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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
People
Description
An account of the resource
Residents of Cooper Street
Person
An individual.
Time period on Cooper Street
c. 1876-88 (boarding)
c. 1892, 1903 (buildings)
Location(s) - Cooper Street
415 Cooper Street
514 Cooper Street (designed by Baily & Truscott for William T. Read, 1903)
538-42 Cooper Street (designed by Baily & Truscott for John W. Cheney, c. 1892)
726 Cooper Street (designed by Arthur Truscott for Lynn Truscott, 1888)
Location(s) - Other
19 Springfield Avenue, Merchantville (Truscott family home, c. 1892-1930s)
New Jersey Trust and Safe Deposit Building, Third and Market Streets, Camden (designed by Arthur Truscott, 1888)
Baily & Truscott office, 138 S. Fourth Street, Philadelphia
Drexel University, Philadelphia
Blackwood, New Jersey
Columbia, Tennessee
Occupation
Architect
Birth Date
December 4, 1858
Birthplace
Cornwall, England
Death Date
September 12, 1938, in Blackwood, New Jersey. Buried in Harleigh Cemetery.
Biographical Text
For at least twelve years, between 1876 and 1888, English immigrant Arthur Truscott boarded at 415 Cooper Street while establishing a career in architecture in Philadelphia. His work included notable buildings for Camden, including houses on Cooper Street and the New Jersey Safe Deposit & Trust Company building at Third and Market Streets.<br /><br />Truscott arrived in the United States in 1875, at the age of 18, and by 1876 he appeared in Camden city directories as a boarder in the 415 Cooper Street home of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/44" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jerusha Browning</a>, a member by marriage of the prominent Browning family of South Jersey. In addition to Arthur, the boarders at 415 Cooper included his two brothers, J. Lynn Truscott (four years older) and Millwood Truscott (two years younger). Arthur's brothers both established long-term, prosperous careers in the insurance industry, following in the footsteps of an uncle already in Camden: John W. Cheney. The Truscott brothers became active in the nearby St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, and Lynn Truscott eventually married into the extended Browning family.<br /><br />While living at 415 Cooper Street, Arthur Truscott gained architectural training in a series of leading Philadelphia firms, including <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/21576" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wilson Bros. & Co</a>. and <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/23024" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cope & Stewardson</a>. By 1888, when he left Cooper Street, he had published house plans in <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/godeys-ladys-book/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Godey's Lady's Book</em></a>, and he demonstrated his range in commercial as well as residential architecture with at least two buildings in Camden. For his brother Lynn, Truscott designed a double-lot gray stone home at 627 Cooper Street (later demolished for construction of the Walt Whitman Hotel). He also designed a four-story office building at Third and Market Streets for the New Jersey Safe Deposit & Trust Company. By 1990, when buildings associated with the banking, insurance, and legal professions in Camden were added to the National Register of Historic Places, Truscott's Victorian Eclectic building for New Jersey Trust was the oldest surviving structure designed for specific use as a bank. <br /><br />Truscott left New Jersey for about two years, 1888-90, to serve as architect for a federal arsenal in Columbia, Tennessee (also later listed on the National Register). When he returned, he formed a partnership with Philadelphia architect William Lloyd Baily, and among many other commissions for residences and churches, Truscott & Baily added four houses to the 500 block of Cooper Street: three of them the trio of Chateauesque stone townhouses for Truscott's uncle, John W. Cheney, at 538-42 Cooper Street (built c. 1892). The facades were preserved as part of the buildings for the LEAP Academy Charter School. About a decade after the Cheney project, in 1903, Baily & Truscott produced the very different red-brick Colonial Revival home at 514 Cooper Street for William T. Read.<br /><br />Truscott, meanwhile, married and designed a home for his family in Merchantville, then a suburban enclave attracting Philadelphia and South Jersey professionals, including a number of prominent architects. His household there, from the 1890s through the 1930s, included his wife, Alice, four children, his mother-in-law, and domestic servants. After the dissolution of the Baily partnership in 1904, Truscott became head of the architecture program at the Drexel Institute (later Drexel University); he was a supervising architect for Camden High School, built on Park Boulevard 1916-18, and late in his life, he worked as a draftsman for a Philadelphia firm specializing in church architecture, <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/18688" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Charles Bolton & Son</a>. At the time of his death in 1938, he was living in Blackwood, New Jersey; he is buried in Camden, in Harleigh Cemetery.<br /><br /><em>Find illustrations of Arthur Truscott's work and further biographical details in "Arthur Truscott" online at <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-ArthurTruscott.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dvrbs.com</a>.</em>
Associated Individuals
J. Lynn Truscott (brother); married Mary Cooper Paul Browning
Millwood Truscott (brother); married Carrie Weatherby
Jerusha Browning (head of household at 415 Cooper Street)
Margaret Browning (daughter of Jerusha Browning)
George Cole (also resident at 415 Cooper Street, 1885)
Anna Browning (also resident at 415 Cooper Street, 1885)
Kate Browning (also resident of 415 Cooper Street, 1885)
Edward P. Browning (also resident at 415 Cooper Street, 1888-89)
Alice Parry, wife (married 1889)
Arthur S. Truscott (son), served as aviator in British Royal Air Force during World War I; died from accidental gas inhalation at Truscott family home in 1935.
