5 10 43 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/ece34aef8698963b458aaa8b7b3298b1.jpg 0dd4a90701b0114e3f98463ce2df8901 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 Streets and Blocks Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance When nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the Cooper Street Historic Street included buildings in the 400 block of Lawrence Street 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. <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/browse?tags=Lawrence+Street" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Link to house histories</a>.</li> <li><a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/neatline/show/from-countryside-to-city#records/57" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Clickable map of Lawrence and Cooper Street house histories</a>.</li> </ul> Date of construction Houses, late 1840s-early 1850s. Garages, c. 1926-1950. History The 400 block of Lawrence Street is a remnant of working-class life in Camden as the city industrialized and its population grew rapidly. The surviving two-story rowhouses in this block date to the late 1840s and early 1850s, when Cooper family landholders began to divide their property north of Cooper Street into building lots. Because the lots extended from Cooper Street, a dominant thoroughfare, to narrow Lawrence Street, buyers had the opportunity to build houses facing both streets. This produced the dual character of the 400 block, with its substantial three-story homes facing Cooper Street as well as the smaller two-story rowhouses facing Lawrence Street. When the Cooper Street Historic Street was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the Lawrence Street buildings were included 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.” The first owners in this block lived in their Cooper Street-facing houses or leased them to prosperous tenants; the smaller Lawrence Street rowhouses, in contrast, became working-class rental properties. Owner-Developers The Lawrence Street houses developed in four segments. In 1845 and 1846, one of the buyers of Cooper family land, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54">Hannah Atwood</a>, bought two adjoining lots and over time erected seven structures: three on Cooper Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/45" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">415</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>) and four on Lawrence Street (<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/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">420</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422</a>). When rented to tenants, the houses provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, Jesse Atwood, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. In 1846, a Camden County public official and ferry company officer, Isaac Porter, also purchased a parcel in the 400 block for his residence at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/52" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">425 Cooper Street</a> and added two adjoining smaller houses on Lawrence Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>). The lots between the Atwood and Porter properties sold in 1847: A Philadelphia merchant, Joseph R. Paulson, put up two houses facing Cooper Street (<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>) and two on Lawrence Street with a small alley between them (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426</a>). Bank teller Jesse Townsend erected one house on Cooper Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423</a>) and two on Lawrence Street (<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>). These transactions and investments filled in much of Cooper and Lawrence Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets. Of the ten houses built on Lawrence Street, six survived into the twenty-first century. A wood-framed house at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90">416</a> Lawrence was demolished in the 1880s; three others (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>) were replaced or adapted as automobile garages in the twentieth century. Tenants on Lawrence Street often changed from year to year, but their brief residence on this block made it a place of striving and struggle, births and deaths, and participation in the social and economic life of Camden. By 1854, the 400 block of Lawrence Street had at least six residents, who were documented in the Philadelphia city directory as living on “Lawrence below Fifth” in Camden. The early existence of Lawrence Street houses is also documented by an 1855 building contract that cited two of them (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>) as models for a row to be built elsewhere in Camden. The earliest known residents of the block included a ferryman, a cordwainer (shoemaker), a blacksmith, and a carpenter—the types of skilled trades and occupations that typified tenants on Lawrence Street during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Skilled Trades, Large Families Occupations on the block reflected nearby opportunities to earn a living. Men often worked in construction trades, which would have been in demand as North Camden filled with houses, or in jobs related to livery stables (drivers, blacksmiths, hostlers, and coachmen). Some worked on the waterfront on ferries that plied the river between Camden and Philadelphia