Reeves, his wife Elizabeth, and their two children. Hardware and Prosperity A sheriff’s sale of 423 Cooper Street in 1886 opened more than three decades of occupancy by members of a prominent Camden retail family, William and Clara Fredericks and their daughter, Edna, born the same year they moved into the house. William Fredericks, born in Camden in 1854, managed the hardware store that his father, Harry, had founded in the 1850s. The store carried the goods that helped to build the growing city – window sashes, doors, and building supplies. While the business prospered, the elder Fredericks also organized the Camden Merritts baseball team, which lasted just a year (1883) but started the career of pitcher William (Kid) Gleason, who later played for the Baltimore Orioles, the Detroit Tigers, and Philadelphia Nationals. When the Fredericks family moved into 423 Cooper Street, the Camden Daily Telegram noted that their “handsome new residence” was being “fitted up in an elegant manner.” The Fredericks family displayed other signs of affluence while living at this address, including the employment of domestic servants even though they remained a small family of three. When Edna Fredericks reached adulthood, at age 20 in 1906 she sailed with relatives to Europe for a summer tour. The family also spent summers at the Jersey Shore, favoring Atlantic City. In 1916, approaching retirement from business, Fredericks put the house up for sale, advertising it as a “three-story brick house in one of the finest residential sections of Camden.” It offered “twelve rooms and handsome tiled bathroom; hardwood floors; pier and mantle mirrors; crystal chandelier; gas and coal ranges, cemented cellars; large yard and side entrance; front and side porches.” After a lifetime in Camden, in 1918 Fredericks retired and the family moved to an apartment in West Philadelphia. Funeral Home The next long-term occupant of 423 Cooper Street reflected the transition of the thoroughfare to commercial uses during the 1920s. The transition, promoted by Camden real estate interests, included conversion of many former residences into offices or apartment buildings. The redevelopment activity accompanied construction of the Delaware River Bridge, later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which opened in 1926. Beginning in 1923, 423 Cooper Street became the residence and funeral home of Charles W. Hiskey, who was assisted in the business by his wife, Matilda. Previously on Sixth Street, the Hiskeys described their new location as a “modern funeral home.” Charles Hiskey developed an extensive network of acquaintances that could be expected to aid the business as he joined various lodges, the Masons, the Kiwanis Club, and other organizations. Matilda Hiskey was a lifelong member of the First Methodist Church. The funeral home remained in operation until 1961, when Charles Hiskey died, five years after his wife. Offices and Demolition A real estate firm next acquired the building and leased to office tenants, including physicians. As an office building, 423 Cooper Street changed hands several times during the 1960s and 1970s, then became the property of Rutgers University in 1984. When surveyed for inclusion in the Cooper Street Historic District in 1985, the building was described as “a highly intact example of one of the most prevalent styles of architecture on Cooper Street” and “a significant contributor to the heritage of the streetscape.” The building was demolished in the early 1990s, creating a vacant lot that remained three decades later. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 423 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 423. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. New Jersey State Census, 1855-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 423 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Vacant lot, site of demolished contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 400 Block 423 Cooper Street Banking Baseball Demolition Doctors Esterbrook Steel Pen Company Funeral Homes Greek Revival Hardware Dealers Philadelphia Quakers Renovations Rutgers-Camden Woodbury https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/71e6707f8bcef09179ba518f552651c3.jpg 7271153aa049bf97d08cbbba199e6528 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance 424 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.” Date of construction c. 1847-54 History At the back of two Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a>), two smaller houses with a small alley between them were added facing Lawrence Street sometime between 1847 and 1854. The collective development of four residences stood on land purchased in 1847 by Joseph R. Paulson, a Philadelphia merchant active in that city’s volunteer fire companies. Although just 35 years old when he bought the lots, Paulson apparently anticipated a need to assure future financial security for his family by 1848, when he placed the land and its "premises” in trust with his mother-in-law so that rents could be collected to support his wife and two young children. Paulson died in 1849 from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage while living in one of the Cooper Street-facing houses, and true to his wishes the four structures on his land generated income and the Cooper Street-facing houses at times provided shelter to his heirs for the next eight decades. 424 Lawrence Street The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents beginning in 1854, according to city directories. The earliest tenants who can be identified at 424 Lawrence Street were a family of five headed by a journeyman tailor, Charles Lewis, who lived in this house from 1858 until 1869. Lewis, a white man who was 38 years old in 1860, headed a family that included his wife, Sarah, age 32, and three children ranging in age from 2 years old to 11 (the older two attending school). The parents and their oldest child were all born in Pennsylvania; the two younger children were both born in New Jersey, indicating a move across the river in the early 1850s. While living at 424 Lawrence Street, by 1868 Charles Lewis changed his occupation or added a second position as collector of water rents for the Camden Water Works. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to a different home on Eighth Street. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, tenants at 424 Lawrence included a barber, machinists, a boot and shoe maker, a sawyer, and a laborer. One of the longest-residing tenants during this period was a widow, Mary Davis, who earned her living as a dress trimmer while living at this address between 1881 and 1888. Davis, a white woman in her 30s, had previously boarded in another family’s home with her two children, so the move to a rented house on Lawrence Street may have been a step forward for the family. For most of the 1890s and into the first year of the new century, the tenants at 424 Lawrence were an extended family including Irish immigrants and their second- and third-generation children and grandchildren. Most consistently through this period, a laborer named William Thompson and his wife, Mary—a daughter of Irish immigrants—headed the household. By 1897, they shared the home with Mary Thompson’s Irish parents, John and Mary Reilly (or Riley), who moved in around the time Mary gave birth to the couple’s third child. The need for additional adults in the home may have been related to Mary’s health; she died in 1900 at the age of 33 from causes not publicly disclosed, leaving behind three children then aged 2 to 15. As the family circumstances changed, William Thompson’s occupation advanced from laborer to policeman, with the family economy also supported by John Reilly’s work as a carpenter and Mary Reilly’s work as a tailor. They left 424 Lawrence Street in 1901. Additional nationalities were represented among tenants at this address in the early decades of the twentieth century, reflecting the diversity of Camden’s immigrant population. During 1904 and 1905, the residents were a Dutch family headed by John Vendengenten, a coachman who was 48 years old in 1905. He and his wife, Elizabeth, age 42, and their older son Johann, 19, had immigrated from Holland nine years before; a younger son, 7-year-old Rudolph, was born after they arrived in New York. While at 424 Lawrence Street, Elizabeth Vendengenten placed a newspaper advertisement offering her labor to do washing or cleaning. By 1910, the residents at this address included a woman born in French-speaking Canada, Corrine Barkley, whose Pennsylvania-born husband William worked in a livery stable and later as a driver. Both of their children had been born in New Jersey. From 1915 to 1923, a second-generation couple whose parents had been German immigrants, Gilbert and Emma Hicks, occupied the home. Gilbert worked as a carpet-layer and department store clerk, and his wife apparently did not work outside the home. And in 1930, another second-generation couple whose parents had been born in Ireland lived at this address. The house at 424 Lawrence Street also had a connection with Camden’s emergence as an industrial center through the life experience of Mary Gibson, a tenant during the 1920s who worked at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>. In her 70s by the time she lived on Lawrence Street, Gibson had been a widow since 1895, when her husband, Joshua, died from pulmonary consumption at the age of 37; their only son, Howard Sands Gibson, died in 1905 at the age of 19 from tuberculosis. Dependent on her own labor for support, Gibson went to work at the Victor Talking Machine Company by 1905, within a few years of the company’s founding. She remained in the Victor workforce as an inspector, assembler, and record maker for more than two decades as the company grew to one of Camden’s major industries. She was still making records at Victor when she moved to 424 Lawrence Street. Previously she had lived as a boarder or roomer with other families; at Lawrence Street she shared the house with her brother William Sands, an artist, until 1928. She died one year later, at age 74, then living in Audubon, New Jersey. The long history of 424 Lawrence Street as an income generator for the original owners, the Paulson family, came to an end during the late 1930s. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary Paulson</a>, a daughter-in-law of the first Paulson owner, had lived in one of the property’s Cooper Street-facing houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419 Cooper</a>) since 1912 while renting out the other houses. By 1938, however, she had gone to live with a daughter in Merchantville and put 419 Cooper Street and 424 Lawrence Street up for sale (the adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421 Cooper</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426 Lawrence</a> houses were sold earlier, during the 1920s). Coinciding with the Great Depression, the offer of the two houses, by then close to 90 years old, failed to find a buyer despite steady reductions in the asking price. After several appearances in legal notices for taxes and sheriff’s sales, Paulson turned the property over to the First Camden National Bank and Trust Company in 1940. Under new owners in the 1940s and 1950s, 424 Lawrence Street remained a rental property with tenants who included employees of RCA (which acquired the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1929). By 1969, the house and others in the 400 block became subjects of interest for their historical value. One of Camden’s active preservationists, Edward Teitelman, purchased 424 Lawrence Street and its neighbor, 426 Lawrence, in 1969. Teitelman, a psychologist by profession, saved other properties on Cooper Street and nearby during this period, including the distinctive <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a> designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre (later the Rutgers-Camden Writers House). Teitelman’s tenants on Lawrence Street included students from Rutgers-Camden, who were believed to be responsible for marijuana plants found growing behind 424 Lawrence Street in 1972. The students also became targets for crime, including a 1973 incident of armed robbery at 424 Lawrence Street that netted stereo equipment and more than $3,000 in cash. After two more transfers of ownership during the 1990s and early 2000s, Rutgers University purchased 424 Lawrence Street in 2005. The building later housed the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Food Pantry. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 424 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. Note on sources: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee; Kevin Johnson (research about Mary Gibson). Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 424 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 424 Lawrence Street Barbers Cabinet Makers Canada Carpenters Childhood Children Clerks Coachmen Crime Death Dressmakers Drivers Extended Family Germany Hemmorhage Historic Preservation Holland Investment Ireland Laborers Lawrence Street Machinists Merchants Philadelphia Rutgers-Camden Sawyers Shoemakers Tailors Victor Talking Machine Company Widows