Alice Truscott (daughter)
W. Parry Truscott (son)
Catharine F. Truscott (daughter)
Anna G. Parry (mother-in-law)
Lolie Dangrigred (?), servant in 1900, African American born in Virginia
Dorinda Barrett, servant in 1910, African American born in Pennsylvania
William Lloyd Baily, business partner, 1890-1904
John W. Cheney, uncle (related through Cheney's wife Emily Cook; Truscott's mother was Susan Frances Matilda Cook); client, 538-42 Cooper Street
William T. Read, client, 514 Cooper Street
Sources
Banks, Insurance and Legal Buildings in Camden, New Jersey, 1873-1938, Nomination, National Register for Historic Places, U.S. Department of the Interior.<br />Berenson, Carol A., <em>Merchantville, New Jersey: The Development, Architecture, and Preservation of a Victorian Commuter Suburb </em>(Thesis, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania), 1984.<br />Camden City Directories, New Jersey State Census, U.S. Census (Ancestry.com).<br /> Camden Newspapers (Newspapers.com).<br />Cooper Street Historic District Nomination, National Register of Historic Places, U.S. Department of the Interior.<br /> "<a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/21581" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Truscott, Arthur (1858-1938)</a>, Philadelphia Buildings and Architects, Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
Research by
Charlene Mires 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
Truscott, Arthur
Description
An account of the resource
While boarding at 415 Cooper Street, architect Arthur Truscott launched his career in Philadelphia.
415 Cooper Street
514 Cooper Street
538 Cooper Street
540 Cooper Street
542 Cooper Street
627 Cooper Street
Adult
Architects
Banking
Blackwood
England
Immigrants
Insurance
LEAP Academy
Male
Merchantville
Philadelphia
Tennessee
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275f0ce37413d87ba9bd2a455e661118
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/a831a01502a6088c87ab18727d45bd01.jpg
3fe2b67ee7bfa6870aa8e9d830ad511f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
417 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Together with others in the row 415-21 Cooper Street, 417 represents a significant transition in the evolution of Camden during the 1840s and 1850s as homes were built for the first time on land formerly owned by the Cooper family on the north side of the street. The building is are among the nineteenth-century structures that support the nomination of the Cooper Street Historic District for the National Register: "The buildings within the district include Camden's best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." This transition is illustrated by 417 Cooper Street, where residents over time also reflect histories of public health, public safety, the experiences of widows as boarding house operators, and connections between Camden and Philadelphia. Rutgers purchased the building in 2010.
Architectural style
Greek Revival
Date of construction
1853
History
In March 1853 the Philadelphia <em>Public Ledger</em> observed, "Mr. Atwood has nearly finished two exquisitely, ornamentally and conveniently arranged dwelling houses on Cooper Street. They are fine additions to the improvements of that part of the city." With this brief note, the newspaper documented the construction of 417 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/45" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">415</a> Cooper Street. "Mr. Atwood" was Jesse Atwood, a Philadelphia-based artist whose wife, Hannah, had purchased property on the north side of Cooper Street from the Cooper family in 1845 and 1846. The frontage of the property accommodated three houses, initially a wood-frame house at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> Cooper Street followed by the two brick houses erected in 1853. The Atwoods also developed four smaller dwellings on the back of the property, facing Lawrence Street. <br /><br />For most of the century following their construction, the houses at 417 and 415 Cooper Street were jointly owned with one or both treated as investment properties rented out to others. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a> derived a steady rental income as her husband pursued his career as an itinerant artist, and she bequeathed the houses to her granddaughter for the same purpose in 1883. The family sold the houses to others, but they remained rental properties.<br /><br /> It is possible that the Atwoods lived in either 413, 415, or 417 Cooper Street between 1853 and 1860, as they appear in city directories at "Cooper above Fourth." Starting in 1860, the house at 417 was rented to others, first to a bookkeeper, William Farr, his wife Adelaide, and their three young children. The household also included a domestic servant, Rachael Askins, identified in the 1860 Census as "mulatto."<br /><br />Little is known about the next tenant, a dealer in boots and shoes named James J. Morrison, but in 1868 a public sale of contents of the home provided a glimpse of the Victorian-era ambiance at this address. As advertised in the <em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em>, the sale revealed a home with rosewood and brocatelle drawing-room furniture made in Philadelphia, velvet carpets, a marble-topped center table, and a fireplace with a French-plate mantel and pier mirror. Music filled the home from a seven-octave pianoforte made by the Philadelphia firm Schomacker & Co., which had been founded by a Viennese craftsman. The contents of 417 Cooper Street included dining room and chamber furniture, beds and bedding, china, glassware, and kitchen utensils. The furnishings provide a glimpse of domestic life on Cooper Street in the second half of the nineteenth century.<br /><br /><strong>Philadelphia Connections</strong><br /><br />By 1870 and continuing until at least 1874, 417 Cooper Street became home for the extended family of William Jenks, a produce dealer on the Philadelphia waterfront. In addition to his Irish-born wife, Kate, the household included Kate's sister Mary Cassidy, a music teacher; and her widowed mother, Catharine Cassidy. The household also included Henry Cooper, a bricklayer, who might have been a boarder. Domestic servants--Maggie Harrison in 1870 and Mary Mullene in 1873--worked and lived in the home. Another family with Philadelphia ties followed in the early 1880s: Robert E. Thompson, a Philadelphia insurance agent with his wife, Sarah, their adult son Charles (a clerk), and Sara's sister. They moved to this address from up the street, at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/52" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">425 Cooper</a>, and stayed at least four years, from 1881 to 1885.