3 10 43 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/940a071ba366045ec585e356e7f866b0.jpg 52136e1b6a3bb96d7ad03cefc860084b 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 329 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places. The anchor of a row of three houses built in the early 1850s, it supports the district’s significance as a collection of residences representing the nineteenth-century history of Camden. It further demonstrates the district’s stated significance as an illustration of transitions from residential and professional to commercial use. Its early history as a home to large families offers a resonant connection with its later purpose as the location of the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Childhood Studies</a>. Architectural style Greek Revival, obscured by later renovations. Date of construction c. 1851 History When George Bockius, a leather tanner from Philadelphia, bought land at the northwest corner of Fourth and Cooper Streets in 1851, his property was in the rapidly developing fringe between settled Camden and farmland to the north that had been owned by the Cooper family since the late seventeenth century. By the time Bockius and his family moved to 329 Cooper Street, in 1853, the Philadelphia Public Ledger was taking note of the “many beautiful and elegant improvements made on and about Cooper Street.” The newspaper observed, “There are now in process of construction on it some fifteen commodious dwelling houses, and every lot on it, from the river to Sixth street, has been sold to persons who will immediately improve them.” Bockius bought enough frontage on Cooper Street – forty feet – to build two rowhouses but erected just one, leaving a side lot along Fourth Street. His house anchored a row of three similar residences, each constructed of brick, three stories high. Bockius came to this newest area of Camden from Philadelphia’s oldest. His lineage traced to the colonial-era settlement of Germantown, and his family’s tannery operated in the traditional leather district around Third and Callowhill Streets near the Delaware River. The location near the waterfront gave the tanners good access to the skins that they imported from Mexico, South America, and Asia, and their operations north of Vine Street separated the hot, noxious activity of boiling and tanning skins from the heart of the city. The Bockius tannery, a longstanding family business, specialized in morocco leather, the soft product used for gloves, shoes, and book bindings. <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/ferries/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ferries</a> between Camden and Philadelphia allowed Bockius to move his young and growing family to new surroundings while still tending to his business. In 1849, he had married Elizabeth Frances Logan (known as Fanny), the daughter of a Philadelphia merchant. She bore two children by the time they relocated to Camden, and three more after they moved. By 1860, their household consisted of George, then 38 years old; Fanny, ten years younger, and the children ranging in age from one-month-old Peter to a nine-year-old daughter, also called Fanny. The Bockius household also employed domestic servants. In 1860 they included two women, Irish immigrant Mary Dwire, 26 years old, and Mary Sanders, 19, who was born in Pennsylvania. A third servant, a man named Orman (Armon) Barranger (variously spelled Barringer or Barrenger), was 22 years old, born in New York, and identified by Census takers as “mulatto.” When he registered for the draft in Camden in 1863, he listed his race as “coloured” and his occupation as “waiter.” As the Bockius family grew, it also experienced loss. One child, 5-year-old Maria Logan Bockius, died in 1858 from causes not made public. In 1861, Fanny Logan Bockius was 10 years old when she developed “dropsy,” the condition of swelling later called edema, which can be an indication of disease in the heart, kidneys, or liver. In the custom of the time, funerals for the children were held at home before their burial, which took place at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. A relative or family friend memorialized Fanny with a poem published in the Camden Democrat, beginning: How sweetly, e’en in death, that fair young face Shone out amid the flowers clustered there; One felt, tho’ beautiful, each blossom placed To deck her form, were even still less fair. Yes, beautiful she looked, so soon to lie Enclosed within the vault at Laurel Hill; So soon removed from earth, so young to die— Yet must we bow submission to His will. The Bockius family returned to Philadelphia after the death of young Fanny. The move also coincided with the expanding business interests of George Bockius. During the 1860s he took an active role in organizing a trade association, the Morocco Manufacturers’ Exchange, and he expanded his investments to include a ferry line between Philadelphia and Gloucester City, a railroad on South Broad Street in Philadelphia, and a coal company in New York. The house at 329 Cooper Street was rented to tenants until its sale to a new owner in 1865. Wealth and Health Like the Bockius family, the owner of 329 Cooper Street for the next 15 years had ties to Philadelphia and a large family. Cooper P. Knight, a fish and provisions merchant on the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia, had long lived in Camden in a house on Third Street with his parents and siblings. He started his own family there after marrying Catherine Fisher, who was known as Kate, in 1859. Although the Knights were Quakers with roots in Woodbury and New Castle County, Delaware, the wedding took place in Philadelphia at the First Presbyterian Church. The Knights moved into 329 Cooper Street in 1865, filling the house once again with the activity of young children. In the 1870 Census the family consisted of Cooper, age 44, Kate, then 32; six children ranging in age from 1 to 10; and Kate’s father, James Fisher, 68. They employed two domestic servants: Anna Potts, 32 years old, who had immigrated from England, and Martha Hatton, age 18, who was born in Pennsylvania. In addition to the servants, the family had luxuries that reflected financial prosperity: a gold watch and a piano. Cooper P. Knight had sufficient wealth to join other Camden and Philadelphia investors in capitalizing an oil-drilling venture in West Virginia. The family’s fortunes at 329 Cooper Street illustrated the tenuous relationship that could exist between health and wealth in the nineteenth century. In 1874, Cooper P. Knight experienced chest pain while out riding. A doctor provided medication, but “about half-past two in the morning Mrs. Knight was awakened by the struggling of her husband and found him dying, and dissolution speedily ensued,” the Camden Democrat newspaper recounted. He died at age 49, leaving Kate a widow with six children. They remained in the Cooper Street house, although with less household help. In the 1880 Census, when the children ranged in age from 9 to 20, their one servant was a 12-year-old girl, Florence Bickington. She was illiterate without knowledge of her mother’s identity, suggesting she might have been placed out to work by an orphanage. The death of Kate Knight in 1880 left her oldest daughter, Emily, the head of the household. The siblings could not sustain tax payments on the Cooper Street home, which was seized and put to sheriff’s sale in 1882. The siblings stayed together but moved to Stockton Township, the more rural area that later developed into the Cramer Hill section of Camden. Physician’s Family The sheriff’s sale of the Knight family’s home occurred during a decade of transformation for Cooper Street. During the 1880s, the thoroughfare was increasingly favored by physicians, often recent graduates of Philadelphia medical schools who found the growing city of Camden a good opportunity for starting new practices. The trend was encouraged by the construction of Cooper Hospital, which opened in 1887. Dr. J. Orlando White, head of the next family to live at 329 Cooper Street, followed the path of many other Camden physicians but was ahead of the trend for Cooper Street. Born in Atlantic County in 1847, White came to Camden as a young man to study medicine with a member of the Cooper family, Dr. Richard M. Cooper, and then enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania medical school. By 1871, he settled his family and practice into a rented house at 326 Cooper Street (across from the Knight family then at 329). He married Elizabeth Starr, the daughter of a prominent Camden industrialist; they had one son who died in infancy and another, Jesse, who was about 10 years old when they moved across the street. In the same block, Dr. White’s widowed mother, Mary, lived with one of his sisters at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/82" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">325 Cooper Street</a>. Although considerably smaller than the earlier families at 329 Cooper Street, the Whites still employed two domestic servants, usually Irish immigrant women. During their first years at this address, from 1883 to 1887, the household also included Elizabeth White’s father, Jesse W. Starr. Then in his 70s, Starr had made and lost a fortune as proprietor of the Camden Iron Works, <a href="https://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/HGSv19.1830-1831" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a massive foundry</a> that produced pipes for the water, sewage, and gas works of growing American cities. The company held contracts and franchises from Boston to San Francisco, and Starr’s prosperity became Camden’s good fortune through acts such as the donation of a site for new city hall. The iron works foundered during the financial panic of 1873, however, and began accumulating debt that led to voluntary bankruptcy in 1878. Starr, whose personal wealth had been estimated between $2 million and $3 million, lost his home, real estate, and horses to satisfy creditors. A widower, he spent the last years of his life with his daughter at 329 Cooper Street. He died there in 1886 of “nervous prostration,” at age 77, after exhibiting indications of dementia. While the Whites lived at 329 Cooper Street, the doctor pivoted from the practice of medicine to another matter of public health, the promotion of water plants and sewage disposal plants. (Perhaps not incidentally, the public works projects he promoted required pipes, which continued to be produced by successor owners of the Camden Iron Works.) He also led a legal fight to retain his wife’s standing as the sole designated heir of Jesse W. Starr, which was contested by her three brothers. Despite the bankruptcy ordeal, the estate amounted to several hundred thousand dollars. J. Orlando White lived until 1909, and 329 Cooper Street remained home for Elizabeth White for twenty-eight years longer, until her death in 1937. Unlike other widows on Cooper Street, she did not rent rooms to boarders; nor did she follow the practice of living with adult children (her married son, Jesse, lived in Merchantville). She shared the home only with servants, usually a married couple. For a remarkably long period—at least 15 years, from 1913 to 1928—her employees were James and Lucy Harris, African Americans who were born in Virginia. In their 30s and 40s while working for Elizabeth White, their lives had spanned from the Reconstruction era in the South to the wave of migration north that became known as the Great Migration. Lucy Harris had family ties in Philadelphia—at least one nephew, who worked as a porter at the Union League. Another member of the Harris family, Robert, was employed as a butler in the home of Elizabeth White’s son Jesse. End of an Era After the death of Elizabeth White, her son and daughter-in-law placed it in the care of a housekeeper and lived there themselves between 1940 and 1943. But the era of single-family homes on Cooper Street had passed. Since construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), completed in 1926, real estate interests in Camden had pushed conversions of residences on Cooper Street into offices and apartment buildings. By the 1940s two institutions of higher education, the College of South Jersey and the South Jersey School of Law, also were a growing presence. These forces combined to chart the future of 329 Cooper Street. In 1949, the College of South Jersey purchased 329 Cooper Street from the estate of Jesse S. White. The acquisition added to the collection of buildings that the college, founded in 1926, was acquiring in the vicinity of Cooper, Penn, and Linden Streets. A short walk from Cooper Street, the former mansion of advertising pioneer Francis Wayland Ayer at 406 Penn Street had been purchased by the college in 1946 for its main offices. At 329 Cooper Street, the college embarked on a renovation to create recreation rooms and a snack bar for students on the first floor and classrooms on the second. The strategy of campus expansion soon changed, however, when the College of South Jersey and the South Jersey School of Law affiliated with Rutgers University in 1950. Although 329 Cooper Street had been so recently renovated for student use, Rutgers developed a master plan for new buildings on an expanded campus to be created by urban renewal demolition in the area between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Cooper Street houses were spared from demolition because of their perceived commercial value, but Rutgers sold 329 Cooper Street in 1954 to a dentist and his wife, Saul and Frances Artis. Dentistry and Donation Saul Artis was among many other professionals during the 1950s and 1960s who made their living in Camden but chose not to live there – a common pattern in the decades following World War II. Saul, a graduate of Camden High School and the University of Pennsylvania Dental School, had served in the Army Dental Corps in the Panama Canal Zone. Following the war, he established his dental practice in Camden, but after marrying Frances they and their three children lived in Haddon Township. Although living in the suburbs, the Artises invested in Camden, purchasing not only 329 Cooper Street from Rutgers but also the adjoining rowhouse, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/81" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">327</a>. The buildings served as Saul’s office as well as rental apartments for students. While other buildings in North Camden suffered from the neglect of absentee landlords, the Artises participated in the Cooper Street Association, which carried out beautification and maintenance projects. In 1960, they remodeled 329 Cooper Street into modernized offices and apartments. The project reoriented the building to place its entrance on the Fourth Street side, and the addition of an exterior stair tower allowed inside stairs to be ripped out to create more room for offices and apartments. A former stable behind the house also was remodeled and converted into an air-conditioned office. While the Artises invested and remodeled, Rutgers carried out its urban renewal plan for the adjacent blocks to the north. Appreciating the growth of the university next door, by 1981 the Artises donated their buildings to Rutgers; Saul Artis still maintained an active dental practice at 329 Cooper Street until he retired, even after it became the Rutgers-Camden admissions office. The building, named the Artis Building after the donors, also served as the campus financial services office before being renovated once again for a new purpose. In 2018, 329 Cooper Street and the adjacent rowhouse at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/81" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">327 Cooper Street</a> became home to the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Childhood Studies</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 329 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 329. