4 10 100 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/274f82540cabe5cba90e18fbffa8b07f.jpg 95466047631d0a1772284d16836fdbaf https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/a8ead66e3e94647b1a8a54e7d03d82fc.jpg bd5e4bd3b06f33d6995ba09db2a9635b 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 425 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 the row 415-21 Cooper Street, 425 represents a significant transition in the evolution of Camden during the 1840s as homes were built for the first time on land formerly owned by the Cooper family on the north side of the street. The nomination of the Cooper Street Historic District 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." The home at 425 Cooper Street represents these transitions through its use for dental and medical practices from the 1880s through the 1970s. Furthermore, the house was built for an early public official of Camden who also developed houses at the back of the property on Lawrence Street. This first owner, Isaac Porter, also served as treasurer of the West Jersey Ferry Company, reflecting the historic significance of Camden as a point of connection between South Jersey and Philadelphia. In 2020, 425 Cooper Street was privately owned and divided into rental apartments. Architectural style Greek Revival row house. Date of construction c. 1846 (dated by New Jersey Office of Historic Preservation Sites Inventory, based upon deed transferring land from Alexander Cooper et al to Isaac Porter, June 5, 1846). History Three long-term owners of 425 Cooper Street reflect patterns of transition across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Town Builder In 1846, just two years after Camden became the governmental seat for newly-designated Camden County, Isaac Porter bought the land where 425 Cooper Street stands from a member of the region's most prominent founding family, Alexander Cooper. His purchase and subsequent building of a three-story brick row house was part of the first wave of home construction on the north side of Cooper Street. Porter (1807-1867) was in many ways a town builder and booster for Camden during the 1840s and 1850s as he developed his property, served in public office, and oversaw financial matters for the West Jersey Ferry Company between Camden and Philadelphia. The Porter family owned 425 Cooper Street for more than three decades. The U.S. Census in 1850 documents the Porter family during their early years at this address: Isaac, age 46; his wife, Esther (Ackley), age 40; and five children, a daughter and four sons ranging in age from 5 to 18. Isaac Porter served as Camden County Surrogate, an office responsible for recording wills and other matters related to settling estates. In 1849 Porter also had been appointed treasurer of the newly incorporated West Jersey Ferry Company. One of Camden's important connections to Philadelphia, this ferry had been operating since 1800 under management of the family and descendants of Abraham Browning, and thus was better known to local residents as "the Browning ferry." It had a prime location, running between Market Street in Camden and Market Street in Philadelphia. As the ferry took on its new status as a corporation, its presence on the Camden waterfront grew with a wharf that further extended filled land into the Delaware River, a ferry house, and a new West Jersey Hotel. Porter, meanwhile, developed his Cooper Street property by building two smaller houses at the rear of his lot, on Lawrence Street. The houses, numbered 432 and 434, were completed by 1855, when they served as models for an additional six two-story row houses contracted for construction by Benjamin H. Browning (a member of the ferry-operating family although not a participant in that venture). These rental properties attracted skilled tradesmen. The earliest that can be documented are in Camden city directories of the 1860s: at 434 Lawrence Street in 1865, a cabinet maker, Alexander Haines; and at 432 Lawrence Street in 1869, a carpenter, William Rotter. During the 1850s, Porter served twice as city treasurer for Camden (assisted by his oldest son, Joseph A. Porter, who lived down the street at 538 Cooper and later held the same office). By 1860, the Porters' older children had left the home, but the household also had gained two new female residents, likely extended family members (Eleanor Ackley, age 68, and Abigail Cooper, age 32). They also employed a domestic servant, Martha Butler, who was African American. To Census takers, she reported her age as 25, her birthplace as Delaware, and indicated that she had been married within the last year and could not read or write. A generational transition took place at 425 Cooper Street during the 1860s with the deaths of the senior members of the family: Esther Porter in 1863, followed by both Isaac Porter and Eleanor Ackley in 1867. As customary for the time, funerals for all three took place in the family home. For Isaac Porter, the flags of the ferry boats of the West Jersey Ferry Company flew at half-mast to honor his memory. Three of the Porters' sons remained at 425 Cooper Street through the 1870s, with the Census of 1870 recognizing the oldest of the three, 31-year-old Israel E. Porter, a store clerk, as head of the household. The family by that date included Israel's wife Ella and their infant son Harry; the other Porter brothers George, a coach maker, and Charles, a store clerk; and one or possibly two servants (in two separate listings for the family in 1870, two different servants were recorded: Margaret Brown, age 30 and described as mulatto, and Gattie Posley, age 20 and African American. This extended family remained until 1880, when they rented the property briefly to an insurance agent and his family. Financial difficulties may have contributed to the ultimate sale of the home, as it went to sheriff's sale in 1881 to satisfy back taxes. A Medical Family The next long-term family came to 425 Cooper with the street's transition during the 1880s, with the founding of nearby Cooper Hospital. Proximity to the hospital made Cooper Street an idea location for medical professionals who established both home and office in structures that previously served strictly residential purposes. Such was the case for 425 Cooper Street and the Irwin family, who lived and provided health care at this address for more than forty years starting in 1884 (and for several years previous, next door at 427 Cooper). The owner of record for the Irwin home was Asbury Irwin, a stenographer for the Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, but the head of the family was his father, a long-time physician, Samuel B. Irwin. The family had roots in the Brandywine region of Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania, where the previous generation had operated iron furnaces. Samuel and his brother, the Philadelphia surgeon Hayes Agnew Irwin, inherited the iron business but also earned medical degrees at Jefferson Medical College. The primary medical practice during the Irwins' ownership of 425 Cooper was the dental office of Alphonso Irwin, who was about 25 years old when his brother Asbury bought the home. A recent graduate of the Philadelphia Dental School (which later became part of Temple University), he founded a Camden Free Dental Clinic as well as a private practice that continued until his retirement in the 1920s. While living at 425 Cooper Street (which he purchased from his brother Asbury in 1896), Alphonso married and with his wife, Anna, raised two children. He wrote frequently about dental hygiene, particularly for children, and became a noted authority on dental law. Alphonso Irwin became a leader in New Jersey dentistry, which for a time made 425 Cooper Street the headquarters for the New Jersey Dental Association. The association's need for a secretary brought into the Irwin household a boarder whose unusual background captured the attention of Camden residents between 1913 and 1915. The Camden Courier-Post reported frequently on the social and professional activities of Winifred de Mercier-Panton, who had been born in Australia but somehow had come to be employed by Irwin as secretary of the New Jersey State Dental Board. When she had a birthday party, when she attended a social event in Philadelphia, and when she met the governor of New Jersey, the Courier-Post noted the details. In November 1914, with the Great War underway in Europe, she announced her engagement to a captain in the British Colonial Force and soon thereafter departed Camden to serve with the <a href="https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/4949680" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Voluntary Aid Attachment</a> of the British Army. In 1915, for circumstances unknown, she was awarded a Royal Red Cross for distinguished service. Office in Camden, Home Away The next owner of 425 Cooper Street, osteopathic physician George W. Tapper, lived in the home for about five years during the 1930s. By 1940, however, he and his wife, Dorothy, had a new home in Medford Lakes, Burlington County. Like a number of other medical professionals on Cooper Street during the later decades of the twentieth century, Tapper treated his property as an office/apartment building with residential tenants living in the upper floors. The frequent turnover of apartment dwellers included Edgar J. Anzola (1937), a Venezuelan who worked in the international division of RCA; Eugene Gravener Jr. (1944), who earned the Air Medal for supplying materials to American and Chinese combat troops in north Burma during World War II; and Rosemary Tully (1958), an Irish woman joined by her new American husband after they married. George Tapper owned 425 Cooper Street until 1975, the first in a sequence of transfers of ownership to absentee landlords. Starting in 2007 and continuing in 2020, the property was owned by investors from the Bronx, New York, and served as rental apartments. Associated Individuals For all known residents and businesses at 425 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>. Illustrations 1. 425 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner) 2. 425 Cooper Street indicated by arrow in photograph taken early in the twentieth century, prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society) Research by Charlene Mires, Kaya Durkee, and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Sources Biographical Review Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of Camden and Burlington Counties, N.J. (Boston: Biographical Review Publishing, 1897). Building Permits, Camden County Historical Society. Charles Boyer, Annals of Camden No. 3: Old Ferries (Privately Printed, 1921). Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). Camden City Directories and U.S. Census, 1850-1940 (Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. George R. Prowell, History of Camden County, New Jersey (Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886). Structures Survey, New Jersey Office of Historic Preservation Sites Inventory. 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 425 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 425 Cooper Street 432 Lawrence Street 434 Lawrence Street African Americans Aging Apartments Australia Childhood Death Delaware Dentists Doctors Economic Development England Extended Family Ferries Greek Revival Health and Medicine Investment Ireland Lawrence Street Medford Lakes Pennsylvania Philadelphia Public Health Public Officials Servants Venezuela World War I https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/0d9b5e8aa2d0a322030100729f9a6991.jpg 41ec076e0f91f685c84b7410d9ca645c 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 426 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 after 1847. The collective development of four residences stood on land purchased that year 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 at times provided shelter to his heirs for the next eight decades. 426 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 426 Lawrence Street included a man who later rose to prominence in Camden, Charles E. Derby, who rented the house between 1859 and 1861. Derby, a journeyman machinist born in Massachusetts, was a white man in his early 30s when he lived at 426 Lawrence with his wife, Susan (also white and in her early 30s), and their infant daughter Orilla. Shortly after they left Lawrence Street, in 1863, Derby co-founded the firm Derby & Weatherby (also known as the Camden Machine Works). Over the next four decades, the company grew at Delaware and Cooper Streets, where it produced machines for many of Camden’s waterfront industries. The firm specialized in building marine engines, including the engines that powered ferryboats operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad. By the time Derby died in 1901, he was described as “well known to machinists throughout the country.” By 1865, the house at 426 Lawrence Street became home to a family that stayed for three decades, longer than any other residents of the block during the nineteenth century. The location would have been ideal for a house carpenter, the occupation of the head of household, William C. Bates. At that time and into the 1870s, builders were buying lots of land north of Cooper Street and rapidly putting up houses in pairs, groups of three, and entire rows. The distinctive Linden Terrace block (Linden Street between Fourth and Fifth Street) developed in 1871, for example. From Lawrence Street, Bates would have had a direct view, and potentially an opportunity for work, as builder Joseph Cooper constructed his unusually large, grand mansion at 406 Penn Street in 1869. Another of the city’s prominent builders, William Severns, had a carpentry shop across the street from Bates while that project was underway. The Census of 1870 documented the Bates family as William, 54 years old, a white man; his wife Sarah, a white woman 55 years old; and their son Samuel, who was 30 years old and employed as a box maker. All were born in New Jersey. Unusual among their neighbors on working-class Lawrence Street, the Bates family employed or had a boarder who was a domestic servant, 19-year-old Maggie Johnson, for at least that one year. The family stayed on Lawrence Street until William Bates’s death in 1895, when he was 80 years old. His funeral took place from the house they had occupied for the last three decades. Another relatively long-term tenant family occupied 426 Lawrence Street between 1896 and 1904. Like others on Lawrence Street during these years, William J. Roche and his wife, Rose, were immigrants—both had immigrated separately from Ireland during the 1870s and later married in the United States. They lived in Pennsylvania prior to moving to Camden sometime after 1888, following the birth of two children. William Roche appeared in Camden city directories as a clerk, but during the 1900 Census he identified his occupation as musician. That year while living on Lawrence Street, he was 49 years old; his wife, Rose, was 40 years old, and their two children, 13-year-old Regina and 12-year-old Gerald, were attending school. The family left Lawrence Street by 1905 and by 1910 had moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where William Roche worked as a piano polisher. Tenants moved in and out frequently for the next two decades. Their occupations included steam fitter, printer, and