<br /><br /><strong>Personal Losses, Property Losses</strong><br /><br />In the late 1880s, 417 Cooper Street became an owner-occupied home when Willard Hinchman, a fish merchant on the Philadelphia waterfront, purchased the house at this address as well as the house next door, 415 Cooper. While the Hinchman family lived in 417 Cooper, 415 continued to be a boarding house operated by a relative who had long lived at the address, Margaret Browning. The Hinchmans had other family connections in Camden as well, especially through Hinchman's wife, M. Ella Hinchman, one of six children of prominent local businessman John Stockham. He had made a fortune during the Civil War by importing Carolina pine from the South and then selling it to the U.S. government. By the 1880s, Stockham had retired to a Maryland farm, but he previously lived at 215 Cooper Street.<br /><br />The Hinchmans' early years at 417 Cooper were years of loss. First, John Stockham died in 1887 at the age of 70, and his funeral took place at the Hinchman home. Just three years later, the Hinchmans' infant son named for his grandfather, John Stockham Hinchman, also died at just eight months of age. His funeral, too, took place at 417 Cooper Street. Shortly thereafter, they rented out 417 Cooper to others; in 1896 both 417 and 415 Cooper Street went to sheriff's sale. The Hinchmans left New Jersey to farm on Stockham family land in Maryland, although they returned by 1905 to a rented home in Haddonfield.<br /><br /><strong>Health</strong> <strong>Professionals</strong><br /><br />At the turn of the twentieth century, 417 Cooper Street was an investment property that belonged to the new owner-occupant of the house next door at 415, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/46" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Joshua B. Franklin</a>. The owner of a livery stable near the Camden waterfront, Franklin had become well-known as he rented horses and carriages to the city's social and political elites. This may have helped him attract tenants for 417 Cooper. He also improved the properties with wood front porches (added in 1913 but later removed).<br /><br />Cooper Street's evolution into a location for medical offices became evident at 417 Cooper Street with the tenants of the early twentieth century. For more than a decade, between 1908 and 1919, Franklin rented to the extended family of Dr. Elmer Bower, a dentist who previously had both home and office at two other Cooper Street addresses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a>). When Bower arrived in Camden in the 1880s, he had been fresh out of dental school at the University of Pennsylvania. Now, at 417 Cooper Street, he continued his practice from age 46 until retirement and shared the home with his wife, Catherine; his newly married son, Chester, and Chester's wife, Mary; and an adult daughter, Sarah. Dr. Bower was active in the Camden Republican Club, then at 312 Cooper Street, and his accomplishments as a fisherman occasionally made the Camden papers. When Bower retired in 1919 for health reasons, he moved briefly to another address in Camden and then returned to his birthplace, Berks County, Pennsylvania. <br /><br />The Bower family's successor at 417 Cooper Street also was culminating a long career in health care, particularly public health and the treatment of infectious disease. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/51" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Henry Hill Davis</a>, 70 years old when he rented 417 Cooper, lived at this address with his wife, Harriett, for about five years while serving as medical inspector for Camden's public schools. He had been appointed to the position at the turn of the century--the first post of its kind in New Jersey and only the second in the nation, after New York City. Davis instituted annual physical examinations for Camden pupils and required vaccinations before any child could be admitted to school. While continuing in this work, he was among the leaders in founding a new Camden Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases, which opened in 1916, and he served for twenty years as president of the Camden Board of Health. Over his long career, he led Camden's responses to smallpox oubreaks and the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. When he retired from his Camden schools position in 1925, the city honored him not only with a pension but also by giving his name to a new public school--still operating in 2020 as the <a href="http://camdencitydavis.ss12.sharpschool.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Henry H. Davis Family School</a> in East Camden. A street near the former site of the Municipal Hospital <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-streets/CamdenNJ-Streets-DavisStreet.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">also bears his name</a>.<br /><br /><strong>A Widow's Boarding House</strong><br /><br />Emma Jarvis experienced two deep losses in the mid-1920s: the death by suicide of her brother, John Knott, who lived on Point Street, and the death of her husband, Edgar, who operated an auto repair shop in North Camden. Perhaps it was the automotive business connected her with 417 Cooper Street, whose owner next door also sold and serviced automobiles as they gained in popularity during the 1920s. By 1927, perhaps a year or two earlier, Emma Jarvis moved from her earlier home in the 700 block of Lawrence Street to operate a boarding house at 417 Cooper.<br /><br />Unusual documentation of Jarvis's new address appeared in the <em>Camden Courier-Post</em> of January 28, 1929: a <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/49" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">testimonial advertisement</a> featuring her photograph. name, and address, with the headline "Woman Cries Aloud with Joy When Rheumatic Pain Goes." The advertisement purported to describe Jarvis's excruciating pain and the miraculous cure afforded by a powder called Nurito, available nearby at Weiser's Pharmacy, Fifth and Market Streets. This was, however, one of many such advertisements that appeared across the country to tout the Chicago-manufactured product. The ads soon attracted the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, which found the powder to be akin to aspirin and ordered the ads to be discontinued. <br /><br />For her more sustained venture, the boarding house, Jarvis rented 417 Cooper Street for $60 a month from the owner next door, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/46" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Joshua Franklin</a>. The 1930 U.S. Census found her at this address at age 59 with two of her four adult children (David, 35, an auto repairman, and Marion, 26, a book keeper) and six boarders. The boarders included a cook, a laundry manager, a saleswoman and a salesman, and a newspaper reporter. Many of the home's occupants shared the experience of being children of immigrants to the United States. Jarvis had been born in Pennsylvania to a father who immigrated from Germany (her mother had been born in Delaware). Jarvis's late husband had been born England. Among her boarders in 1930, one had parents born in Germany and another had parents born in Ireland. Two others demonstrated the fluidity of movement within the country; one had been born in New York and another, while born in New Jersey, had a father born in Montana.