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Note on sources: Earlier historic structures surveys placed George Bockius at 325 Cooper Street, but property deeds establish that he lived at this address, 327. Research by Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, Melissa Bryson, and Mary Katt. 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 329 Cooper Street Subject The topic of the resource 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 2000s 2010s 300 Block 329 Cooper Street African Americans Apartments Atlantic County Black Migration Camden Iron Works Children College of South Jersey Death Dentists Doctors Dropsy Fish Haddon Township Heart Disease Leather Manufacturers Merchantville Philadelphia Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Virginia https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/5d94eac0fafe294d65709896e0dc8aca.jpg 86eddcec41502d24f44810beba07bfb6 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 305 Cooper Street is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, described in its nomination as “one of the most distinguished extent attached townhouses of the American Queen Anne Revival style in the nation, and probably was one of the best of the early urban works of its architect, Wilson Eyre.” Also a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, the residence was home to a prominent Camden physician, Henry Genet Taylor, and his family for seventy-five years. Restored by Rutgers University, it serves as the <a href="https://writershouse.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Writers House</a> of the Department of English. Architectural style Queen Anne Revival Date of construction 1885-86 History The exuberant townhouse at 305 Cooper Street created a stir in Camden when it appeared in 1885-86. Unlike any previous house in the city, and surpassing most built thereafter, the building reflected a highly individualized embrace of Queen Anne style that discarded the staidness and symmetry of its neighbors on Cooper Street. “This structure will mark an entirely new departure in Camden architecture, being of an entirely new ornate character,” the Camden County Courier forecast as construction began in June 1885. At least some of the locals were not pleased. The new residence was “the subject of considerable criticism from architects and others,” the Morning Post noted as the house neared completion the following January. The spectrum of opinion hinted in the local press ranged from a tempered mention of the “unique residence on Cooper Street [that] attracts so much attention” (Morning Post, January 16, 1886) to a more barbed referenced to the “costly and peculiarly constructed residence" (Daily Courier, November 4, 1886). The Philadelphia architect who designed the home, <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/25852" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wilson Eyre</a>, was then early in his career but on his way to becoming one of the most sought-after residential architects on the East Coast. Known for individuality, creativity, and attention to detail, his work included mansions for prominent people in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, and he later designed the fountain for Logan Square on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Path to Cooper Street Henry Genet Taylor, 50 years old when he moved his family into the new house on Cooper Street, came from a family with deep ties in the medical community of Philadelphia and Camden. His father, Dr. Othniel Taylor, had gained prominence in Philadelphia for his role in combatting the cholera epidemic of 1832; moving to Camden in 1844, when Henry Genet and his two brothers were boys, the elder Dr. Taylor was among the organizers of the Camden County and city medical societies. Henry Genet Taylor’s mother, Evelina, descended from English Quaker settlers of West Jersey and reflected family heritage in the naming of her sons. Her lineage included an indirect line to Edmond-Charles Genet, also known as “Citizen” Genet, the first ambassador from France to the United States during the 1790s. Thus Henry was known throughout his life as “Genet,” his given middle name. An older, named Othniel for his father, had the middle name Gazzam from his mother’s side of the family. A younger son had an unusual first name, Marmaduke, and his mother’s maiden name, Burroughs, in the middle. Henry Genet Taylor remained in his boyhood home in the 300 block of Market Street as he largely followed his father’s path to the University of Pennsylvania medical school and leadership positions with the medical societies and <a href="https://stpaulschurchcamden.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church</a> across the street from their house. His life took a more dramatic turn, however, with the outbreak of the Civil War. Newly graduated from medical school and appointed assistant surgeon for the <a href="http://8thnj.org/history" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eighth Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers</a>, he deployed deep into Virginia to treat the wounded and recover the dead. In four vivid letters published in the West Jersey Press during 1862, he recounted his experiences, including the <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/williamsburg-the-battle-of/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Battle of Williamsburg</a> and an encounter with General Stonewall Jackson while on a pass behind Confederate lines to retrieve wounded Union soldiers. Taylor continued his service later in the war with the Third Army Corps, which placed him at the Battle of Gettysburg. He mustered out of the Army in 1864, but military service remained a fixture of his life through the National Guard and medical examinations for the Board of Pensions. After the Civil War, while launching his private practice, Henry Genet Taylor joined with his father, brother Othniel, and other prominent Camden residents to establish the Camden Dispensary, which became another lifelong position of service. Founded in 1867 with funds left over from bounties raised to hire substitute soldiers for the Union Army, the dispensary provided medical care to indigent patients. The dispensary operated in a former fire house on Third Street south of Market with the younger Othniel Taylor, a pharmacist, in charge of day-to-day operations. Only after the death of both of his parents (his father in 1870 and his mother in 1878) did Henry Genet Taylor take steps to establish his own household and family. In 1879 when he was 42 years old, he married Helen Cooper, who was 10 years younger. Their union set a course toward the home later built at 305 Cooper Street because the new Mrs. Taylor was a descendant of Camden’s founding family, which had extensive land holdings north of that thoroughfare. She had grown up amid an extended family of aunts and uncles in the “Cooper Mansion” between Second and Front Streets, the later site of Johnson Park. The Cooper heirs sold most of their property for development from the 1840s through the 1870s. But in 1885 the 305 Cooper Street double lot—the only undeveloped parcel remaining on the block—came back into the family through a mortgage foreclosure and sheriff’s sale. Helen Cooper Taylor’s aunt, Elizabeth, gained title to the land. How and why the Taylors commissioned Wilson Eyre to design their new home is unknown. But Cooper Street in the early 1880s was becoming a setting for homes grander than the three-story brick rowhouses built a generation before. Enormous mansions anchored the area around Sixth and Cooper, and houses for the length of the thoroughfare gained new front yard space in the early 1880s when the City Council agreed to move the curbs of Cooper Street toward the center by twelve feet on each side. The more pastoral setting prompted a wave of architect-designed houses, with 305 Cooper Street among the trend setters. Physician’s Home and Office Among its many other unusual qualities, the house at 305 Cooper Street was purpose-built to serve as both a home and office. Such a dual use was common among physicians, were becoming plentiful on Cooper Street during the 1880s in anticipation of the opening of nearby <a href="https://www.cooperhealth.org/about-us/our-history" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Hospital</a>. But this house was designed from the start to serve both purposes, not adapted. The front entrance enabled visitors to proceed in either of two directions, into the office or the family quarters. A separate unusual front entrance descended from ground level to enable deliveries and servants to reach the back of the house through a passageway, out of sight of both patients and family. The Taylors—a family that had grown to include two young sons—settled into the new house at the end of the summer of 1886, after their customary annual sojourn in Cape May. The next year, Taylor was among the physicians appointed to a staff position with the newly opened Cooper Hospital, which became another of his lifelong affiliations. The family’s prosperity was tempered by loss, however. Shortly before the move to Cooper Street, Genet’s older brother Othniel, the mainstay of the Camden Dispensary, died from heart disease at the age of 52. Then, less than a year after the move, an infant daughter born to Helen and Genet died at four months of causes that were not publicly disclosed. In the custom of the time, the funeral for the child, Helen Elizabeth Taylor, was held at home. More funerals followed in 1890 for Genet’s younger brother Marmaduke, a lawyer, who died from acute peritonitis at age 54, and seven months later for Marmaduke’s widow Agnes, who had cancer. These deaths added to the Taylor household their minor niece, Annie. Despite such sad beginnings, the Taylors and their descendants remained at 305 Cooper Street for a remarkable seventy-five years, longer than most owners in the neighborhood. The Taylors raised two sons to adulthood, Henry G. Taylor Jr., who was known as Harry, and Richard Cooper Taylor. Domestic servants were also a constant presence, typically Irish or German immigrants who lived in rooms on the third floor. During summers the Taylors, like many other wealthy families in Camden, left the city for extended weeks or months in resort areas. The Taylors customarily spent their summers at Cape May, but during the 1890s extended their travels to more distant resorts. In this era of railroad tourism by those who could afford it, the Taylors at first sought out the health benefits of areas with mineral springs. Both Genet and Helen endured chronic health challenges, for his part rheumatism and gout, and for her the aftereffects of surviving typhoid fever. Their summer journeys took them to White Sulphur Springs and Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, and Hot Springs, Virginia. While not abandoning Cape May, over the next decade, they widened their travels into a circuit that also included resorts in Lake Placid, New York, and St. Catherines in Ontario, Canada. The benefits were noticeable to Dr. Taylor’s neighbors in Camden, for example prompting the Morning Post to note in 1895, “Dr. H. Genet Taylor is home again after two months of recreation looking well, and to quote the genial doctor, feeling chipper and young again.” Henry Genet Taylor headed the household at 305 Cooper Street until he died in 1916 from “ailments incident to old age,” including recent bouts with pneumonia and influenza. At 79, his lifespan had far exceeded his brothers, and the accolades that followed his death pointed to his lifelong devotion to health care, including his service during the Civil War. Cooper Hospital installed a memorial tablet in the main corridor. The Cooper Street house passed to his widow, Helen, who lived until 1936, and then to their sons. A new generation of Taylors at 305 Cooper Street began in the 1920s, after Henry Genet Taylor Jr. married Maude Denney, the daughter of a local banker. Their two children carried on the names that had become common: another Henry Genet Taylor (III), born in 1925, and another Helen Cooper Taylor (named for her grandmother but known as “Tottie,” born in 1927). The younger Helen Cooper Taylor carried on the family tradition in medicine by enlisting in the <a href="https://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/c.php?g=860714&p=6167910" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">United States Cadet Nurse Corps</a> during the Second World War, when she was 17 years old. Continuity and Change Throughout the continuity of the Taylors’ ownership, North Camden was changing around them. Construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), completed in 1926, prompted civic boosters in Camden to envision Cooper Street as a commercial thoroughfare. Real estate interests fueled speculative buying, selling, and converting of former residences into offices and apartment buildings. The Taylors eventually joined this trend, in part. While they remained in the home, after Helen Cooper Taylor’s death in 1936 her son Henry Genet Jr. converted the upper floors into apartments of one to two rooms with tile baths, showers, and Pullman kitchens. By the time of the 1940 Census, the occupants included not only the Taylor nuclear family but also tenants who represented a spectrum of working life in Camden: Arthur Beckman, age 21, a draftsman at the New York Shipbuilding Co.; Mary Lord, 23, a social worker for the YWCA who had been born in Hawaii; Margaret Miller, 30, a public school teacher, and her roommate, Jeanette Bloombaum, 40, a bookkeeper for the Works Progress Administration; Mildred