molder, driver, machinist, bank watchman, and woodworker. At least one tenant family offered boarding for one or two working men. For a time during 1905, an unlicensed <a href="https://sciencehistory.org/collections/blog/stomping-the-margarine/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">oleo margarine</a> manufactory was set up at 426 Lawrence Street by an operator who sought to evade taxes by producing an unlabeled product for local stores. Inspectors hauled away 1,000 pounds of margarine as well as the machinery that produced it. The incident was an exceptional manufacturing use of the property, which otherwise remained rented to residential tenants. By the 1920s, construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) prompted changes on Cooper Street as local real estate interests pushed to transform the residential street into a commercial thoroughfare. During this period, the longtime owners of 426 Lawrence Street, the Paulson family, put the house up for sale along with its companion Cooper Street-facing house (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421 Cooper Street</a>). At the time, a daughter-in-law of the original Paulson property owner, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary Paulson</a>, lived in 421 Cooper Street and derived income from renting out the other inherited houses. The sale of 421 Cooper and 426 Lawrence Street from Mary Paulson to the Bell-Oliver Corporation of Camden made news for the property’s lineage in Camden history. The Camden Daily Courier noted that only two families—the Paulsons and, before them, the Coopers—had owned the parcel since the time of the city’s founding. While Cooper Street transitioned to business uses, Lawrence Street remained a row of residential rental properties. For most of the 1920s, spanning the period of the sale of the property and renovation of the Cooper Street-facing house, 426 Lawrence Street was the home of a shipyard worker, Frank Kenny, and his wife Jeannette (who had previously lived down the street at 418 Lawrence). By 1930, a machine hand at the RCA Victor radio factory, Maybel Gray, rented the house. A white female, 33 years old, Gray headed a household of two children, ages 12 and 14, who were attending school. The continued pairing of 426 Lawrence and 421 Cooper Street as one parcel was evident through the presence and transactions of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/39" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Helen C. Waters</a>, a widow, who rented space in the remodeled 421 Cooper Street beginning in 1934. At that address, she operated her business, Helen’s Beauty Shoppe, and made a home for herself and two daughters. By 1943, after her daughters were grown, she moved to the smaller Lawrence Street house and subsequently bought the entire property, including 421 Cooper Street, in 1945. The property changed ownership again in 1947, transferring to an optometrist who ran his business in the Cooper Street-facing house but continued to rent 426 Lawrence Street to residential tenants. In 1950, Census takers recorded the occupant as Marguarite A. Graves, a 46-year-old white female working as a professional singer. Frequently put up for rent or sale during the 1950s and 1960s, 426 Lawrence Street apparently also benefitted from a facelift to meet modern expectations. In 1953, a rental ad for the property described the house for potential tenants: “Teacher, business couple or widow looking for a modern central city home, here is a lovely tile bath, modern kitchen with dinette, one large bedroom, gas heated, living room and storage room.” The house, which had been standing for a century by the 1950s, also began to attract interest as a remnant of Camden history. One of Camden’s active preservationists, Edward Teitelman, purchased 426 Lawrence Street and its neighbor, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424 Lawrence</a>, 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). He owned the pair of Lawrence Street houses until 1989; by 2004 they were in the hands of a real estate broker who sold them to Rutgers University in 2005. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 426 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. At this address, research located one individual identified as a domestic servant, but she lived within the household of a tenant family. 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 426 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 426 Lawrence Street Beauticians Boarder/Lodger Box Makers Bridge Impact Carpenters Childhood Children Clerks Crime Death Derby & Weatherby Drivers Hemmorhage Historic Preservation Investment Ireland Lawrence Street Machinists Massachusetts Merchants Molders Musicians Oleo Philadelphia Printers RCA Renovations Rutgers University Servants Shipyard Workers Steam Fitters Watchmen Woodworkers https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/14325b38d22c59fa4f7e22527ac57b32.jpg 038f6edbc57a8ae88f35d922f1c0422a 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 Photograph by Jacob Lechner Significance Near the intersection of Fifth Street, 427 Cooper Street is among the large residences of the 1880s and 1890s that represent the height of Camden’s nineteenth-century prosperity and the subsequent transitions of a fashionable neighborhood following the 1926 completion of the first bridge across the Delaware River to Philadelphia. The residence, designed by the Moses & King architectural firm of Philadelphia, contributes to the National Register of Historic Places’ recognition of Cooper Street’s significance in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, “when industry, commerce, and agriculture combined to make this city the economic and urban center of Southern New Jersey.” In its uses over time, the house demonstrates transitions from nineteenth-century trades to real estate development and the practice of medicine in the houses on Cooper Street. In this way it supports the statement of significance for the National Register: “These buildings [in the district] demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." Architectural style Richardsonian Romanesque/Queen Anne Date of construction c. 1890 History The distinctive stone house at 427 Cooper Street replaced an earlier brick house that stood at the same location from at least the 1850s. The north side of Cooper Street filled with rowhouses during the late 1840s and early 1850s as members of the Cooper family sold their inherited land. Earlier Brick House Early owners of the lot at this address included Thomas W. Dyott Jr., a Philadelphia wholesaler of patent medicines who bought the property in 1852 (in addition to the <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/72" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">adjacent corner lot</a> at Fifth and Cooper, which he had acquired in 1846). In business with his father, also named Thomas, Dyott sold remedies such as <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/exhibits/show/excavation/item/2">Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup</a> for quieting babies and cures for rheumatism, liver ailments, and other maladies. <a href="https://blog.phillyhistory.org/index.php/2012/01/thomas-w-dyott-snake-oil-soda-water-and-the-perennially-seductive-philadelphia-bottle/">His father</a> had immigrated England in 1805 opened a drug store, claimed to be a doctor, and became one of the nation's leading purveyors of patent medicines. Seeking bottles for his remedies, the elder Dyott also went into the bottle manufacturing business and by the 1820s had a thriving complex of factories in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. That venture grew into a company town called Dyottville but collapsed in bankruptcy after a run on its bank during the panic of 1837. The patent medicine business remained active during the 1850s as T.W. Dyott & Sons. City directories document Thomas Dyott Jr. as a Camden resident at "Cooper above Fourth" from 1855 to 1857, and his lot at 427 Cooper Street included a brick house by the time he sold it in 1860. Documented that year in their next home in Philadelphia, the Dyott family included Thomas, his wife Sarah, four children ranging in age from 8 to 16, two Irish immigrant domestic servants, and two boarders. Dyott also sold his adjacent corner lot at Fifth and Cooper Streets to a new owner in 1860. The next owner of 427 Cooper Street, builder Thomas Atkinson (later a mayor of Camden), resold it just two years later. This transaction in 1862 opened a long period of ownership by William T. Doughten, a pioneer in Camden’s riverfront lumber industry. Doughten had moved to Camden from Gloucester City in the 1850s to establish a lumber business at Kaighn’s Point. Before acquiring 427 Cooper Street, Doughten and his wife, Abigail, had rented another home in the same block, a less substantial wood-frame house at 413 Cooper Street. At the new address, by 1870 their household included two sons and two daughters, two unrelated women seamstresses, and a domestic servant, Phebe Oney, described in the 1870 Census as “mulatto,” born in Delaware and illiterate. Although the family moved elsewhere in Camden in the 1870s and 1880s, Doughten retained ownership of the house as an investment property. Among the tenants was a dentist, Alphonso Irwin, who had his home and office at 427 from 1881 until 1885, when he purchased the house next door, 425 Cooper Street, which still stands. New Streetscape, New House The property changed ownership in 1889 during the greatest takeoff of Camden’s population, which nearly tripled between 1880 and 1920, from about 41,000 to more than 116,000 people. Cooper Street also changed in the early 1880s after residents persuaded the City Council to move curb lines toward the center to create twelve-foot front yards for the length of the street. The more pastoral setting touched off a trend of new houses that stood in contrast to earlier rowhouses as much larger, fashionable statements of their owners’ success and ambition in business. In place of the earlier house owned by Doughten, real estate broker James White built a new house designed to serve as both his office and residence for himself, his wife, and two daughters. The Whites engaged the Philadelphia architectural firm <a href="The%20distinctive%20stone%20house%20at%20427%20Cooper%20Street%20replaced%20an%20earlier%20brick%20rowhouse%20that%20stood%20at%20the%20same%20location%20from%20at%20least%20the%201850s.%20During%20the%201840s%20and%201850s,%20the%20north%20side%20of%20Cooper%20Street%20filled%20with%20rowhouses%20as%20members%20of%20the%20Cooper%20family%20sold%20their%20inherited%20land.%20Early%20owners%20and%20occupants%20at%20this%20address%20included%20Thomas%20W.%20Dyott,%20a%20druggist%20(1852-57);%20Thomas%20Atkinson,%20a%20builder%20and%20later%20mayor%20of%20Camden%20(1860-62);%20and%20William%20T.%20Doughten,%20a%20pioneer%20in%20Camden%E2%80%99s%20riverfront%20lumber%20industry%20who%20purchased%20the%20house%20in%201862.%20William%20Doughten%20came%20to%20Camden%20from%20Gloucester%20City%20in%20the%201850s%20to%20establish%20a%20lumber%20business%20at%20Kaighn%E2%80%99s%20Point.%20He%20and%20his%20wife,%20Abigail,%20rented%20another%20home%20in%20the%20same%20block,%20a%20wood-frame%20house%20at%20413%20Cooper%20Street,%20for%20two%20years%20before%20purchasing%20the%20more%20substantial%20brick%20house%20at%20427.%20At%20the%20new%20address,%20by%201870%20their%20household%20included%20two%20sons%20and%20two%20daughters,%20two%20unrelated%20women%20seamstresses,%20and%20a%20domestic%20servant,%20Phebe%20Oney,%20described%20in%20the%201870%20Census%20as%20%E2%80%9Cmulatto,%E2%80%9D%20born%20in%20Delaware%20and%20illiterate.%20Although%20the%20family%20moved%20elsewhere%20in%20Camden%20in%20the%201870s%20and%201880s,%20Doughten%20retained%20ownership%20of%20the%20house%20as%20an%20investment%20property.%20Among%20the%20tenants%20was%20a%20dentist,%20Alphonso%20Irwin,%20who%20had%20his%20home%20and%20office%20at%20427%20from%201881%20until%201885,%20when%20he%20purchased%20the%20house%20next%20door,%20425%20Cooper%20Street,%20which%20still%20stands.%20New%20Streetscape,%20New%20House%20The%20property%20changed%20ownership%20in%201889%20during%20the%20greatest%20takeoff%20of%20Camden%E2%80%99s%20population,%20which%20nearly%20tripled%20between%201880%20and%201920,%20from%20about%2041,000%20to%20more%20than%20116,000%20people.%20Cooper%20Street%20also%20changed%20in%20the%20early%201880s%20after%20residents%20persuaded%20the%20City%20Council%20to%20move%20curb%20lines%20toward%20the%20center%20to%20create%20twelve-foot%20front%20yards%20for%20the%20length%20of%20the%20street.%20The%20more%20pastoral%20setting%20touched%20off%20a%20trend%20of%20new%20houses%20that%20stood%20in%20contrast%20to%20earlier%20rowhouses%20as%20much%20larger,%20fashionable%20statements%20of%20their%20owners%E2%80%99%20success%20and%20ambition%20in%20business.%20In%20place%20of%20the%20earlier%20house%20owned%20by%20Doughten,%20real%20estate%20broker%20James%20White%20built%20a%20new%20house%20designed%20to%20serve%20as%20both%20his%20office%20and%20residence%20for%20himself,%20his%20wife,%20and%20two%20daughters.%20%20The%20Whites%20engaged%20the%20Philadelphia%20architectural%20firm%20Moses%20&%20King%20to%20design%20a%20distinctive%20home%20that%20incorporated%20a%20strong%20statement%20of%20Richardsonian%20Romanesque%20style%20with%20a%20stone%20arched%20window%20on%20the%20first%20floor%20but%20also%20ornamental%20touches%20that%20could%20be%20described%20as%20Queen%20Anne,%20a%20style%20that%20gained%20in%20popularity%20in%20the%20United%20States%20following%20its%20appearance%20at%20the%201876%20Centennial%20Exhibition%20in%20Philadelphia.%20The%20residence%20thus%20combined%20two%20architectural%20statements%20in%20one%20building,%20speaking%20to%20two%20purposes%20as%20home%20and%20office.%20Moses%20&%20King%20were%20known%20for%20designing%20churches%20as%20well%20as%20residences,%20which%20may%20help%20to%20explain%20the%20stained%20glass%20installed%20over%20the%20front%20door.%20The%20White%20family%20remained%20at%20427%20Cooper%20Street%20until%20the%201920s.%20After%20the%20death%20of%20James%20White%20in%201902,%20his%20wife%20Margaret%20became%20one%20of%20several%20widows%20heading%20households%20in%20the%20400%20block%20of%20Cooper%20Street.%20Her%20family%20in%20the%20first%20decade%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century%20included%20a%20married%20daughter,%20the%20daughter%E2%80%99s%20husband,%20and%20a%20grandchild.%20A%20Commercial%20Future%20By%20the%201920s,%20suburbanization%20and%20the%20construction%20of%20the%20Delaware%20River%20Bridge%E2%80%94later%20the%20renamed%20the%20Benjamin%20Franklin%20Bridge%E2%80%94were%20changing%20Camden,%20and%20so%20too%20the%20occupants%20and%20fates%20of%20houses%20on%20Cooper%20Street.%20By%20the%20middle%201920s,%20as%20demolition%20made%20way%20for%20the%20bridge%20and%20the%20new%20Plaza%20Hotel%20signaled%20a%20more%20commercial%20future%20for%20Cooper%20Street,%20an%20evolution%20pursued%20intensely%20by%20Camden%20boosters%20and%20real%20estate%20interests.%20The%20house%20at%20427%20Cooper%20Street%20became%20a%20medical%20office%20as%20well%20as%20a%20home%20in%201922%20when%20Mary%20Whites%20sold%20it%20to%20a%20doctor,%20Oscar%20Grumbrecht,%20and%20his%20wife,%20Mary%20(who%20held%20title%20to%20the%20property).