<br /><br />Jarvis operated the boarding house until at least 1931 (when she was listed in the last Camden city directory published during the 1930s) and likely longer, as advertisements offering furnished rooms or apartments at 417 Cooper Street continued to appear in Camden newspapers until 1938. In the late 1930s, she moved to Haddonfield to live with her daughter, Marion, who was employed there as a book keeper.<br /><br /><strong>Physician's Office, Retirement Home</strong><br /><br />By 1939, 417 Cooper Street had a new owner and transitioned to a common pattern of use for Cooper Street houses during the remaining decades of the twentieth century. The new owner, Dr. Edmund Hessert, lived in Collingswood (and later Rancocas) while maintaining his office on the first floor of the building he had purchased in Camden. He rented out the two floors above as apartments.<br /><br />The building remained in part a family home, however, because the most long-term occupants of the second-floor apartment were Hessert's in-laws, Thomas J. and Anna Murphy, both in their 70s, together with one and sometimes two of their adult sons. Thomas J. Murphy was retired from the Camden police force; his son Thomas P. Murphy had followed him onto the force and also retired in 1943. The other son living at 417 Cooper periodically, John, served in Europe during World War II and then returned to his office job with RCA (in Camden, later in Cherry Hill).<br /><br /> Maintaining a home for the Murphys seems to have been a factor in Hessert's continued ownership of 417 Cooper Street through the 1950s. A year after the death of Anna Murphy in 1958, at the age of 86, the building was advertised "for quick sale." The listing promised the buyer professional offices on the first floor and two apartments, completely modernized, including Venetian blinds and carpeting.<br /><br /><strong>Professional Services and Apartments</strong><br /><br />In the second half of the twentieth century, 417 Cooper Street transitioned to an office building for insurance and legal services, with rental apartments above. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/43" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Richard C. Hardenbergh</a> operated his insurance agency at this address beginning in 1961, and in 1963 he bought the building. Although living in Haddon Township, he remained active in Camden civic activities, for example collecting registration forms for the Spring Queen competition held in Johnson Park in 1961. His business grew to twelve employees in Camden, with an additional office in Willingboro by 1966. During Hardenbergh's ownership, the tenants in the building included a training school for data processing equipment operators.<br /><br />A lawyer, Barry Weinberg, owned 417 Cooper in the 1970s and 1980s, when office tenants also included an accounting firm. Thereafter the building passed through a sequence of absentee and corporate owners and often appeared in notices for sheriff's sales to satisfy back taxes. In 2002, a Rutgers-Camden graduate, Elizabeth Ashley, bought the building and rehabilitated it into apartments for students while also opening a restaurant in the house next door (215). After one more change of ownership, to a Philadelphia entity Park Properties Unlimited, Rutgers University purchased the building in 2010 for $367,000.
Associated Individuals
For a list of individuals and businesses associated with this address, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Database</a> and scroll down to 417.
Illustrations
1. 417 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner)
2. 400 block of Cooper Street, early twentieth century prior to 1913, with arrow indicating 417. (Camden County Historical Society)
Sources
Camden City Directories (Ancestry.com).<br /> Camden County Property Records.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Geneaology Bank).<br />National Register for Historic Places, Cooper Street Historic District Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior.<br /> New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services Structures Surveys (1985) and Office of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office, Property Reports (2007).<br /> U.S. Census, 1850-1950; New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources:</strong> Historic structures surveys identify this house as constructed c. 1846, consistent with the deed for purchase for the land. This research updates and corrects the date of construction for the home.
Research by
Charlene Mires
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
417 Cooper Street
Description
An account of the resource
Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
400 Block
417 Cooper Street
Accountants
Aging
Apartments
Boarding House
Boarding House Operator
Childhood
Collingswood
Death
Dentists
Doctors
Domestic Life
England
Germany
Haddon Township
Haddonfield
Insurance
Interiors
Investment
Ireland
Merchants
Montana
New York
Philadelphia
Police
Rancocas
RCA
Rutgers-Camden
Toms River
Widows
World War II
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/a8ead66e3e94647b1a8a54e7d03d82fc.jpg
bd5e4bd3b06f33d6995ba09db2a9635b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
425 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Together with the row 415-21 Cooper Street, 425 represents a significant transition in the evolution of Camden during the 1840s as homes were built for the first time on land formerly owned by the Cooper family on the north side of the street. The nomination of the Cooper Street Historic District for the National Register identifies significance in part through architecture and transitions of use: "The buildings within the district include Camden's best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." The home at 425 Cooper Street represents these transitions through its use for dental and medical practices from the 1880s through the 1970s. Furthermore, the house was built for an early public official of Camden who also developed houses at the back of the property on Lawrence Street. This first owner, Isaac Porter, also served as treasurer of the West Jersey Ferry Company, reflecting the historic significance of Camden as a point of connection between South Jersey and Philadelphia. In 2020, 425 Cooper Street was privately owned and divided into rental apartments.
Architectural style
Greek Revival row house.
Date of construction
c. 1846 (dated by New Jersey Office of Historic Preservation Sites Inventory, based upon deed transferring land from Alexander Cooper et al to Isaac Porter, June 5, 1846).
