1
10
11
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b3fd7fbac5d8ea05fe050e351fdaacb2.jpg
91e3393d199bcee889b2bc7fe08c4b09
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
This one-story automobile garage demonstrates the changing character of Lawrence Street with the advent of the automobile. The structure was originally a two-story rowhouse, part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The owner of adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a> purchased and adapted the property as part of a renovation of his Fifth Street-facing home and office.
Date of construction
c. 1946-55; garage conversion c. 1946.
History
<p>In 1846, a Camden County public official named Isaac Porter purchased an undeveloped lot extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street and thereafter added three structures: A three-story house, 425 Cooper Street, and two smaller rowhouses at the back of the property at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and 434 Lawrence Street. Porter, also an officer of the West Jersey Ferry Company, lived in the Cooper Street house with his family while renting the two smaller houses to tenants until his death in 1867. His surviving sons later divided the property so that one would own the Cooper Street house and another the pair of rental houses. The Lawrence Street houses continued to be treated as properties separate from the Cooper Street house as they conveyed to subsequent owners outside the Porter family from the 1880s through the early twenty-first century.</p>
<p><strong>434 Lawrence Street<br /></strong></p>
<p>The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents listed in city directories beginning in 1854, although the absence of house numbering prevents associating them with specific addresses prior to the 1860s. Isaac Porter’s two rowhouses on Lawrence Street are known to have existed by 1855, when they were cited in a building contract as models for similar houses to be built elsewhere in Camden. An early tenant at 434 Lawrence Street may have been Daniel Bodine, a steamboat captain, who lived on “Lawrence below Fifth” between 1854 and 1860. His occupation may indicate an acquaintance with the property owner Isaac Porter, who served as an officer of the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-WestJerseyFerry.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">West Jersey Ferry Company</a>. Census records of 1860 identify Daniel Bodine as a white man 33 years old, living with his wife Elizabeth, a white woman aged 32.</p>
<p>Tenants at 434 Lawrence Street during the last decades of the nineteenth century included a cabinet maker, a police officer, a packer, a machinist, a brick layer, and a paper box maker. In 1870, the tenants were cabinet maker Alexander Haines, who had lived at this address since 1863. A white man who was born in New Jersey, Haines was 52 years old in 1870 and shared the home with his wife, Elizabeth, a white woman 46 years old, also born in New Jersey, and their two daughters. Daughters Anna, 15, and Ella, 11, both attended school. Work for a cabinet maker would have been plentiful in this neighborhood during these years as blocks north of Cooper Street filled with new houses, including the surviving mansion at 406 Penn Street built c. 1869. Behind that mansion and across the street from the Lawrence Street rowhouses, builder William Severns had a carpentry shop at 425 Lawrence that could have afforded employment to Haines and others. Severns, whose rising prominence in Camden led him to later service on the Board of Freeholders, developed a reputation as one of the city’s pioneer builders during the late nineteenth century.</p>
<p>Unusually, 434 Lawrence Street had one tenant who stayed for more than twenty years, from the early 1880s until 1913. Rebecca S. Lawrence, a white woman who was around 30 years old when she moved Lawrence Street, had grown up in South Camden with at least four siblings in a family headed by a laborer. Born in 1853, her childhood included her father’s service in the Civil War. By age 18, she went to work in a paper box factory and continued in that occupation throughout her years on Lawrence Street. Having married during the 1870s, she first appeared on Lawrence Street as Rebecca S. Currie (and may have first lived in adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a>). By 1884, however, she had reverted to her birth name; by 1900 Census records identified her as divorced. It would have been unusual for woman to occupy a home by herself, but if Rebecca Armstrong had lodgers or relatives with her at 434 Lawrence Street, they do not appear in public records. The only exception came in 1905, when New Jersey Census takers recorded the presence of one other occupant, a widow named Mary Lake. By the time Armstrong left Lawrence Street, she was in her late 50s. She spent her later years living in Philadelphia with one of her sisters, a widow who worked as a saleslady at the John Wanamaker department store. When she and her sister returned to New Jersey in the 1930s, they lived in Burlington County.</p>
<p>At 434 Lawrence Street, Armstrong was followed in 1914 by another household headed by women, a mother and daughter who were both widowed (Martha Delaney and Margaret Wheaton), and the daughter’s 13-year-old son. They moved on when Margaret Wheaton remarried in 1915, creating a vacancy filled by the family of August Sonntag, a woodworker at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>, for the decade between 1916 and 1926. Sonntag and his wife Jane (also known as Jennie), both white and born in Pennsylvania, represented converging ethnic identities—his parents had been born in Germany, and hers in Ireland. Prior to Lawrence Street, they lived at 301 Point Street, closer to the Victor manufacturing complex. While there, they suffered the death of their oldest daughter, Theresa, who succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 13. On Lawrence Street, they raised their surviving two daughters and one son to young adulthood.</p>
<p>Tenants continued to live at 434 Lawrence Street through the 1930s and most of the 1940s, but the character of the street was changing. Lawrence Street began to function as a service alley for automobiles, and garages replaced several of the rowhouses (see <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">416</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a> Lawrence Street). This was the fate of 434 Lawrence Street, which was purchased in 1946 by the owner of an adjacent house facing Fifth Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth</a>). That owner, Dr. Charles Kutner, renovated the Fifth Street house into a home and office and eliminated its deteriorated third floor in the process. Similarly, 434 Lawrence Street was reduced to one story and converted into an automobile garage, with a new concrete-block structure faced in brick joining the two structures in the back. The enlarged 211 N. Fifth Street, incorporating the former 434 Lawrence Street rowhouse, conveyed to Rutgers University as part of a multiple-property transaction with a real estate investor in 2005.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 434 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<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. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee; Gina Torres (Charles Kutner research).
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
434 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century former rowhouse converted to automobile garage c. 1946.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
211 N. Fifth Street
425 Cooper Street
432 Lawrence Street
434 Lawrence Street
Box Makers
Bricklayers
Cabinet Makers
Childhood
Children
Death
Demolition
Ferries
Garages
Germany
Ireland
Lawrence Street
Machinists
Packers
Philadelphia
Pneumonia
Police
Renovations
Victor Talking Machine Company
Widows
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/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
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/0d9b5e8aa2d0a322030100729f9a6991.jpg
41ec076e0f91f685c84b7410d9ca645c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
426 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.”