Patton, 23, a restaurant dietician, and her husband Paul, 22, a piler for a transportation company; and Beatrice Watson, 43, a saleswoman in a department store. For about 10 years between 1940 and 1950, the tenants included Agnes Draper, a longtime teacher who had been the first principal of Camden High School. The neighborhood around Third and Cooper Streets became considerably more dense with apartment dwellers, including young children who were products of the baby boom that followed the Second World War. They attended the Cooper School on Third Street north of Linden, which placed them at risk from traffic to and from the factories on Camden’s waterfront. In 1952 one of the Taylors’ tenants, Jennie Seavers, mobilized the Cooper School PTA to call attention to the danger. Seavers and other women from the PTA joined hands to form human chains across the intersections of Third Street with Cooper and Linden Streets to block drivers for six minutes while their children passed and to demand that the city install traffic signals. Two months later, without acknowledging the role of the protest, the city complied. Historic Preservation By the time Henry Genet Taylor Jr. died in 1961, his son had moved to Florida and his daughter had married and lived in the suburbs. North of Cooper Street, rowhouses built during the 1860s and 1870s had deteriorated from intense use and neglect by absentee landlords, and redlining imposed in the 1930s discouraged investment. Rutgers University had announced a plan to demolish houses between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge to create an expanded campus through urban renewal. Like other longtime residences in the area, 305 Cooper Street was offered for sale as an apartment house, not a home. “Close to Rutgers College,” said the advertisement. “Attractive stone building in excellent condition, six apartments plus entire first floor which can be made into three additional apartments. Never a vacancy. A good investment. Asking $35,000.” By the late 1960s, 305 Cooper Street and other nineteenth-century buildings in Camden found a protector in Edward J. Teitelman, a psychiatrist by profession with a keen appreciation for historic architecture. He purchased 305 Cooper Street, where he lived with his wife, Mildred, and two sons; <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">303 Cooper Street</a> next door, where he opened a mental health clinic; and other properties on Cooper and Lawrence Streets. As a member of the <a href="https://newtonmeetingcamden.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Newton Friends Meeting</a> on Cooper Street between Seventh and Eighth, in 1966 he argued for its protection from a state highway project then threatening the building. “If Camden is ever going to revive,” he said, “these places ought to be here. There should be some evidence of what was.” Teitelman, who later became chairman of the Camden Historical Review Committee, turned scholarly attention on his home at 305 Cooper Street. With cooperation from the Taylor family, he documented the details of the structure and advocated for its significance in American architectural history. In 1970, while serving as preservation officer for Camden County, he successfully nominated his house for listing on the <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail/c2c6844d-0dac-420b-a0d7-c516e8c924e2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Register for Historic Places</a>. It was, he stated, “one of the most distinguished extent attached townhouses of the American Queen Anne Revival style in the nation, and probably was one of the best of the early urban works of its architect, Wilson Eyre.” In 1980 Teitelman published a comprehensive article about the house in Winterthur Portfolio, a prestigious journal of decorative arts and material culture, and in 1983 it was documented for the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/nj0011/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Historic American Buildings Survey</a>. These acknowledgements of the significance of 305 Cooper Street set a precedent for designation of the Cooper Street Historic District, approved for the National Register in 1989. Teitelman’s advocacy for Cooper Street buildings extended into the late 1980s, when he opposed demolishing houses in the historic district to create a site for a federal courthouse annex but lost the fight. In 1999, he argued against running the New Jersey Transit <a href="https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Transit_RiverLine" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Riverline</a> through the historic district. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, 305 Cooper Street was among properties owned by Teitelman that appeared in legal notices related to back taxes. Finally, in 2001 a trustee for Edward and Mildred Teitelman sold 305 Cooper Street as well as the house next door (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">303</a>) to Rutgers University. The house built for Henry Genet and Helen Taylor sat in deteriorating condition for a decade, until Rutgers approved $7 million to rehabilitate it and a house across the street (312) for use by the university. The result at 305 Cooper Street, a grandly restored <a href="https://writershouse.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Writers House</a> for the Department of English, in 2016 received a <a href="https://smparchitects.com/ribbon-cutting-at-rutgers-writers-house/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Grand Jury Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia</a>. Associated architects/builders <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/25852" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wilson Eyre</a>, architect. Restoration by <a href="https://smparchitects.com/ribbon-cutting-at-rutgers-writers-house/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SMP Architects</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Teitelman, Edward. “Wilson Eyre in Camden: The Henry Genet Taylor House and Office.” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol 15, No 3 (Autumn 1980): 229-55. Research by Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, and Mikaela Maria Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 305 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 305. 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 305 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Structure on the National Register of Historic Places, contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District. 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 200s 2010s 300 Block 305 Cooper Street Activism Apartments Camden Dispensary Children Civil War Cooper Family Death Doctors Gout Heart Disease Historic Preservation Immigrants Nurses Peritonitis Philadelphia Queen Anne Renovations Restoration Rheumatism Rutgers-Camden Servants Teachers Tourism Typhoid Fever https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/59ba02cfefc7e9519bfa4fb3ff75e9dd.jpg c39b0193f6dbec81019fe0c9216d4e67 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 303 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places. A 1980 survey of historic structures on Cooper Street described the building as “the best example of high-school, pre-Civil War architecture to be found in Camden.” It therefore supports the historic district’s designation on the basis of architectural merit as well as its representation of broad patterns of American history. Through its owners and occupants, this house tells the story of Camden’s development in manufacturing, finance, and medicine, and its later challenges as a post-industrial city. Purchased by Rutgers University in 2001, it serves as an office building for the <a href="https://camden.rutgers.edu/discover-camden/leadership/office-of-chancellor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rutgers-Camden Chancellor</a> and other senior administrators. Architectural style Renaissance Revival Date of construction 1853 History Prior to the 1850s, the undeveloped land in the vicinity of Third and Cooper Streets, stretching northward to Pearl Street, was known as “Carman’s Field.” William Carman, a prosperous and prominent operator of a sawmill and lumber yard on the Camden waterfront, controlled more than 10 acres that had descended through the Cooper family to Carman’s wife, Mary Ann Cooper, who died in 1841. The house on the northeast corner of Third and Cooper Streets, later numbered 303, is a product of the sale, division, and development of the Carman land in 1852. While still owned by Carman, the later location of 303 Cooper Street had a two-story wood frame house occupied during the 1840s by a maker of water pumps, Joseph Vautier, the son of a <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/france-and-the-french/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">French immigrant</a> to Philadelphia. Vautier was remembered decades later for the pump that stood in front of his house, which was regarded as a source of excellent water during the cholera epidemic of 1849. Development of the Carman property displaced Vautier, who moved his family from Third and Cooper to another house to the west beyond Seventh Street. In 1852, a broker named Solomon Stimson acquired the double-width lot at Third and Cooper from a group of investors who had acquired the entire Carman field. In June 1853, the Philadelphia Public Ledger observed him “erecting a large and very tastily arranged dwelling on Cooper Street, which will be an ornament to that rapidly improving section of the city.” Stimson covered the old well with flagstones and ran the water through pipes to serve the new home. Wealth and Status Solomon Stimson’s house was double the width of the rowhouses recently constructed in the rest of the block, and it reached beyond them in architectural style with features such as its brownstone foundation and hooded windows. It was similar in size but also fancier than the home recently completed in the 400 block of Cooper Street for George W. Carpenter (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/74" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">401-03 Cooper Street</a>), a lumber merchant who later entered into a manufacturing partnership with Stimson. The source of Stimson’s wealth and his reasons for being in Camden are unclear. He came from a rural area of Saratoga County, New York, north of Albany, but by 1850 was in Camden, 30 years old, and heading a household that included his wife Flora (28 years old, also born in New York); a one-year-old son, James; his younger brother John, 25 years old; and two domestic servants who were Irish immigrants, Ann and Bridget McLeod. The Stimson brothers both reported their occupations as “brokers,” but brokers of what? It’s possible that their connections with Camden were formed through the lumber industry, given Solomon Stimson’s association with George Carpenter, his purchase of part of the Carman land, and his later return to upstate New York, a timber region. By 1860, Stimson and Carpenter were in business together as Stimson and Carpenter, manufacturers of tape and webbing at Front and Pearl Streets. (They also both served as trustees of the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-religion/camdennj-church-2ndpresbyterian.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Second Presbyterian Church</a>, newly founded at Fourth and Benson Streets.) A glimpse of the Stimson family’s material possessions emerged from a burglary in 1864, which netted “about $800 worth of plate, jewelry, ornaments &c.,” the Camden Democrat reported. In 1866, the Internal Revenue Service taxed Stimson on possessions that included a carriage, two gold watches, and a piano. The Stimson family’s reasons for leaving Camden in 1867 are as unclear as their arrival. They returned to Saratoga County, New York, where Solomon Stimson listed his occupation as “lumber.” A Judge, Eventually The next owner of 303 Cooper Street, Isaiah Woolston, had just been elected to the Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders when he purchased the house from Solomon Stimson. Woolston, 50 years old, had a checkered career in and out of businesses that included lumber, poultry, and wholesale liquor. It was in the wholesale liquor business in Philadelphia that “he rapidly accumulated capital,” according to his later obituary in the Camden Morning Post. In Camden, he accumulated political capital as well, holding public office and serving as a director for enterprises that included the <a href="https://sjfilmoffice.com/location/camden-safe-deposit-trust-company/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Safe Deposit and Trust Co.</a> and the <a href="https://delawareriverheritagetrail.org/2021/06/24/the-camden-amboy-railroad/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden and Amboy Railroad</a>. He was a founder of <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-religion/camdennj-church-TrinityBaptist.