History
Three long-term owners of 425 Cooper Street reflect patterns of transition across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.<br /><br /><strong>Town Builder</strong><br /><br />In 1846, just two years after Camden became the governmental seat for newly-designated Camden County, Isaac Porter bought the land where 425 Cooper Street stands from a member of the region's most prominent founding family, Alexander Cooper. His purchase and subsequent building of a three-story brick row house was part of the first wave of home construction on the north side of Cooper Street. Porter (1807-1867) was in many ways a town builder and booster for Camden during the 1840s and 1850s as he developed his property, served in public office, and oversaw financial matters for the West Jersey Ferry Company between Camden and Philadelphia.<br /><br />The Porter family owned 425 Cooper Street for more than three decades. The U.S. Census in 1850 documents the Porter family during their early years at this address: Isaac, age 46; his wife, Esther (Ackley), age 40; and five children, a daughter and four sons ranging in age from 5 to 18. Isaac Porter served as Camden County Surrogate, an office responsible for recording wills and other matters related to settling estates.<br /><br />In 1849 Porter also had been appointed treasurer of the newly incorporated West Jersey Ferry Company. One of Camden's important connections to Philadelphia, this ferry had been operating since 1800 under management of the family and descendants of Abraham Browning, and thus was better known to local residents as "the Browning ferry." It had a prime location, running between Market Street in Camden and Market Street in Philadelphia. As the ferry took on its new status as a corporation, its presence on the Camden waterfront grew with a wharf that further extended filled land into the Delaware River, a ferry house, and a new West Jersey Hotel.<br /><br />Porter, meanwhile, developed his Cooper Street property by building two smaller houses at the rear of his lot, on Lawrence Street. The houses, numbered 432 and 434, were completed by 1855, when they served as models for an additional six two-story row houses contracted for construction by Benjamin H. Browning (a member of the ferry-operating family although not a participant in that venture). These rental properties attracted skilled tradesmen. The earliest that can be documented are in Camden city directories of the 1860s: at 434 Lawrence Street in 1865, a cabinet maker, Alexander Haines; and at 432 Lawrence Street in 1869, a carpenter, William Rotter.<br /><br />During the 1850s, Porter served twice as city treasurer for Camden (assisted by his oldest son, Joseph A. Porter, who lived down the street at 538 Cooper and later held the same office). By 1860, the Porters' older children had left the home, but the household also had gained two new female residents, likely extended family members (Eleanor Ackley, age 68, and Abigail Cooper, age 32). They also employed a domestic servant, Martha Butler, who was African American. To Census takers, she reported her age as 25, her birthplace as Delaware, and indicated that she had been married within the last year and could not read or write.<br /><br />A generational transition took place at 425 Cooper Street during the 1860s with the deaths of the senior members of the family: Esther Porter in 1863, followed by both Isaac Porter and Eleanor Ackley in 1867. As customary for the time, funerals for all three took place in the family home. For Isaac Porter, the flags of the ferry boats of the West Jersey Ferry Company flew at half-mast to honor his memory.<br /><br />Three of the Porters' sons remained at 425 Cooper Street through the 1870s, with the Census of 1870 recognizing the oldest of the three, 31-year-old Israel E. Porter, a store clerk, as head of the household. The family by that date included Israel's wife Ella and their infant son Harry; the other Porter brothers George, a coach maker, and Charles, a store clerk; and one or possibly two servants (in two separate listings for the family in 1870, two different servants were recorded: Margaret Brown, age 30 and described as mulatto, and Gattie Posley, age 20 and African American. This extended family remained until 1880, when they rented the property briefly to an insurance agent and his family. Financial difficulties may have contributed to the ultimate sale of the home, as it went to sheriff's sale in 1881 to satisfy back taxes.<br /><br /><strong>A Medical Family</strong><br /><br />The next long-term family came to 425 Cooper with the street's transition during the 1880s, with the founding of nearby Cooper Hospital. Proximity to the hospital made Cooper Street an idea location for medical professionals who established both home and office in structures that previously served strictly residential purposes. Such was the case for 425 Cooper Street and the Irwin family, who lived and provided health care at this address for more than forty years starting in 1884 (and for several years previous, next door at 427 Cooper).<br /><br />The owner of record for the Irwin home was Asbury Irwin, a stenographer for the Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, but the head of the family was his father, a long-time physician, Samuel B. Irwin. The family had roots in the Brandywine region of Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania, where the previous generation had operated iron furnaces. Samuel and his brother, the Philadelphia surgeon Hayes Agnew Irwin, inherited the iron business but also earned medical degrees at Jefferson Medical College.<br /><br />The primary medical practice during the Irwins' ownership of 425 Cooper was the dental office of Alphonso Irwin, who was about 25 years old when his brother Asbury bought the home. A recent graduate of the Philadelphia Dental School (which later became part of Temple University), he founded a Camden Free Dental Clinic as well as a private practice that continued until his retirement in the 1920s. While living at 425 Cooper Street (which he purchased from his brother Asbury in 1896), Alphonso married and with his wife, Anna, raised two children. He wrote frequently about dental hygiene, particularly for children, and became a noted authority on dental law.