1 10 2 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/d9d7f03996a2529006719e2c23bc9b27.jpg 205a9dbb9284a15f2b93cfcb2e791411 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 building at 211 N. Fifth Street originated as a single-family home, among the earliest to be built north of Cooper Street during the period when Cooper family heirs sold their inherited land for development. It stands within the boundaries of the Cooper Street Historic District, although not assessed as a “contributing structure” due to extensive remodeling. Nevertheless, 211 N. Fifth Street has a significant history dating to its construction a few years prior to the Civil War. It has been a home for prominent families, a men’s clubhouse, a boarding house and apartment house, and an office and residence for prominent Camden physicians, among other uses. Owned by Rutgers University since 2005, the building by 2021 served as offices for the Rutgers-Camden Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Architectural style Obscured by twentieth-century renovations; assessed as apparently Italianate in Historic Structure Report by John Milner Associates, 2003. Originally a three-story structure, reduced to two stories by renovations in the 1950s. Date of construction c. 1857 History The house at 211 N. Fifth Street is a testament to Camden’s urban development during the 1850s and 1860s, after the city gained new status as the seat of government for Camden County. Built c. 1857 at the back of two Cooper Street lots owned by Thomas Wharton Dyott Jr., a Philadelphia wholesaler of patent medicines, the three-story brick residence was among the first to be built north of Cooper Street as Cooper family heirs sold their lands for development. If Dyott and his family occupied the new house facing Fifth Street, as city directories suggest, the household included Thomas Wharton Dyott Jr., a white man in his late 30s; his wife, Sarah, also in her 30s; four children ranging in age from 8 to 16, and possibly two Irish immigrant domestic servants (who were with the family in 1860, at their next address). Dyott commuted from Camden to his patent medicine business in Philadelphia, a remnant of a much larger enterprise developed by his father (for whom he was named). The elder Thomas Dyott had immigrated England in 1805, opened a drug store, claimed to be a doctor, and became one of the nation's leading purveyors of patent medicines. In need of bottles for his remedies, by the 1820s the elder Dyott also established a thriving complex of bottle-making factories in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. That venture grew into a company town called <a href="http://www.philaplace.org/story/722/">Dyottville</a> but collapsed in bankruptcy after a run on its bank during the panic of 1837. The patent medicine business remained active during the 1850s as T.W. Dyott & Sons. The wholesaler marketed remedies such as “<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/2">Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup</a>” for quieting babies and cures for rheumatism, liver ailments, and other maladies. Civil War Veteran, Public Servant When Dyott sold his Camden properties in 1860 and returned to Philadelphia, the house at 211 N. Fifth Street conveyed to a nearby neighbor on Cooper Street, retired merchant David Vickers. By 1862, it became the home of Vickers’ daughter, Hannah Gibson, and her family. For the next two decades, the Gibson family infused 211 N. Fifth Street with experiences of the Civil War, public service in government, entrepreneurship, and family life in Camden. When the Gibsons moved in, the household included Henry C. Gibson, a white man in the wholesale paint business, in his late 40s; Hannah, also white, in her late 30s; and their three children, who in 1860 ranged in age from 17-year-old James to Lillie, age 9, and Hannah (in some records, Anne), age 3; and domestic servants. The young daughters grew to adulthood in the Fifth Street house. Between 1878 and 1880, the household also included Hannah’s younger brother, David Vickers. The Gibsons’ move to Fifth Street coincided with Henry Gibson’s return from military service during the Civil War (he previously served in the <a href="https://dos.myflorida.com/florida-facts/florida-history/seminole-history/the-seminole-wars/">Florida Seminole Wars</a>). In May 1861, Gibson led 101 men from Camden to Trenton to muster into service with the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0003RI01">Third Regiment – Infantry – New Jersey Volunteers</a>. The regiment joined a reserve division at the First Battle of Bull Run in July and engaged in the Battle of Munson’s Hill in August. Gibson returned to Camden to staff a recruiting office and concluded his military service in August 1862; shortly thereafter his son James enlisted and served until 1864. After the war Henry Gibson served as a Republican member of the Camden Board of Chosen Freeholders, and he was among the incorporators of the New Jersey Chemical Works, a manufacturer of chemicals and fertilizers located on Cooper Creek. The women of the Gibson family—Hannah and her daughters—left few traces in the public record. Hannah Gibson became owner of the home following the death of her father in 1865. The domestic labor of running the large household was borne at least partially by female domestic servants, but the Gibson women apparently did not act on this advantage to pursue public activities outside the home. The Gibsons’ domestic servants included Catherine Powell, an Irish immigrant who could not read or write, who was recorded with the family in 1860 while they still lived on Cooper Street. Their