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Trinity Baptist Church</a>. Woolston and his family occupied 303 Cooper Street for the next three decades, including a ten-year period when he advanced his political career to the position of lay judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Woolston, who had been born in the vicinity of Vincentown, Burlington County, headed a household of four sons with his wife Sarah, originally from Freehold, New Jersey. The family employed Black domestic servants, some of whom are known from Census records: in 1870, Eliza Duncan, 45 years old, who was born in Maryland and unable to read or write; in 1880, Mary E. Hines, 18 years old, also from Maryland and illiterate; and in 1885, Annie Burton, whose age and family history are unknown. A white domestic servant, Laura Dickenson, also came from Maryland and worked in the Woolston home in 1894. Later in the 1890s, the Woolstons advertised a preference for a “German girl for general housework.” With the benefit of domestic labor for housework, Sarah Woolston engaged in charitable activities. She served on the board of managers for the <a href="https://www.sageth.com/businesses/camden-home-for-friendless-children/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>, which had been organized by prominent Camden residents in 1865. Located on Haddon Avenue above Mount Vernon, it was an altruistic endeavor that also revealed prevailing attitudes toward the poor. While providing shelter, health care, and education to “destitute friendless children,” it also sought to place them out with families to learn trades or useful occupations. The home was also segregated, which prompted the creation of a separate institution for Black children, the West Jersey Orphanage for Colored Children, in 1874. While living at Third and Cooper, Judge Woolston added real estate investment to his variety of business and political activities. In 1878, he purchased a large tract of then-undeveloped land in the vicinity of Fourth and Penn Streets and resold it to a builder. The property had a frontage of 200 feet on Fourth Street, approximately the later site of the <a href="https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/camden" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Robeson Library of Rutgers-Camden</a>. Houses filled the block until they were demolished in the 1962-64 urban renewal project that created an enlarged campus for Rutgers. The four Woolston sons, ages 8 to 14 when they moved into 303 Cooper Street, grew to adulthood at this address. One son, Charles, had a condition that Census takers in 1880 recorded as “insane” and “idiotic.” He died in 1887 at age 30, “very suddenly in Trenton of apoplexy,” raising the possibility that he lived in a state facility. Another son, Clarence, became pastor of the East Baptist Church in Philadelphia and developed expertise in children’s Bible study. Harry Woolston went into the coal business in Camden but also embraced the bicycle craze of the 1890s by starting the Woolston Bicycle Enameling Company. Albert Woolston, a clerk during his father’s judgeship, entered the real estate business. The Woolston family’s ownership of 303 Cooper Street ended with the death of Isaiah Woolston in 1899 and Sarah Woolston in 1900. The family sold the home to a real estate agent, who advertised, “I will sell the handsome residence at the northeast corner of Third and Cooper Streets, at an exceedingly liberal price provided that a contract is made within ten days.” Banking and Medicine For the first two decades of the twentieth century, 303 Cooper Street continued to be home to prominent Camden business leaders. The next two owners were both presidents of the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Central_Trust_Camden_NJ.JPG" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Central Trust Company</a>, a bank founded in 1891 by local businessmen including Abraham Anderson, a canner who had been a partner in the business that later became Campbell Soup. The bank grew quickly to assets of more than $1 million by the time its then-president, Alpheus McCracken, bought the former Woolston home at Third and Cooper Streets. McCracken rose to business prominence in Camden through the carpentry trade. Born in 1843 in Morris County, New Jersey, McCracken apprenticed as a carpenter by the age of 16. Three years later, he enlisted in the Army and fought for the Union during the Civil War; his unit, the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0031RI" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Thirty-First Infantry Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers</a>, saw action at the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/chancellorsville" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Battle of Chancellorsville</a>. He moved to Camden from Bordentown, New Jersey, in the 1870s following the death of his first wife, which occurred just one month after the birth of their second son. Camden’s prominence in the lumber business and railroads proved advantageous for McCracken, as he gained employment as a lumber inspector for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s lines in New Jersey. By the 1880s, he was investing in construction-related businesses, the Richman Fire Escape Company and the Fay Manilla Roofing Company. Although not among the organizers of the new Central Trust Company, he was on its board of directors by 1893 and succeeded Abraham Anderson as president in 1897. Three years later, he moved from North Second Street to 303 Cooper Street, which was closer to the bank at Fourth and Federal. During their five years in the Cooper Street house, the McCracken family included Alpheus and his second wife, Lillian, a daughter, and two sons. The family also employed Black domestic servants who were born in the South, an indication of the increasing presence of African Americans in Camden at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1900 just before the move to Cooper Street, they employed Mary Hill, a Black woman identified by Census takers only as born in “the South,” who could neither read nor write. In 1905 their household on Cooper Street included a young widow, Rosa Hayden, a 24-year-old Black widow who was born in Virginia, also unable to read or write. Living with her was a 15-year-old Black youth with the same last name, Frederick Hayden, who was attending school. For reasons not publicly explained, in 1906 the McCrackens moved to Vineland, turning over their house at Third and Cooper to an associate for the nominal sum of $1. The new owner, homeopathic physician Harry H. Grace, was acquainted with Alpheus McCracken through their mutual involvement in the Camden Republican Club (then at 312 Cooper Street) and shared enthusiasm for automobile touring, a new pastime for the wealthy. Grace and his wife, Ellen, established their home and his medical practice at their new address; in 1910, they employed two Black domestic workers, 21-year-old Sadie Hughes and a “house man,” 22-year-old Lorne Flemming (in some records Flemming Green or Lemmond Green), who were both born in Virginia. During this period, Harry Grace also became involved in management of the Central Trust Company, elected to the board of directors in 1908 and then succeeding McCracken as president of the bank in 1915. Grace’s transition from medicine to banking occurred after his own health scare, which was not publicly identified but necessitated traveling to Frankfurt, Germany, for rest and to “take the celebrated baths in the hope of being restored to his wonted health and vigor,” the Camden Morning Post reported. The journey put Grace and his wife in Europe during the summer of 1914, as the First World War began to unfold following the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This apparently cut short the intended treatment of complete rest, as the Graces returned from Europe to Atlantic City, not Camden. Within weeks they traveled again, this time to Rochester, Minnesota, where Grace underwent surgery by one of the renowned Mayo brothers, who soon founded the <a href="https://history.mayoclinic.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mayo Clinic</a>. A year after the surgery, a celebration at the Union Club in Philadelphia marked Harry H. Grace’s ascendance to the presidency of Central Trust Bank, where Alpheus McCracken remained chairman of the board. By 1917, however, Grace left Camden for Atlantic City, where he continued to work in banking. McCracken resigned as chairman of Central Trust in 1918, citing ill health, and later lived in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. The Strenuous Life Unlike many homes on Cooper Street, 303 did not undergo conversion into an office building or apartments during the 1920s, the period of construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). As long as it continued to be owned by physicians, which continued into the 1950s, it remained a family home while also including an office for the doctor. This was the case for Dr. Edward Pechin, who bought the property in 1920 (moving from a house immediately behind it at 300 Penn Street). The household that year included Pechin, then 42 years old; his wife, Anna, 38; and their daughter Dorothy, 13. Like their predecessors at this address, they employed a Black domestic worker, 18-year-old Mary Blackson, who was born in New Jersey to parents born in Delaware. They also employed a white maid, 23-year-old Mary Gleaves, who was born in Maryland. Pechin, who was born in Philadelphia, had come to Camden as a youth to work in a drug store owned by his brother. While his brother maintained the pharmacy, Pechin proceeded to medical school at Jefferson College in Philadelphia, where he graduated in 1903. During that period he appears to have embraced the “<a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/roosevelt-strenuous-life-1899-speech-text/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">strenuous life</a>” philosophy espoused in 1899 by Theodore Roosevelt, who implored men to set aside lives of ease and become strong, individually and for the nation. In Camden, this took the form of the Camden Light Infantry, which formed in 1900, with Pechin participating as a lieutenant by 1904. The group devoted itself to military-style training, and members regarded their participation as cultivating not only physical fitness but also, in the words of a captain of the corps, “habits of mind, self-control, and reverence for the law.” Focusing his practice on internal medicine and treatment of tuberculosis, Pechin became a member of the Board of Managers of the <a href="https://digital.hagley.org/1970200_05385" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Tuberculosis Hospital</a>. Some traces of devotion to an active life continued: in 1911 he sprung to the rescue of a woman who tripped in the path of an approaching freight train; in 1918 he was reported to be close to collapse from overwork while treating patients at Cooper Hospital during the influenza epidemic. Known for tirelessly responding to patients, day or night, he later contracted the flu and pneumonia, which permanently sapped his strength. It came as a “severe shock,” the Camden Morning Post reported, in 1925 when Pechin contracted spinal meningitis. At age 47, he died several days later despite a dozen of his fellow physicians working in shifts to try to save his life with treatments that included spinal taps and brain surgery. His wife and daughter kept vigil. A year later, they left the house at Third and Cooper and relocated to Haddonfield. Jewish Home The next long-term owners of 303 Cooper Street, Dr. Max Ruttenberg and his wife, Anna, came to a neighborhood that had transformed during the 1920s to include a significant Jewish presence. Jewish entrepreneurs were active in renovating 50-year-old rowhouses into apartments during the period of real estate speculation that occurred in anticipation of the Delaware River Bridge. A cluster of Jewish-owned businesses, including a tailor shop, a delicatessen, and an automobile dealership, developed just a block away from Third and Cooper in the 200 block of Penn Street. Although Camden’s Jewish population centered more prominently in other parts of the city, the Ruttenbergs were not the only Jewish family in the vicinity of Cooper Street. Moving from their previous home on State Street in 1933, the Ruttenbergs were a family of five: Max, who was an ear, nose, and throat specialist, was 42 years old, and Anna was 36. They had been married twelve years and had three children, a son Bertram, 10 years old, and two daughters, 8-year-old Ruth and 4-year-old Serita. Their Jewish heritage was rooted in Russia. Max had been born there and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1900, when he was 8 years old, during a surge of new arrivals from southern and eastern Europe. Anna was the daughter of a Philadelphia rabbi who immigrated from Russia, as did her mother. In addition to their ties to extended family in both Camden and Philadelphia, the Ruttenbergs participated in networks of Jewish civic, social, and faith activities. Anna, a college graduate and a teacher before her marriage, was one of the organizers of the Camden chapter of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America; she served as chapter president in 1932. Shortly after moving to Cooper Street, in 1934, Max Ruttenberg was elected president of the Jewish Welfare Society, which raised funds to encourage self-reliance of the poor and to provide free medical and legal advice. The family’s religious life centered on <a href="https://bethelsnj.org/about-beth-el/our-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Congregation Beth-El</a>, which had been established in the Parkside neighborhood of Camden during the 1920s. Bertram Ruttenberg had his bar mitzvah there in 1935, followed by a reception at home. The Ruttenbergs lived at 303 Cooper Street for a little more than two decades, from 1933 until 1955. During this period Max Ruttenberg, who had degrees in dentistry from the University of Pennsylvania and in medicine from Temple University, joined the faculty of the Penn Graduate School of Medicine. The children grew up, attended college, and married. During the Second World War, Bertram Ruttenberg—by then a medical school graduate—served in Guam with the U.S. Army medical corps. Bertram’s sister Ruth in 1945 married a Philadelphia medical student who then served in the Army and later in the Air Force. Max and Anna Ruttenberg remained at 303 Cooper Street until the doctor retired in the early 1950s. They spent their later years primarily at the Jersey Shore, and their departure from Cooper Street marked the end of its era as a single-family home. Service to Camden After the Ruttenbergs moved from Camden, institutional and office uses of 303 Cooper Street reflected the changing social landscape and needs of the city. In 1955, the <a href="https://www.campbellsoupcompany.com/about-us/our-story/campbell-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Campbell Soup</a> Fund bought the building and presented it to the Camden County Community Chest and Council, an organization that raised and administered funding for “health, welfare, and character-building agencies and the USO.” The new headquarters was intended as a memorial to <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/leadership/20th-century-leaders/Pages/details.aspx?profile=arthur_c_dorrance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arthur C. Dorrance</a>, a president of the Campbell Soup Company and the first president of the Community Chest before his death in 1946. A plaque placed in the building acknowledged his service. The Community Chest, later known as the United Fund, operated at 303 Cooper for nearly two decades, until moving to 408 Cooper Street in 1972. Its relationships with social service agencies positioned the building to play a role in responding to the city’s needs in the wake of the Camden <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/camden-new-jersey-riots-1969-and-1971/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">riot of 1971</a>. After tensions between police and Camden’s growing Puerto Rican population ignited violence, an ad hoc group of social service leaders met at this location on August 27, 1971, to discuss ways of being more useful to the community and to plan responses to future emergencies. Leading the effort were Angel Perez, director of Community Organization for Puerto Rican Affairs, the Rev. Edward Walsh of Catholic Charities, and Ronald B. Evans, chairman of the Camden chapter of the <a href="https://www.thecongressofracialequality.