Date of construction
c. 1847-54
History
<p>At the back of two Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a>), two smaller houses with a small alley between them were added facing Lawrence Street sometime after 1847. The collective development of four residences stood on land purchased that year by Joseph R. Paulson, a Philadelphia merchant active in that city’s volunteer fire companies. Although just 35 years old when he bought the lots, Paulson apparently anticipated a need to assure future financial security for his family by 1848, when he placed the land and its ‘premises” in trust with his mother-in-law so that rents could be collected to support his wife and two young children. Paulson died in 1849 from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage while living in one of the Cooper Street-facing houses, and true to his wishes the four structures on his land generated income and at times provided shelter to his heirs for the next eight decades.</p>
<p><strong>426 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents beginning in 1854, according to city directories. The earliest tenants who can be identified at 426 Lawrence Street included a man who later rose to prominence in Camden, Charles E. Derby, who rented the house between 1859 and 1861. Derby, a journeyman machinist born in Massachusetts, was a white man in his early 30s when he lived at 426 Lawrence with his wife, Susan (also white and in her early 30s), and their infant daughter Orilla. Shortly after they left Lawrence Street, in 1863, Derby co-founded the firm Derby & Weatherby (also known as the Camden Machine Works). Over the next four decades, the company grew at Delaware and Cooper Streets, where it produced machines for many of Camden’s waterfront industries. The firm specialized in building marine engines, including the engines that powered ferryboats operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad. By the time Derby died in 1901, he was described as “well known to machinists throughout the country.”</p>
<p>By 1865, the house at 426 Lawrence Street became home to a family that stayed for three decades, longer than any other residents of the block during the nineteenth century. The location would have been ideal for a house carpenter, the occupation of the head of household, William C. Bates. At that time and into the 1870s, builders were buying lots of land north of Cooper Street and rapidly putting up houses in pairs, groups of three, and entire rows. The distinctive Linden Terrace block (Linden Street between Fourth and Fifth Street) developed in 1871, for example. From Lawrence Street, Bates would have had a direct view, and potentially an opportunity for work, as builder Joseph Cooper constructed his unusually large, grand mansion at 406 Penn Street in 1869. Another of the city’s prominent builders, William Severns, had a carpentry shop across the street from Bates while that project was underway.</p>
<p>The Census of 1870 documented the Bates family as William, 54 years old, a white man; his wife Sarah, a white woman 55 years old; and their son Samuel, who was 30 years old and employed as a box maker. All were born in New Jersey. Unusual among their neighbors on working-class Lawrence Street, the Bates family employed or had a boarder who was a domestic servant, 19-year-old Maggie Johnson, for at least that one year. The family stayed on Lawrence Street until William Bates’s death in 1895, when he was 80 years old. His funeral took place from the house they had occupied for the last three decades.</p>
<p>Another relatively long-term tenant family occupied 426 Lawrence Street between 1896 and 1904. Like others on Lawrence Street during these years, William J. Roche and his wife, Rose, were immigrants—both had immigrated separately from Ireland during the 1870s and later married in the United States. They lived in Pennsylvania prior to moving to Camden sometime after 1888, following the birth of two children. William Roche appeared in Camden city directories as a clerk, but during the 1900 Census he identified his occupation as musician. That year while living on Lawrence Street, he was 49 years old; his wife, Rose, was 40 years old, and their two children, 13-year-old Regina and 12-year-old Gerald, were attending school. The family left Lawrence Street by 1905 and by 1910 had moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where William Roche worked as a piano polisher.</p>
<p>Tenants moved in and out frequently for the next two decades. Their occupations included steam fitter, printer, and molder, driver, machinist, bank watchman, and woodworker. At least one tenant family offered boarding for one or two working men. For a time during 1905, an unlicensed <a href="https://sciencehistory.org/collections/blog/stomping-the-margarine/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">oleo margarine</a> manufactory was set up at 426 Lawrence Street by an operator who sought to evade taxes by producing an unlabeled product for local stores. Inspectors hauled away 1,000 pounds of margarine as well as the machinery that produced it. The incident was an exceptional manufacturing use of the property, which otherwise remained rented to residential tenants.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) prompted changes on Cooper Street as local real estate interests pushed to transform the residential street into a commercial thoroughfare. During this period, the longtime owners of 426 Lawrence Street, the Paulson family, put the house up for sale along with its companion Cooper Street-facing house (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421 Cooper Street</a>). At the time, a daughter-in-law of the original Paulson property owner, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary Paulson</a>, lived in 421 Cooper Street and derived income from renting out the other inherited houses. The sale of 421 Cooper and 426 Lawrence Street from Mary Paulson to the Bell-Oliver Corporation of Camden made news for the property’s lineage in Camden history. The Camden <em>Daily Courier</em> noted that only two families—the Paulsons and, before them, the Coopers—had owned the parcel since the time of the city’s founding.<br /><br />While Cooper Street transitioned to business uses, Lawrence Street remained a row of residential rental properties. For most of the 1920s, spanning the period of the sale of the property and renovation of the Cooper Street-facing house, 426 Lawrence Street was the home of a shipyard worker, Frank Kenny, and his wife Jeannette (who had previously lived down the street at 418 Lawrence). By 1930, a machine hand at the RCA Victor radio factory, Maybel Gray, rented the house. A white female, 33 years old, Gray headed a household of two children, ages 12 and 14, who were attending school.<br /><br /> The continued pairing of 426 Lawrence and 421 Cooper Street as one parcel was evident through the presence and transactions of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/39" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Helen C. Waters</a>, a widow, who rented space in the remodeled 421 Cooper Street beginning in 1934. At that address, she operated her business, Helen’s Beauty Shoppe, and made a home for herself and two daughters. By 1943, after her daughters were grown, she moved to the smaller Lawrence Street house and subsequently bought the entire property, including 421 Cooper Street, in 1945. The property changed ownership again in 1947, transferring to an optometrist who ran his business in the Cooper Street-facing house but continued to rent 426 Lawrence Street to residential tenants. In 1950, Census takers recorded the occupant as Marguarite A. Graves, a 46-year-old white female working as a professional singer.</p>
<p>Frequently put up for rent or sale during the 1950s and 1960s, 426 Lawrence Street apparently also benefitted from a facelift to meet modern expectations. In 1953, a rental ad for the property described the house for potential tenants: “Teacher, business couple or widow looking for a modern central city home, here is a lovely tile bath, modern kitchen with dinette, one large bedroom, gas heated, living room and storage room.” The house, which had been standing for a century by the 1950s, also began to attract interest as a remnant of Camden history. One of Camden’s active preservationists, Edward Teitelman, purchased 426 Lawrence Street and its neighbor, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424 Lawrence</a>, in 1969. Teitelman, a psychologist by profession, saved other properties on Cooper Street and nearby during this period, including the distinctive <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a> designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre (later the Rutgers-Camden Writers House). He owned the pair of Lawrence Street houses until 1989; by 2004 they were in the hands of a real estate broker who sold them to Rutgers University in 2005.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 426 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<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. This research updates and corrects the record. At this address, research located one individual identified as a domestic servant, but she lived within the household of a tenant family.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee.
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
426 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
426 Lawrence Street
Beauticians
Boarder/Lodger
Box Makers
Bridge Impact
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Clerks
Crime
Death
Derby & Weatherby
Drivers
Hemmorhage
Historic Preservation
Investment
Ireland
Lawrence Street
Machinists
Massachusetts
Merchants
Molders
Musicians
Oleo
Philadelphia
Printers
RCA
Renovations
Rutgers University
Servants
Shipyard Workers
Steam Fitters
Watchmen
Woodworkers
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/71e6707f8bcef09179ba518f552651c3.jpg
7271153aa049bf97d08cbbba199e6528
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
424 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.”