or, later, in shipyards. Women worked in needle trades (dress making, tailoring, lace making), took in laundry, or tended to boarders in addition to housekeeping for family members. As Camden industrialized, residents of Lawrence Street also went to work in factories, including the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Esterbrook Steel Pen Company</a> and <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a> on Cooper Street. Lawrence Street filled with families. The U.S. Census in 1860 recorded large families that would have strained the capacity of the houses, which typically consisted of four or five rooms. For example, Christian Bott, a sawyer, and his wife, Christiana, both German immigrants, headed a family with six children under the age of 10. Their neighbors included Nicholas Snider (or Snyder), a watchman who was born in France, and his wife, Margaret (who was born in New Jersey), who had seven children ranging in age from 5 to 19. Such large families remained common, although not universal, among Lawrence Street’s tenants throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With so many people in such close quarters, the street and backyards would have been active with children’s voices and energy. Women and Children Lawrence Street’s tenants included households headed by women. They were widowed, divorced, or otherwise separated from husbands, and often they were supporting young children. At least two women on Lawrence Street tended young families while their husbands served in the Civil War (one of the children in this circumstance, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-DrLettieAllenWard.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lettie Ward</a> of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a>, grew up to become Camden’s second female physician). Other women struggled to keep families together. For example, Mary Benbow, a widow who rented 418 Lawrence Street beginning in 1878, for a time surrendered three of her five children to the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/businesses/camden-home-for-friendless-children" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>. On Lawrence Street, Benbow took in washing to earn a living; two of her sons returned from the children’s home when they were old enough to work and contribute to the family economy. Other struggles of child-rearing surfaced periodically in Camden and Philadelphia newspapers in the form of advertisements, for example an 1859 notice in the Philadelphia Public Ledger that sought an adoptive parent for “a healthy male Child nine months old” and directed inquiries to “Lawrence Street, first house above Fourth, between Cooper and Penn, Camden.” In 1916, an ad placed in the Camden Morning Post read: “Home wanted for 6-year-old boy; lady works all the time; will pay small board. Call evenings. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence Street</a>.” The Diversity of Camden In contrast to the mostly white, native-born homeowners on Cooper Street, Lawrence Street’s population represented many of the waves of migration and immigration that created the city’s diverse population. In addition to residents born in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, immigrants or second-generation Americans who rented in this block had ancestries rooted predominantly in western European countries (Germany, England, Ireland, or France). At various times the street also had at least one Japanese-American resident and several Scandinavians and Canadians. Lawrence Street’s population also reflected the migration of African Americans from southern states to northern cities. During the late 1890s and the first years of the twentieth century, Black tenants lived in three of the Lawrence Street houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422</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>). They worked primarily in food service occupations. (One of the Black children who lived on Lawrence Street in 1902, Edward A. Reid, in later life became the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mtcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=%22Edward+A.+Reid%22+Camden+judge&source=bl&ots=E52K5r-7qb&sig=ACfU3U1nmX-QVMAcyB6D_wED5tHMaGDJnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjYvJyHjKGCAxV9v4kEHVPKBaU4ChDoAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22Edward%20A.%20Reid%22%20Camden%20judge&f=false" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first Black judge to be appointed in Camden County</a>.) During the second half of the twentieth century, Lawrence Street also reflected the increasing presence of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/puerto-rican-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Puerto Rican-born migrants</a> to Camden. From Countryside to City While urban in character, the houses on Lawrence Street originally looked out on a mostly rural landscape extending three-quarters of a mile northward to the bend in the Delaware River. The view changed dramatically from the 1860s through the 1880s as the Cooper family heirs sold more of their property to builders, who filled in the blocks of North Camden with houses built two or three at a time or in continuous rows. Nevertheless, the Lawrence Street houses had a bit of a buffer from dense development because they faced the site of a mansion built by a member of the Cooper family at 406 Penn Street, the next street north, around 1869. (The