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Congress for Racial Equality</a> (CORE). The departure of the United Fund in 1972 led to a period of ownership by Edward Teitelman, a psychiatrist and historic architecture enthusiast who also owned the distinctive nineteenth-century home next door (305 Cooper Street) and other buildings on Cooper Street and nearby. During the 1970s and 1980s, the building housed psychiatry practices and a Veterans Vocational Guidance Center (which lost its funding during federal budget cuts in 1980). The address appeared periodically in legal notices for overdue taxes through 1990 and came into the hands of Rutgers University in 2001 through purchase from a trustee for Edward Teitelman. Thereafter it served as an office building for the <a href="https://camden.rutgers.edu/discover-camden/leadership/office-of-chancellor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chancellor</a> and other senior administrators of Rutgers University-Camden. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 303 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 303. Sources Francis Berger, Genealogical and Memorial History of the State of New Jersey (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1910). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society, Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). U.S. Census, 1850-1950, and New Jersey State Census, 1885-1925 (Ancestry.com). Register of Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Civil War, 1861-65 (Ancestry.com). Nathanial B. Sylvester, History of Saratoga County, New York (Philadelphia: Everts & Ensign, 1878). Priscilla M. and Franklyn M. Thompson, "Central Trust Company," <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/ed8dd60e-55a4-4520-9013-b419ce02df74/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a>. Research by Charlene Mires, Scott Hearn, and Lucy Davis 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 303 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 2000s 300 Block 303 Cooper Street African Americans Automobiles Bala Cynwyd Banking Bar Mitzvah Black Migration Bordentown Camden Home for Friendless Children Camden Light Infantry Camden Republican Club Campbell Soup Company Civil War Community Chest Death Doctors Hadassah Immigration Jersey Shore Jewish Welfare Society Jews Lumber Manufacturers Maryland New York Puerto Ricans Riot of 1971 Russia Rutgers-Camden Servants Social Services Spinal Meningitis Tuberculosis United Fund Veterans Vineland World War II https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/a7748f4e180322c93e0d7ef8da804d93.jpg 20688c94d6ee93db78852f4d7ecf6457 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 407 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places, and notable as the home of a nineteenth-century descendant of the Cooper family. The district's nomination for the National Register identifies significance in part for the presence of Camden’s “most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses” and their embodiment of “the street’s change from residential and professional to commercial.” The house at 407 Cooper Street embodies this change through its history as a single-family home that transitioned to medical offices and apartments during the 1920s as affluent families moved to suburban towns during the construction period for the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). In 2000, Rutgers University acquired the building, which became home to the <a href="https://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice</a>. Architectural style Greek Revival Date of construction 1871 History Among the many building lots that heirs of the Cooper family sold on the north side of Cooper Street during the 1840s and 1850s, they retained one: the lot at 407, which remained undeveloped until construction of a three-story brick rowhouse in 1871. By that date, the lot had continued to pass through the family to William B. Cooper, who leased the house to another tenant for several years before retiring from farming in Stockton Township and moving into Camden in 1876 when he was 62 years old. The Cooper Family and Legacies of Slavery Descended from the first European landholders of the area that became Camden, William B. Cooper was born in 1814 in a house built by his grandparents in Delaware Township (later known as Stockton and still later developed into the Cramer Hill section of Camden). In the tradition of his Quaker family, he attended the <a href="https://newtonmeetingcamden.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Newton Friends</a> School and later the <a href="https://www.westtown.edu/our-purpose/history" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Westtown Boarding School</a> in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He returned to New Jersey and joined his father and brother Benjamin in farming the Cooper land. According to an <a href="https://archive.org/details/historyofcamdenc00prow/mode/2up" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1886 history of Camden County</a>, the two brothers and their father were “in the days of slavery … devoted friend[s] of the refugee slaves, and would do anything to comfort and protect them.” <a href="https://www.cchsnj.org/camden-slave-markers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Research by the Camden County Historical Society</a> has identified the Camden area as “Station A” on the Underground Railroad in New Jersey, and the Coopers’ Stockton Township property afforded an especially conducive location on the Delaware River opposite Petty Island. In earlier years, however, the extended Cooper family had benefitted from enslaved labor and the slave trade. The Historical Society’s research documented sales of enslaved people at Camden ferry landings, including the Cooper Point ferry that William B. Cooper’s father leased to a Philadelphia operator. Two such transactions took place while the lease was in effect (1762-64) and one after it ended. During the late eighteenth century, another member of the family, Marmaduke Cooper, is known to have held fourteen slaves on another plantation (where his home, <a href="http://historiccamdencounty.com/ccnews58.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pomona Hall</a>, became a museum). Those Cooper connections with slavery took place before William B. Cooper was born, but his life nevertheless entwined with the hierarchies of race that prevailed in the nineteenth century. In Stockton Township and at 407 Cooper Street, his household had both white and Black residents. At the head of the household were William and his wife, Phoebe, a descendant of another Quaker settler family, the Emlens; living with them was William’s older sister, Elizabeth. For the work of the household, they employed Black domestic servants, most consistently a woman in her 50s, Mary Ann Christmas, who moved with them from the farm to the city. Apart from the Coopers, Christmas headed her own household in Stockton Township, documented in the 1880 Census as including four children, among them a 9-year-old daughter already in domestic service with the Cooper family and a 12-year-old son working as a waiter in a hotel. An 11-year-old son was attending school; an 8-year-old daughter was not. The household also included a nephew, Joseph Dean, who at 23 years old could not read or write; he worked as a coachman for the Coopers and joined his aunt at the new house at 407 Cooper Street. Although separated from her own household, while in the Coopers’ employ Christmas amassed wages enough to purchase property in 1883. The lot and single-story frame house, in the vicinity of Twenty-Ninth Street and Mitchell Streets in Cramer Hill, remained the family home for at least two decades. In their elder years in Camden, the three Coopers of 407 Cooper Street became known for their support of charitable causes. All three played roles in managing and supporting the West Jersey Orphanage for Colored Children, which had been founded in 1874. Although an altruistic endeavor, the institution existed within its benefactors’ beliefs about the welfare and potential of Black children. The orphanage provided education and health care, but it also sought to “bind out” children over the age of 12 to enable them to learn trades or other employment. The Cooper household diminished in the 1880s with the deaths of Elizabeth in 1883, Phoebe in 1887, and finally William in 1888 at the age of 75. His bequests reflected the range of and character of his civic interests: Cooper Hospital received the largest bequest, $50,000, followed by $15,000 given to the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/places/friends-asylum.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Friends’ Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason</a>, located in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. The West Jersey Orphanage received $2,000, as did the City Dispensary and the Home for Friendless Children. To the servants of his household, he left $6,000. Fruit Merchant The next occupants of 407 Cooper Street, from 1888 until 1897, linked the home with merchant activity in Philadelphia and the pursuit of exotic fruits for the growing cities on both sides of the Delaware River. Eugene B. Redfield, who was in the produce business with his father at the <a href="https://hiddencityphila.org/2019/11/appetite-for-distribution-the-life-times-of-phillys-wholesale-food-center/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dock Street Market</a> in Philadelphia, was about 30 years old when he purchased 407 Cooper Street as a home for himself and his wife, Lydia. They employed Black servants, including Martha Woolford and Thomas Jefferson. Redfield & Son brought fruit and vegetables into Philadelphia from warmer climates in the South and West, then repacked and sold them to the nearby region. The founder of the firm, Eugene’s father Bradley, had started life in Connecticut but took up farming in Delaware in the late 1860s and then launched his produce business in Philadelphia in 1871. Like many of Dock Street’s commission merchants, he commuted to work from a home in Camden. Eugene Redfield, the oldest of five siblings, moved to 407 Cooper Street around the time that he embarked on a new extension of the family business: Florida oranges. During the 1890s, the commercial orange industry was in its infancy, and Redfield found opportunity in Polk County near Tampa. He invested in land and developed a grove that over twenty years’ time developed to more than 2,000 trees, primarily oranges but also grapefruit, lemons, limes, and other novelties for northern tastes. Together with Lydia, he established a winter home in a colonial-style mansion and returned to Camden only during the summers. The Redfields sold 407 Cooper Street and left Camden by the end of the nineteenth century. While continuing to winter in Florida, Eugene and Lydia divided their summer months between Atlantic City and a residence in West Philadelphia. In 1911, when Eugene Redfield died at his Polk County estate, Lydia took over the citrus grove and made Florida her permanent home. Boarding House, Club House After the Redfields departed, 407 Cooper Street changed hands several times in the first years of the twentieth century. As a rental property, from 1899 to 1902 it was a boarding house whose occupants included Samuel Hufty, the city comptroller of Camden and a veteran of the Civil War, and a physician, Paul Mecray, who soon married and moved into the house next door (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405 Cooper Street</a>). For a brief few months in 1903, the building became the club house for a fledging Union League organized by former Mayor Cooper B. Hatch. Conceived as a rival to the Camden Republican Club across the street at 312 Cooper Street, the Union League launched with fanfare in July 1903 with a lawn party for four hundred people and music by Josephus Jennings’ Third Regiment Band. The enthusiasm was not matched with sufficient funds to support the club, however, and it folded by November. Bridges to Bridgeton The next long-term owners of 407 Cooper Street owned the home from 1905 into the 1940s, through Cooper Street’s transition to a primarily commercial thoroughfare. The Ewell family, with deep roots in <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/locations/cumberland-county-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cumberland County</a>, located in Camden for the benefit of the medical career of Dr. Alfred Elwell, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania medical school in 1899. The doctor’s father, Jacob, bought the home in 1905 and immediately signed the deed over to his son. With the purchase of the home, Jacob Elwell, began to divide his time between Camden and <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/bridgeton-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bridgeton</a>, the commercial center of rural Cumberland County, about 40 miles south of Camden. He was 62 years old and a Civil War veteran whose unit fought at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. His trade was harness-making, which he had learned as a teenage apprentice and built into a prominent harness, leather, and saddle store in Bridgeton. When automobiles began to supplant horses early in the twentieth century, he saw the future and in 1911 added an auto garage to his store. The Elwell household on Cooper Street at first consisted of two generations, Jacob Elwell and his wife Harriet, together with their doctor son and their adult daughter, Alice. In 1910 they employed a Black married couple, William and Cora Wright, as domestic servants. The Wrights, who had been married three years, had both migrated north from Virginia. They were, thus, harbingers of the larger wave of <a href="https://goinnorth.