%20The%20Grumbrechts%20moved%20again%20to%20another%20house%20on%20Cooper%20Street%20in%20the%20mid-1920s,%20and%20thereafter%20427%20was%20divided%20and%20rented%20to%20tenants.%20As%20Camden%20became%20a%20recorded-music%20mecca%20with%20the%20rise%20of%20RCA-Victor,%20the%20tenants%20included%20a%20World%20War%20I%20veteran%20named%20Edwin%20Wartman%20who%20lived%20at%20427%20Cooper%20from%201929%20to%201931%20while%20working%20as%20a%20Vitaphone%20recording%20system%20operator%20(and%20later%20a%20movie%20projectionist).%20During%20the%20Great%20Depression,%20427%20became%20a%20boarding%20house%20with%20boarders%20and%20lodgers%20including%20factory%20workers,%20waitresses,%20and%20a%20draftsman%20employed%20by%20the%20Works%20Progress%20Administration%20(WPA).%20By%20the%201940s,%20the%20building%20also%20housed%20businesses%20that%20included%20a%20dealer%20in%20hearing%20aids%20and%20a%20real%20estate%20agent,%20and%20in%20the%201950s%20its%20tenants%20include%20a%20lawyer%E2%80%99s%20office.%20By%20the%201970s,%20427%20Cooper%20Street%20reflected%20the%20overall%20decline%20of%20Cooper%20Street%20properties%20and%20appeared%20frequently%20in%20legal%20notices%20for%20sheriff%E2%80%99s%20sales%20to%20recover%20back%20taxes.%20In%202008,%20absentee%20owners%20with%20a%20Florida%20address%20sold%20the%20property%20to%20Rutgers%20University.%20%20A%20renovation%20project%20completed%20in%202011%20joined%20427%20Cooper%20Street%20with%20the%20house%20next%20door%20(429)%20to%20create%20offices%20for%20the%20Rutgers-Camden%20Department%20of%20History%20and%20the%20Department%20of%20Religion%20and%20Philosophy.">Moses & King</a> to design a distinctive home that incorporated a strong statement of Richardsonian Romanesque style with a stone arched window on the first floor but also ornamental touches that could be described as Queen Anne, a style that gained in popularity in the United States following its appearance at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The residence thus combined two architectural statements in one building, speaking to two purposes as home and office. Moses & King were known for designing churches as well as residences, which may help to explain the stained glass installed over the front door. The White family remained at 427 Cooper Street until the 1920s. After the death of James White in 1902, his wife Margaret became one of several widows heading households in the 400 block of Cooper Street. Her family in the first decade of the twentieth century included a married daughter, the daughter’s husband, and a grandchild. The house they occupied changed in appearance with the addition of an ornamental front porch that obscured the heavy Romanesque arched window of the first floor. A Commercial Future By the 1920s, suburbanization and the construction of the Delaware River Bridge—later the renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge—were changing Camden, and so too the occupants and fates of houses on Cooper Street. By the middle 1920s, demolition made way for the bridge and construction of the new Plaza Hotel at Fifth and Cooper Streets signaled a more commercial future for the area around the White family home, an evolution pursued intensely by Camden boosters and real estate interests. The house at 427 Cooper Street became a medical office as well as a home in 1922 when Mary White sold it to a doctor, Oscar Grumbrecht, and his wife, Mary (who held title to the property). After the Grumbrechts moved again to another house on Cooper Street in the mid-1920s, 427 was divided and rented to tenants. As Camden became a recorded-music mecca with the rise of <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20131119042100/https:/sites.google.com/site/cchsrcaorg/home/Research-Library">RCA-Victor</a>, the tenants included a World War I veteran named Edwin Wartman who lived at 427 Cooper from 1929 to 1931 while working as a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20131119042100/http:/www.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/belknap/exhibit2002/vitaphone.htm">Vitaphone</a> recording system operator (and later a movie projectionist). During the Great Depression, 427 became a boarding house with boarders and lodgers including factory workers, waitresses, and a draftsman employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). By the 1940s, the building housed businesses that included a dealer in hearing aids and a real estate agent, and in the 1950s its tenants include a lawyer’s office. By the 1970s, 427 Cooper Street reflected the overall decline of Cooper Street properties and appeared frequently in legal notices for sheriff’s sales to recover back taxes. Finally, in 2008 absentee owners with a Florida address sold the property to Rutgers University. A renovation project completed in 2011 joined 427 Cooper Street with the house next door (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/72" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">429</a>) to create offices for the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://history.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of History</a> and the <a href="https://philosophyandreligion.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Philosophy and Religion</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of all known residents of 427 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 427. Associated architects/builders <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/26260">Moses & King</a>, Philadelphia Sources Camden City Directories, 1840-1940, Camden County Historical Society. Camden County Property Records (FamilySearch.org). Camden and Philadelphia newspapers (Newspapers.com). Dorwart, Jeffery M. Camden County, New Jersey: The Making of a Metropolitan Community, 1926-2000. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Jones, Carmita De Solms. "Thomas W. Dyott Boot-Black, Glass Maker and FInancier." Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum (October 1926): 226-34. Lockhart, Bill, et al., <a href="https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/Dyottville.pdf">Dyottville Glass Works</a> (pdf). New Jersey Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Note on sources: Previous documentation dated the construction of this house as c. 1882 and labeled it the “Isaac Doughten House.” This research updates and corrects the record. 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 427 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 400 Block 427 Cooper Street Architects Attorneys Boarding House Dentists Doctors Extended Family Investment Lumber Philadelphia Queen Anne Real Estate Richardsonian Romanesque Servants Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b4c797de75db0d2a78cff5f85a2a9713.jpg ac73eb57f91e5511da2c99eacbbc9893 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 The concrete block garage, built c. 1939-50, originally served the funeral home operating at that time at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>. The garage replaced two nineteenth-century, working-class rental rowhouses. The house at 428 Lawrence Street was the early childhood home and possibly the birthplace of Edward A. Reid, who later in life was the first Black judge to be appointed for the Camden County courts. Date of construction c. 1847-54 History A cement-block garage, built for a Cooper Street undertaker c. 1939-50, stands on the site of two earlier rowhouses similar to others that remain standing on Lawrence Street. The earlier houses date to the period c. 1847-54, when they were built on land purchased by Jesse Townsend, a bank clerk. In 1847, Townsend acquired property extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street, and like several of his neighbors he added houses facing both streets. At <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>, Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, raised a family that grew to include five children as Jesse Townsend rose to the position of cashier at one of Camden’s key institutions, the State Bank of Camden. The smaller rowhouses on Lawrence Street were rented to tenants. During the 1860s, the Townsends sold their house and the pair of rental properties separately to new owners. They moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank, in 1862; five years later, they sold the pair of Lawrence Street houses to investors from Cumberland County. 428 Lawrence Street The absence of house numbering prior to 1861 prevents identifying tenants by address in earlier years, but city directories document people living in the 400 block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. The earliest who can be identified with certainty at 428 Lawrence Street were members of the extended family of a blacksmith, John A. Brown, who lived at this address between 1861 and 1867. When documented in 1860 at their previous address, they were a household of nine people. Brown, a white man 47 years old, born in New Jersey, headed the household with his wife, Debra, a white woman 44 years old, and they had five offspring ranging in age from 9 to 22. Their oldest daughter worked as a dressmaker, and their oldest son as a journeyman hatter. Also in the household were plasterer Van T. Shivers and a 2-year-old child, Lorenzo Shivers, who may have been a son-in-law and grandchild of the Browns. By 1863 the Browns left the Lawrence Street address, but Shivers stayed until 1867. In 1867, the owner of the adjacent 428 and 430 Lawrence Street rowhouses, Jesse Townsend, put them up for sale. Townsend had already sold the associated Cooper Street-facing house (423 Cooper) and moved to another Cooper Street house closer to the State Bank of Camden, where he worked. When Townsend advertised the Lawrence Street houses for sale in the West Jersey Press, he described their potential as investment properties: "Two Small Houses / For Sale Cheap / The subscriber offers for sale two small Brick Houses, No. 428 and 430 Lawrence Street, Camden, N.J. These houses contain five rooms each, are well built, have range in kitchen and hydrant water in yard, and will be sold so as to net from 10 to 12 per cent per annum clear of taxes. A portion of the purchase money may remain on mortgage.” The two houses quickly sold to a couple living in Cumberland County and remained rental properties. Tenants moved in and out of the 428 Lawrence Street rowhouse frequently for the rest of the nineteenth century. Their occupations reflected the range of skilled trades then in demand in Camden, including building trades (mason, carpenter, bricklayer); crafts (tinsmith, caner, weaver); and clothing-related occupations for women (tailoress, dressmaker). Tenants at 428 Lawrence Street also included a railroad brakeman and people working in office jobs (clerk, stenographer). Most tenants during this period, to the extent that they can be identified, were white and born in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, although some had parents who were immigrants. In large families, adult children worked outside the home, but younger sons and daughters attended school. By 1900, 428 Lawrence Street and several others nearby became homes to Black families with members who migrated from the South in the decades following the Civil War. James T. Reid, a Black man born in North Carolina, migrated to Philadelphia by 1890 and then, after marrying and starting a family, moved to Camden by 1899. The Reid family rented 428 Lawrence Street between 1899 and 1903. Reid worked as a butler and waiter while at this address and later as a gardener and odd-jobs laborer. In 1900 on Lawrence Street, the Reids were a household of six people: James Reid, 34 years old; his wife, Mary, a Black woman 34 years old, who was born in New Jersey; and four daughters ranging from 1 to 8 years old. While at this address, the Reids added two sons to their family. One of the sons born to the Reid family while they lived at this address became prominent in later years as the first Black judge appointed for the Camden County courts. Edward A. Reid, born on May 29, 1902, later graduated from Camden High School, Howard University, and the Howard University law school. He returned to Camden to practice and served as a borough solicitor and municipal judge for the predominantly Black community of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/lawnside-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawnside</a>, as an assistant Camden County prosecutor, and ultimately as Camden County Juvenile and Domestic Relations judge. For a time he had his law office at Sixth and Cooper Streets, not far from his first home in Camden; by the time he died in 1967 he lived in the nearby Northgate Apartments, then a recently built luxury high-rise. Active in community affairs including the NAACP and United Fund of Camden County, in 1965 Reid received a community service award from the AFL-CIO. Racial and ethnic diversity continued to be present at 428 Lawrence Street in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1905-06, the tenants were Joseph Mallay, a chef who had been born in Japan in 1860, and his wife, Elizabeth, a Black woman whose parents had been born in Virginia. Several tenants later, in 1910, three occupants of 428 Lawrence Street had ancestral connections with western Europe: Andrew Wiliams, 38 years old and working as a cook in a canning factory, was a son of a German immigrant; his wife, Margaret, also 38 years old, immigrated from Ireland. They shared the home with a widowed woman of the same age, Clara A. Stewart, a daughter of German immigrants who worked as a trimmer in a lace factory. By 1915, a couple both born in England occupied the home: Thomas H. Hewley, 33 years old, a steamfitter, his wife, Florence, age 37, and their 4-year-old son Thomas. By 1920, a young couple who were both Irish immigrants lived at 428 Lawrence Street with their infant daughter. Tenants of the early twentieth century sought employment by placing ads in local newspapers. Women sought to do washing at home, and at times they offered rooms for rent even though the house totaled only four or five rooms. A baker advertised his skills at making bread; another sought work “of any kind.” In 1912, an advertisement described an occupant of 428 Lawrence Street as well as his skills: “Middle-aged, fairly educated, temperate man, wants position of any responsible nature; thoroughly understands reading of blueprints and handling of men.” After years of frequent turnover of tenants, 428 Lawrence Street gained relatively long-term renters during the 1920s when it became home to the family of a shipyard worker, Frank J. Read, and his wife, Eva. They had been married about ten years when they moved from another rental a few blocks away on Mickle Street. Both of the Reads were children of immigrants, in his case from Ireland and in her case from Austria. When they moved to Lawrence Street, Frank Read was 31 years old and Eva was 27; while at this address, their family grew from three children to six, and the household may have included one other adult lodger or relative, an Irish immigrant widow, Sara Colley. By the 1920s, the Cooper Street-facing house behind 428 and 430 Lawrence Street had become a funeral home and residence for the operator, Charles Hiskey. The Lawrence Street houses remained a rental property for a succession of tenants during the 1930s, but in 1939 Hiskey bought them and then built a concrete-block automobile garage in their place. The garage changed hands in concert with 423 Cooper Street through a series of owners in the later twentieth century, including a doctor who had his office in the Cooper Street building during the 1960s and 1970s. Rutgers University first gained title to the properties in 1984 and in the early 1990s, after demolishing <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>, entered into a partnership with a redevelopment firm. The project included renovations of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/84" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">321</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/69" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">411 Cooper Street</a> and the potential for new construction in place of 423 Cooper. However, by 1998 that project faltered. With the garage still standing on the site of the Lawrence Street rowhouses, Rutgers regained title to the property again in 2005. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 428 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. At 428 Lawrence Street, one individual worked as a butler and waiter and several others as domestics, but none are known to have been employed 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 428 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Garage, built c. 1939-50 on former site of two nineteenth-century rowhouses. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 423 Cooper Street 428 Lawrence Street African Americans Attorneys Austria Automobiles Bakers Banking Black Migration Blacksmiths Bricklayers Butlers Caners Carpenters Childhood Children Demolition Dressmakers England Extended Family Factory Workers Funeral Homes Garage Gardeners Germany Hatters Howard University Investment Ireland Japan Judges Laundries Lawnside Lawrence Street Masons North Carolina Plasterers Rooming House Rutgers-Camden Shipyard Workers Tinsmiths Virginia Waiters Weavers Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/2d498dfb78c6f4708ed8fb1be0a67b81.jpg 6dfb2c8a871b4e2a67041d28eb27e498 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 Photograph by Jacob Lechner Significance On the northwest corner of Fifth and Cooper Streets, 429 Cooper Street is among the residences of the late nineteenth century that represent the evolution of the street into one of Camden’s most fashionable addresses and its subsequent transitions following the 1926 completion of the first bridge across the Delaware River to Philadelphia. In its uses over time, the house demonstrates transitions from nineteenth-century trades to real estate development and the practice of medicine in the houses on Cooper Street. In this way it supports the statement of significance of the Cooper Street Historic District for the National Register of Historic Places: “These buildings [in the district] demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." Documentation by the City of Camden Division of Planning in 1980 described 429 Cooper Street as “an excellent vernacular working of the Second Empire style [that] contributes to the late nineteenth century quality of Cooper Street with its variety of residential structures.” Architectural style Second Empire vernacular Date of construction c. 1850s-1885 History The northwest corner of Fifth and Cooper Streets has been occupied by a residence since at least 1857, when it was represented on a map of Camden County as part of a row of structures spanning most of the 400 block of Cooper Street. Houses rose rapidly on the north side of Cooper Street for the first time during the late 1840s and early 1850s as heirs of the Cooper family sold their land for development. Among the early owners of the lot at this address was Thomas W. Dyott Jr., a Philadelphia wholesaler of patent medicines who bought the property in 1846 and then the lot next door (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/71" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">427 Cooper Street</a>) in 1852. In business with his father, also named Thomas, Dyott sold remedies such as <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/exhibits/show/excavation/item/2">Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup</a> for quieting babies and cures for rheumatism, liver ailments, and other maladies. The business had grown to one of the nation's leading purveyors of patent medicine under <a href="https://blog.phillyhistory.org/index.php/2012/01/thomas-w-dyott-snake-oil-soda-water-and-the-perennially-seductive-philadelphia-bottle/">his father</a>, who had immigrated England in 1805, claimed without foundation to be a doctor, and started selling miracle cures. Seeking bottles for his remedies, the elder Dyott also went into the bottle manufacturing business and by the 1820s had a thriving complex of factories in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. That venture grew into a company town called Dyottville but collapsed in bankruptcy after a run on its bank during the panic of 1837. The patent medicine business remained active during the 1850s as T.W. Dyott & Sons. City directories list Thomas Dyott Jr. as a Camden resident from 1855 to 1857 at "Cooper above Fourth" (not "Fifth and Cooper"), suggesting that he and his family lived next door at 427 Cooper Street, not on the corner. When he sold both properties in 1860, the 429 Cooper Street lot included a frame house next occupied by Lewis Wilkins, a livery stable operator. Wilkins, who had moved into Camden from Burlington County in the 1850s, had a good location for a stable in the growing city, near the ferries that crossed to Philadelphia. At 51 years old in 1860, his household at 429 Cooper included his wife, Rebecca; their 20-year-old daughter Katura (Kate); Rebecca’s mother, Katura Moore, and her sister, Emeline Dobbins, a nurse. In a later U.S. Census, Kate was noted as having a “spine disease,” which could explain the presence of a nurse in the family. Wilkins, his immediate family, and various other relatives lived at 429 Cooper Street for twenty years, and during that time Wilkins improved the house in keeping with architectural fashion. In 1869, he added a <a href="https://www.oldhouseonline.com/house-tours/the-mania-for-mansard-roofs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mansard roof</a>, a hallmark feature of the French-inspired Second Empire architectural style very popular in the United States during the 1860s and 1870s. In the same year, Second Empire mansards were adopted for a new mansion built nearby by a member of the Cooper family (406 Cooper Street, still standing in the twenty-first century) and for other less grand houses rapidly filling Penn and Linden Streets. Across the river, Philadelphia officials chose the same style for the new <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/city-hall-philadelphia/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">City Hall</a> then under construction. Renovation Mystery After Rebecca Wilkins died in 1880, Lewis Wilkins at age 70 sold his property to a real estate broker, Joseph J. Read. The experiences of the real estate man had spanned the changing worlds of work and opportunity in the nineteenth century. Born in Camden in 1815, in his youth in South Philadelphia Read learned the craft of coopering—barrel-making—and he practiced this trade in Camden as late as the 1860s. But in the 1860s and 1870s Read also began to buy and renovate houses and at least one office building in Camden, and he amassed enough wealth to also invest in property in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Established in the real estate business, the former cooper moved to Cooper Street. Read’s purchase of 429 Cooper Street occurred at the start of the greatest takeoff of Camden’s population, which nearly tripled between 1880 and 1920, from about 41,000 to more than 116,000 people. In the early 1880s, residents of Cooper Street sought to distinguish their thoroughfare in this growing city by narrowing the street to create front yard spaces that allowed for gardens, small yards, or front porches. The change in the streetscape prompted a wave of construction of grander, architect-designed houses. For his part, Joseph Read gained approval from the Camden City Council “to alter and change the frame dwelling house at the northwest corner of Fifth and Cooper streets by extending the same to the house line on the north side of said Cooper Street.” Read’s proposed renovation in 1882 raises a question of when – and how – the original frame house at 429 Cooper Street became the brick house that remained standing at 429 Cooper Street in the twenty-first century. The historic building survey conducted in 1980 prior to National Register listing dated the house as c. 1880, consistent with Read’s purchase of the property. But the sources for this report did not include two key pieces of evidence: local newspaper reports that Lewis Wilkins added a mansard roof in 1869 and that Read in 1882 requested to renovate a house that was frame (wood), not brick. The still-standing brick house has both a mansard and a front bay consistent with Read’s 1882 proposal – could it be the same house, further renovated with brick facing by Read, or did he rebuild entirely? There is no answer in the known public record, but by 1885 the Sanborn Insurance Company map for Camden lists only brick houses in the 400 block, and the 1891 map depicts a brick house on this corner of Fifth and Cooper Streets. For Read, a recent widower, 429 Cooper Street became the home of his second marriage, in 1881 to Elizabeth Schellenger (in public records of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century also spelled Schellinger), the widow of a sea captain. Their extended household included Elizabeth’s son William Schellenger, a clerk, and Edward A.Y. Schellenger (known as Ned), who during the 1890s completed medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and returned to Camden to practice. While William moved to the Philadelphia suburbs after his marriage in 1891, Ned remained in the household at Fifth and Cooper. After Joseph Read died in 1898, Ned headed the extended family including his mother, his wife Lillian, their son also named Edward, and their daughter Elizabeth. The family also employed domestic servants and a driver for the doctor; those that can be documented were African Americans: Julia Burse, a 36-year-old widow at the time of the 1900 Census, was born in Maryland. Mary Taylor, who worked in the household in 1910, was also a widow, 61 years old and born in New Jersey. She cooked for the Schellengers for at least a decade. Medical Treatments and Tragedies The house at 429 Cooper Street also served as a medical office for Edward A.Y. Schellenger, adding to Cooper Street’s reputation as a location for medical professionals. Front parlors on the first floors of nineteenth-century homes served well as offices, and the physicians were within walking distance of Camden’s Cooper Hospital. Schellenger specialized in surgery, and in addition to a growing practice served on the Board of Managers of the County Tuberculosis Hospital. While occupying 429 Cooper Street, the Schellenger family confronted medical challenges of their own: their daughter, named Elizabeth after her grandmother, contracted polio in 1913. She lived six years longer, until age 18, when a cold developed into pneumonia and caused her death. The Camden Morning Post noted that “although handicapped by deformities,” Elizabeth took an active part in combatting the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/influenza-spanish-flu-pandemic-1918-19/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">influenza epidemic</a> of 1918-19. “She was an accomplished automobile driver, despite her tender years and day after day … she was busy conveying nurses, attendants, patients, and Red Cross workers to and from hospitals.” By the time of Elizabeth’s early death, her father also had succumbed to complications from an illness that was publicly described only as a “serious ailment” that he had treated in others as a surgeon. In 1917, he cited ill health when he resigned his position with the Tuberculosis Hospital. While hospitalized shortly thereafter, he experienced burns from an x-ray that were blamed for a subsequent burst artery that ended his life. He was 47 years old. Office Building The house at Fifth and Cooper Streets remained home for Schellenger’s widow, Lillian, and son Edward until the mid-1920s, but then they joined other prominent Camden families in relocating to suburban Merchantville. Cooper Street was by that time taking on a distinctly more commercial atmosphere as the opening of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) prompted changes such as the construction of the Plaza Hotel diagonally across the street from the Schellenger home. The Schellengers retained ownership of 429 Cooper Street, but a real estate firm renovated the building into offices and at least one apartment. In 1930, the apartment was rented by a church organist and his family. By 1940, the residential tenants included a German-born Naval draftsman and his family and a second household consisting of a widowed artist and her adult daughter, a secretary. In the 1940s, 429 Cooper Street once again became a location for medical offices, this time for doctors who practiced in Camden but chose to live in the suburbs. Among them was the son of the original Dr. Schellenger, also named Edward. The younger Schellenger, a gynecologist, opened his practice after graduating from Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. World War II interrupted his career in Camden as he served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Africa and the Middle East. While overseas, he met the Army nurse who became his wife, Margaret Clayton; they raised their family of two daughters and a son in Merchantville. The younger Edward Schellenger donated 429 Cooper Street to Rutgers University in 1977. After housing student health services for Rutgers-Camden during the 1990s, the building gained a new purpose in 2011 through a renovation that joined it with adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/71" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">427 Cooper Street</a> to create office spaces for the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://history.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of History</a> and the <a href="https://philosophyandreligion.camden.rutgers.edu/">Department of Philosophy and Religion</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of all known occupants of 429 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 429. Sources Camden City Directories, 1840-1940, Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com. Camden County Property Records (FamilySearch.org). Camden and Philadelphia newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Dorwart, Jeffery M. Camden County, New Jersey: The Making of a Metropolitan Community, 1926-2000. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Jones, Carmita De Solms. "Thomas W. Dyott Boot-Black, Glass Maker and FInancier." Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum (October 1926): 226-34. New Jersey Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Note on sources: Previous documentation dated the construction of this house as c. 1880 and labeled it the “Joseph J. Read House.” This research updates the record and raises questions about the date of construction. 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 429 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 200s 2010s 400 Block 429 Cooper Street African Americans Apartments Death Doctors Druggists Livery Stable Mansard Merchantville Polio Real Estate Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/1093d3fa70bf6ac5b1684d70ea33d82b.jpg ac73eb57f91e5511da2c99eacbbc9893 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 The concrete block garage, built c. 1939-50, originally served the funeral home operating at that time at 423 Cooper Street. The garage replaced two nineteenth-century, working-class rental rowhouses. Date of construction c. 1939-50 History A cement-block garage, built for a Cooper Street undertaker c. 1939-50, stands on the site of two earlier rowhouses similar to others that remain standing on Lawrence Street. The earlier houses date to the period c. 1847-54, when they were built on land purchased by Jesse Townsend, a bank clerk. In 1847, Townsend acquired property extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street, and like several of his neighbors he added houses facing both streets. At <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75">423 Cooper Street</a>, Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, raised a family that grew to include five children as Jesse Townsend rose to the position of cashier at one of Camden’s key institutions, the State Bank of Camden. The smaller rowhouses on Lawrence Street were rented to tenants. During the 1860s, the Townsends sold their house and the pair of rental properties separately to new owners. They moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank, in 1862; five years later, they sold the pair of Lawrence Street houses to investors from Cumberland County. 430 Lawrence Street City directories document people living in the 400 block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854, although absence of house numbering prior to the 1860s prevents identifying tenants by address in the earliest years. The earliest known tenants of 430 Lawrence Street, in 1860-61, were a family of three headed by a coach painter, Richard S. Humphreys. A former hotel operator in Mount Holly, Burlington County, Humphreys moved to Camden sometime during the 1850s. He was a white man, 53 years old in 1860, and lived at 430 Lawrence Street with his wife Evaline, a white woman 39 years old, and their 5-year-old son, Harry. Later in life, Harry Humphreys became a prominent lumber merchant in Camden, served briefly on the city council, and helped to establish parts of the city’s park system while a member of the Camden Parks Commission. Another family of three, headed by a hatter named John Gamble, lived at 430 Lawrence Street between 1865 and 1867, when the property owner Jesse Townsend put this house and adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96">428 Lawrence Street</a> up for sale. Townsend had previously sold his Cooper Street-facing house (423 Cooper) and moved closer to the State Bank of Camden, where he worked. When he advertised the Lawrence Street houses for sale in the West Jersey Press, Townsend described their potential as investment properties: "Two Small Houses / For Sale Cheap / The subscriber offers for sale two small Brick Houses, No. 428 and 430 Lawrence Street, Camden, N.J. These houses contain five rooms each, are well built, have range in kitchen and hydrant water in yard, and will be sold so as to net from 10 to 12 per cent per annum clear of taxes. A portion of the purchase money may remain on mortgage.” The two houses quickly sold to a couple living in Cumberland County and remained rental properties. Larger families resided at 430 Lawrence Street during the 1870s and 1880s. In 1870, perhaps for just one year, a 32-year-old tugboat captain named David Hallinger headed a household of seven. A white man born in Bucks County, Hallinger had come to Camden in 1864. By 1870 his household included his wife Mary (a white woman 31 years old, the daughter of a Cape May County shipbuilder), and four children ranging in age from 7 months to 11 years old. Living with them, perhaps to assist with the infant, was a domestic servant, Telitha Stiles, a 54-year-old white woman. Hallinger and his oldest son, Hiram, in later life became active in Camden real estate development. Hiram Hallinger’s projects included houses still standing in the 700 block of Washington Street, built in the 1890s as part of the new neighborhood that emerged around Camden’s City Hall at that time. By the time Hiram Hallinger died in 1935, he was regarded as one of the city’s “pioneer builders.” Tenants of 430 Lawrence Street during the late nineteenth century included widows who worked to support themselves and their families. Althea Ogden, a white woman who rented the house for at least two years (1877-78), had been married to a Pennsylvania clothing manufacturer with substantial wealth, and they had two children by the time he died in 1863. By 1870, she had moved to Haddonfield, New Jersey, where she worked as a librarian; she was then 36 years old with a 15-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son. The circumstances that brought her to Lawrence Street are not known, but by that time her daughter had married, and her son could contribute income from his work as a paper hanger. By 1880, she and her son moved to another house on South Fourth Street. The next tenant at 430 Lawrence Street, also a widow, headed a household of six people and took in washing to earn her living. Sarah Dorsey, a white woman 43 years old, may have lived at this address for only one year. Because her presence coincided with the 1880 Census, a record of her family economy survived: Her three oldest sons (ages 20, 18, and 14) worked in labor, coach painting, and farming. The next youngest child, a 10-year-old daughter, attended school, and the youngest child, a 4-year-old son, had not yet reached school age. An air of the supernatural hovered in 430 Lawrence Street for several years later in the 1880s when another widow, Anita Smith, may have supported herself by fortune-telling or had a female boarder who did. Throughout 1886-88, when Smith appeared in city directories at this address, ads in local newspapers advertised the availability of a “reliable medium” at the same location. The services and clientele were best described in this classified advertisement in 1888: “Circles Sunday and Wednesday Evenings. Reliable consultations daily. Ladies only. 430 Lawrence St., bet 4th and 5th Cooper and Penn St.” An incident in 1892 provides a rare glimpse into the contrasting circumstances between narrow Lawrence Street with its small rental rowhouses and the adjacent blocks of more prosperous Cooper Street and Penn Street. As reported in the Camden Morning Courier, a “Mrs. O’Conner” living at 430 Lawrence Street fell into dire straits because her husband—“a man of ability and education” who “held a good position in Philadelphia”—had been sentenced to jail. The privileged residents of Penn Street took notice when the woman and her two children, one of them an infant, became ill. Mrs. O’Conner “was too proud to throw herself on the charity of her neighbors,” the newspaper reported, “but a few charitable families on Penn Street learning of her sad case visited her and found her and her children suffering for the necessities of life.” The neighbors assisted and paid her doctor’s bills for a month, but the newspaper noted that the woman and her children faced a future of dependence on the Overseer of the Poor. Occupations among the frequently-changing tenants during the early 1890s included driver, polisher, shoe cutter, and clerk. By 1894, 430 Lawrence Street became home to a news dealer, Charles W. Dreher, a son of German immigrants. Dreher and his wife, Hattie, had gained some notoriety in Camden when they married in 1891. At that time, Charles was 16 years old and swore to a minister that he was 21 in order to marry a woman nearly 10 years older. The couple rented 430 Lawrence Street between 1894 and 1898 and left Camden several years later. The groom’s mother was reported to be bitterly opposed to the marriage; in the 1900 Census, she claimed to have only one child, a 17-year-old daughter still living at home. Like several of the other houses on Lawrence Street, during the first decade of the twentieth century 430 Lawrence became home to Black tenants. Isaac Brown, a Black man who rented the house between 1900 and 1907, worked as a railroad porter and messenger, and shared the home with his wife, Elizabeth. Discrepancies in census records and the existence of multiple individuals with the same names obscure the details of their lives, but one or both of the Browns had family connections with Black migrants from southern states. Living with them on Lawrence Street during 1900 and 1901, a Black woman named Lizzie Harris (possibly a relative or boarder) worked as an ironer. In the 1900 Census, Lizzie Harris was recorded at a different Camden address as 20 years old, born in Virginia, and unable to read or write. She was newly married to John Harris, a 24-year-old day laborer who had also been born in Virginia. Tenants at 430 Lawrence Street reflected the fluidity of Camden’s population during the early twentieth century, as industries grew and the city attracted new residents from across the nation and abroad. While some tenants were born in New Jersey, others showed how a more mobile population led to marriages and families that would have been unlikely in earlier eras. John S. Sheidell, a bartender who rented 430 Lawrence Street between 1911 and 1920, was a white man born in Pennsylvania; his father was also born in Pennsylvania, but his mother was born in New York. Sheidell’s wife, Gertrude, was born in Colorado to a mother born in Pennsylvania and a father born in Nevada. By the 1920s, the Cooper Street-facing house behind 428 and 430 Lawrence Street had become a funeral home and residence for the operator, Charles Hiskey. The Lawrence Street houses remained rental properties for a succession of tenants during the 1920s and 1930s, with tenants at 430 Lawrence Street who included a chauffeur for the nearby F.W. Ayer/Wilfred Fry family on Penn Street and a widow who had immigrated from Ireland in 1910. However, in 1939 Hiskey bought both of the adjoining rowhouses and built a concrete-block automobile garage in their place. The garage changed hands in concert with 423 Cooper Street through a series of owners in the later twentieth century, including a doctor who had his office in the Cooper Street building during the 1960s and 1970s. Rutgers University first gained title to the properties in 1984 and in the early 1990s, after demolishing 423 Cooper Street, entered into a partnership with a redevelopment firm. The project included renovations of 321 and 411 Cooper Street and the potential for new construction in place of 423 Cooper. However, by 1998 that project faltered. With the garage still standing on the site of the Lawrence Street rowhouses, Rutgers regained title to the property again in 2005. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 430 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. At 430 Lawrence Street, the tenants included one individual, Thomas Whiteside, who is known to have worked as a chauffeur for the F.W. Ayer/Wilfred Fry family on nearby Penn Street. This raises the possibility that other individuals with the occupation "driver" may have worked for that household as well. This research updates and corrects the record, finding no known servants associated with Cooper Street households. 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 430 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Garage, built c. 1939-50 on former site of two nineteenth-century rowhouses. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 430 Lawrence Street African Americans Banking Bartenders Black Migration Boatmen Childhood Children Clerks Coach Painters Colorado Demolition Drivers Farmers Funeral Homes Garages Germany Haddonfield Hatters Investment Ironers Laborers Laundries Lawrence Street Librarians Lumber Mediums Messengers Mount Holly Nevada New York Parks Pennsylvania Polishers Porters Public Officials Rutgers University Servants Shoemakers Weddings Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/4b755f99bb623c328baa3835b2295ce5.jpg 3aea6df10a1d0a48be69f881fedbb000 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 432 Lawrence Street originated as part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class 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.” 432 Lawrence is notable as an early childhood home of Lettie Allen Ward, who in later life was the second female physician to practice in Camden. Its tenants also included a veteran of the Civil War and veterans of World War I. Date of construction c. 1846-55 History In 1846, a Camden County public official named Isaac Porter purchased an undeveloped lot extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street and thereafter added three structures: A three-story house, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/52" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">425 Cooper Street</a>, and two smaller rowhouses at the back of the property at 432 and 434 Lawrence Street. Porter, also an officer of the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/businesses/travel/ferries/west-jersey-ferry-aka-market-street-ferry" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">West Jersey Ferry Company</a>, lived in the Cooper Street house with his family while renting the two smaller houses to tenants until his death in 1867. His surviving sons later divided the property so that one would own the Cooper Street house and another the pair of rental houses. The Lawrence Street houses continued to be treated as properties separate from the Cooper Street house as they conveyed to subsequent owners outside the Porter family from the 1880s through the early twenty-first century. 432 Lawrence Street The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents listed in city directories beginning in 1854, although the absence of house numbering prevents associating them with specific addresses prior to the 1860s. Isaac Porter’s two rowhouses on Lawrence Street are known to have existed by 1855, when they were cited in a building contract as models for similar houses to be built elsewhere in Camden. The earliest known tenants at 432 Lawrence Street connect this house with experiences of the Civil War and the rapid growth of Camden during the late nineteenth century. <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/camdenpeople-aaronward.