domestic workers at 211 N. Fifth Street included Anna Maria Ballet, who in 1875 was convicted of stealing about $50 worth of clothing from the Gibson house and sentenced to one year in state prison. In 1878, the Gibsons employed Anna A. Lloyd, whom the Camden city directory identified as “colored.” Following the death of Henry Gibson in 1875, the house at 211 N. Fifth Street became an important instrument of security for his widow and daughters. They remained in the home until 1880, and Hannah Gibson derived income by renting the building out to tenants while living in other nearby houses until her death in 1895. Men’s Club House During the late 1880s and early 1890s, 211 N. Fifth Street served as a club house for two white men’s clubs, first the Camden Republican Club (1887-89) and then the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-Wheelmen.htm">Camden Wheelmen</a> (1889-94). Both organizations remodeled and redecorated the interior to suit their purposes and comfort, and both employed Black men who lived in the building and did custodial work (one also operated a barber shop). The “tastefully fitted up club house” of the Republicans was “the finest in the city,” according to the Camden County Courier. In addition to the parlor, library, reception room, and kitchen on the first floor, on the second floor the Republicans installed pool and billiard rooms, a card room, and a barber shop. (The resident barber was Charles H. Griffin, a Black man whom city directories also identified as a janitor.) At the time, the house had a veranda on its south side, which provided a stage for political and social events in the yard. In 1889, the Republicans gave up their lease and moved to still larger and grander quarters at 312 Cooper Street (later the Alumni House for Rutgers-Camden). Taking their place at 211 N. Fifth Street were the Camden Wheelmen, a sports and social club rooted in the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/cycling-sport/">bicycle craze</a> of the late nineteenth-century. The Wheelmen kept many of the amenities from the Republicans but also used a back room on the first floor for their “wheels” and turned part of the third floor into a gymnasium. The third floor also included quarters for a janitor, identified in city directories as Levin J. Saunders, a Black man who also worked as a messenger for the Pennsylvania Railroad. His son Clarence, also a messenger, was listed at the 211 N. Fifth Street address for several years, raising a question of whether more of the Saunders family may have also lived on the third floor. According to Census records, Levin Saunders was married and with his wife, Elizabeth, had at least three sons and one daughter. Saunders remained employed by the Wheelmen (renamed the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-TheCarteretClub.htm">Carteret Club</a> in 1893) at their later locations on Penn Street and Cooper Street. The men’s clubs of 211 N. Fifth Street demonstrated the racial disparities of Camden of their era, with prominent white men with leisure time served by Black male employees. Further elements of racism were evident in activities of the Wheelmen, who in addition to their many sporting pursuits put on <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/minstrel-show">minstrel shows</a> for public audiences in Camden and other nearby venues. A popular form of entertainment for white audiences, minstrel shows in the nineteenth century featured white performers in burnt-cork blackface makeup who ridiculed the mannerisms of Black people. Members of the Wheelmen produced and performed in these shows during their years on Fifth Street. During this period, the League of American Wheelmen also barred Black riders from membership. Boarding House The death of the longtime owner of 211 N. Fifth Street, Hannah Gibson, in 1895 led to a sheriff’s sale of the building and opened a period when subsequent women owners and tenants operated boarding houses at this address. Their boarders also were primarily white women, who represented the spectrum of life circumstances and economic strategies available to them in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Elizabeth Peterson, a white widow who had been working as a sewing machine operator, obtained a mortgage and purchased 211 N. Fifth Street in 1899 from another widow who had acquired the building at the earlier sheriff’s sale. Born in England, Peterson had immigrated to the United States in 1886. During her ownership, 211 N. Fifth Street also became home to her adult daughter and a changing cast of boarders who included a widowed woman who worked as an editor and a single woman who worked as a forewoman. The boarders also included female employees of the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back">Esterbrook Steel Pen Company</a>, then one of Camden’s most prominent industries, and a woman who made her living by dressmaking. By 1910, the boarding house keeper at this address was Isabel Dubois, a white widow then 60 years old, who rented the building and made it home for her 86-year-old mother and two adult daughters. One daughter, Edna, worked as a legal stenographer, and the other, Isabel, as an accountant for the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>. The boarders in 1910 included a 70-year-old widow with an independent income, a single woman who worked as a title clerk, and another single woman employed in candy manufacturing. The ownership of 211 N. Fifth Street passed in 1911 from Elizabeth Peterson to Anna Janke, a white widow whose husband had been a bank clerk and a veteran of the Civil War. While city directories indicate residents