Date of construction
c. 1847-54
History
<p>At the back of two Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a>), two smaller houses with a small alley between them were added facing Lawrence Street sometime between 1847 and 1854. The collective development of four residences stood on land purchased in 1847 by Joseph R. Paulson, a Philadelphia merchant active in that city’s volunteer fire companies. Although just 35 years old when he bought the lots, Paulson apparently anticipated a need to assure future financial security for his family by 1848, when he placed the land and its "premises” in trust with his mother-in-law so that rents could be collected to support his wife and two young children. Paulson died in 1849 from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage while living in one of the Cooper Street-facing houses, and true to his wishes the four structures on his land generated income and the Cooper Street-facing houses at times provided shelter to his heirs for the next eight decades.</p>
<p><strong>424 Lawrence Street</strong></p>
<p>The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents beginning in 1854, according to city directories. The earliest tenants who can be identified at 424 Lawrence Street were a family of five headed by a journeyman tailor, Charles Lewis, who lived in this house from 1858 until 1869. Lewis, a white man who was 38 years old in 1860, headed a family that included his wife, Sarah, age 32, and three children ranging in age from 2 years old to 11 (the older two attending school). The parents and their oldest child were all born in Pennsylvania; the two younger children were both born in New Jersey, indicating a move across the river in the early 1850s. While living at 424 Lawrence Street, by 1868 Charles Lewis changed his occupation or added a second position as collector of water rents for the Camden Water Works. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to a different home on Eighth Street.</p>
<p>During the last decades of the nineteenth century, tenants at 424 Lawrence included a barber, machinists, a boot and shoe maker, a sawyer, and a laborer. One of the longest-residing tenants during this period was a widow, Mary Davis, who earned her living as a dress trimmer while living at this address between 1881 and 1888. Davis, a white woman in her 30s, had previously boarded in another family’s home with her two children, so the move to a rented house on Lawrence Street may have been a step forward for the family. For most of the 1890s and into the first year of the new century, the tenants at 424 Lawrence were an extended family including Irish immigrants and their second- and third-generation children and grandchildren. Most consistently through this period, a laborer named William Thompson and his wife, Mary—a daughter of Irish immigrants—headed the household. By 1897, they shared the home with Mary Thompson’s Irish parents, John and Mary Reilly (or Riley), who moved in around the time Mary gave birth to the couple’s third child. The need for additional adults in the home may have been related to Mary’s health; she died in 1900 at the age of 33 from causes not publicly disclosed, leaving behind three children then aged 2 to 15. As the family circumstances changed, William Thompson’s occupation advanced from laborer to policeman, with the family economy also supported by John Reilly’s work as a carpenter and Mary Reilly’s work as a tailor. They left 424 Lawrence Street in 1901.</p>
<p>Additional nationalities were represented among tenants at this address in the early decades of the twentieth century, reflecting the diversity of Camden’s immigrant population. During 1904 and 1905, the residents were a Dutch family headed by John Vendengenten, a coachman who was 48 years old in 1905. He and his wife, Elizabeth, age 42, and their older son Johann, 19, had immigrated from Holland nine years before; a younger son, 7-year-old Rudolph, was born after they arrived in New York. While at 424 Lawrence Street, Elizabeth Vendengenten placed a newspaper advertisement offering her labor to do washing or cleaning. By 1910, the residents at this address included a woman born in French-speaking Canada, Corrine Barkley, whose Pennsylvania-born husband William worked in a livery stable and later as a driver. Both of their children had been born in New Jersey. From 1915 to 1923, a second-generation couple whose parents had been German immigrants, Gilbert and Emma Hicks, occupied the home. Gilbert worked as a carpet-layer and department store clerk, and his wife apparently did not work outside the home. And in 1930, another second-generation couple whose parents had been born in Ireland lived at this address.</p>
<p>The house at 424 Lawrence Street also had a connection with Camden’s emergence as an industrial center through the life experience of Mary Gibson, a tenant during the 1920s who worked at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>. In her 70s by the time she lived on Lawrence Street, Gibson had been a widow since 1895, when her husband, Joshua, died from pulmonary consumption at the age of 37; their only son, Howard Sands Gibson, died in 1905 at the age of 19 from tuberculosis. Dependent on her own labor for support, Gibson went to work at the Victor Talking Machine Company by 1905, within a few years of the company’s founding. She remained in the Victor workforce as an inspector, assembler, and record maker for more than two decades as the company grew to one of Camden’s major industries. She was still making records at Victor when she moved to 424 Lawrence Street. Previously she had lived as a boarder or roomer with other families; at Lawrence Street she shared the house with her brother William Sands, an artist, until 1928. She died one year later, at age 74, then living in Audubon, New Jersey.</p>
<p>The long history of 424 Lawrence Street as an income generator for the original owners, the Paulson family, came to an end during the late 1930s. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary Paulson</a>, a daughter-in-law of the first Paulson owner, had lived in one of the property’s Cooper Street-facing houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419 Cooper</a>) since 1912 while renting out the other houses. By 1938, however, she had gone to live with a daughter in Merchantville and put 419 Cooper Street and 424 Lawrence Street up for sale (the adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421 Cooper</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426 Lawrence</a> houses were sold earlier, during the 1920s). Coinciding with the Great Depression, the offer of the two houses, by then close to 90 years old, failed to find a buyer despite steady reductions in the asking price. After several appearances in legal notices for taxes and sheriff’s sales, Paulson turned the property over to the First Camden National Bank and Trust Company in 1940.</p>
<p>Under new owners in the 1940s and 1950s, 424 Lawrence Street remained a rental property with tenants who included employees of RCA (which acquired the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1929). By 1969, the house and others in the 400 block became subjects of interest for their historical value. One of Camden’s active preservationists, Edward Teitelman, purchased 424 Lawrence Street and its neighbor, 426 Lawrence, in 1969. Teitelman, a psychologist by profession, saved other properties on Cooper Street and nearby during this period, including the distinctive <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a> designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre (later the Rutgers-Camden Writers House). Teitelman’s tenants on Lawrence Street included students from Rutgers-Camden, who were believed to be responsible for marijuana plants found growing behind 424 Lawrence Street in 1972. The students also became targets for crime, including a 1973 incident of armed robbery at 424 Lawrence Street that netted stereo equipment and more than $3,000 in cash. After two more transfers of ownership during the 1990s and early 2000s, Rutgers University purchased 424 Lawrence Street in 2005. The building later housed the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Food Pantry.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 424 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<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. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee; Kevin Johnson (research about Mary Gibson).
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
424 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1840s
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
424 Lawrence Street
Barbers
Cabinet Makers
Canada
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Clerks
Coachmen
Crime
Death
Dressmakers
Drivers
Extended Family
Germany
Hemmorhage
Historic Preservation
Holland
Investment
Ireland
Laborers
Lawrence Street
Machinists
Merchants
Philadelphia
Rutgers-Camden
Sawyers
Shoemakers
Tailors
Victor Talking Machine Company
Widows
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/9279210ee7027c9b10f6f92ba48f9376.jpg
1c483d5b832d770366c2aacb798371c5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
420 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history" and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.”
Date of construction
c. early 1850s
History
At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States.<br /><br /><strong>420 Lawrence Street<br /></strong><br />The two-story, four-room brick house at 420 Lawrence Street likely dates to the early 1850s, when other similar houses are known to have been built in the same row. The absence of house numbering prevents identifying tenants by address prior to 1861, but city directories documented people living in this block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. Directories during the 1860s identify skilled tradespeople among the occupants of 420 Lawrence Street, including a butcher and a glazier (glass fitter).
<p>Between 1865 and 1870, a butcher’s family lived at 420 Lawrence Street. The butcher, Peter C. Cliver, was a white man born in New Jersey, 53 years old in 1870. His household that year included at least six other people: his wife, Hannah, a white woman, 49 years old; four children ranging in age from 13 to 22 years of age; and an unrelated 25-year-old man who may have been a boarder. The Clivers’ oldest son worked as a box maker, and a 16-year-old son worked as a store clerk. For two years, 1869-70, city directories also list 420 Lawrence Street as the residence of Elizabeth A. Mood, a widow and dressmaker. If that listing is correct, she may have been the next tenant after the Clivers or co-inhabited the house with one or more of them. (The Census of 1870 found her at a different location, on Market Street.) Mood headed an extended family of five people. A white woman 46 years old, born in New Jersey, Mood lived with her three children, two of whom were old enough to contribute to the family economy: William, 18 years old, was an apprentice carpenter, and Lewis, 15, worked as a clerk in a grocery store. The household also included Mood’s 11-year-old daughter, Annie, and 63-year-old Ann Penn, likely Mood’s mother.</p>
<p>Longer-term tenants moved into 420 Lawrence Street by 1877. A laborer, John Stow, a white man in his late 30s, arrived that year with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Mary; they occupied the home until 1890. The 1880 Census recorded that the parents could not write (but apparently could read). Their daughter was attending school and had a “wounded hip,” the Census recorded. The next year, 1881, 11-year-old Mary’s life began to diverge from her parents when she was baptized at <a href="https://stpaulschurchcamden.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Paul’s Episcopal Church</a> on Market Street under the sponsorship of another adult. By 1885, Mary lived with another family in Stockton Township, possibly as a domestic servant. Her parents remained at 420 Lawrence Street until John Stow’s death in 1890, at the age of 51, from causes not publicly reported. A succession of other tenants followed during the 1890s, including laborers, a gardener, a bricklayer, a packer, a coachman, and a washerwoman. In 1896, hostler Herbert Batey and his wife, Emma, suffered the death of their infant son Horace while living at 420 Lawrence Street.</p>