structure survives as the <a href="https://admissions.rutgers.edu/contact-us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Admissions Office</a> for Rutgers-Camden.) Most Lawrence Street residents lost their direct view of the mansion’s expansive lawn and adjoining undeveloped lots by the 1880s, after a large stable serving the mansion was added to the north side of Lawrence Street. This addition meant that more than half the Lawrence Street houses had the sights, smells, and traffic of the stable twenty feet from their front doors. Automobiles Arrive By the 1920s and 1930s, Lawrence Street tended to house fewer people, with tenants consisting primarily of married couples or families with two or three children. More of the residents worked in factories, and fewer in trades. The advent of automobiles also changed this block as some property owners opted to build garages in place of their rental properties. The long-vacant site of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90">416</a> Lawrence Street, where a wood-framed house had been demolished in the 1880s, gained an automobile garage. Another garage replaced two of the Lawrence Street houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>-<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>) to serve the needs of the funeral home then operating at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>. Finally, in the 1940s, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434 Lawrence Street</a> was adapted into a garage as part of a renovation of the adjoining larger house facing Fifth Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a>), which left its twin at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a> standing alone between two garages. The longstanding stable on the north side of the street also became an automobile garage. Six houses remained on a block that had acquired the character of a service alley between Cooper and Penn Streets. They were included in the “hazardous” (or red-lined) zone designated in 1937 by the federal <a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/39.924/-75.159&city=camden-nj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Home Owners’ Loan Corporation</a>. Applying a broad brush, the HOLC deemed all of North Camden north of Cooper Street and west of Tenth Street—deteriorating and stable blocks alike—as high-risk investments because of aging structures and residents perceived as “undesirable” on the basis of income, race, or ethnicity. Survivors of Urban Renewal Red-lining set the stage for later urban renewal, which also impacted the surviving houses on Lawrence Street. During the 1940s, residents on Lawrence Street gained a new neighbor when the College of South Jersey and South Jersey School of Law—the predecessor institutions of Rutgers-Camden—purchased the mansion at 406 Penn Street. While that house became an administration and classroom building, at the back of the property (across from the Lawrence Street houses) the college converted former stables and garages for classrooms and added a building for the law school in 1949. After the college affiliated with Rutgers University in 1950, the growing institution turned to urban renewal strategies to demolish six mostly-residential blocks and create an expanded campus—yet the Lawrence Street houses survived. They stood just outside the south boundary of the urban renewal zone, spared because they occupied the same block as Cooper Street-facing houses perceived as having commercial value. They remained standing as the Rutgers-Camden campus took shape, including a new law school building (constructed beginning in 1969) that backed onto Lawrence Street with a tall brick exterior wall that loomed over the houses on the opposite side. During the second half of the twentieth century, some of the Lawrence Street houses remained investment properties but others were owner-occupied. Recognizing the block as an increasingly rare survivor from Camden’s history, some individuals invested in preservation as well as property. Edward Teitelman, a psychiatrist whose preservation interests in Camden included the Henry Genet Taylor house (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a>), purchased <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426</a> Lawrence Street in 1969 and held them through the 1980s. The City of Camden also recognized the historic value of the block when drawing boundaries for the <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/89d3ab32-8016-4d49-bdec-1f7cd93b69c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Historic District</a>, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. At the time, the Lawrence Street houses were thought to have been back-of-property dwellings for servants working on Cooper Street. Although recent research has disproved this theory, the history of the street nevertheless supports the significance stated in the National Register nomination: that Lawrence Street together with Cooper Street represents “a comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history.” Rutgers University acquired the surviving Lawrence Street houses between 2005 and 2007 as it envisioned future expansion of the Camden campus. Most of the houses stood vacant by the early 2020s, awaiting future uses, but one served as the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Food Bank. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of the 400 block of 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 Building Contract, Benjamin Browning, 1855, Camden County Historical Society. Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Cooper Street Historic District, <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/89d3ab32-8016-4d49-bdec-1f7cd93b69c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Register of Historic Places Registration Form</a>, 1989. Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America (<a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/39.924/-75.159&city=camden-nj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden, New Jersey</a>). Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. 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 Lawrence Street (400 Block) Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century, working-class rowhouses and twentieth-century garages. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 400 Block Blacksmiths Boarder/Lodger Bricklayers Cabinet Makers Carpenters Childhood Children Coachmen Demolition Dressmakers Drivers Extended Family Garages Historic Preservation Hostlers Investment Laundries Lawrence Street Redlining Renovations Rutgers University Rutgers-Camden Tailors Urban Renewal Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/102be0fae6e53064d8daa05e145c9be4.jpg 454bb3c58bd68f131cacb5c9b5477bc1 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 Camden Post, November 27, 1897. Significance Built during the 1820s and home to two generations of the Cooper family, the mansion at 121 Cooper Street later served as a public library and an important site of activism for woman suffrage and other civic projects led by Camden women. Architectural style Federal, adapted to Second Empire by addition of Mansard roof. Date of construction ca. 1825 History A large brick house, home to descendants of Camden’s founding Cooper family for two generations, stood on Cooper Street between Front and Second Streets for nearly a century, from the 1820s until 1919. The land, later designated as Johnson Park, had been acquired by members of the Cooper family from another English Quaker landholder in 1689. Richard Matlack Cooper, who inherited the property from his grandfather, chose it as the location for a residence that reflected his prominence, wealth, and need to accommodate a large family: his wife, Mary Cooper, eight of their children, periodically other relatives, and the domestic servants whose labor sustained the household. Built by 1825 (possibly earlier), the symmetrical red-brick structure was five bays wide and at least that deep. A brick wall surrounded the residence, a brick stable stood in the rear, and fruit trees shaded the grounds. The home’s first head of household, Richard M. Cooper, played a significant role in the economic vitality of Camden through his roles with the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/businesses/banks/first-camden-national-bank-trust" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">State Bank of Camden</a>, initially as its first cashier (1812-14) and then as its president (1814-42). The bank, one of the institutions that propelled Camden’s growth as a city less dependent on Philadelphia, stood just a block away from the Cooper Mansion (as it came to be known). Cooper also held positions in government, including judge and justice of the Gloucester County courts and state assemblyman. In 1829, he was <a href="https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/C000760" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">elected to the first of two terms in the U.S. Congress</a> on an anti-Jacksonian ticket headed by John Quincy Adams for president. His politics aligned with his banking interests as he opposed President <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/andrew-jackson/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Andrew Jackson</a>’s dismantling of the centralized <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/second-bank-of-the-us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Second Bank of the United States</a>, headquartered in Philadelphia. Cooper’s votes on military matters were consistent with his faith heritage as a Quaker as well as anti-Jacksonian politics. During his first term, he voted against the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-Removal-Act" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Indian Removal Act</a>, which nevertheless passed and forced Native Americans to relocate to territory west of the Mississippi River. During the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/nullification-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">nullification crisis</a> of 1832-33, when South Carolina attempted to declare a federally enacted tariff null and voice within the state, Cooper voted against giving Jackson the power to use military authority to enforce collecting duties on imports. When Richard M. Cooper <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7173544/richard-matlack-cooper" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">died in 1843</a> at age 76, the mansion on Cooper Street and the rest of his property passed in equal parts to his children, with the provision that half of the income from his holdings be reserved for his wife, Mary (who outlived him by more than two decades). She continued to inhabit the mansion, together with her adult unmarried children and domestic servants. Prominent among the siblings were the youngest, who were twins: Dr. Richard