<br /><br />Alphonso Irwin became a leader in New Jersey dentistry, which for a time made 425 Cooper Street the headquarters for the New Jersey Dental Association. The association's need for a secretary brought into the Irwin household a boarder whose unusual background captured the attention of Camden residents between 1913 and 1915. The <em>Camden Courier-Post</em> reported frequently on the social and professional activities of Winifred de Mercier-Panton, who had been born in Australia but somehow had come to be employed by Irwin as secretary of the New Jersey State Dental Board. When she had a birthday party, when she attended a social event in Philadelphia, and when she met the governor of New Jersey, the <em>Courier-Post </em>noted the details. In November 1914, with the Great War underway in Europe, she announced her engagement to a captain in the British Colonial Force and soon thereafter departed Camden to serve with the <a href="https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/4949680" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Voluntary Aid Attachment</a> of the British Army. In 1915, for circumstances unknown, she was awarded a Royal Red Cross for distinguished service.<br /><br /><strong>Office in Camden, Home Away</strong><br /><br />The next owner of 425 Cooper Street, osteopathic physician George W. Tapper, lived in the home for about five years during the 1930s. By 1940, however, he and his wife, Dorothy, had a new home in Medford Lakes, Burlington County. Like a number of other medical professionals on Cooper Street during the later decades of the twentieth century, Tapper treated his property as an office/apartment building with residential tenants living in the upper floors. The frequent turnover of apartment dwellers included Edgar J. Anzola (1937), a Venezuelan who worked in the international division of RCA; Eugene Gravener Jr. (1944), who earned the Air Medal for supplying materials to American and Chinese combat troops in north Burma during World War II; and Rosemary Tully (1958), an Irish woman joined by her new American husband after they married.<br /><br />George Tapper owned 425 Cooper Street until 1975, the first in a sequence of transfers of ownership to absentee landlords. Starting in 2007 and continuing in 2020, the property was owned by investors from the Bronx, New York, and served as rental apartments.
Associated Individuals
For all known residents and businesses at 425 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Database</a>.
Illustrations
1. 425 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner)
2. 425 Cooper Street indicated by arrow in photograph taken early in the twentieth century, prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society)
Research by
Charlene Mires, Kaya Durkee, and Lucy Davis
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Sources
<em>Biographical Review Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of Camden and Burlington Counties, N.J.</em> (Boston: Biographical Review Publishing, 1897).<br />Building Permits, Camden County Historical Society.<br />Charles Boyer, <em>Annals of Camden No. 3: Old Ferries </em>(Privately Printed, 1921).<br />Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com).<br />Camden City Directories and U.S. Census, 1850-1940 (Ancestry.com).<br />Camden County Property Records.<br />George R. Prowell, <em>History of Camden County, New Jersey </em>(Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886).<br />Structures Survey, New Jersey Office of Historic Preservation Sites Inventory.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
425 Cooper Street
Description
An account of the resource
Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
400 Block
425 Cooper Street
432 Lawrence Street
434 Lawrence Street
African Americans
Aging
Apartments
Australia
Childhood
Death
Delaware
Dentists
Doctors
Economic Development
England
Extended Family
Ferries
Greek Revival
Health and Medicine
Investment
Ireland
Lawrence Street
Medford Lakes
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
Public Health
Public Officials
Servants
Venezuela
World War I
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/dbdacc8f82072b50e2629ff34d1cf557.jpg
b8e4443e9fb43c31437edf1dfcb1e280
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
At this location, a wood-framed house numbered 416 Lawrence Street, built in 1847, formed part of a row of working-class rental properties erected behind the grander homes of Cooper Street during the nineteenth century. The later garage, built sometime between 1926 and 1950, documents the introduction of automobiles to Camden in the twentieth century.
Date of construction
1847 (house); c. 1926-50 (garage).
History
<p>At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States.</p>
<p><strong>416 Lawrence Street </strong></p>
<p>A two-story, wood-frame house stood at 416 Lawrence Street from 1847 until 1884. Its status as a back building associated with <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/admin/items/show/70">413 Cooper Street</a> was described in an advertisement in the Philadelphia <em>Public Ledger </em>that offered both properties for sale on April 9, 1847: “For Sale – A modern built three-story Frame House, with two-story Back Building, with a choice lot of Fruit Trees in the yard.” An additional advertisement in December described the Lawrence Street house as “a small two-story Frame Building on the Alley, built about six months since.”</p>
<p>The absence of house numbering prior to 1861 prevents identifying tenants of 416 Lawrence Street in city directories in earlier years. However, one clue about unfortunate circumstances appeared in a <em>Public Ledger </em>advertisement in 1859. The notice sought an adoptive parent for “a healthy male Child nine months old” and directed inquiries to “Lawrence Street, first house above Fourth, between Cooper and Penn, Camden.” By 1865, tenants at 416 Lawrence included Sophia Fairfowl (or Fairfield), a widow; Abby Hammell, possibly also a widow; and Watson Wertsel (variously spelled Wartsel or Wertzell), a wheelwright and veteran of the Civil War. Wertsel’s household likely included his wife, Rebecca, whom he had married in 1860.</p>
<p>By 1870, 416 Lawrence Street had become home to a family of six people (plus an additional unrelated tenant) whose occupations reflected the significance of Camden in the region’s transportation networks and industrial growth. George Mapes, a white man 45 years old, born in New Jersey, worked as an engineer on one of the ferries that traversed the Delaware River between Camden and Philadelphia. His wife Rebecca, 40 years old, also white and born in New Jersey, kept house and raised their four children. She could not read or write, but that would not be the case for at least two of the next generation: Charles Mapes, age 8, and Sarah Mapes, 13, were both recorded by the 1870 Census as attending school. An older son, Jacob, age 15, was not in school that year and not recorded as working. An older daughter, Mary, age 20, worked in a pen factory—likely the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back">Esterbrook Steel Pen</a> factory on Cooper Street. Esterbrook, which crafted and shipped steel pen nibs around the world, signaled the future development of heavy industry on Camden’s waterfront. By 1876, new tenants at 416 Cooper Street, the McLaughlins, also included two women working at the pen factory.</p>