with different surnames living together with Janke between 1911 and 1914, some were relatives (including her sister, Anna Platt). Janke’s social activities, reported in Camden newspapers, suggest a middle-class life not common for boarding house keepers. When Janke bought the home, the Camden Morning Post noted the sale and her intentions to thoroughly renovate – perhaps a sign of transition back to a single-family home or at least fewer occupants. Janke hosted card parties and was active in the New Era Club, which promoted college education for women and proper hygienic care of babies. Another woman who lived in the Janke home, Harriet Branson, hosted meetings of the Beethoven Club. Medical Office The next transition for 211 N. Fifth Street aligned it with nearby Cooper Street’s evolution into a location for medical professionals. The transformation had been underway since the 1880s, when <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/camdennj-cooperhospital.htm">Cooper Hospital</a> opened nearby. Residences serving dual purposes as doctor’s homes and offices included 211 N. Fifth Street’s neighbor on the corner of Fifth and Cooper. There, at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/72">429 Cooper Street</a>, surgeon Edward A.Y. Schellenger lived with his family and maintained his practice between 1898 and 1917. The house at 211 N. Fifth became a doctor’s home and office in 1915, when Dr. Alfred I. Cramer Jr. purchased the building from Anna Janke. Cramer, who was white, listed the Fifth Street home in city directories as the business address for his practice as an eye surgeon. It also became the family home for Cramer’s wife, Annie (a member of the locally prominent Browning and Doughten families) and their three sons and one daughter ranging in age from two months to seven years old. The Cramers made “extensive improvements” to the home, according to local newspapers. They employed two domestic servants, a sign of their economic and social standing. In 1915 the servants were Nellie McCabe, an 18-year-old Irish immigrant who cooked for the family, and Winifred Lyons, a 19-year-old daughter of Irish immigrants employed as a nurse. One of the previous owner’s tenants, a single woman who worked in the garment industry, also remained in residence with the Cramer family. Cramer, a graduate of Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, was affiliated with Cooper Hospital and active in Camden’s public health movement to combat the spread of disease in poor neighborhoods. He also invested in real estate, which was the primary business of his extended family. In the late nineteenth century Cramer’s father, Alfred I. Cramer Sr., and brother Joseph had transformed farmland adjacent to Camden into <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/camdennj-cramerhill.htm">Cramer Hill</a>, a neighborhood for local shipyard workers. The development was later annexed into the city and remains a neighborhood of Camden. Real estate considerations may have played a role in Dr. Cramer’s investment in the Fifth Street home and the Cramer family’s subsequent move to suburban Moorestown in 1924. Cramer bought 211 N. Fifth Street shortly after legislatures in Pennsylvania and New Jersey began planning for a bridge or a tunnel between Camden and Philadelphia. Those plans came to fruition in 1926 with completion of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), which terminated in Camden a few blocks north of 211 N. Fifth Street. The bridge project triggered a wave of real estate speculation in North Camden and a booster campaign to transform Cooper Street from a residential street into a commercial district. Amid these disruptions, many wealthy families moved from Camden to suburban Merchantville, Haddonfield, or (like the Cramers) Moorestown. Automobiles helped to make the moves not only possible but preferable for their owners in need of garages and parking spaces. The Cramer family retained 211 N. Fifth Street as an investment property, and it remained Dr. Cramer’s office location until his death in 1929. Inherited by his wife, Annie, the building reverted to multiple-family use as an apartment building from the 1930s into the 1940s. The tenants in those years included married couples and single women, their occupations ranging from school teachers to clerks, skilled tradespeople, and factory workers. The building also continued to house a medical practice: from at least 1931 through 1943, the office of another eye surgeon, Dr. George J. Dublin. While maintaining the office on Fifth Street, Dublin, a World War I veteran, lived in the Parkside section of Camden with his parents, who were Russian immigrants in the retail clothing business. In 1937 Dublin also bought a house across the street from his office, at 214 N. Fifth, but in the years after World War II he married and joined the post-World War II suburban migration to Cherry Hill. Renovations and a Jewish Family Home By the 1940s, 211 N. Fifth Street was more than eighty years old and deteriorating, like many other houses of similar vintage in North Camden. In 1937, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) <a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/39.1/-94.58">“redlined” the blocks north of Cooper Street</a> and west of Tenth Street as “hazardous” based on perceived negative characteristics of the housing stock and residents. The stigma affected even the most substantial homes, like 211 N. Fifth, by branding the area as high-risk for mortgage lenders. Nevertheless, in 1945 a new owner saved 211 N. Fifth Street from its declining state and remodeled it to serve as his family home with two medical