<p>At the turn of the twentieth century, a large family headed by German immigrants moved into the small house. William Heider, a 37-year-old baker, had immigrated to the United States in in 1878; his wife, 36-year-old Lena, came later, in 1883. When recorded in the Census of 1900, they had been married fourteen years and had seven children ranging in age from 3 months to 13 years, two of them twin daughters. Two other children had not survived. The Heiders lived at 420 Lawrence Street from 1900 until 1903, when the house was put up for sale together with the adjoining <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence Street</a>. The agent advertised that the houses “will show a good investment, either for the man who is seeking a home or investment, and are real bargains.” The house remained a rental property, occupied by 1905 by a household headed by a 48-year-old Irish immigrant, a widow named Nora Healey (or Haley). Her two daughters, ages 17 and 22, worked in lace making and later in domestic service, and a 15-year-old son worked in farming.</p>
<p>In the early decades of the twentieth century, tenants at 420 Lawrence Street included a succession of married couples in their 20s and 30s, with occupations including salesman, shoemaker, chef, timekeeper, and laborer. Another large family moved into the home in 1920, headed by shipyard worker Thomas A. Montgomery, a white man 45 years old. He and his wife, Sadie, were both born in Pennsylvania but had lived in New Jersey for most of their married life. By 1920, their two oldest sons, ages 20 and 17, worked as truck drivers for a laundry; an 8-year-old daughter was attending school. Two younger children, ages 1 and 4, completed the family of seven. They remained at 420 Lawrence Street for seven years, followed by another household headed by a shipyard worker, a rigger named Lawrence Lauinger and his wife, Helen.</p>
<p>Records of tenants during the Great Depression are sparse because city directories were not published in Camden between 1931 and 1940. The decade opened with a 45-year-old white woman, Margaret Peterson, who was divorced, renting the home for herself and her 18-year old son, who operated machines at a laundry. By 1940, Earl Nelson, a 36-year-old immigrant from Norway who worked as a railroad machinist, shared the home with a family of lodgers. His lodgers were a family of five headed by Paul E. Rube, an immigrant from Sweden, 54 years old, who worked as a car cleaner; with his wife, Catherine (who was born in Pennsylvania), he had three children ranging in age from 1 to 8. The lodgers also included a 12-year-old boy, Joseph Armstrong, whose age suggests he may have been Catherine Rube’s son from a previous marriage.</p>
<p>By 1942, the house was vacant and put up for sale along with adjacent 418 and 422 Lawrence Streets. Under new ownership, during World War II the sequence of next tenants included a wounded Army private and a welder. Another large family moved into the home in 1950, headed by a 45-year-old white woman, Mary Brennan, who told Census takers she was separated from her husband. She shared the house with four sons ranging in age from 16 to 20, her 20-year-old daughter, and a 4-year-old granddaughter.</p>
<p>Several tenants later, by 1957 the house at 420 Lawrence Street had been conveyed to an investment company, and a woman who rented the house next door at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence</a> took the opportunity to buy both properties. Alice Pharo, a white woman, had rented 418 Lawrence since 1950 and chose to stay despite a 1952 incident of a man breaking through the window of her kitchen. Divorced and living independently, Pharo served as secretary of the Burlington-Camden-Gloucester Society for Crippled Children and Adults. She rented out 420 Lawrence Street to tenants while living at 418 Lawrence until her death in 1977.</p>
<p>The next owners, Eric and Ellen Eifert, acquired both <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a> and 420 Lawrence Street from Alice Pharo’s estate in 1984. In 2007, the Eiferts sold 418, 420, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422 Lawrence Street</a> to Rutgers University.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 420 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<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. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
420 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
420 Lawrence Street
Artists
Butchers
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Clerks
Dressmakers
Extended Family
Farmers
Germany
Glaziers
Immigrants
Immigration
Infant Mortality
Injuries
Investment
Ireland
Laborers
Laundries
Lawrence Street
Lodgers
Norway
Rutgers-Camden
Salesmen
Secretaries
Shipyard Workers
Shoemakers
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Sweden
Veterans
Widows
World War II
-
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b55a13a9a133de768d0275a76e37f86e.jpg
c474a6d5d51a21eec55173d5cda2573c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Significance
418 Lawrence Street forms part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The row was included in the Cooper Street Historic District’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 to provide a “comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history” and “a clear view of the economic and social dichotomy that has continued to typify Camden.”
Date of construction
c. early 1850s
History
At the back of three Cooper Street-facing properties (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a> through <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>), four two-story houses were added facing Lawrence Street during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The collective development of seven residences stood on land purchased in 1845 and 1846 by <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hannah Atwood</a>, who lived at various times in one of the Cooper Street homes or in Philadelphia. When rented to others, the houses on Cooper and Lawrence Streets provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, <a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A78798" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesse Atwood</a>, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. He was best known for an 1847 <a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_1914.7">portrait of General Zachary Taylor</a>, the Mexican-American War hero who later became president of the United States.<br /><br /><strong>418 Lawrence Street<br /></strong><br />The two-story, four-room brick house at 418 Lawrence Street likely dates to the early 1850s, when other similar houses are known to have been built in the same row. The absence of house numbering prevents identifying tenants by address prior to 1861, but city directories document people living in this block of Lawrence Street beginning in 1854. Directories during the 1860s and 1870s identify laborers and skilled tradespeople among the occupants of 418 Lawrence Street, including a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a machinist.
<p>By 1878, 418 Lawrence Street became home to a family headed by Catharine Benbow, a widow who took in washing to earn a living. Benbow, a white woman who had immigrated from England in the late 1860s, had struggled to support herself and at least five children since arriving in Camden. The fate of her husband, Richard, is unknown; four of their children were born in England prior to 1866, and the last in New York around 1868. In Camden County by 1870, living in Stockton Township near Merchantville, Catharine at 35 years old was widowed and had just two of her children living with her: her oldest, then 10 years old, and the youngest, 2 years old. Three others, then ages 4, 6, and 8, had been placed in the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/historical-accounts/a-brief-history-of-the-camden-home-for-children-spcc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>, a charitable institution at Fifth and Federal Streets which had been chartered in 1865 to shelter “friendless and destitute children.” The family partially reunited by the time Catharine moved to 418 Lawrence Street. There, Benbow’s household included three of her sons, two of them retrieved from the children’s home and by then old enough (ages 16 and 18) to contribute to the family economy. Those two sons worked as laborers and another, the oldest son (21 years old), as a farmer. The Benbows further supplemented their incomes by taking in a boarder at 418 Lawrence Street. They lived at this address from 1878 until 1884, leaving around the time when Hannah Atwood’s heirs sold her Cooper and Lawrence Street properties to new owners. At their next address, a daughter who had been placed in the Home for Friendless Children also returned to the family.</p>
<p>For the rest of the nineteenth century, 418 Lawrence Street housed tenants who worked as laborers and in a range of skilled and semi-skilled occupations, including cabinet maker, blacksmith, and cook. At the turn of the twentieth century, Census records offer additional glimpses into family life on Lawrence Street: In 1900, William and Annie Decon (or Decou) headed a household of five, supported by William’s work as an express driver. Both born in New Jersey, William was a white man, then age 33, and Annie was 27, unable to read or write. Married for eleven years, they had three daughters aged 8 and younger, the oldest attending school.<br /><br />In 1903, the house was put up for sale together with the adjoining 420 Lawrence Street. The agent advertised that the houses “will show a good investment, either for the man who is seeking a home or investment, and are real bargains.” Both houses remained rental properties, with 418 Lawrence Street occupied by the McDonald family, headed by Irish immigrants. Phillip McDonald, 50 years old, was a stonemason and his wife, Elizabeth, at 42 years of age was a pen worker, likely for the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Esterbrook Steel Pen Company</a> on Cooper Street. Their four children, ranging in age from 4 to 18, had all been born in the United States, and those of school age were attending school.</p>
<p>The home remained a rental property through the first half of the twentieth century, but more often occupied by married couples or smaller families. The challenges of work and child-rearing surfaced again in 1916, when this ad appeared in the “Board Wanted” column of the Camden <em>Morning Post</em>: “Home wanted for 6-year-old boy; lady works all the time; will pay small board. Call evenings. 418 Lawrence Street.” Tenant occupations between 1910 and 1950 included cabinet maker, chauffeur, wrapper, ship joiner, decorator, watchman, and tool grinder. Many of the residents were New Jersey-born, but tenants during these years also included first- and second-generation Irish, one Scot, and one German.</p>
<p>By 1957, the house at 418 Lawrence Street had been conveyed to an investment company, and its tenant at that time took the opportunity to buy the home as well as adjacent 420 Lawrence Street. Alice Pharo, a white woman, had rented 418 Lawrence since 1950 and chose to stay despite a 1952 incident of a man breaking through the window of her kitchen. Divorced and living independently, Pharo served as secretary of the Burlington-Camden-Gloucester Society for Crippled Children and Adults. She rented out 420 Lawrence Street to tenants while living at 418 Lawrence until her death in 1977, a two-decade-long period that ranked as the longest period of residence for anyone at this address up to that time. Through the 1960s, she had a direct view of the urban renewal demolition that created a new campus for Rutgers University-Camden in the blocks north of her house.</p>
<p>The next owners, Eric and Ellen Eifert, acquired both 418 and 420 Lawrence Street from Alice Pharo’s estate in 1984. In 2005, Eric Eifert successfully argued before Camden City Council that 418 Lawrence Street had historic value and should not be allowed to be taken by eminent domain for further expansion of Rutgers. In 2007, Rutgers instead purchased 418, 420, and 422 Lawrence Street from the Eiferts.</p>
Associated Individuals
For a list of known residents of 418 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to street numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>.