<p>By 1880, a new family at 416 Lawrence Street illustrated the changing composition of Camden’s population as people moved to the growing city. Martin Holahan (in other records, Hallahan or Hollahan), a 43-year-old white male, was born in Massachusetts. A Civil War veteran, he worked as a carpenter and headed a household of six other people: His wife, Sarah, a 26-year-old white woman, had been in born in Canada to parents who immigrated from England. Her mother, English-born Elizabeth Whartle, 54 years old and unable to read or write, lived with the family and worked in domestic service. Martin and Sarah’s family also included four children ranging from 9 months to 9 years old, the oldest two attending school.</p>
<p>Another carpenter, John Ferrell, lived at 416 Lawrence Street in the early 1880s, but during 1883 and 1884, the home was listed for sale. By this time, heirs of Hannah Atwood had sold her properties. The wood-framed 416 Lawrence Street and 413 Cooper Street transferred to a farmer-turned-inventor, Restore B. Lamb, who built <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/admin/items/show/70">a new brick house at 413 Cooper Street</a> in 1883. By 1885, 416 Lawrence Street had been demolished. The lot stood vacant until the erection of a one-story garage sometime between 1926 and 1950. The garage documents the introduction of automobiles to Camden in the twentieth century.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 416 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to street numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia newspapers. Camden County and Gloucester County deeds. <br />Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. Census, 1870 and 1880.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
416 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Garage (built c. 1926-50) on former site of wood-framed house, 1847-84.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
413 Cooper Street
416 Lawrence Street
Artists
Canada
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Civil War
Demolition
England
Esterbrook Steel Pen Company
Ferries
Garage
Lawrence Street
Massachusetts
Veterans
Widows
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b4c797de75db0d2a78cff5f85a2a9713.jpg
ac73eb57f91e5511da2c99eacbbc9893
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
The concrete block garage, built c. 1939-50, originally served the funeral home operating at that time at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>. The garage replaced two nineteenth-century, working-class rental rowhouses. The house at 428 Lawrence Street was the early childhood home and possibly the birthplace of Edward A. Reid, who later in life was the first Black judge to be appointed for the Camden County courts.
Date of construction
c. 1847-54
History
<p>A cement-block garage, built for a Cooper Street undertaker c. 1939-50, stands on the site of two earlier rowhouses similar to others that remain standing on Lawrence Street. The earlier houses date to the period c. 1847-54, when they were built on land purchased by Jesse Townsend, a bank clerk. In 1847, Townsend acquired property extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street, and like several of his neighbors he added houses facing both streets. At <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>, Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, raised a family that grew to include five children as Jesse Townsend rose to the position of cashier at one of Camden’s key institutions, the State Bank of Camden. The smaller rowhouses on Lawrence Street were rented to tenants. During the 1860s, the Townsends sold their house and the pair of rental properties separately to new owners. They moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank, in 1862; five years later, they sold the pair of Lawrence Street houses to investors from Cumberland County. </p>
<p><strong>428 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>The absence of house numbering prior to 1861 prevents identifying tenants by address in earlier years, but city directories document people living in the 400 block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. The earliest who can be identified with certainty at 428 Lawrence Street were members of the extended family of a blacksmith, John A. Brown, who lived at this address between 1861 and 1867. When documented in 1860 at their previous address, they were a household of nine people. Brown, a white man 47 years old, born in New Jersey, headed the household with his wife, Debra, a white woman 44 years old, and they had five offspring ranging in age from 9 to 22. Their oldest daughter worked as a dressmaker, and their oldest son as a journeyman hatter. Also in the household were plasterer Van T. Shivers and a 2-year-old child, Lorenzo Shivers, who may have been a son-in-law and grandchild of the Browns. By 1863 the Browns left the Lawrence Street address, but Shivers stayed until 1867.<br /><br />In 1867, the owner of the adjacent 428 and 430 Lawrence Street rowhouses, Jesse Townsend, put them up for sale. Townsend had already sold the associated Cooper Street-facing house (423 Cooper) and moved to another Cooper Street house closer to the State Bank of Camden, where he worked. When Townsend advertised the Lawrence Street houses for sale in the <em>West Jersey Press</em>, he described their potential as investment properties: "Two Small Houses / For Sale Cheap / The subscriber offers for sale two small Brick Houses, No. 428 and 430 Lawrence Street, Camden, N.J. These houses contain five rooms each, are well built, have range in kitchen and hydrant water in yard, and will be sold so as to net from 10 to 12 per cent per annum clear of taxes. A portion of the purchase money may remain on mortgage.” The two houses quickly sold to a couple living in Cumberland County and remained rental properties.</p>
<p>Tenants moved in and out of the 428 Lawrence Street rowhouse frequently for the rest of the nineteenth century. Their occupations reflected the range of skilled trades then in demand in Camden, including building trades (mason, carpenter, bricklayer); crafts (tinsmith, caner, weaver); and clothing-related occupations for women (tailoress, dressmaker). Tenants at 428 Lawrence Street also included a railroad brakeman and people working in office jobs (clerk, stenographer). Most tenants during this period, to the extent that they can be identified, were white and born in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, although some had parents who were immigrants. In large families, adult children worked outside the home, but younger sons and daughters attended school.</p>