M. Cooper and lawyer William D. Cooper, who were around 30 years of age at the time of their father’s death. Dr. Cooper played a leading role in public health in Camden, including co-founding a dispensary to provide medical services to indigent patients. The twins’ older sisters Elizabeth, Mary, and Sarah became known for their support of charitable causes. By 1860, the household of siblings and Irish domestic servants also included a 13-year-old niece, Helen Cooper, whose mother had died. (In later years, Helen married another prominent resident of Cooper Street, Dr. Henry Genet Taylor.) The younger generation of Coopers waited until after their mother’s death in 1869 to renovate the mansion to reflect contemporary architectural tastes. The formerly two-story house became three stories with the additional of a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/mansard-roof" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mansard roof</a>, a European design element that had become popular in France and the United States. Similar renovations were taking place at other older homes around Camden. The West Jersey Press took note of the widespread improvements during these years following the Civil War, observing, “They evince the highest taste in many cases, and some of the buildings metamorphosed possess considerable architectural beauty. The Mansard roof is a great addition, and has been generally adopted, where changes have been made.” The twins Richard and William Cooper nurtured an idea for another Camden improvement, in the form of a hospital. Although both of them died in the mid-1870s before the project could be carried out, their sisters Elizabeth and Sarah and another brother, Alexander, stepped forward to contribute and raise the necessary funds. The Camden Hospital–soon named <a href="https://www.cooperhealth.org/about-us/our-history" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Hospital</a>–opened in 1887. A building for the hospital stood ready by 1877, but it took another ten years to fund an endowment to support its operations. Uncertain Future By 1880, the household at the Cooper Mansion had diminished to only the sisters Elizabeth, age 74, and Sarah, age 76, with four or five servants (most of them Irish immigrants). The sisters’ deaths in the 1880s closed a chapter for the mansion as a family home and opened uncertainty about the future for the property. At the time of the mansion’s construction, Camden was only beginning to emerge as a city and the Cooper family held most of the land north of Cooper Street as undeveloped property. But the terms of Richard M. Cooper’s will in 1843 had released his heirs to develop the land as they saw fit. At that fortuitous time, when Camden gained in status as the seat of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/locations/camden-county-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">newly formed Camden County</a>, building lots sold at a fast clip. The square where the mansion stood, between the industrialized Delaware River waterfront to the west and recently built residential blocks to the east, consequently became a rare open space in the fast-growing, densely developing city. Only two other houses stood in the block, both facing Front Street. During the 1890s, the future of the Cooper Mansion touched off a debate in Camden. The local Women’s Parks Association, formed in 1893, succeeded in persuading the Camden City Council to purchase the mansion and its square from the Cooper Estate for $75,000 (financed by a bond issue) in 1895. The resulting Cooper Park, with its new landscape of curving walks, benches, and streetlamps, raised a question of whether the old mansion should be retained within the more picturesque setting. The Parks Association, which had responsibility for maintaining the square, divided over the issue; for a time, a committee of City Council supported demolition. A flurry of public debate in the fall of 1897 centered primarily on whether the outmoded aesthetics of the building marred an otherwise improved public space. Opponents of demolition argued for giving the mansion a new purpose as a manual training high school or a library. In a victory for a project long favored by the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-texts/camdennj-womansclub-1894-1919.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Woman’s Club</a> (whose membership overlapped with the Parks Association) and other influential citizens, the proponents of the library prevailed. Library The mansion, reduced in size by demolition of a rear extension, opened as the Cooper Library in 1898 with a collection of 2,000 books amassed through public donations. The building remained a residence as well, but only for park caretakers and a librarian. The caretaker from at least 1900 through 1909, Thomas Jones, nurtured the plants and trees of the park and kept it spotless. Known affectionately to parkgoers as “Pop,” Jones shared quarters in the mansion with his wife and teenage son. Jones had immigrated from Ireland as a child; his wife Ellen’s parents also were Irish. Also resident in the mansion-turned-library was the librarian, Marietta Kay Champion. A descendant of the prominent Kay family of Haddonfield, Champion was a longtime Camden resident whose father had been one of the founders of <a href="https://stpaulschurchcamden.