Sources
Camden and Philadelphia City Directories.<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. This research updates and corrects the record.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
418 Lawrence Street
Description
An account of the resource
Nineteenth-century working-class rental property, Cooper Street Historic District.
1850s
1860s
1870s
1880s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2010s
2020s
418 Lawrence Street
Blacksmiths
Cabinet Makers
Camden Home for Friendless Children
Carpenters
Childhood
Children
Cooks
Drivers
Esterbrook Steel Pen Company
Farmers
Investment
Ireland
Laborers
Laundries
Lawrence Street
Machinists
Rutgers-Camden
Secretaries
Widows
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/a3a3b6f3194ecfe7f7262f659caaaf9b.jpg
1efe517cfc1070d84e1202f600d99678
https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/6c2ee2ef0a428df7624427f289f6129e.jpg
86f7e131e28d58792ad78e403829f44f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buildings
Description
An account of the resource
Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J.
Place
Residence, business, or other entity.
Illustrations
527 Cooper Street in 1890, The Inland Architect and News Record. (Courtesy, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, the Art Institute of Chicago)
527 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner)
Significance
527 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Its designers, <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/22158" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hazlehurst & Huckel</a> of Philadelphia, are named in National Register documentation as among the architects whose work warranted designating the district based on its distinctive architecture. The building also illustrates the district’s significance in representing broad patterns of American history. As stated in the National Register nomination: “The buildings within the district include Camden’s best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street’s change from residential and professional to commercial.” During the 1920s, the building housed offices of real estate agents and a builder who played important roles in that transition. The building also has a notable history associated with individuals prominent in industry and government, their families, and domestic workers whose histories reflect patterns of immigration and African American migration.
Architectural style
Queen Anne. Documentation prepared in 1980 by J.P. Graham of the Division of Planning, City of Camden, stated: “Although altered the house preserves an element characteristic to residential construction on Cooper St. in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century. It is also one of the few Queen Anne buildings remaining in the Central Business District of Camden.”
Date of construction
1889
History
In 1889, an officer of the Anderson Preserving Company in Camden commissioned the Queen Anne-style home at 527 Cooper Street. Like other new homes on Cooper Street during the 1880s and 1890s, it likely replaced an earlier, less elaborate brick row house. The construction of the new home occurred as Camden grew in size and stature, and as Cooper Street became an increasingly fashionable address. The character of the street changed in the early 1880s when curbs were moved toward the center of the street by twelve feet on each side, which gave homeowners space to create a boulevard of homes fronted by porches, front yards, and gardens.<br /><br /><strong>Industry and Architects</strong><br /><br /> Abraham Anderson, a partner with the founder of Campbell’s Soup before forming his own firm, lived at 232 Cooper when he bought the 527 Cooper Street property up the street in 1885. Four years later, he sold 527 to his daughter, Ella A. Cox, who with her husband, John, newborn daughter Martha, and domestic servants became the first residents of a new house built on the lot in 1889.<br /><br /> To design the new home, John T. Cox (secretary-treasurer of his father-in-law’s company) commissioned <a href="In%201889,%20an%20officer%20of%20the%20Anderson%20Preserving%20Company%20in%20Camden%20commissioned%20the%20Queen%20Anne-style%20home%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street.%20Like%20other%20new%20homes%20on%20Cooper%20Street%20during%20the%201880s%20and%201890s,%20it%20likely%20replaced%20an%20earlier,%20less%20elaborate%20brick%20row%20house.%20As%20Camden%20grew%20in%20size%20and%20stature,%20Cooper%20Street%20became%20an%20increasingly%20fashionable%20address.%20Its%20character%20changed%20in%20the%20early%201880s%20when%20curbs%20were%20moved%20toward%20the%20center%20of%20the%20street%20by%20twelve%20feet%20on%20each%20side,%20which%20gave%20homeowners%20space%20to%20create%20a%20boulevard%20of%20homes%20fronted%20by%20porches,%20front%20%20yards,%20and%20gardens.%20Industry%20and%20Architects%20Abraham%20Anderson,%20a%20partner%20with%20the%20founder%20of%20Campbell%E2%80%99s%20Soup%20before%20forming%20his%20own%20firm,%20lived%20at%20232%20Cooper%20when%20he%20bought%20the%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20property%20up%20the%20street%20in%201885.%20Four%20years%20later,%20he%20sold%20527%20to%20his%20daughter,%20Ella%20A.%20Cox,%20who%20with%20her%20husband,%20John,%20newborn%20daughter%20Martha,%20and%20domestic%20servants%20became%20the%20first%20residents%20of%20a%20new%20house%20built%20on%20the%20lot%20in%201889.%20To%20design%20the%20new%20home,%20John%20T.%20Cox%20(secretary-treasurer%20of%20his%20father-in-law%E2%80%99s%20company)%20commissioned%20Hazlehurst%20&%20Huckel,%20a%20Philadelphia%20firm%20known%20for%20residential,%20church,%20and%20commercial%20architecture.%20The%20firm%20had%20recently%20completed%20another%20Queen%20Anne-style%20home%20at%20323%20Cooper%20Street,%20within%20view%20of%20the%20Anderson%20residence%20at%20Second%20and%20Cooper.%20One%20of%20the%20partners,%20Edward%20P.%20Hazlehurst,%20had%20worked%20with%20one%20of%20Philadelphia%E2%80%99s%20best-known%20architects,%20Frank%20Furness,%20before%20starting%20his%20own%20firm%20with%20Samuel%20Huckel%20Jr.%20in%201881.%20The%20stature%20of%20the%20partners%20had%20grown%20in%201887,%20when%20they%20won%20a%20competition%20to%20design%20the%20Manufacturer%E2%80%99s%20Club%20prominently%20located%20at%20Broad%20and%20Walnut%20Streets%20in%20Philadelphia;%20later%20Huckel,%20individually%20won%20the%20commission%20to%20remodel%20Grand%20Central%20Station%20in%20New%20York.%20In%20the%20300%20and%20500%20blocks%20of%20Cooper%20Street,%20the%20two%20Hazlehurst%20&%20Huckel%20houses%20stood%20distinctively%20among%20the%20earlier%20generation%20of%20red-brick%20rowhouses%20built%20in%20the%201850s.%20They%20celebrated%20individuality%20in%20their%20varieties%20of%20materials%20and%20departures%20from%20symmetry,%20and%20they%20punctured%20the%20typical%20flat%20fa%C3%A7ade%20of%20earlier%20rowhouses%20by%20featuring%20bay%20windows%20and%20dormers.%20The%20house%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20earned%20a%20full-page%20photograph%20in%20The%20Inland%20Architect%20and%20News%20Record,%20a%20monthly%20trade%20journal%20published%20in%20Chicago.%20The%20Cox%20family%20lived%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20until%201897,%20when%20they%20followed%20the%20trend%20of%20other%20Camden%20elites%20by%20moving%20to%20more%20pastoral%20suburbs%20(Moorestown).%20While%20on%20Cooper%20Street,%20their%20household%20included%20at%20least%20two%20domestic%20servants,%20at%20least%20one%20of%20them%20an%20Irish%20immigrant.%20Prestige%20Rental%20The%20Cox%20family%20sold%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20to%20a%20real%20estate%20firm,%20opening%20a%20period%20of%20more%20than%20two%20decades%20when%20the%20home%20was%20leased%20to%20a%20series%20of%20high-profile%20tenants.%20These%20included%20four%20division%20managers%20for%20the%20Pennsylvania%20Railroad%E2%80%99s%20Amboy%20Division%20(formerly%20the%20Camden%20and%20Amboy%20Railroad).%20Among%20the%20most%20notable%20residents%20of%20527%20Cooper%20during%20these%20early%20years%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century,%20future%20New%20Jersey%20Supreme%20Court%20Justice%20Frank%20T.%20Lloyd%20Sr.%20lived%20at%20this%20address%20between%201908%20and%201918.