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Aaron Ward</a>, who worked as a carpenter, rented the house between 1861 and 1863. It was, therefore, the home where Ward’s wife, Anna, lived with their toddler daughter and infant son while he went to war with the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0024RI" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">24th Infantry New Jersey Regiment</a> in September 1862. This regiment of men from Camden, Gloucester, and Cumberland counties deployed to Virginia. During the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battles-detail.htm?battleCode=va028" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Battle of Fredericksburg</a> in December, Ward charged with his comrades across open ground into Confederate fire and became one of the many wounded in that engagement. He took a bullet through his left lung, an injury that affected his health for the rest of his life. He returned to Camden with the sword and scabbard that he carried that day and displayed it in his home for many years thereafter. Ward, a white man, was about 27 years old when he moved his young family to Lawrence Street in 1861. Born in Newton Township, Camden County, he attended the <a href="https://www.westtown.edu/about/history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Westtown School</a>—a Quaker boarding school in Chester County, Pennsylvania. At that time, the school admitted only Quaker students, so Ward would have set aside pacifist principles when he went to war. Prior to 1859, Ward married Anna, a white woman born in New Jersey, and their first child Letty (Lettie) was born that year. A son, Franklin, followed in 1861. Ward’s work as a carpenter while on Lawrence Street signaled the start of a long career in construction contracting for the growing city of Camden. He oversaw construction of sewer systems, bridges, and the concrete pier at Cooper Street wharf, among other projects. The Wards’ oldest child, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-DrLettieAllenWard.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lettie Allen Ward</a>, achieved prominence in later life as a public school teacher and principal who changed careers by enrolling at the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/womans-medical-college-of-pennsylvania/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania</a>. She became the second female physician to practice in Camden. (In her later years, she owned nearby <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/82" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">325 Cooper Street</a>.) Tenants who worked in the building trades continued to be among the occupants of 432 Lawrence Street. William M. Rutter, a ship joiner, helped to build boats and buildings for ferry services on the Delaware River, perhaps suggesting an acquaintance with his landlords in the Porter family. He and his family lived at 432 Lawrence Street for at least two years, in 1869-70, and possibly longer. Rutter, a white man born in New Jersey, was recorded as 48 years old in the 1870 Census; his household also included his wife, Sarah, also 48 years old and born in New Jersey, and their 14-year-old daughter, also named Sarah, who was born in Pennsylvania. The Census taker classified Mrs. Rutter as “insane,” but following enumeration instructions did not further specify a condition or disability. Her circumstances may explain the presence of another adult female in the house, 43-year-old Elizabeth Hewitt, who was described as the housekeeper. Also living with the family was an adult male laborer, Lorenzo F. Jones, 21 years old, who could have been another family member or a boarder. Other occupations at this address during the late nineteenth century included factory workers, a janitor, a coachman, and a hostler. For most of the 1890s, 432 Lawrence Street became home to German immigrants and their American-born daughters. Jacob and Marie Schuldtheis (spelled variously in different records), in their 60s, had immigrated from Germany in 1866 and lived in Philadelphia except for their residence on Lawrence Street between 1892 and 1900. Jacob worked as a baker and as a watchman in Philadelphia, even after moving to Camden. Their adult daughters did factory work, one as a box maker and the other as a millhand. They all moved back to Philadelphia by 1900, after one of the daughters married and established a new extended family household there. During the first decade of the twentieth century, tenants at 432 Lawrence Street included a dressmaker, a blacksmith, a chandelier maker, a leather worker, and laborers. The dressmaker, Rose Jolly, was living apart from her husband and raising three children under the age of 7. The chandelier maker, Theodore Dreher, and his wife, Julie, immigrated from Germany during the 1880s. Tenants during this period seldom stayed longer than one year, and some advertised their need for employment. In 1903 “a young man, in delicate health” sought work he could do at home. In 1904 a man sought work as a team driver, and a16-year-old boy sought “work of any kind, can fire small boiler; knows all about Camden and Philadelphia.” In 1905, a German woman—possibly Julie Dreher, the chandelier maker’s wife—sought washing and ironing to do at home. The house at 432 Lawrence Street gained a longer-term occupant beginning in 1908, when a dressmaker named Amanda Allen began a tenancy that lasted into the 1920s. These were eventful years in which Amanda held a viewing for her deceased mother at the Lawrence Street house (1908), divorced her longtime first husband (1910), cohabited with and then married a retired Camden police officer (1917), saw her adult son enlist to fight in France during the First World War (1918-19), and held another funeral, for her second husband (1920). Allen, a white woman who was 56 years old when documented on Lawrence Street by the 1910 Census, had been born in Philadelphia, where her father worked as a blacksmith. By the time she moved to Camden around 1905, she had been married for more than thirty years to a house painter, William Allen, and their three children had reached adulthood. By 1908, however, she lived apart from her husband and moved into 432 Lawrence Street with one of her two sons, also named William, who was 21 years and working as a machinist at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a> (where Amanda Allen’s widowed sister, Mary Gibson, also worked--see <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424 Lawrence Street</a>). Adding to the household income, the Allens took in a boarder, initially Albert Barton, who worked in a cloth factory. Legal notices in Camden newspapers confirm Amanda Allen’s divorce from her first husband in 1910 without disclosing details. Her second husband, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-GeorgeHorner.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">George W. Horner</a>, began to appear in city directories at the 432 Lawrence Street address in 1913, which could indicate he initially entered the household as a boarder. Horner, who was 10 to 12 years older than Amanda, was retired from the Camden police force and had been a member of the city’s first paid fire department in the 1870s. He continued to work as a private watchman, contributing to a feeling of security for the neighborhood on and around Cooper Street. By 1917, Horner and Allen obtained a marriage license and were wed on December 11, at the nearby <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-religion/camdennj-church-1stPresbyterian.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">First Presbyterian Church</a> at Fifth and Penn Streets. The Horner-Allen wedding took place just as the United States broke its neutrality and entered the Great War on the side of the Allies. The following May (1918), Amanda’s son William enlisted as a private with Company I, <a href="https://www.uswarmemorials.org/html/monument_details.php?SiteID=1523&MemID=2024" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">316th Infantry, of the 79th Division</a> of the U.S. Army. Listing his mother at 432 Lawrence Street as his next of kin, William embarked from Hoboken on a steamship carrying American Expeditionary Forces to France. His unit participated in one of the attacks that ended the war, the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww1/meuse-argonne">Meuse-Argonne Offensive</a> September 26-November 11, 1918. The massive operation by more than one million troops resulted in thousands of soldiers killed and wounded, but William survived. He was honorably discharged from the Army on June 9, 1919. Returning home, he would have found his mother still working at dressmaking and living at 432 Lawrence Street, where she remained until 1923, several years beyond the death of her second husband in 1920. His funeral took place in the Lawrence Street home. Another veteran of the Great War, William Walton, rented 432 Lawrence Street for the next six years, 1924-1931, and lived there with his wife, Ida. A white man in his 40s, born in Philadelphia, Walton worked for part of that period as a construction foreman. His projects included the <a href="https://rivertonhistory.com/images/camden-nj-images/stanley-theater-broadway-and-market-street-camden-nj-1936-800x506/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stanley Theater</a> at Broad and Market Streets. He earlier served in the Camden Fire Department and worked at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>; his later employment included being a foreman for the Highway Department and an engineer with a newspaper company. Ida Watson, a white woman also in her 40s when they lived at this address, was born in New Jersey and did not work outside the home. During the 1930s and 1940s, the environment around 432 Lawrence Street changed in ways that left it a single home standing between two automobile garages. Sometime in 1939 or during the 1940s, two houses to the west (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>) were replaced by a garage to serve a funeral home facing Cooper Street. During the 1940s, the adjacent rowhouse at 434 Lawrence Street was purchased by the homeowner of nearby <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a> and adapted into a garage. Nevertheless, the house sandwiched between two garages remained a rental property, by this time owned as an investment by a man in the elevator construction business who lived in Barrington, New Jersey. His tenants during the early 1940s included a family of five headed by Paul Pagano, who worked as a timekeeper for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration. Pagano, a white man born in Pennsylvania, was 30 years old in 1940, and shared the home with his wife Esther (25 years old, a white woman born in New Jersey) and their two sons and one daughter ages 3, 5, and 8 months. They were followed at 432 Lawrence Street by a household that apparently moved to this address from another house in the row, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">420 Lawrence Street</a>. The next tenants included Earl Nelson, an immigrant from Norway who worked as a railroad machinist, and lodgers Paul and Catherine Rube and their three children. Paul Rube, who immigrated from Sweden, by 1943 worked as an icer for fruit growers; his wife Catherine, a white woman born in Pennsylvania, did not work outside the home. The Nelson/Rube household remained until at least 1947. The tenants of 432 Lawrence Street are unknown for the 1950s through the 1970s, but for at least some of that period the house may have had a resident homeowner for the first time in its history. Ruth E. Darling, a nurse, sold the house in 1973 but also appeared at this address in voter registration records the following year. A series of subsequent owners included investors not living in Camden as well as sellers who listed 432 Lawrence Street as their home addresses. In 2007, owner Quan Pham of Cherry Hill sold the property to Rutgers University. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 432 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 432 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 325 Cooper Street 420 Lawrence Street 424 Lawrence Street 425 Cooper Street 432 Lawrence Street Bakers Blacksmiths Boarder/Lodger Box Makers Carpenters Chandelier Makers Civil War Coachmen Construction Workers Death Doctors Dressmakers Extended Family Factory Workers Ferries Firefighters Germany Hostlers Investment Janitor Laborers Laundries Lawrence Street Leather Mental Illness Norway Nurses Police Quakers Sweden Victor Talking Machine Company Watchmen Works Progress Administration World War I https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b3fd7fbac5d8ea05fe050e351fdaacb2.jpg 91e3393d199bcee889b2bc7fe08c4b09 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 This one-story automobile garage demonstrates the changing character of Lawrence Street with the advent of the automobile. The structure was originally a two-story rowhouse, 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 owner of adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a> purchased and adapted the property as part of a renovation of his Fifth Street-facing home and office. Date of construction c. 1946-55; garage conversion c. 1946. History In 1846, a Camden County public official named Isaac Porter purchased an undeveloped lot extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street and thereafter added three structures: A three-story house, 425 Cooper Street, and two smaller rowhouses at the back of the property at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and 434 Lawrence Street. Porter, also an officer of the West Jersey Ferry Company, lived in the Cooper Street house with his family while renting the two smaller houses to tenants until his death in 1867. His surviving sons later divided the property so that one would own the Cooper Street house and another the pair of rental houses. The Lawrence Street houses continued to be treated as properties separate from the Cooper Street house as they conveyed to subsequent owners outside the Porter family from the 1880s through the early twenty-first century. 434 Lawrence Street The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents listed in city directories beginning in 1854, although the absence of house numbering prevents associating them with specific addresses prior to the 1860s. Isaac Porter’s two rowhouses on Lawrence Street are known to have existed by 1855, when they were cited in a building contract as models for similar houses to be built elsewhere in Camden. An early tenant at 434 Lawrence Street may have been Daniel Bodine, a steamboat captain, who lived on “Lawrence below Fifth” between 1854 and 1860. His occupation may indicate an acquaintance with the property owner Isaac Porter, who served as an officer of the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-WestJerseyFerry.