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Black migration</a> that came to northern industrial cities during the First World War. The Elwell family experienced generational transitions while living at 407 Cooper Street. Jacob and Harriet celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary with a party back in Bridgeton in 1914. The next year, Dr. Alfred Elwell married a woman from Bridgeton, Helen Whitaker, and by 1920 their family on Cooper Street expanded to include two children. Alice Elwell also married and left the home in 1916. That year, the death of Harriet Elwell led her husband, Jacob, to move back to Bridgeton to live with another of their sons. He also died there, in 1922. By the 1920s, Cooper Street was undergoing its own transitions related to the construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later named the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), which opened in 1926. Expecting a commercial boom for Camden, real estate interests promoted conversions of Cooper Street properties from family homes into office buildings and apartments. The Elwells were a bit ahead of the trend, as they started advertising an apartment for rent in 1918. In 1922 they joined other prominent neighbors in relocating to Merchantville, although they retained ownership of 407 Cooper Street and Alfred Elwell maintained his practice there. They rented offices to other physicians and apartments to long-term tenants such as Helen and Martha Lummis, sisters and school teachers. The Elwells themselves returned to live in one of their apartments from 1935 through 1941, when the doctor died from a heart attack that he experienced while driving in Ocean City. By that time his son, Alfred Jr., had completed medical school and was starting an internship at Cooper Hospital. Offices and Apartments The house at 407 Cooper Street remained a place of medical offices, dental offices, and apartments from the 1940s through the 1970s, owned for much of that time by Helen Elwell’s second husband, dentist John S. Owens. For a time during the early 1960s, it served as the Camden Free Dental Clinic. In its physical appearance and occupancy, the building continued to reflect the changing nature of Cooper Street. By 1980, its first floor had a front façade of polished stone that spanned the original house and an addition on the east side that housed an additional doctor’s office. “A rather ugly modernized first floor does little to enhance this structure,” noted historic structure surveyors from the Camden Division of Planning. Apartment tenants by the 1980s included individuals with Spanish surnames, likely a reflection of the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/puerto-rican-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increasing Puerto Rican population</a> of North Camden. Because of their perceived value as business locations, houses on Cooper Street were spared from the 1962-64 urban renewal project that created a campus for Rutgers University in the blocks between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Rutgers, which had acquired the house next door at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405 Cooper Street</a> by the 1970s, also purchased 407 Cooper Street in 2000. A renovation project in 2004 united the two buildings into one facility with office spaces, seminar rooms, and a student computer lab. The combined properties, turning their backs to Cooper Street by providing access through a shared back porch, became home to the <a href="https://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rutgers-Camden Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 407 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 407. Associated architects/builders Joseph B. Cooper, builder (also the builder of nearby 406 Penn Street, which survives on the Rutgers-Camden campus). Sources Newspapers of Camden, Bridgeton, Philadelphia, and Tampa, Florida (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Heatherington, M.F. History of Polk County, Florida. St. Augustine, Fla.: The Record Company, 1928. Historical Data Systems, comp. U.S., American Civil War Regiments, 1861-1866 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999. Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 407 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 400 Block 407 Cooper Street African Americans Apartments Bequests Boarding House Bridge Impact Bridgeton Children Civil War Club Cooper Family Death Dentists Doctors Extended Family Farmers Florida Merchants Merchantville Philadelphia Produce Puerto Ricans Quakers Rutgers-Camden Servants Stockton Township Teachers Veterans West Jersey Orphanage https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/f4ceb49d9e5087e413a05b747f5aabbb.jpg b16086fc6653c8ef9da6fd36eac400f4 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 405 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district's nomination for the National Register identifies significance in part for the presence of Camden’s “most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses” and their embodiment of “the street’s change from residential and professional to commercial.” The house at 405 Cooper Street embodies this change through its history as a single-family home that transitioned to medical offices and apartments during the 1920s as affluent families moved to suburban towns during the construction period for the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). By the 1970s, Rutgers University acquired the building, which later became home to the <a href="https://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice</a>. Architectural style Italianate with some Greek Revival elements. Date of construction 1868 History As a new house rose at 405 Cooper Street in 1868, the West Jersey Press proclaimed it to be a sign that Camden improvements were keeping up with larger cities and matching the best in the country. The house, the newspaper reported, “is one of the handsomest residences in Camden. Planned with rare judgment, and built in the latest style of architecture, of excellent material, with large halls, ample parlor, sitting, dining rooms, and sleeping apartments supplied in every part with water, heat, and light.” Indeed, it was “the beau ideal of all that is neat, airy, and convenient.” The lot at 405 had remained undeveloped during the 1840s and 1850s as much of the rest of the block filled with rowhouses. The property had been subdivided from lands held by the Cooper family and changed hands three times, first conveyed from Esther Cooper to a Philadelphia clerk, Joseph Wayne (1848) and next to a Philadelphia deputy marshal, Samuel Halzell (1851), but there is no evidence that Wayne or Halzell relocated to Camden. Meanwhile, the grandest house on the block rose on two adjacent lots (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/74">401-03</a>) in 1850. Its owner, lumber merchant George W. Carpenter, acquired the lot next door in 1854. The house built in 1868 was intended to be the home of George W. Carpenter’s son Charles, a coal dealer who commissioned its construction while living across the street at 408 Cooper Street. Before he could move in, however, he died at the age of 34 from causes not publicly disclosed. His completed house was sold to his younger brother, George W. Carpenter Jr. In the deed, their father mandated that the cornice on the new house be raised to be even with his residence next door. This may explain the taller, heavier, more ornamental cornice that contrasts with other houses on the block built earlier. The restriction also could have forestalled the addition of a French-style <a href="https://www.oldhouseonline.com/house-tours/the-mania-for-mansard-roofs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mansard roof</a>, which was becoming the fashion for newly built houses in Camden. Philadelphia Merchant The year before he bought the house at 405 Cooper Street, George W. Carpenter Jr. had entered into a business partnership in Philadelphia, Hall & Carpenter, which sold metals and hardware. The business filled a <a href="https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/43288" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">five-story building at 709 Market Street</a>, on Philadelphia’s dominant commercial corridor. In an age of cast-iron buildings and tin ceilings, Hall & Carpenter sold metals from Europe and the United States: “Tin-plate, pig tin, pig, lead, and antimony … Iron, cast and wrought, in whatever size desired, square and rolled; steel, of every grade; galvanized brass and copper, that will effectually resist the corrodings of time; and copper in sheets.” Like many of his neighbors, Carpenter commuted to his business on the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/ferries/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ferries</a> that crossed the Delaware River between Camden and Philadelphia. With his business and home established, Carpenter married in 1870. His new wife, Sara (Sallie) Reinboth, was at most 18 years old at the time of the ceremony at Camden’s First Presbyterian Church and may have been as young as 15. Their household in the 1870 Census consisted of the couple and one domestic servant, 20-year-old Irish immigrant Maria Early. By 1880, the family grew to include two daughters, age 4 and 7, and one son, age 2. The Carpenter family’s presence at 405 Cooper Street ended with George Carpenter Jr.’s untimely death from a lung hemorrhage in 1883, but his heirs retained the house as a rental property for the rest of the nineteenth century. They rented first to a physician, James Armstrong, and next to a young widow, Ella Hackett, who operated 405 Cooper Street as a boarding house from 1886 to 1888. In addition to providing a home for her daughter and a niece, Hackett advertised “elegantly furnished rooms” for “first-class parties,” attracting boarders who included a violin teacher and an employee of the Philadelphia Petroleum Exchange. Dentist and Doctors During the 1890s, the tenants at 405 Cooper Street reflected the increasing presence of medical professionals in the neighborhood following the opening of Cooper Hospital in 1885. A dentist, Elmer Bower, rented the house for his family and practice upon graduating from the University of Pennsylvania dental school in 1888. They stayed as long as the Carpenters owned the property – more than decade – and over the next thirty years lived in two other houses in the same block (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> Cooper Street). While at 405 Cooper Street, they shared the home at one point in 1895 with one of Camden’s first female physicians, <a href="http://njwomenshistory.org/discover/biographies/sophia-presley/">Sophia Presley</a>. She lived at various addresses on Cooper, Penn, and Linden Streets after graduating from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1879. By 1895, she had broken a barrier by becoming the first female member of the Camden County Medical Society and was serving as its secretary. The presence of medical professionals continued with the next long-term owner of 405 Cooper Street, Jane Boyer Mecray, who held title to the home she shared with her husband, physician Paul Mecray. They moved into the house as soon as they married in 1900 and in the next decade had two children, a daughter and a son. Domestic servants, usually Irish or other European immigrants, helped with the housework and freed Jane Mecray to participate in groups such as the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The family vacationed in Cape May, where Dr. Mecray was born, and at other points at the Jersey Shore. Transitions came to the Mecray family, and Camden, during the 1920s. Some changes were marks of achievement: their daughter, Helen, went away to Vassar College, and Paul Mecray advanced to chief of staff of Cooper Hospital. Other changes resulted from the nearby construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), which was completed in 1926. Jane Mecray’s mother, Alabama Boyer, came to live with the family on Cooper Street because her longtime home in the 500 block of Linden Street stood in the path of construction for the new bridge plaza. With expectations that the bridge would create a new era of business prosperity for Camden, one house after another in the 400 block of Cooper Street transitioned into office or apartment uses. The Mecray family joined this trend by relocating to a home in suburban Moorestown but keeping 405 Cooper Street as a rental property. Offices and Apartments From the 1920s through the 1950s, Paul Mecray maintained his medical office at 405 Cooper Street while renting offices to other doctors and apartments to public school teachers. His son, Paul Jr., occupied both an apartment and office in the building after following in his father’s footsteps into the medical profession. The younger Mecray served in the Medical Corps in India during World War II and returned to direct emergency medical services for the chief of Civilian Defense for Camden. Because of their perceived value as business locations, houses on Cooper Street were spared from the urban renewal project that created a campus for Rutgers University in the blocks between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. By the early 1970s, Rutgers acquired 405 Cooper Street and renovated it to create space for academic and administrative offices. A more extensive renovation occurred in 2004 when the university combined 405 and adjacent 407 Cooper Street into one facility with office spaces, seminar rooms, and a student computer lab. The combined properties, turning their backs to Cooper Street by providing access through a shared back porch, became home to the <a href="https://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rutgers-Camden Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 405 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 405. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Building contracts, Camden County Historical Society. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Associated architects/builders Harden & Brother, master carpenters. Curlis & Cole, brick layers. William Allen, plasterer. 