%20Lloyd%20had%20lived%20in%20Camden%20since%201875,%20when%20he%20arrived%20from%20Delaware%20to%20work%20as%20a%20compositor%20for%20the%20West%20Jersey%20Press%20newspaper.%20He%20became%20a%20lawyer%20by%20studying%20with%20Philadelphia%20attorneys%20and%20maintained%20a%20Philadelphia%20law%20office.%20Elected%20to%20the%20New%20Jersey%20Assembly%20for%20the%20term%201896-97,%20Lloyd%20began%20a%20career%20of%20public%20service%20marked%20by%20combatting%20vice%20and%20upholding%20morality%20in%20his%20posts%20as%20legislator,%20Camden%20County%20Prosecutor,%20and%20Circuit%20Court%20Judge.%20In%20the%20Assembly,%20he%20wrote%20a%20new%20marriage%20law%20that%20ended%20Camden%E2%80%99s%20reputation%20as%20a%20place%20for%20quick%20get-away%20marriages%20by%20requiring%20a%20three-day%20wait%20after%20obtaining%20a%20marriage%20license.%20As%20a%20prosecutor,%20he%20took%20aim%20at%20illegal%20gambling,%20particularly%20at%20racetracks.%20The%20extended%20Lloyd%20family%20at%20527%20Cooper%20is%20glimpsed%20in%20the%20U.S.%20Census%20in%201910,%20during%20Frank%20Sr.%E2%80%99s%20service%20as%20Circuit%20Court%20Judge.%20Lloyd,%20then%2050%20years%20old,%20headed%20the%20family%20with%20his%20wife,%20Mary,%20age%2043;%20Mary%E2%80%99s%20older%20sister%20Sophia%20Pelouze,%2050%20years%20old%20and%20single,%20identified%20herself%20to%20the%20Census-taker%20as%20a%20%E2%80%9Ccompanion.%E2%80%9D%20The%20Lloyds,%20who%20had%20been%20married%2023%20years,%20had%20three%20children%20ranging%20in%20age%20from%2010%20to%2022.%20The%20domestic%20workers%20in%20the%20Lloyd%20household%20added%20not%20only%20their%20labor%20but%20also%20ethnic%20and%20racial%20diversity,%20as%20in%20many%20other%20Cooper%20Street%20households.%20Katie%20Tellus,%2031%20years%20old,%20immigrated%20to%20the%20United%20States%20from%20Bavaria%20(Austria)%20%E2%80%93%20a%20rarity%20among%20Cooper%20Street%20servants,%20who%20typically%20came%20from%20Ireland.%20A%20widow,%20she%20could%20not%20read%20or%20write.%20The%20Lloyds%20also%20employed%20James%20R.%20Taylor,%20a%2035-year-old%20Black%20man%20described%20in%20the%20Census%20as%20a%20butler%20but%20listed%20in%20later%20city%20directories%20as%20a%20cook.%20Taylor,%20born%20in%20either%20Maryland%20or%20Virginia%20(sources%20vary),%20was%20among%20southern%20African%20Americans%20who%20migrated%20to%20Camden%20and%20other%20northern%20cities%20in%20search%20of%20opportunity%20and%20an%20escape%20from%20repression%20and%20violence.%20Taylor%20displayed%20his%20aspirations,%20and%20perhaps%20his%20dissatisfaction%20with%20housework,%20in%20a%20series%20of%20classified%20ads%20in%201912.%20In%20the%20Situations%20Wanted%20column%20of%20the%20Courier-Post%20he%20advertised,%20%E2%80%9CYoung%20colored%20boy%20from%20South%20wishes%20position%20of%20any%20kind%E2%80%9D%20and%20%E2%80%9CSouthern%20colored%20boy%20wants%20position%20driving%20for%20doctor.%E2%80%9D%20His%20self-description%20as%20a%20%E2%80%9Cyoung%20colored%20boy,%E2%80%9D%20despite%20being%20a%20man%20in%20his%2030s,%20suggests%20the%20racial%20biases%20present%20in%20the%20South%20Jersey/Philadelphia%20region%20during%20the%20migration%20era.%20The%20Lloyds%E2%80%99%20occupancy%20at%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20encompassed%20the%20period%20of%20the%20First%20World%20War.%20Frank%20Sr.%20served%20on%20the%20home%20front%20as%20a%20federal%20food%20administrator%20while%20son%20Frank%20Jr.%20deployed%20to%20France.%20While%20in%20command%20of%20an%20aerial%20testing%20camp%20near%20Paris,%20Lieutenant%20Lloyd%20suffered%20a%20fall%20that%20resulted%20in%20broken%20jaw%20and%20two%20days%20of%20unconsciousness.%20The%20Philadelphia%20Inquirer%E2%80%99s%20lists%20of%20soldiers%20killed%20and%20injured%20identified%20the%20younger%20Lloyd%20as%20%E2%80%9Cwounded%20severely.%E2%80%9D%20After%20their%20years%20on%20Cooper%20Street,%20the%20Lloyd%20family%20moved%20to%20Pennsauken.%20Frank%20Lloyd%20Sr.,%20appointed%20to%20the%20New%20Jersey%20Supreme%20Court%20in%201924,%20lived%20until%201951.%20An%20editorial%20in%20the%20Courier-Post%20eulogized%20him%20as%20%E2%80%9Ca%20citizen%20who%20never%20will%20be%20forgotten,%20one%20whose%20life%20and%20character%20have%20been%20and%20will%20continue%20to%20be%20an%20inspiration.%E2%80%9D%20Block-Busting%20on%20Cooper%20Street%20During%20the%201920s,%20construction%20of%20the%20Delaware%20River%20Bridge%20(the%20Benjamin%20Franklin%20Bridge)%20between%20Camden%20and%20Philadelphia%20propelled%20a%20spirit%20of%20boosterism%20with%20profound%20implications%20for%20Cooper%20Street.%20The%20location%20of%20the%20bridge,%20and%20the%20extension%20of%20Broadway%20to%20reach%20it,%20created%20a%20new%20focal%20point%20for%20business%20activity%20at%20Sixth%20and%20Cooper,%20adjacent%20to%20527%20Cooper%20Street.%20As%20real%20estate%20interests%20eyed%20the%20rest%20of%20Cooper%20Street%20as%20an%20opportunity%20to%20convert%20older%20homes%20into%20apartments%20and%20businesses,%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20became%20a%20base%20for%20their%20efforts%20to%20transform%20Cooper%20Street%20into%20a%20New%20York-style%20%E2%80%9CFifth%20Avenue.%E2%80%9D%20Several%20women%20emerged%20as%20real%20estate%20entrepreneurs%20during%20these%20years,%20among%20them%20a%20new%20owner%20of%20527%20Cooper%20Street,%20Julia%20M.%20Carey.%20By%20the%20time%20the%20bridge%20opened%20in%201926,%20the%20%E2%80%9CCarey%20Building%E2%80%9D%20at%20527%20Cooper%20offered%20office%20suites%20and%20apartments.%20Carey%20leased%20one%20of%20the%20offices%20to%20another%20real%20estate%20dealer,%20Emma%20M.%20Asay,%20whose%20gender-neutral%20advertising%20invited%20prospective%20buyers%20to%20contact%20%E2%80%9CE.M.%20Asay.%E2%80%9D%20The%20Courier-Post%20noted%20in%201926,%20%E2%80%9CMiss%20Carey%20and%20Miss%20E.M.%20Asay%20have%20found%20Cooper%20street%20an%20advantageous%20location,%20as%20both%20of%20these%20%E2%80%98lady%20real%20estators%E2%80%99%20have%20had%20two%20splendid%20selling%20seasons%20on%20Camden%E2%80%99s%20famous%20residential%20thoroughfare,%20now%20giving%20way%20to%20business.%E2%80%9D%20Carey%E2%80%99s%20work%20on%20the%20street%20included%20three%20strategically%20located%20renovations,%20one%20per%20block,%20to%20convert%20321,%20421,%20and%20521%20Cooper%20into%20offices%20or%20apartments.%20She%20often%20collaborated%20with%20contractor%20John%20C.%20Gibson,%20also%20based%20at%20527%20Cooper%20while%20he%20worked%20on%20conversions%20and%20new%20construction%20up%20and%20down%20the%20street.%20For%20the%20rest%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century%20and%20into%20the%20twenty-first%20century,%20527%20Cooper%20served%20a%20variety%20of%20business%20and%20professional%20uses,%20including%20offices%20for%20doctors,%20lawyers,%20real%20estate%20agents,%20and%20title%20companies.%20For%20three%20years%20in%20the%201950s,%20the%20building%20served%20as%20headquarters%20for%20the%20Camden%20County%20Republican%20Party.%20By%201980,%20when%20the%20Camden%20Division%20of%20Planning%20surveyed%20Cooper%20Street%E2%80%99s%20historic%20structures,%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20had%20lost%20some%20%E2%80%93%20but%20by%20no%20means%20all%20%E2%80%93%20of%20its%20architectural%20character.%20%E2%80%9CIn%20spite%20of%20alterations%20to%20the%20entrance%20way%20and%20the%20removal%20of%20the%20second-story%20oriel%20that%20once%20occupied%20the%20left%20bay,%E2%80%9D%20surveyor%20J.P.%20Graham%20wrote,%20%E2%80%9Cthis%20house%20still%20conveys%20much%20of%20the%20feeling%20of%20the%20Queen%20Anne%20style.%E2%80%9D%20In%202016,%20LEAP%20Academy%20University%20Charter%20School%20Inc.%20acquired%20527%20Cooper%20Street%20from%20Thomas%20DeMarco%20Holdings,%20LLC,%20of%20Cherry%20Hill,%20for%20$310,000." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hazlehurst & Huckel</a>, a Philadelphia firm known for residential, church, and commercial architecture. The firm had recently completed another Queen Anne-style home at 323 Cooper Street, within view of the Anderson residence at Second and Cooper. One of the partners, Edward P. Hazlehurst, had worked with one of Philadelphia’s best-known architects, Frank Furness, before starting his own firm with Samuel Huckel Jr. in 1881. The stature of the partners had grown in 1887, when they won a competition to design the Manufacturer’s Club prominently located at Broad and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia; later, Huckel individually won the commission to remodel Grand Central Station in New York.