offices on the first floor. Dr. Charles Kutner began renting in the building in 1943, then bought the home and started renovating in 1945 when he returned from three years’ military service during World War II. Kutner, the son of Jewish immigrants from an area of Poland under Russian control, grew up in South Camden among six siblings. His father worked as a baker. Although his parents spoke only Yiddish when they arrived in the United States and could not read or write, Charles graduated from high school, then Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and by 1926 had his medical degree from the University of Maryland. While attending medical school in Baltimore he met his future wife, Leah Friedlander, who was also Jewish. They married in 1927 and returned to Camden, where they had two daughters. Dr. Kutner became active in public health initiatives, especially the fight against tuberculosis in Camden public schools, and Leah Kutner participated in Jewish woman’s organizations. They joined the Jewish country club, Woodcrest, in Cherry Hill. The Kutners’ renovation of their new home preserved the building but altered its original form and nineteenth-century character. They removed the dilapidated third floor, making 211 N. Fifth Street into a two-story structure without its original roofline and cornice. Inside, the resulting living quarters on the second floor had varied levels, somewhat like the split-level designs that were becoming popular for suburban family homes. They divided the first floor into two medical offices, one for Dr. Kutner and the other rented to Dr. Walter Crist, who maintained his practice in Camden while living in West Collingswood. The Kutners also solved the problem of parking space for an automobile by buying an adjacent small rowhouse on Lawrence Street and converting it into a garage. A new two-story, brick-faced concrete structure at the rear of both buildings connected the garage with the Fifth Street house. The Kutners and their daughters lived at 211 N. Fifth Street through the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, the period when Rutgers University began other buying other nearby properties. After their daughters were grown, Charles and Leah Kutner stayed until at least 1962, when urban renewal demolition began to clear nearby blocks to create the Rutgers-Camden campus. They later lived in suburban Cherry Hill, but Dr. Kutner commuted daily to his medical practice at 211 N. Fifth Street until 1989 and rented the rest of the building to commercial and medical tenants. The occupants during the 1970s included First Harlem Management Corp., which specialized in management and technical assistance for minority entrepreneurs. Real Estate and Rutgers When the Kutners sold the property, following the death of Leah Kutner in 1989, 211 N. Fifth Street became one among many Camden properties owned by real estate investors Alfred and Ninfa DeMartini of Cherry Hill. The building housed legal and real estate offices until 2005, when Rutgers purchased it together with a package of other properties in the area of its expanding campus: 526 Penn Street, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75">423 Cooper Street</a>, and 428-430 Lawrence Street. The building subsequently served as offices for Disability Services, Communications and Events, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) before becoming home to the <a href="https://graduateschool.camden.rutgers.edu/">Graduate School of Arts and Sciences</a> in 2021. The building’s long history as a family home, men’s club house, boarding and apartment house, and site of medical practices was reconstructed in 2022-23 by graduate students in the Rutgers-Camden Department of History. Associated Individuals All known residents and businesses are listed in the Fifth Street Database: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T57JcKt9zThByrso2xqFx88JTozS_reaNc7X-JngTVo/edit?usp=sharing">click here</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com, GeneaologyBank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Digital Photographs Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. New Jersey State Census, 1885, 1895, 1915, and U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Structure Survey, 211 N. Fifth Street, John Milner Associates for New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Note on sources: The historic structure report for this property dates it as c. 1860. This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Sebastian LaVergne, Charlene Mires, Victoria Scannella, John Sprague, and Gina Torres. <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yfDIQTpKUWaOtoxOYtJPV?si=8ec95c1068ab499b&nd=1&dlsi=ffab6e22084b421a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Listen to a podcast</a> about this project. 