<p>By 1900, 428 Lawrence Street and several others nearby became homes to Black families with members who migrated from the South in the decades following the Civil War. James T. Reid, a Black man born in North Carolina, migrated to Philadelphia by 1890 and then, after marrying and starting a family, moved to Camden by 1899. The Reid family rented 428 Lawrence Street between 1899 and 1903. Reid worked as a butler and waiter while at this address and later as a gardener and odd-jobs laborer. In 1900 on Lawrence Street, the Reids were a household of six people: James Reid, 34 years old; his wife, Mary, a Black woman 34 years old, who was born in New Jersey; and four daughters ranging from 1 to 8 years old. While at this address, the Reids added two sons to their family.</p>
<p>One of the sons born to the Reid family while they lived at this address became prominent in later years as the first Black judge appointed for the Camden County courts. Edward A. Reid, born on May 29, 1902, later graduated from Camden High School, Howard University, and the Howard University law school. He returned to Camden to practice and served as a borough solicitor and municipal judge for the predominantly Black community of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/lawnside-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawnside</a>, as an assistant Camden County prosecutor, and ultimately as Camden County Juvenile and Domestic Relations judge. For a time he had his law office at Sixth and Cooper Streets, not far from his first home in Camden; by the time he died in 1967 he lived in the nearby Northgate Apartments, then a recently built luxury high-rise. Active in community affairs including the NAACP and United Fund of Camden County, in 1965 Reid received a community service award from the AFL-CIO.</p>
<p>Racial and ethnic diversity continued to be present at 428 Lawrence Street in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1905-06, the tenants were Joseph Mallay, a chef who had been born in Japan in 1860, and his wife, Elizabeth, a Black woman whose parents had been born in Virginia. Several tenants later, in 1910, three occupants of 428 Lawrence Street had ancestral connections with western Europe: Andrew Wiliams, 38 years old and working as a cook in a canning factory, was a son of a German immigrant; his wife, Margaret, also 38 years old, immigrated from Ireland. They shared the home with a widowed woman of the same age, Clara A. Stewart, a daughter of German immigrants who worked as a trimmer in a lace factory. By 1915, a couple both born in England occupied the home: Thomas H. Hewley, 33 years old, a steamfitter, his wife, Florence, age 37, and their 4-year-old son Thomas. By 1920, a young couple who were both Irish immigrants lived at 428 Lawrence Street with their infant daughter.</p>
<p>Tenants of the early twentieth century sought employment by placing ads in local newspapers. Women sought to do washing at home, and at times they offered rooms for rent even though the house totaled only four or five rooms. A baker advertised his skills at making bread; another sought work “of any kind.” In 1912, an advertisement described an occupant of 428 Lawrence Street as well as his skills: “Middle-aged, fairly educated, temperate man, wants position of any responsible nature; thoroughly understands reading of blueprints and handling of men.”</p>
<p>After years of frequent turnover of tenants, 428 Lawrence Street gained relatively long-term renters during the 1920s when it became home to the family of a shipyard worker, Frank J. Read, and his wife, Eva. They had been married about ten years when they moved from another rental a few blocks away on Mickle Street. Both of the Reads were children of immigrants, in his case from Ireland and in her case from Austria. When they moved to Lawrence Street, Frank Read was 31 years old and Eva was 27; while at this address, their family grew from three children to six, and the household may have included one other adult lodger or relative, an Irish immigrant widow, Sara Colley.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, the Cooper Street-facing house behind 428 and 430 Lawrence Street had become a funeral home and residence for the operator, Charles Hiskey. The Lawrence Street houses remained a rental property for a succession of tenants during the 1930s, but in 1939 Hiskey bought them and then built a concrete-block automobile garage in their place. The garage changed hands in concert with 423 Cooper Street through a series of owners in the later twentieth century, including a doctor who had his office in the Cooper Street building during the 1960s and 1970s. Rutgers University first gained title to the properties in 1984 and in the early 1990s, after demolishing <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>, entered into a partnership with a redevelopment firm. The project included renovations of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/84" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">321</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/69" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">411 Cooper Street</a> and the potential for new construction in place of 423 Cooper. However, by 1998 that project faltered. With the garage still standing on the site of the Lawrence Street rowhouses, Rutgers regained title to the property again in 2005.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 428 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<br /> Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers.<br /> Camden County Deeds.<br /> Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950.<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950.<br /><br /><strong>Note on sources</strong>: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. At 428 Lawrence Street, one individual worked as a butler and waiter and several others as domestics, but none are known to have been employed on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee.
Posted by
Charlene Mires
send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
428 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Garage, built c. 1939-50 on former site of two nineteenth-century rowhouses.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
423 Cooper Street
428 Lawrence Street
African Americans
Attorneys
Austria
Automobiles
Bakers
Banking
Black Migration
Blacksmiths
Bricklayers
Butlers
Caners
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Demolition
Dressmakers
England
Extended Family
Factory Workers
Funeral Homes
Garage
Gardeners
Germany
Hatters
Howard University
Investment
Ireland
Japan
Judges
Laundries
Lawnside
Lawrence Street
Masons
North Carolina
Plasterers
Rooming House
Rutgers-Camden
Shipyard Workers
Tinsmiths
Virginia
Waiters
Weavers
Widows