<br /><br /> In the 300 and 500 blocks of Cooper Street, the two Hazlehurst & Huckel houses stood distinctively among the earlier generation of red-brick row houses built in the 1850s. They celebrated individuality in their varieties of materials and departures from symmetry, and they punctured the typical flat façade of earlier row houses by featuring bay windows and dormers. The house at 527 Cooper Street earned a full-page photograph in <a href="https://digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/id/7299/rec/5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Inland Architect and News Record</em></a>, a monthly trade journal published in Chicago. (In 1894 the journal accorded the same treatment to the Henry Genet Taylor home at <a href="https://digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/id/8152/rec/13" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a>, designed by Wilson Eyre Jr.)<br /><br /> The Cox family lived at 527 Cooper Street until 1897, when they followed the trend of other Camden elites by moving to more pastoral suburbs (Moorestown). While on Cooper Street, their household included at least two domestic servants, at least one of them an Irish immigrant.<br /><br /><strong>Prestige Rental</strong><br /><br /> The Cox family sold 527 Cooper Street to a real estate firm, opening a period of more than two decades when the home was leased to a series of high-profile tenants. These included four division managers for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Amboy Division (formerly the <a href="https://www.delawareriverheritagetrail.org/Camden-and-Amboy-Railroad.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden and Amboy Railroad</a>).<br /><br /> Among the most notable residents of 527 Cooper during these early years of the twentieth century, future New Jersey Supreme Court Justice <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/camdenpeople-judgefranktlloyd.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Frank T. Lloyd Sr.</a> lived at this address between 1908 and 1918. Lloyd had lived in Camden since 1875, when he arrived from Delaware to work as a compositor for the <em>West Jersey Press</em> newspaper. He became a lawyer by studying with Philadelphia attorneys and maintained a Philadelphia law office. Elected to the New Jersey Assembly for the term 1896-97, Lloyd began a career of public service marked by combatting vice and upholding morality in his posts as legislator, Camden County Prosecutor, and Circuit Court Judge. In the Assembly, he wrote a new marriage law that ended Camden’s reputation as a place for quick get-away marriages by requiring a three-day wait after obtaining a marriage license. As a prosecutor, he took aim at illegal gambling, particularly at racetracks.<br /><br /> The extended Lloyd family at 527 Cooper is glimpsed in the U.S. Census in 1910, during Frank Sr.’s service as Circuit Court Judge. Lloyd, then 50 years old, headed the family with his wife, Mary, age 43; Mary’s older sister Sophia Pelouze, 50 years old and single, identified herself to the Census-taker as a “companion.” The Lloyds, who had been married 23 years, had three children ranging in age from 10 to 22.<br /><br /> The domestic workers in the Lloyd household added not only their labor but also ethnic and racial diversity, as in many other Cooper Street households. Katie Tellus, 31 years old, immigrated to the United States from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bavaria" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bavaria</a> – a rarity among Cooper Street servants, who typically came from Ireland. A widow, she could not read or write. The Lloyds also employed James R. Taylor, a 35-year-old Black man described in the Census as a butler but listed in later city directories as a cook. Taylor, born in either Maryland or Virginia (sources vary), was among <a href="https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/020/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">southern African Americans who migrated</a> to Camden and other northern cities in search of opportunity and an escape from repression and violence. Taylor displayed his aspirations, and perhaps his dissatisfaction with housework, in a series of classified ads in 1912. In the Situations Wanted column of the Camden <em>Courier-Post</em> he advertised, “Young colored boy from South wishes position of any kind” and “Southern colored boy wants position driving for doctor.” His self-description as a “young colored boy,” despite being a man in his 30s, suggests the racial biases present in the South Jersey/Philadelphia region during the migration era.<br /><br /> The Lloyds’ occupancy at 527 Cooper Street encompassed the period of the First World War. Frank Sr. served on the home front as a federal food administrator while son Frank Jr. deployed to France. While in command of an aerial testing camp near Paris, Lieutenant Lloyd suffered a fall that resulted in broken jaw and two days of unconsciousness. The <em>Philadelphia Inquirer’s</em> lists of soldiers killed and injured identified the younger Lloyd as “wounded severely.” After their years on Cooper Street, the Lloyd family moved to Pennsauken. Frank Lloyd Sr., appointed to the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1924, lived until 1951. An editorial in the <em>Courier-Post</em> eulogized him as “a citizen who never will be forgotten, one whose life and character have been and will continue to be an inspiration.”<br /><br /><strong>Block-Busting on Cooper Street</strong><br /><br /> During the 1920s, construction of the Delaware River Bridge (the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) between Camden and Philadelphia propelled a spirit of boosterism with profound implications for Cooper Street. The location of the bridge, and the extension of Broadway to reach it, created a new focal point for business activity at Sixth and Cooper, adjacent to 527 Cooper Street. As real estate interests eyed the rest of Cooper Street as an opportunity to convert older homes into apartments and businesses, 527 Cooper Street became a base for their efforts to transform Cooper Street into a New York-style “Fifth Avenue.”<br /><br /> Several women emerged as real estate entrepreneurs during these years, among them a new owner of 527 Cooper Street, Julia M. Carey. By the time the bridge opened in 1926, the “Carey Building” at 527 Cooper offered office suites and apartments. Carey leased one of the offices to another real estate dealer, Emma M. Asay, whose gender-neutral advertising invited prospective buyers to contact “E.M. Asay.” The <em>Courier-Post</em> noted in 1926, “Miss Carey and Miss E.M. Asay have found Cooper street an advantageous location, as both of these ‘lady real estators’ have had two splendid selling seasons on Camden’s famous residential thoroughfare, now giving way to business.” Carey’s work on the street included three strategically located renovations, one per block, to convert 321, 421, and 521 Cooper into offices or apartments. She often collaborated with contractor John C. Gibson, also based at 527 Cooper while he worked on conversions and new construction up and down the street.<br /><br /> For the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, 527 Cooper served a variety of business and professional uses, including offices for doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and title companies. For three years in the early 1950s, the building served as headquarters for the Camden County Republican Party. By 1980, when the Camden Division of Planning surveyed Cooper Street’s historic structures, 527 Cooper Street had lost some – but by no means all – of its architectural character. “In spite of alterations to the entrance way and the removal of the second-story oriel that once occupied the left bay,” surveyor J.P. Graham wrote, “this house still conveys much of the feeling of the Queen Anne style.”<br /><br /> In 2016, LEAP Academy University Charter School Inc. acquired 527 Cooper Street from Thomas DeMarco Holdings, LLC, of Cherry Hill, for $310,000.