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">West Jersey Ferry Company</a>. Census records of 1860 identify Daniel Bodine as a white man 33 years old, living with his wife Elizabeth, a white woman aged 32. Tenants at 434 Lawrence Street during the last decades of the nineteenth century included a cabinet maker, a police officer, a packer, a machinist, a brick layer, and a paper box maker. In 1870, the tenants were cabinet maker Alexander Haines, who had lived at this address since 1863. A white man who was born in New Jersey, Haines was 52 years old in 1870 and shared the home with his wife, Elizabeth, a white woman 46 years old, also born in New Jersey, and their two daughters. Daughters Anna, 15, and Ella, 11, both attended school. Work for a cabinet maker would have been plentiful in this neighborhood during these years as blocks north of Cooper Street filled with new houses, including the surviving mansion at 406 Penn Street built c. 1869. Behind that mansion and across the street from the Lawrence Street rowhouses, builder William Severns had a carpentry shop at 425 Lawrence that could have afforded employment to Haines and others. Severns, whose rising prominence in Camden led him to later service on the Board of Freeholders, developed a reputation as one of the city’s pioneer builders during the late nineteenth century. Unusually, 434 Lawrence Street had one tenant who stayed for more than twenty years, from the early 1880s until 1913. Rebecca S. Lawrence, a white woman who was around 30 years old when she moved Lawrence Street, had grown up in South Camden with at least four siblings in a family headed by a laborer. Born in 1853, her childhood included her father’s service in the Civil War. By age 18, she went to work in a paper box factory and continued in that occupation throughout her years on Lawrence Street. Having married during the 1870s, she first appeared on Lawrence Street as Rebecca S. Currie (and may have first lived in adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a>). By 1884, however, she had reverted to her birth name; by 1900 Census records identified her as divorced. It would have been unusual for woman to occupy a home by herself, but if Rebecca Armstrong had lodgers or relatives with her at 434 Lawrence Street, they do not appear in public records. The only exception came in 1905, when New Jersey Census takers recorded the presence of one other occupant, a widow named Mary Lake. By the time Armstrong left Lawrence Street, she was in her late 50s. She spent her later years living in Philadelphia with one of her sisters, a widow who worked as a saleslady at the John Wanamaker department store. When she and her sister returned to New Jersey in the 1930s, they lived in Burlington County. At 434 Lawrence Street, Armstrong was followed in 1914 by another household headed by women, a mother and daughter who were both widowed (Martha Delaney and Margaret Wheaton), and the daughter’s 13-year-old son. They moved on when Margaret Wheaton remarried in 1915, creating a vacancy filled by the family of August Sonntag, a woodworker at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>, for the decade between 1916 and 1926. Sonntag and his wife Jane (also known as Jennie), both white and born in Pennsylvania, represented converging ethnic identities—his parents had been born in Germany, and hers in Ireland. Prior to Lawrence Street, they lived at 301 Point Street, closer to the Victor manufacturing complex. While there, they suffered the death of their oldest daughter, Theresa, who succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 13. On Lawrence Street, they raised their surviving two daughters and one son to young adulthood. Tenants continued to live at 434 Lawrence Street through the 1930s and most of the 1940s, but the character of the street was changing. Lawrence Street began to function as a service alley for automobiles, and garages replaced several of the rowhouses (see <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">416</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a> Lawrence Street). This was the fate of 434 Lawrence Street, which was purchased in 1946 by the owner of an adjacent house facing Fifth Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth</a>). That owner, Dr. Charles Kutner, renovated the Fifth Street house into a home and office and eliminated its deteriorated third floor in the process. Similarly, 434 Lawrence Street was reduced to one story and converted into an automobile garage, with a new concrete-block structure faced in brick joining the two structures in the back. The enlarged 211 N. Fifth Street, incorporating the former 434 Lawrence Street rowhouse, conveyed to Rutgers University as part of a multiple-property transaction with a real estate investor in 2005. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 434 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; Gina Torres (Charles Kutner research). 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 434 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century former rowhouse converted to automobile garage c. 1946. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 211 N. Fifth Street 425 Cooper Street 432 Lawrence Street 434 Lawrence Street Box Makers Bricklayers Cabinet Makers Childhood Children Death Demolition Ferries Garages Germany Ireland Lawrence Street Machinists Packers Philadelphia Pneumonia Police Renovations Victor Talking Machine Company Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/a3a3b6f3194ecfe7f7262f659caaaf9b.jpg 1efe517cfc1070d84e1202f600d99678 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/6c2ee2ef0a428df7624427f289f6129e.jpg 86f7e131e28d58792ad78e403829f44f 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 527 Cooper Street in 1890, The Inland Architect and News Record. (Courtesy, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, the Art Institute of Chicago) 527 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner) Significance 527 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. Its designers, <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/22158" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hazlehurst & Huckel</a> of Philadelphia, are named in National Register documentation as among the architects whose work warranted designating the district based on its distinctive architecture. The building also illustrates the district’s significance in representing broad patterns of American history. As stated in the National Register nomination: “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.” During the 1920s, the building housed offices of real estate agents and a builder who played important roles in that transition. The building also has a notable history associated with individuals prominent in industry and government, their families, and domestic workers whose histories reflect patterns of immigration and African American migration. Architectural style Queen Anne. Documentation prepared in 1980 by J.P. Graham of the Division of Planning, City of Camden, stated: “Although altered the house preserves an element characteristic to residential construction on Cooper St. in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century. It is also one of the few Queen Anne buildings remaining in the Central Business District of Camden.” Date of construction 1889 History In 1889, an officer of the Anderson Preserving Company in Camden commissioned the Queen Anne-style home at 527 Cooper Street. Like other new homes on Cooper Street during the 1880s and 1890s, it likely replaced an earlier, less elaborate brick row house. The construction of the new home occurred as Camden grew in size and stature, and as Cooper Street became an increasingly fashionable address. The character of the street changed in the early 1880s when curbs were moved toward the center of the street by twelve feet on each side, which gave homeowners space to create a boulevard of homes fronted by porches, front yards, and gardens. Industry and Architects Abraham Anderson, a partner with the founder of Campbell’s Soup before forming his own firm, lived at 232 Cooper when he bought the 527 Cooper Street property up the street in 1885. Four years later, he sold 527 to his daughter, Ella A. Cox, who with her husband, John, newborn daughter Martha, and domestic servants became the first residents of a new house built on the lot in 1889. To design the new home, John T. Cox (secretary-treasurer of his father-in-law’s company) commissioned <a href="In%201889,%20an%20officer%20of%20the%20Anderson%20Preserving%20Company%20in%20Camden%20commissioned%20the%20Queen%20Anne-style%20home%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street.%20Like%20other%20new%20homes%20on%20Cooper%20Street%20during%20the%201880s%20and%201890s,%20it%20likely%20replaced%20an%20earlier,%20less%20elaborate%20brick%20row%20house.%20As%20Camden%20grew%20in%20size%20and%20stature,%20Cooper%20Street%20became%20an%20increasingly%20fashionable%20address.%20Its%20character%20changed%20in%20the%20early%201880s%20when%20curbs%20were%20moved%20toward%20the%20center%20of%20the%20street%20by%20twelve%20feet%20on%20each%20side,%20which%20gave%20homeowners%20space%20to%20create%20a%20boulevard%20of%20homes%20fronted%20by%20porches,%20front%20%20yards,%20and%20gardens.%20Industry%20and%20Architects%20Abraham%20Anderson,%20a%20partner%20with%20the%20founder%20of%20Campbell%E2%80%99s%20Soup%20before%20forming%20his%20own%20firm,%20lived%20at%20232%20Cooper%20when%20he%20bought%20the%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20property%20up%20the%20street%20in%201885.%20Four%20years%20later,%20he%20sold%20527%20to%20his%20daughter,%20Ella%20A.%20Cox,%20who%20with%20her%20husband,%20John,%20newborn%20daughter%20Martha,%20and%20domestic%20servants%20became%20the%20first%20residents%20of%20a%20new%20house%20built%20on%20the%20lot%20in%201889.%20To%20design%20the%20new%20home,%20John%20T.%20Cox%20(secretary-treasurer%20of%20his%20father-in-law%E2%80%99s%20company)%20commissioned%20Hazlehurst%20&%20Huckel,%20a%20Philadelphia%20firm%20known%20for%20residential,%20church,%20and%20commercial%20architecture.%20The%20firm%20had%20recently%20completed%20another%20Queen%20Anne-style%20home%20at%20323%20Cooper%20Street,%20within%20view%20of%20the%20Anderson%20residence%20at%20Second%20and%20Cooper.%20One%20of%20the%20partners,%20Edward%20P.%20Hazlehurst,%20had%20worked%20with%20one%20of%20Philadelphia%E2%80%99s%20best-known%20architects,%20Frank%20Furness,%20before%20starting%20his%20own%20firm%20with%20Samuel%20Huckel%20Jr.%20in%201881.%20The%20stature%20of%20the%20partners%20had%20grown%20in%201887,%20when%20they%20won%20a%20competition%20to%20design%20the%20Manufacturer%E2%80%99s%20Club%20prominently%20located%20at%20Broad%20and%20Walnut%20Streets%20in%20Philadelphia;%20later%20Huckel,%20individually%20won%20the%20commission%20to%20remodel%20Grand%20Central%20Station%20in%20New%20York.%20In%20the%20300%20and%20500%20blocks%20of%20Cooper%20Street,%20the%20two%20Hazlehurst%20&%20Huckel%20houses%20stood%20distinctively%20among%20the%20earlier%20generation%20of%20red-brick%20rowhouses%20built%20in%20the%201850s.%20They%20celebrated%20individuality%20in%20their%20varieties%20of%20materials%20and%20departures%20from%20symmetry,%20and%20they%20punctured%20the%20typical%20flat%20fa%C3%A7ade%20of%20earlier%20rowhouses%20by%20featuring%20bay%20windows%20and%20dormers.%20The%20house%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20earned%20a%20full-page%20photograph%20in%20The%20Inland%20Architect%20and%20News%20Record,%20a%20monthly%20trade%20journal%20published%20in%20Chicago.%20The%20Cox%20family%20lived%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20until%201897,%20when%20they%20followed%20the%20trend%20of%20other%20Camden%20elites%20by%20moving%20to%20more%20pastoral%20suburbs%20(Moorestown).%20While%20on%20Cooper%20Street,%20their%20household%20included%20at%20least%20two%20domestic%20servants,%20at%20least%20one%20of%20them%20an%20Irish%20immigrant.%20Prestige%20Rental%20The%20Cox%20family%20sold%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20to%20a%20real%20estate%20firm,%20opening%20a%20period%20of%20more%20than%20two%20decades%20when%20the%20home%20was%20leased%20to%20a%20series%20of%20high-profile%20tenants.%20These%20included%20four%20division%20managers%20for%20the%20Pennsylvania%20Railroad%E2%80%99s%20Amboy%20Division%20(formerly%20the%20Camden%20and%20Amboy%20Railroad).%20Among%20the%20most%20notable%20residents%20of%20527%20Cooper%20during%20these%20early%20years%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century,%20future%20New%20Jersey%20Supreme%20Court%20Justice%20Frank%20T.%20Lloyd%20Sr.%20lived%20at%20this%20address%20between%201908%20and%201918.%20Lloyd%20had%20lived%20in%20Camden%20since%201875,%20when%20he%20arrived%20from%20Delaware%20to%20work%20as%20a%20compositor%20for%20the%20West%20Jersey%20Press%20newspaper.%20He%20became%20a%20lawyer%20by%20studying%20with%20Philadelphia%20attorneys%20and%20maintained%20a%20Philadelphia%20law%20office.%20Elected%20to%20the%20New%20Jersey%20Assembly%20for%20the%20term%201896-97,%20Lloyd%20began%20a%20career%20of%20public%20service%20marked%20by%20combatting%20vice%20and%20upholding%20morality%20in%20his%20posts%20as%20legislator,%20Camden%20County%20Prosecutor,%20and%20Circuit%20Court%20Judge.%20In%20the%20Assembly,%20he%20wrote%20a%20new%20marriage%20law%20that%20ended%20Camden%E2%80%99s%20reputation%20as%20a%20place%20for%20quick%20get-away%20marriages%20by%20requiring%20a%20three-day%20wait%20after%20obtaining%20a%20marriage%20license.%20As%20a%20prosecutor,%20he%20took%20aim%20at%20illegal%20gambling,%20particularly%20at%20racetracks.%20The%20extended%20Lloyd%20family%20at%20527%20Cooper%20is%20glimpsed%20in%20the%20U.S.%20Census%20in%201910,%20during%20Frank%20Sr.%E2%80%99s%20service%20as%20Circuit%20Court%20Judge.%20Lloyd,%20then%2050%20years%20old,%20headed%20the%20family%20with%20his%20wife,%20Mary,%20age%2043;%20Mary%E2%80%99s%20older%20sister%20Sophia%20Pelouze,%2050%20years%20old%20and%20single,%20identified%20herself%20to%20the%20Census-taker%20as%20a%20%E2%80%9Ccompanion.%E2%80%9D%20The%20Lloyds,%20who%20had%20been%20married%2023%20years,%20had%20three%20children%20ranging%20in%20age%20from%2010%20to%2022.%20The%20domestic%20workers%20in%20the%20Lloyd%20household%20added%20not%20only%20their%20labor%20but%20also%20ethnic%20and%20racial%20diversity,%20as%20in%20many%20other%20Cooper%20Street%20households.%20Katie%20Tellus,%2031%20years%20old,%20immigrated%20to%20the%20United%20States%20from%20Bavaria%20(Austria)%20%E2%80%93%20a%20rarity%20among%20Cooper%20Street%20servants,%20who%20typically%20came%20from%20Ireland.%20A%20widow,%20she%20could%20not%20read%20or%20write.%20The%20Lloyds%20also%20employed%20James%20R.%20Taylor,%20a%2035-year-old%20Black%20man%20described%20in%20the%20Census%20as%20a%20butler%20but%20listed%20in%20later%20city%20directories%20as%20a%20cook.%20Taylor,%20born%20in%20either%20Maryland%20or%20Virginia%20(sources%20vary),%20was%20among%20southern%20African%20Americans%20who%20migrated%20to%20Camden%20and%20other%20northern%20cities%20in%20search%20of%20opportunity%20and%20an%20escape%20from%20repression%20and%20violence.%20Taylor%20displayed%20his%20aspirations,%20and%20perhaps%20his%20dissatisfaction%20with%20housework,%20in%20a%20series%20of%20classified%20ads%20in%201912.%20In%20the%20Situations%20Wanted%20column%20of%20the%20Courier-Post%20he%20advertised,%20%E2%80%9CYoung%20colored%20boy%20from%20South%20wishes%20position%20of%20any%20kind%E2%80%9D%20and%20%E2%80%9CSouthern%20colored%20boy%20wants%20position%20driving%20for%20doctor.%E2%80%9D%20His%20self-description%20as%20a%20%E2%80%9Cyoung%20colored%20boy,%E2%80%9D%20despite%20being%20a%20man%20in%20his%2030s,%20suggests%20the%20racial%20biases%20present%20in%20the%20South%20Jersey/Philadelphia%20region%20during%20the%20migration%20era.%20The%20Lloyds%E2%80%99%20occupancy%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20encompassed%20the%20period%20of%20the%20First%20World%20War.%20Frank%20Sr.%20served%20on%20the%20home%20front%20as%20a%20federal%20food%20administrator%20while%20son%20Frank%20Jr.%20deployed%20to%20France.%20While%20in%20command%20of%20an%20aerial%20testing%20camp%20near%20Paris,%20Lieutenant%20Lloyd%20suffered%20a%20fall%20that%20resulted%20in%20broken%20jaw%20and%20two%20days%20of%20unconsciousness.