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 405 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1860s 18702 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 400 Block 405 Cooper Street Apartments Boarding House Death Dentists Doctors Italianate Merchants Moorestown Philadelphia Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/1a58545206a4032c8a0b31422adb830d.jpg b4d8fa46048454ef5ab9b406158ecd92 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Early twentieth-century photograph, Camden County Historical Society. Significance 423 Cooper Street was the site of a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district is defined as representing broad patterns of American history, including: "The buildings within the district include Camden's best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." The latter transition was well illustrated by 423 Cooper Street, which began as a family home then became a funeral home from the 1920s through the 1960s. The house was demolished in the early 1990s. Date of construction c. 1847, renovated 1875. History The house that stood at 423 Cooper Street for nearly 150 years was among the first houses built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family heirs sold their land for development. When they began to divide their land into building lots in the 1840s, Camden was seeking new status as the seat of government for newly designated Camden County, formed from Gloucester County in 1844. Building Lives in Camden Jesse Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, came to Camden in 1847, two years after they were married at the Byberry Friends Meeting in the rural northern reaches of Philadelphia. They had one infant daughter when Jesse took a job as a clerk at the State Bank of Camden, one of the institutions that marked the emergence of Camden as a city in its own right, not merely a satellite of Philadelphia across the river. The Townsends purchased the 423 Cooper Street lot and in their new house, likely a Greek Revival brick rowhouse like others in the 400 block, their family grew during the 1850s to include five children – four girls and a boy – in addition to Elizabeth Townsend’s mother, Mary Wilson. Jesse Townsend ascended to cashier of the bank. When he also entered into partnership in a flour and grain business, his business partner Caleb Parry also lived with the family for a time. In 1862, the Townsend family sold the house and moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank at Second and Market Streets. New owners who lived in Woodbury rented out the house for the rest of that decade. Notably, in 1870 the tenants of the house included Richard and Mary Esterbrook, immigrants from England. Richard Esterbrook was the founder of the Esterbrook Steel Pen Company, founded in Camden in 1858 and on its way to becoming one of the world’s leading producers of steel pen nibs. The house underwent a major renovation by its next owner, Frederick Rex, a bank clerk in his 20s who later became a prominent attorney. When advertised for sale by its previous owners from Woodbury, the house was described as having “six chambers, and bath room, parlor, dining room and kitchen; water and gas in the house which is in good order.” Rex apparently saw room for improvement and contracted with a builder in 1875 to “tear down, build up, and repair” the 30-year-old rowhouse. The result was a home that stood out from others on the block with Italianate details. Rex then sold the house to the family who also lived there with him, feed and flour dealer Charles C. Reeves, his wife Elizabeth, and their two children. Hardware and Prosperity A sheriff’s sale of 423 Cooper Street in 1886 opened more than three decades of occupancy by members of a prominent Camden retail family, William and Clara Fredericks and their daughter, Edna, born the same year they moved into the house. William Fredericks, born in Camden in 1854, managed the hardware store that his father, Harry, had founded in the 1850s. The store carried the goods that helped to build the growing city – window sashes, doors, and building supplies. While the business prospered, the elder Fredericks also organized the Camden Merritts baseball team, which lasted just a year (1883) but started the career of pitcher William (Kid) Gleason, who later played for the Baltimore Orioles, the Detroit Tigers, and Philadelphia Nationals. When the Fredericks family moved into 423 Cooper Street, the Camden Daily Telegram noted that their “handsome new residence” was being “fitted up in an elegant manner.” The Fredericks family displayed other signs of affluence while living at this address, including the employment of domestic servants even though they remained a small family of three. When Edna Fredericks reached adulthood, at age 20 in 1906 she sailed with relatives to Europe for a summer tour. The family also spent summers at the Jersey Shore, favoring Atlantic City. In 1916, approaching retirement from business, Fredericks put the house up for sale, advertising it as a “three-story brick house in one of the finest residential sections of Camden.” It offered “twelve rooms and handsome tiled bathroom; hardwood floors; pier and mantle mirrors; crystal chandelier; gas and coal ranges, cemented cellars; large yard and side entrance; front and side porches.” After a lifetime in Camden, in 1918 Fredericks retired and the family moved to an apartment in West Philadelphia. Funeral Home The next long-term occupant of 423 Cooper Street reflected the transition of the thoroughfare to commercial uses during the 1920s. The transition, promoted by Camden real estate interests, included conversion of many former residences into offices or apartment buildings. The redevelopment activity accompanied construction of the Delaware River Bridge, later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which opened in 1926. Beginning in 1923, 423 Cooper Street became the residence and funeral home of Charles W. Hiskey, who was assisted in the business by his wife, Matilda. Previously on Sixth Street, the Hiskeys described their new location as a “modern funeral home.” Charles Hiskey developed an extensive network of acquaintances that could be expected to aid the business as he joined various lodges, the Masons, the Kiwanis Club, and other organizations. Matilda Hiskey was a lifelong member of the First Methodist Church. The funeral home remained in operation until 1961, when Charles Hiskey died, five years after his wife. Offices and Demolition A real estate firm next acquired the building and leased to office tenants, including physicians. As an office building, 423 Cooper Street changed hands several times during the 1960s and 1970s, then became the property of Rutgers University in 1984. When surveyed for inclusion in the Cooper Street Historic District in 1985, the building was described as “a highly intact example of one of the most prevalent styles of architecture on Cooper Street” and “a significant contributor to the heritage of the streetscape.” The building was demolished in the early 1990s, creating a vacant lot that remained three decades later. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 423 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 423. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. New Jersey State Census, 1855-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 423 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Vacant lot, site of demolished contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 400 Block 423 Cooper Street Banking Baseball Demolition Doctors Esterbrook Steel Pen Company Funeral Homes Greek Revival Hardware Dealers Philadelphia Quakers Renovations Rutgers-Camden Woodbury https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b10abf82678c25d65658b12871051317.jpg a1f973f83b5728f4de6caf2dca4e53cd 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 401-03 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Documentation prepared by the Camden Division of Planning in 1980 noted, “In spite of stuccoing and alterations to the door, it remains one of the important visual links between Cooper Street’s pre- and post- Civil War development.” The scale of the house reflects the wealth and status of pioneers in Camden’s lumber industry during the nineteenth century; occupants over time included a prominent banker, a leader of the New Century Club of Philadelphia and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, a female physician who founded a clinic for underprivileged women and children in West Philadelphia, and a future dean of Rutgers-Camden. In the 1920s the building transitioned to office and apartment use, thus exemplifying one of the Cooper Street Historic District’s stated qualities of significance, “the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." Owned by Rutgers University since the 1970s, the building became home to the Departments of <a href="https://polisci.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Political Science</a> and <a href="https://dppa.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Public Policy and Public Administration</a>. Architectural style Greek Revival Date of construction 1849-50 History The double-lot residence at Fourth and Cooper Streets, originally the home of a lumber dealer’s family, is a testament to the prominence and prosperity of the lumber industry in nineteenth-century Camden. Lumber yards and sawmills began to populate the Camden riverfront in the 1830s and thrived for decades as the city’s dominant industry. Unlike Philadelphia across the river, Camden had an advantage of undeveloped river flats where rafts of cut timber could be accumulated. Timber came down the Delaware River from northern Pennsylvania and southern New York and filled Camden’s riverfront from Cooper Street north to Cooper’s Point. Lumber entrepreneurs also obtained Pennsylvania white pine after it traveled down the Susquehanna River to Marietta, Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County and to Port Deposit, Maryland. Once in Camden, the timber became the lumber and building products that railroads carried across South Jersey to build newly developing towns. A Business Pioneer The financial success of one of Camden’s lumber dealers, George W. Carpenter, can be seen in his home at 401-03 Cooper Street – a residence double the size of any other built in this block of Cooper Street during its first generation of development. Carpenter bought the adjoining lots in 1849 from an heir of the Cooper family, which had begun to sell land on the north side of Cooper Street for development. The purchase was among sixteen real estate purchases by Carpenter during the period from 1846 to 1859, a pace of investment enabled by his success as a lumber dealer. Carpenter, who was born in Massachusetts, had migrated to New Jersey sometime before 1830, the year he married Susan Heigh in Cumberland County. By 1841, together with a partner he was operating a lumber mill on Front Street near the riverfront. As it rose during late 1849 and early 1850, the new house attracted attention from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which called it "one of the handsomest mansions any where near Philadelphia," and from the Philadelphia Public Ledger, which noted its front facade constructed of Connecticut brownstone. When they moved into their new home in 1850, the Carpenter household consisted of George and Susan Carpenter, their three sons ages 11, 13, and 14, and a sister or other female relative of Susan. The Carpenters added to their holdings in 1854 by purchasing the adjacent lot at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405 Cooper Street</a>, which remained undeveloped until its sale to one of their grown sons in 1868. George Carpenter’s business endeavors meanwhile extended from lumber into manufacturing, and he became regarded as “one of the business pioneers of our city,” in the words of the Camden Democrat. By the time of his death in 1870, he was taking an interest in the development of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/atlantic-city/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Atlantic City</a> as a member of the Board of Directors of the Camden and Atlantic Railroad Company. His widow, Susan, remained in the Cooper Street house until 1887. Wealth and Activism A family that united two of Camden’s economic foundations – lumber and banking – became the next owners of 401-03 Cooper Street. Wilbur F. Rose, a banker, and Mary Whitlock Rose, the daughter of a lumber merchant, moved into the grandest house on the block from a smaller house across the street (406 Cooper Street) that had been in her family since before their marriage in 1869. By the time of the move in 1888, Wilbur Rose had advanced from clerk to cashier of National State Bank of Camden. The family included two young daughters, 13-year-old Elsie and 10-year-old Mary Caroline, and Mary’s widowed mother, Ann Whitlock. (A son had died in infancy.) At various times the Rose household included other extended family members and Black domestic servants. With the benefits of substantial income and help to run the household, Wilbur and Mary Rose both became active in civic and charitable causes. As Wilbur Rose continued to advance to the position of vice president of the bank, he invested energy in a vast array of Camden business and charitable activities, from directorships with railroads and insurance firms to service on behalf libraries, poverty relief, and child welfare. Mary Rose, known for her interest in literature and the arts, expanded her public activities after two personal losses in 1891: the death of her mother as well as her younger daughter, who succumbed from scarlet fever at the age of 13. In keeping with the usual custom of the time, their funerals were held in the home. During the 1890s, Mary Whitlock Rose became especially prominent in <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/womens-clubs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">women’s club circles</a> in Philadelphia and nationally. She ascended to the presidency of the New Century Club in Philadelphia, a group that had formed after the nation’s Centennial in 1876, and she became a vice president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. The New Century Club, originally devoted to literature and other cultural pursuits, had become active in progressive reform work by the time of Rose’s leadership. In speeches, Rose promoted the idea that clubs should become increasingly democratic and less defined by social class. She spoke on contemporary issues, including immigration and “The Possibilities of <a href="https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-new-woman" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the New Woman</a>.” During this era, the New Century Club’s guests at its clubhouse on Twelfth Street included Susan B. Anthony and Jane Addams, the Chicago reformer who addressed the group on the subject of child labor. Mary Rose’s surviving daughter, Elsie (known in adulthood as Elise Whitlock-Rose), accompanied her on trips to General Federation of Women’s Clubs meetings, and together they toured in Europe. Elise, who was educated at the Springside boarding school in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill section, acquired fluency in French and a passion for French culture and history. After her school days she channeled this interest into a series of books about cathedrals and cloisters of France, researched in Europe and published between 1906 and 1914. The death of Mary Whitlock Rose from “a lingering illness” in 1907 left a $50,000 estate to Elise and her father, Wilbur, who remained at 401-03 Cooper Street together. They employed two domestic servants, recorded in the 1910 Census as Black women born in Delaware: Mary Harris, 19, and Rosa Johnson, 64. It was around this time that Elise Whitlock-Rose embarked on her own path of community service. In her late 20s she enrolled in the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/womans-medical-college-of-pennsylvania/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania</a>, where she completed her M.D. degree in 1914. With another Woman’s Medical College graduate, Elizabeth F.C. Clark, she opened a clinic in West Philadelphia to serve underprivileged women and children, the Clinic of Notre Dame des Malades (Our Lady of the Sick). The clinic served patients for more than 30 years. Following the outbreak of World War I, which occurred while she was traveling in Europe with her father, Elise also sought to aid France by starting a war relief agency, which she called the Little House of Saint Pantaleon. She revived it in 1939 to help France at the start of World War II. Elise Rose’s career as a physician entailed a move to Philadelphia, where she was joined by her father, who retired from business in 1912, in a home on Twenty-Second Street near Rittenhouse Square. The Rose family’s occupation of 403 Cooper Street came to an end in 1916. Offices and Apartments During the 1920s, 401-03 Cooper Street converted from a family home into physicians’ offices and apartments, a common pattern on Cooper Street during the period of construction of the nearby Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), which opened in 1926. Expecting a business boom in Camden, real estate interests promoted Cooper Street as a potential New York-style Fifth Avenue lined with offices and apartment buildings. They bought, renovated, and sold or managed numerous former residences in pursuit of this vision. (It is perhaps during this period of renovations that 401-03 Cooper Street gained its coating of stucco.) The physicians who subsequently owned 403 Cooper Street from the 1920s through the 1960s maintained practices in Camden but primarily lived in suburban Haddonfield. In addition to other doctors’ offices, tenants in the building included a dressmaker, Eva Smith, who lived in one of the apartments from 1929 until at least 1945. Her neighbors over that span of time included schoolteachers, a secretary, a boiler fireman, and a returning World War II veteran. By the 1960s, students at Rutgers University were among the apartment tenants at 401-03 Cooper Street as the university expanded its campus north of Cooper Street through urban renewal demolitions in 1962-64. During this period of significant growth for Rutgers-Camden, one of 401-03 Cooper’s apartment dwellers was student <a href="https://mmarsh.