Associated Individuals
All known residents and businesses are listed in the Cooper Street database. <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Click here</a> and scroll to 527.
Associated architects/builders
Edward P. Hazlehurst
Samuel Huckel Jr.
Sources
<p>Camden and Philadelphia newspapers (Newspapers.com)<br /> Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society, Ancestry.com)<br /> Camden County Property Records<br /> Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior.<br /><em>Inland Architect and News Record</em>, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, the Art Institute of Chicago<br /><em>Manuals of the Legislature of New Jersey</em>, 1896-97<br /> Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project, Athenaeum of Philadelphia<br /> Structures Survey, 527 Cooper Street, New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services<br /> U.S. and New Jersey Censuses (Ancestry.com)</p>
Research by
Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, and Nick Prehn. Thanks to Benjamin Saracco for assistance locating Manuals for the Legislature of New Jersey.
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Please communicate corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
527 Cooper Street
Description
An account of the resource
Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District.
1890s
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
500 Block
527 Cooper Street
Bavaria
Black Migration
Bridge Impact
Delaware
Domestic Life
Extended Family
Food Industry
Hazlehurst & Huckel
Immigration
Ireland
Maryland
Moorestown
Pennsauken
Philadelphia
Public Officials
Queen Anne
Railroad Executives
Real Estate
Renovations
Servants
Virginia
World War I
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https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/7b1319df32ee089e1c2ecb2bd4873ab7.jpg
231c13634bdc4f7d74e7da3804b92858
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, 2019
Significance
The Helene Apartments, opened in 1913, introduced luxury apartment living to Camden and encouraged a vision of Cooper Street as a potential high-style, Fifth Avenue-type rental district. Built by an Irish immigrant who became an important local real estate developer, the building later called the Castle Apartments is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District.
Architectural style
Romanesque Revival
Date of construction
1912 (opened 1913)
Associated Individuals
For a list of all known residents and owners, <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">visit the Cooper Street Database</a> and scroll to 232.
Research by
Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis
Posted by
Charlene Mires
Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu
History
When the Helene Apartments opened at Third and Cooper Streets in 1913, the four-story granite structure reflected tradition on Cooper Street by emulating the bulk and imposing stone facades of some of the avenue's finest mansions. At the same time, it introduced a new mode of living to Cooper Street and Camden: rental apartments created especially for the upper class.<br /><br />"Nothing has been spared to make the apartments attractive to the most discriminating classes," promised the builder of the Helene, Patrick J. Farley, who razed his own house at Third and Cooper to clear the site for the new building. Farley, an Irish immigrant, had already made his mark in Camden as one of the developers of <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-Parkside.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Parkside</a>, the streetcar suburb near the Cooper River completed in the first years of the twentieth century. While he remained president of the Parkside Land Company, he moved to Cooper Street in 1905. The home he purchased at Third and Cooper was a three-story brick structure that local newspapers described as a mansion; it had last belonged to one of the co-founders of the Campbell Soup Company, Abraham Anderson. The double lot had a lineage extending to the earliest development of Camden city, having been purchased by a lumber man, Isaac Wilkins, in 1814 and passed to his heirs.<br /><br />While Farley and his partners promoted affordable home ownership in the twin homes of "Beautiful Parkside," the Helene Apartments beckoned well-to-do homeowners to consider letting go of their homes in favor of rental apartments. To signal the desirability of the Helene, Farley set the rents as high as or higher than any being asked for a house in Camden: $60 to $75 a month. He provided amenities to appeal to a class of tenant accustomed to having servants: six maid's rooms in the basement, for example, and a steam-powered drier to speed the work of the "wash woman."<br /><br />The Helene had its front door on Cooper Street, where visitors could call on telephones to be let into the interior white marble and tile hallways. Deliveries came to the back of the building, where butchers, bakers, or other suppliers had access to a push-button directory to alert residents of their arrival. They could then proceed up the brick-enclosed iron stairways on the west side of the building, which afforded access to every floor. The stairways doubled as fire escapes--"the safest in the state," the builder proclaimed. In its original configuration, the Helene offered seventeen apartments, each consisting of four rooms, bath, and kitchen, extending across the width of the building with views across the back yards of Cooper Street houses toward the manufacturing complex of the Victor Talking Machine Company.<br /><br /> The presence of the apartment house at Third and Cooper foreshadowed further transformation in the 200 and 300 block of Cooper Street. During the 1920s, as Victor expanded at the east end of Cooper Street and the Walt Whitman Hotel took the place of older mansions to the west, some Camden boosters envisioned Cooper Street as a local version of New York's Fifth Avenue. Apartment buildings fit that vision, and soon the Helene's neighbors included the Chalcar Apartments (220 Cooper Street, built 1925) and the Pierre Apartments (304-306 Cooper Street, built 1932).<br /><br />The early tenants of the Helene Apartments realized Patrick Farley's expectations: by 1915 and continuing through the 1920s, most were couples in their 30s and 40s, without children at home, with husbands in professions like insurance or engineering and wives who did not work outside the home. The cachet of the Helene Apartments faded somewhat during the Great Depression, when rents for some apartments dropped into the range of $30 to $40 a month. Some of the original tenants stayed on as retirees. By the 1940s, though, some newcomers came from the ranks of skilled trades, including cooks and draftsmen. In a few cases, households included a lodger or a boarder--more characteristic of rooming houses than a luxury apartment home.<br /><br />Ownership of the apartment building changed only once from the time of its construction until the 1960s. In 1917, Farley sold the Helene Apartments to one of his tenants, building and loan executive Paul J. Powell, and moved on to a comfortable retirement divided between homes in Ventnor and in Palm Beach, Florida. After Powell died in 1938, his widow Mary continued as owner until she died in 1963. By that time, she lived away from the building, with her daughter in Haddonfield, but her son-in-law maintained his medical office at the Helene.<br /><br />By the end of the Powell era of ownership, the building was showing its age. In 1961, problems with water supply to the upstairs apartments resulted from a water meter in need of updating, city officials said. A series of investor-owners through the last decades of the twentieth century marketed the apartments to workers of RCA and Campbell's as well as students of the emerging local campus of Rutgers University. The building managers sought to limit tenants to adults without children and stressed that residents should behave with respect to elderly neighbors and studious people who appreciated quiet. Nevertheless, the physical condition of the building deteriorated to the point that the mayor of Camden intervened in 2000 to remove some tenants from unsafe conditions.<br /><br />New investors in the Helene Apartments restored the building to a more habitable condition after 2000 and rebranded the building as the Castle Apartments. From the building's low point in the 1990s, when it went to sheriff's sale resulting in acquisition for $100, the building rebounded to a value of $1.1 million when purchased in 2011 by JVS Camden (later JVS Partnership) of Merchantville.
Associated architects/builders
Patrick J. Farley, developer and first owner.
Sources
Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society, Ancestry.com).
Camden County Property Records.
Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com).
U.S. Census and New Jersey State Census (Ancestry.com).
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Helene Apartments (Castle Apartments, 232 Cooper Street / 125 N. Third Street)
Description
An account of the resource
Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District.
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
200 Block
2000s
2010s
232 Cooper Street
Apartments
Demolition
Investment
Ireland
Real Estate
Redevelopment
Romanesque Revival
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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
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/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