%20The%20Philadelphia%20Inquirer%E2%80%99s%20lists%20of%20soldiers%20killed%20and%20injured%20identified%20the%20younger%20Lloyd%20as%20%E2%80%9Cwounded%20severely.%E2%80%9D%20After%20their%20years%20on%20Cooper%20Street,%20the%20Lloyd%20family%20moved%20to%20Pennsauken.%20Frank%20Lloyd%20Sr.,%20appointed%20to%20the%20New%20Jersey%20Supreme%20Court%20in%201924,%20lived%20until%201951.%20An%20editorial%20in%20the%20Courier-Post%20eulogized%20him%20as%20%E2%80%9Ca%20citizen%20who%20never%20will%20be%20forgotten,%20one%20whose%20life%20and%20character%20have%20been%20and%20will%20continue%20to%20be%20an%20inspiration.%E2%80%9D%20Block-Busting%20on%20Cooper%20Street%20During%20the%201920s,%20construction%20of%20the%20Delaware%20River%20Bridge%20(the%20Benjamin%20Franklin%20Bridge)%20between%20Camden%20and%20Philadelphia%20propelled%20a%20spirit%20of%20boosterism%20with%20profound%20implications%20for%20Cooper%20Street.%20The%20location%20of%20the%20bridge,%20and%20the%20extension%20of%20Broadway%20to%20reach%20it,%20created%20a%20new%20focal%20point%20for%20business%20activity%20at%20Sixth%20and%20Cooper,%20adjacent%20to%20527%20Cooper%20Street.%20As%20real%20estate%20interests%20eyed%20the%20rest%20of%20Cooper%20Street%20as%20an%20opportunity%20to%20convert%20older%20homes%20into%20apartments%20and%20businesses,%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20became%20a%20base%20for%20their%20efforts%20to%20transform%20Cooper%20Street%20into%20a%20New%20York-style%20%E2%80%9CFifth%20Avenue.%E2%80%9D%20Several%20women%20emerged%20as%20real%20estate%20entrepreneurs%20during%20these%20years,%20among%20them%20a%20new%20owner%20of%20527%20Cooper%20Street,%20Julia%20M.%20Carey.%20By%20the%20time%20the%20bridge%20opened%20in%201926,%20the%20%E2%80%9CCarey%20Building%E2%80%9D%20at%20527%20Cooper%20offered%20office%20suites%20and%20apartments.%20Carey%20leased%20one%20of%20the%20offices%20to%20another%20real%20estate%20dealer,%20Emma%20M.%20Asay,%20whose%20gender-neutral%20advertising%20invited%20prospective%20buyers%20to%20contact%20%E2%80%9CE.M.%20Asay.%E2%80%9D%20The%20Courier-Post%20noted%20in%201926,%20%E2%80%9CMiss%20Carey%20and%20Miss%20E.M.%20Asay%20have%20found%20Cooper%20street%20an%20advantageous%20location,%20as%20both%20of%20these%20%E2%80%98lady%20real%20estators%E2%80%99%20have%20had%20two%20splendid%20selling%20seasons%20on%20Camden%E2%80%99s%20famous%20residential%20thoroughfare,%20now%20giving%20way%20to%20business.%E2%80%9D%20Carey%E2%80%99s%20work%20on%20the%20street%20included%20three%20strategically%20located%20renovations,%20one%20per%20block,%20to%20convert%20321,%20421,%20and%20521%20Cooper%20into%20offices%20or%20apartments.%20She%20often%20collaborated%20with%20contractor%20John%20C.%20Gibson,%20also%20based%20at%20527%20Cooper%20while%20he%20worked%20on%20conversions%20and%20new%20construction%20up%20and%20down%20the%20street.%20For%20the%20rest%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century%20and%20into%20the%20twenty-first%20century,%20527%20Cooper%20served%20a%20variety%20of%20business%20and%20professional%20uses,%20including%20offices%20for%20doctors,%20lawyers,%20real%20estate%20agents,%20and%20title%20companies.%20For%20three%20years%20in%20the%201950s,%20the%20building%20served%20as%20headquarters%20for%20the%20Camden%20County%20Republican%20Party.%20By%201980,%20when%20the%20Camden%20Division%20of%20Planning%20surveyed%20Cooper%20Street%E2%80%99s%20historic%20structures,%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20had%20lost%20some%20%E2%80%93%20but%20by%20no%20means%20all%20%E2%80%93%20of%20its%20architectural%20character.%20%E2%80%9CIn%20spite%20of%20alterations%20to%20the%20entrance%20way%20and%20the%20removal%20of%20the%20second-story%20oriel%20that%20once%20occupied%20the%20left%20bay,%E2%80%9D%20surveyor%20J.P.%20Graham%20wrote,%20%E2%80%9Cthis%20house%20still%20conveys%20much%20of%20the%20feeling%20of%20the%20Queen%20Anne%20style.%E2%80%9D%20In%202016,%20LEAP%20Academy%20University%20Charter%20School%20Inc.%20acquired%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20from%20Thomas%20DeMarco%20Holdings,%20LLC,%20of%20Cherry%20Hill,%20for%20$310,000." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hazlehurst & Huckel</a>, a Philadelphia firm known for residential, church, and commercial architecture. The firm had recently completed another Queen Anne-style home at 323 Cooper Street, within view of the Anderson residence at Second and Cooper. One of the partners, Edward P. Hazlehurst, had worked with one of Philadelphia’s best-known architects, Frank Furness, before starting his own firm with Samuel Huckel Jr. in 1881. The stature of the partners had grown in 1887, when they won a competition to design the Manufacturer’s Club prominently located at Broad and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia; later, Huckel individually won the commission to remodel Grand Central Station in New York. In the 300 and 500 blocks of Cooper Street, the two Hazlehurst & Huckel houses stood distinctively among the earlier generation of red-brick row houses built in the 1850s. They celebrated individuality in their varieties of materials and departures from symmetry, and they punctured the typical flat façade of earlier row houses by featuring bay windows and dormers. The house at 527 Cooper Street earned a full-page photograph in <a href="https://digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/id/7299/rec/5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Inland Architect and News Record</a>, a monthly trade journal published in Chicago. (In 1894 the journal accorded the same treatment to the Henry Genet Taylor home at <a href="https://digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/id/8152/rec/13" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a>, designed by Wilson Eyre Jr.) The Cox family lived at 527 Cooper Street until 1897, when they followed the trend of other Camden elites by moving to more pastoral suburbs (Moorestown). While on Cooper Street, their household included at least two domestic servants, at least one of them an Irish immigrant. Prestige Rental The Cox family sold 527 Cooper Street to a real estate firm, opening a period of more than two decades when the home was leased to a series of high-profile tenants. These included four division managers for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Amboy Division (formerly the <a href="https://www.delawareriverheritagetrail.org/Camden-and-Amboy-Railroad.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden and Amboy Railroad</a>). Among the most notable residents of 527 Cooper during these early years of the twentieth century, future New Jersey Supreme Court Justice <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/camdenpeople-judgefranktlloyd.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Frank T. Lloyd Sr.</a> lived at this address between 1908 and 1918. Lloyd had lived in Camden since 1875, when he arrived from Delaware to work as a compositor for the West Jersey Press newspaper. He became a lawyer by studying with Philadelphia attorneys and maintained a Philadelphia law office. Elected to the New Jersey Assembly for the term 1896-97, Lloyd began a career of public service marked by combatting vice and upholding morality in his posts as legislator, Camden County Prosecutor, and Circuit Court Judge. In the Assembly, he wrote a new marriage law that ended Camden’s reputation as a place for quick get-away marriages by requiring a three-day wait after obtaining a marriage license. As a prosecutor, he took aim at illegal gambling, particularly at racetracks. The extended Lloyd family at 527 Cooper is glimpsed in the U.S. Census in 1910, during Frank Sr.’s service as Circuit Court Judge. Lloyd, then 50 years old, headed the family with his wife, Mary, age 43; Mary’s older sister Sophia Pelouze, 50 years old and single, identified herself to the Census-taker as a “companion.” The Lloyds, who had been married 23 years, had three children ranging in age from 10 to 22. The domestic workers in the Lloyd household added not only their labor but also ethnic and racial diversity, as in many other Cooper Street households. Katie Tellus, 31 years old, immigrated to the United States from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bavaria" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bavaria</a> – a rarity among Cooper Street servants, who typically came from Ireland. A widow, she could not read or write. The Lloyds also employed James R. Taylor, a 35-year-old Black man described in the Census as a butler but listed in later city directories as a cook. Taylor, born in either Maryland or Virginia (sources vary), was among <a href="https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/020/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">southern African Americans who migrated</a> to Camden and other northern cities in search of opportunity and an escape from repression and violence. Taylor displayed his aspirations, and perhaps his dissatisfaction with housework, in a series of classified ads in 1912. In the Situations Wanted column of the Camden Courier-Post he advertised, “Young colored boy from South wishes position of any kind” and “Southern colored boy wants position driving for doctor.” His self-description as a “young colored boy,” despite being a man in his 30s, suggests the racial biases present in the South Jersey/Philadelphia region during the migration era. The Lloyds’ occupancy at 527 Cooper Street encompassed the period of the First World War. Frank Sr. served on the home front as a federal food administrator while son Frank Jr. deployed to France. While in command of an aerial testing camp near Paris, Lieutenant Lloyd suffered a fall that resulted in broken jaw and two days of unconsciousness. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s lists of soldiers killed and injured identified the younger Lloyd as “wounded severely.” After their years on Cooper Street, the Lloyd family moved to Pennsauken. Frank Lloyd Sr., appointed to the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1924, lived until 1951. An editorial in the Courier-Post eulogized him as “a citizen who never will be forgotten, one whose life and character have been and will continue to be an inspiration.” Block-Busting on Cooper Street During the 1920s, construction of the Delaware River Bridge (the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) between Camden and Philadelphia propelled a spirit of boosterism with profound implications for Cooper Street. The location of the bridge, and the extension of Broadway to reach it, created a new focal point for business activity at Sixth and Cooper, adjacent to 527 Cooper Street. As real estate interests eyed the rest of Cooper Street as an opportunity to convert older homes into apartments and businesses, 527 Cooper Street became a base for their efforts to transform Cooper Street into a New York-style “Fifth Avenue.” Several women emerged as real estate entrepreneurs during these years, among them a new owner of 527 Cooper Street, Julia M. Carey. By the time the bridge opened in 1926, the “Carey Building” at 527 Cooper offered office suites and apartments. Carey leased one of the offices to another real estate dealer, Emma M. Asay, whose gender-neutral advertising invited prospective buyers to contact “E.M. Asay.” The Courier-Post noted in 1926, “Miss Carey and Miss E.M. Asay have found Cooper street an advantageous location, as both of these ‘lady real estators’ have had two splendid selling seasons on Camden’s famous residential thoroughfare, now giving way to business.” Carey’s woThe 1 Cooper into offices or apartments. She often collaborated with contractor John C. Gibson, also based at 527 Cooper while he worked on conversions and new construction up and down the street. For the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, 527 Cooper served a variety of business and professional uses, including offices for doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and title companies. For three years in the early 1950s, the building served as headquarters for the Camden County Republican Party. By 1980, when the Camden Division of Planning surveyed Cooper Street’s historic structures, 527 Cooper Street had lost some – but by no means all – of its architectural character. “In spite of alterations to the entrance way and the removal of the second-story oriel that once occupied the left bay,” surveyor J.P. Graham wrote, “this house still conveys much of the feeling of the Queen Anne style.” In 2016, LEAP Academy University Charter School Inc. acquired 527 Cooper Street from Thomas DeMarco Holdings, LLC, of Cherry Hill, for $310,000. Although a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, the house was demolished in 2024. 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 527. Associated architects/builders Edward P. Hazlehurst Samuel Huckel Jr. Sources Camden and Philadelphia newspapers (Newspapers.com) Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society, Ancestry.com) Camden County Property Records Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. Inland Architect and News Record, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, the Art Institute of Chicago Manuals of the Legislature of New Jersey, 1896-97 Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project, Athenaeum of Philadelphia Structures Survey, 527 Cooper Street, New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services U.S. and New Jersey Censuses (Ancestry.com) Research by Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, and Nick Prehn. Thanks to Benjamin Saracco for assistance locating Manuals for the Legislature of New Jersey. Posted by Charlene Mires Please communicate 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 527 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 500 Block 527 Cooper Street Bavaria Black Migration Bridge Impact Delaware Domestic Life Extended Family Food Industry Hazlehurst & Huckel Immigration Ireland Maryland Moorestown Pennsauken Philadelphia Public Officials Queen Anne Railroad Executives Real Estate Renovations Servants Virginia World War I https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/e485217d096f770fbc5f1b3ca962714f.pdf 0148fd0c9cbbeca7f99fe57d5c449eab 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 Research Reports Description An account of the resource Research by student and faculty investigators. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rutgers University-Camden Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Tia Antonelli, Lucy Davis, William Krakower, Charlene Mires, Timothy Potero 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 A Lost Block of Cooper Street Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charlene Mires Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource March 3, 2020 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright 2020, Charlene Mires. Do not reproduce or cite without permission of the author. Description An account of the resource Expansion of the Victor Talking Machine Company spelled the end for a block of houses on Cooper Street between Front Street and Delaware Avenue. 00 Block 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s Boarding House Clergy Demolition Grocers Printing Victor Talking Machine Company Weddings Widows