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Margaret Marsh</a>, Class of 1967. Later earning graduate degrees at Rutgers and becoming a renowned scholar of the histories of women, gender, and medicine, Marsh returned to Rutgers-Camden in 1998 as Dean and later Executive Dean of the Rutgers-Camden Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She also served as Chancellor - twice, from 2007 to 2009 and from 2020 to 2021 - on an interim basis. By the late 1970s Rutgers University owned 401-03 Cooper Street, which became home to the Departments of <a href="https://polisci.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Political Science</a> and <a href="https://dppa.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Public Policy and Administration</a>. Associated Individuals For list of known occupants of 401-03 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 403. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Note on sources: Previous documentation estimated the construction date of this house as 1850. The revised date 1849-50 is based on the following account published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 28, 1849: "We observe with pleasure that within the last few months a very active spirit of improvement has been evident in Camden. On Cooper street, one of the handsomest mansions any where near Philadelphia, has been erected by Mr. George Alexander Carpenter, of the Flour and Saw Mills, Camden. It is now nearly completed, under the superintendence of Mr. [illegible] Hall, contractor -- Mr. J.W. Brister, bricklayer, Mr. Simpson, stone mason, and Mr. S. Sexton, cementer and plaster. The rooms of the different stories vary from 10 to 15 in height. Mr. Hoxie, we learn, was the architect." A subsequent article in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, January 26, 1850, noted the house was "nearly finished." This article also described the materials: "Its front, door and window frames are constructed of Connecticut borwn stone of a superior quality and dimensions." Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Associated architects/builders Attributed to <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/51793" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Joseph C. Hoxie</a> (Philadelphia Inquirer, September 28, 1849) 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 401-03 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 Activism Banking Death Doctors Dressmakers Greek Revival Haddonfield Lumber Renovations Rutgers-Camden Scarlet Fever Servants Teachers Women's Clubs 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/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/4e53ac230474a7c31376cab24fb934a9.jpg d6496c2afaa5d93937e47df076ba2b78 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/9ba3a336946f11f0cf4e845b2d355357.jpg 3829dcca065fcec10e3a2b4b9ae2de52 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 1. Photograph by Jacob Lechner 2. 400 block of Cooper Street (Camden County Historical Society) Significance Extensively remodeled from its original appearance, the building at 413 Cooper Street and the lot where it stands embody the historical development of Camden. A commercial façade obscures a Second Empire-style house built in 1883, a stylish residence that replaced an earlier wood-frame house in the same location. The lot was part of a larger parcel purchased from the Cooper family in 1845 by a woman who lived in Philadelphia, Hannah Atwood, who managed up to seven houses built on her land as rental properties. This property, therefore, illustrates one of the defining characteristics of the Cooper Street Historic District: “These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." Notable occupants of the houses at this address included William Doughten and Harry Humphreys, two pioneers of the lumber industry that dominated Camden’s frontage on the Delaware River during the nineteenth century. The building has been owned by Rutgers University since 2009. Architectural style Second Empire style house obscured by modern commercial façade applied in the twentieth century. Date of construction 1883, modified c. 1928 History The lot where 413 Cooper Street stands was among the first properties developed on the north side of Cooper Street as members of the Cooper family began to sell their inherited land during the 1840s. Among the purchasers, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived in Philadelphia, acquired two lots in 1845 and 1846. Atwood’s purchase spanned sixty-five feet on Cooper Street east of Fourth and extended north to Lawrence Street. Seven houses were built on the property during Atwood’s ownership, including a wood-frame house at 413 and two others facing Cooper Street, and four smaller houses facing Lawrence Street. The property at 413 Cooper Street was described in 1847 in an advertisement placed in the Philadelphia Public Ledger: "A modern built three-story Frame Home, with two-story Back Building, with a choice lot of Fruit Trees in the yard. The lot is 23 feet front by 150 deep to a back street. This property is pleasantly situated and in a good neighborhood." Although offered for sale at that time, the lot and the buildings upon it remained with Atwood. Rental Income for an Artist’s Family The Camden houses, managed as rental properties, provided steady income for Atwood, a married woman whose husband, an artist, was frequently absent and dependent on patrons for income. <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798">Jesse Atwood</a>, born in New Hampshire, was an itinerant portrait painter who became best known for a journey to Mexico to paint General Zachary Taylor during the Mexican-American War. He also painted portraits of presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, and promoted this work to entice other patrons as he traveled. According to Who's Who in American History, Hannah and Jesse Atwood came to Philadelphia from Rhode Island around 1830, which may have been shortly after their marriage. The Atwoods appear to have lived in the wood-frame house that stood at 413 Cooper Street in the late 1840s; during that time, Jesse Atwood created a bust from his portrait of Zachary Taylor and offered it for sale. They lived in Camden again between 1855 and 1860, but otherwise they lived in Philadelphia. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, other tenants occupied the row houses on Hannah's Cooper Street land (spanning 413, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/45">415</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48">417</a> Cooper). From 1861 to 1863, the occupants of 413 Cooper included William T. Doughten, who moved to Camden in the 1850s to establish a lumber business at Kaighn’s Point. (Doughten next purchased a home up the street at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/71" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">427 Cooper</a>.) Jesse Atwood died in Philadelphia in 1870, at the age of 79, and Hannah lived until 1883. Both are buried in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. Hannah's will specified the houses at 415 and 417 Cooper Street as bequests to her granddaughter Clara Fisher, without mentioning the adjoining property at 413. Although Atwood envisioned the houses as an ongoing source of independent income for her granddaughter, Clara's husband sold 413 Cooper Street to its tenant, Restore Lamb, in 1883, and Clara sold 415 and 417 Cooper Street by 1888. Hannah Atwood's long record of ownership on Cooper Street faded from memory. New House, New Style, New Family At the time of Hannah Atwood’s death, Cooper Street was undergoing a transformation to a more fashionable residential address. In the early 1880s, the Camden City Council approved a resident’s proposal to move the curb lines of Cooper Street properties into the street by twelve feet on each side, thereby creating room for gardens or lawns in front of every house. The more bucolic thoroughfare touched off an era for construction of new, more fashionable homes. At 413 Cooper Street, an older wood-frame house gave way to a Second Empire-style house with a stone façade and mansard roof, described by the Camden Courier as a “comfortable dwelling replete with modern conveniences.” Restore Lamb, the tenant who bought the earlier wood-frame house, carried out the redevelopment project in 1883 shortly after his daughter, Lizzie, died in the old house of typhoid fever at the age of 25. He then sold the new house in 1884 to a commission fish merchant, Albert Rowe, who moved from Second Street with his wife, Henrietta, and two children. They employed at least one domestic servant, an Irish immigrant named Kitty Keelan. The house at 413 Cooper Street changed hands again in 1887, opening a long-term period of occupancy by the family of lumber merchant Harry Humphreys that lasted into the 1920s. Humphreys, in his early 30s when he bought the home, had recently opened his own lumber business on the Camden waterfront after years working for other firms. The Humphreys family, which had been living nearby on north Third Street, also included Humphreys’ mother, his wife, and a young son. The family employed domestic servants, usually young, female Irish immigrants. Harry Humphreys’ mother, Evaline, died in 1892, but the family also expanded with two additional children who grew up in the Cooper Street home. Harry Humphreys took an active role in civic affairs as well as in business, serving on the Camden Park Commission and for a time as a city councilman. He served as a vestryman of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church a block away on Market Street. The Camden Morning Post once described him as a man with a memorable smile: “… he was a man who seemed always in the brightest of moods, a man who found a rare satisfaction in his associations with other men, a man who knew nothing of cynicism but ever made the most of the good things which life has to offer.” Humphreys parted with the home at 413 Cooper Street in the 1920s, when he was in his 60s, in a decade when Camden real estate interests sought to transition Cooper Street into a commercial corridor. (Humphreys’ cousin, Louis Humphreys, was a leading real estate broker.) After selling the house to a pair of lawyers in 1928, Harry Humphreys and his wife, Susanna, divided their time between the new Walt Whitman Hotel in Camden and the home of a married daughter in Merchantville. Office Building The two lawyers who bought 413 Cooper Street, Joseph Beck Tyler and A. Moulton McNutt, may have been responsible for the new commercial façade that obscured the structure’s earlier history as a family home. Beginning their purchase in 1928, the building primarily housed office tenants but retained at least two rental apartments that were documented by the U.S. Census in 1940. In addition to the Tyler law firm, which grew to include two grown sons in the 1940s, the building housed offices for an insurance agent, an engineer, and a mortgage company. During the 1940s, its business tenants included an optician and a dentist. Like the owners of the building, these business and professional people maintained offices in Camden but lived in the suburbs. By the late 1960s, the building had passed to heirs of Tyler and McNutt and notices for sheriff’s sale and foreclosure appeared in the Camden Courier-Post. It was acquired in 1980 by Nise Productions, notable as the producer of the television program <a href="http://www.nisebiz.com/project/doa/">Dancin’ On Air</a>–but Camden served only as the mailing address for the show, which was telecast on Channel 17 from a studio in West Philadelphia. Nise Productions sold the building to Rutgers University in 2009. Associated Individuals For a list of all known occupants of 413 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 413. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank) Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden City Atlas, 1877 (Camden County Historical Society). Camden County Property Records. Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. New Jersey State Census, 1855-1915, U.S. Census, 1960-1950 (Ancestry.com). Property Report, 413 Cooper Street, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Note on sources: Earlier documentation stated this house was constructed c. 1860 with alteration c. 1910. 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 413 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 400 Block 413 Cooper Street Artists Attorneys Engineers Investment Lumber Opticians Real Estate Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Television