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 211 N. Fifth Street Description An account of the resource Built c. 1857, former residence within Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 211 N. Fifth Street African Americans Apartments Bicycling Boarding House Camden Republican Club Camden Wheelmen Cherry Hill Children Civil War Clerks Club Doctors Factory Workers Fifth Street Jews Manufacturers Men's Clubs Moorestown Politics Public Health Public Officials Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Sports Women's Clubs World War II https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/59ba02cfefc7e9519bfa4fb3ff75e9dd.jpg c39b0193f6dbec81019fe0c9216d4e67 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Photograph by Jacob Lechner Significance 303 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places. A 1980 survey of historic structures on Cooper Street described the building as “the best example of high-school, pre-Civil War architecture to be found in Camden.” It therefore supports the historic district’s designation on the basis of architectural merit as well as its representation of broad patterns of American history. Through its owners and occupants, this house tells the story of Camden’s development in manufacturing, finance, and medicine, and its later challenges as a post-industrial city. Purchased by Rutgers University in 2001, it serves as an office building for the <a href="https://camden.rutgers.edu/discover-camden/leadership/office-of-chancellor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rutgers-Camden Chancellor</a> and other senior administrators. Architectural style Renaissance Revival Date of construction 1853 History Prior to the 1850s, the undeveloped land in the vicinity of Third and Cooper Streets, stretching northward to Pearl Street, was known as “Carman’s Field.” William Carman, a prosperous and prominent operator of a sawmill and lumber yard on the Camden waterfront, controlled more than 10 acres that had descended through the Cooper family to Carman’s wife, Mary Ann Cooper, who died in 1841. The house on the northeast corner of Third and Cooper Streets, later numbered 303, is a product of the sale, division, and development of the Carman land in 1852. While still owned by Carman, the later location of 303 Cooper Street had a two-story wood frame house occupied during the 1840s by a maker of water pumps, Joseph Vautier, the son of a <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/france-and-the-french/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">French immigrant</a> to Philadelphia. Vautier was remembered decades later for the pump that stood in front of his house, which was regarded as a source of excellent water during the cholera epidemic of 1849. Development of the Carman property displaced Vautier, who moved his family from Third and Cooper to another house to the west beyond Seventh Street. In 1852, a broker named Solomon Stimson acquired the double-width lot at Third and Cooper from a group of investors who had acquired the entire Carman field. In June 1853, the Philadelphia Public Ledger observed him “erecting a large and very tastily arranged dwelling on Cooper Street, which will be an ornament to that rapidly improving section of the city.” Stimson covered the old well with flagstones and ran the water through pipes to serve the new home. Wealth and Status Solomon Stimson’s house was double the width of the rowhouses recently constructed in the rest of the block, and it reached beyond them in architectural style with features such as its brownstone foundation and hooded windows. It was similar in size but also fancier than the home recently completed in the 400 block of Cooper Street for George W. Carpenter (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/74" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">401-03 Cooper Street</a>), a lumber merchant who later entered into a manufacturing partnership with Stimson. The source of Stimson’s wealth and his reasons for being in Camden are unclear. He came from a rural area of Saratoga County, New York, north of Albany, but by 1850 was in Camden, 30 years old, and heading a household that included his wife Flora (28 years old, also born in New York); a one-year-old son, James; his younger brother John, 25 years old; and two domestic servants who were Irish immigrants, Ann and Bridget McLeod. The Stimson brothers both reported their occupations as “brokers,” but brokers of what? It’s possible that their connections with Camden were formed through the lumber industry, given Solomon Stimson’s association with George Carpenter, his purchase of part of the Carman land, and his later return to upstate New York, a timber region. By 1860, Stimson and Carpenter were in business together as Stimson and Carpenter, manufacturers of tape and webbing at Front and Pearl Streets. (They also both served as trustees of the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-religion/camdennj-church-2ndpresbyterian.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Second Presbyterian Church</a>, newly founded at Fourth and Benson Streets.) A glimpse of the Stimson family’s material possessions emerged from a burglary in 1864, which netted “about $800 worth of plate, jewelry, ornaments &c.,” the Camden Democrat reported. In 1866, the Internal Revenue Service taxed Stimson on possessions that included a carriage, two gold watches, and a piano. The Stimson family’s reasons for leaving Camden in 1867 are as unclear as their arrival. They returned to Saratoga County, New York, where Solomon Stimson listed his occupation as “lumber.” A Judge, Eventually The next owner of 303 Cooper Street, Isaiah Woolston, had just been elected to the Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders when he purchased the house from Solomon Stimson. Woolston, 50 years old, had a checkered career in and out of businesses that included lumber, poultry, and wholesale liquor. It was in the wholesale liquor business in Philadelphia that “he rapidly accumulated capital,” according to his later obituary in the Camden Morning Post. In Camden, he accumulated political capital as well, holding public office and serving as a director for enterprises that included the <a href="https://sjfilmoffice.com/location/camden-safe-deposit-trust-company/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Safe Deposit and Trust Co.