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Paul’s Church</a> on Market Street. Champion’s formal schooling had ended in the eighth grade, but she pursued further education through the Camden University Extension, which offered college-level lectures for adults (in that program, she earned honorable mention for a paper on “The Story of Faust” in 1891). Champion also had a keen interest in history. On the basis of documenting her genealogy, she became a member of the <a href="https://nscda.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Colonial Dames Society</a>; later in life, she served as secretary of the <a href="https://cchsnj.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden County Historical Society</a> (which met for a time in the library). The Cooper Library soon became designated as a branch within a small system of libraries in Camden. In 1903, Camden accepted a gift of $100,000 from Pennsylvania steel magnate <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andrew-Carnegie" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Andrew Carnegie</a>, who financed library buildings around the country in keeping with his “<a href="https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gospel of Wealth</a>” philosophy. The new Carnegie-funded building, which opened in 1905 on Broadway at Line Street, became the central <a href="https://www.nj.gov/dca/njht/funded/sitedetails/carnegie_library_camden.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Free Library</a>; in addition to the Cooper Branch Library in the former mansion, another branch opened in East Camden. Women's Activism Just as women had played a pivotal role in establishing Cooper Park and saving the mansion, they increasingly used the Cooper Branch Library as a place for gathering and activism. These activities escalated after 1907, when a renovation installed an auditorium on the building’s second floor. The Camden Woman’s Club, a mainstay of civic and social activity for middle- and upper-class women since 1894, moved its headquarters to the library after the renovation. By 1912, the library began hosting speakers who promoted <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/woman-suffrage/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">woman suffrage</a>, and it hosted meetings of the Camden Equal Suffragist League beginning with the organization’s founding in 1913. Local <a href="https://www.dar.org/">Daughters of the American Revolution</a> met at the library and established a Visiting Nurses Society, which also met there. At the Cooper Branch Library in 1916, with the Great War underway in Europe, local women organized a chapter of the New Jersey Women’s Division for National Preparedness. During the war, the library became headquarters for the Red Cross. Other groups that united women and men for civic betterment—the Civic Club and the Playgrounds Commission, for example—gathered in the library as well. Collectively, these activities made the Cooper Branch Library a center for Progressive Era causes for more than a decade and defined it as predominantly a place for women’s activism. An act of philanthropy in 1915 signaled an approaching end to the mansion’s service as a library and community center. Eldridge R. Johnson, the founder and president of the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>, announced his intention to donate $130,000 for construction of a new, modern library in Cooper Park to replace the older building. Johnson’s factories and offices, the product of rapid expansion since the company’s founding in 1901, stood adjacent to the park. He intended the gift to provide a library more in keeping with the scale and impressive, neoclassical architecture of cultural institutions in major American cities. Although not stated as such in the public record, such a library would compare favorably or potentially outshine to the central Camden Free Library that had been funded by Andrew Carnegie. The new <a href="https://johnson-park.camden.rutgers.edu/library.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Branch Library</a>, constructed behind the old Cooper Mansion, opened in 1919. Then, with only a ripple of public opposition, contractors demolished the mansion. Johnson donated additional funds to renovate and beautify the square, which the city renamed <a href="https://johnson-park.camden.rutgers.edu/history.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Johnson Park</a> in his honor in 1920. Associated Individuals For a list of all known occupants of 121 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 121. Sources Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1910 (Ancestry.com). Camden, New Jersey, Newspapers. Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. "<a href="https://li.proquest.com/elhpdf/histcontext/21st_Congress.pdf">Twenty-First Congress</a>" and "<a href="https://li.proquest.com/elhpdf/histcontext/22nd_Congress.pdf">Twenty-Second Congress</a>" (Proquest). Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires 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 Cooper Mansion (121 Cooper Street) Description An account of the resource Demolished home to two generations of the Cooper family, later a public library. 100 Block 121 Cooper Street 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s Attorneys Bankers Banking Cooper Family Cooper Hospital Cooper Park Demolition Doctors Eldridge Johnson Extended Family Johnson Park Librarians Libraries Mansard Philanthropy Public Health Public Officials Red Cross Reform Renovations Woman Suffrage Women's Clubs World War I