</a> and the <a href="https://delawareriverheritagetrail.org/2021/06/24/the-camden-amboy-railroad/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden and Amboy Railroad</a>. He was a founder of <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-religion/camdennj-church-TrinityBaptist.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Trinity Baptist Church</a>. Woolston and his family occupied 303 Cooper Street for the next three decades, including a ten-year period when he advanced his political career to the position of lay judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Woolston, who had been born in the vicinity of Vincentown, Burlington County, headed a household of four sons with his wife Sarah, originally from Freehold, New Jersey. The family employed Black domestic servants, some of whom are known from Census records: in 1870, Eliza Duncan, 45 years old, who was born in Maryland and unable to read or write; in 1880, Mary E. Hines, 18 years old, also from Maryland and illiterate; and in 1885, Annie Burton, whose age and family history are unknown. A white domestic servant, Laura Dickenson, also came from Maryland and worked in the Woolston home in 1894. Later in the 1890s, the Woolstons advertised a preference for a “German girl for general housework.” With the benefit of domestic labor for housework, Sarah Woolston engaged in charitable activities. She served on the board of managers for the <a href="https://www.sageth.com/businesses/camden-home-for-friendless-children/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>, which had been organized by prominent Camden residents in 1865. Located on Haddon Avenue above Mount Vernon, it was an altruistic endeavor that also revealed prevailing attitudes toward the poor. While providing shelter, health care, and education to “destitute friendless children,” it also sought to place them out with families to learn trades or useful occupations. The home was also segregated, which prompted the creation of a separate institution for Black children, the West Jersey Orphanage for Colored Children, in 1874. While living at Third and Cooper, Judge Woolston added real estate investment to his variety of business and political activities. In 1878, he purchased a large tract of then-undeveloped land in the vicinity of Fourth and Penn Streets and resold it to a builder. The property had a frontage of 200 feet on Fourth Street, approximately the later site of the <a href="https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/camden" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Robeson Library of Rutgers-Camden</a>. Houses filled the block until they were demolished in the 1962-64 urban renewal project that created an enlarged campus for Rutgers. The four Woolston sons, ages 8 to 14 when they moved into 303 Cooper Street, grew to adulthood at this address. One son, Charles, had a condition that Census takers in 1880 recorded as “insane” and “idiotic.” He died in 1887 at age 30, “very suddenly in Trenton of apoplexy,” raising the possibility that he lived in a state facility. Another son, Clarence, became pastor of the East Baptist Church in Philadelphia and developed expertise in children’s Bible study. Harry Woolston went into the coal business in Camden but also embraced the bicycle craze of the 1890s by starting the Woolston Bicycle Enameling Company. Albert Woolston, a clerk during his father’s judgeship, entered the real estate business. The Woolston family’s ownership of 303 Cooper Street ended with the death of Isaiah Woolston in 1899 and Sarah Woolston in 1900. The family sold the home to a real estate agent, who advertised, “I will sell the handsome residence at the northeast corner of Third and Cooper Streets, at an exceedingly liberal price provided that a contract is made within ten days.” Banking and Medicine For the first two decades of the twentieth century, 303 Cooper Street continued to be home to prominent Camden business leaders. The next two owners were both presidents of the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Central_Trust_Camden_NJ.JPG" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Central Trust Company</a>, a bank founded in 1891 by local businessmen including Abraham Anderson, a canner who had been a partner in the business that later became Campbell Soup. The bank grew quickly to assets of more than $1 million by the time its then-president, Alpheus McCracken, bought the former Woolston home at Third and Cooper Streets. McCracken rose to business prominence in Camden through the carpentry trade. Born in 1843 in Morris County, New Jersey, McCracken apprenticed as a carpenter by the age of 16. Three years later, he enlisted in the Army and fought for the Union during the Civil War; his unit, the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0031RI" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Thirty-First Infantry Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers</a>, saw action at the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/chancellorsville" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Battle of Chancellorsville</a>. He moved to Camden from Bordentown, New Jersey, in the 1870s following the death of his first wife, which occurred just one month after the birth of their second son. Camden’s prominence in the lumber business and railroads proved advantageous for McCracken, as he gained employment as a lumber inspector for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s lines in New Jersey. By the 1880s, he was investing in construction-related businesses, the Richman Fire Escape Company and the Fay Manilla Roofing Company. Although not among the organizers of the new Central Trust Company, he was on its board of directors by 1893 and succeeded Abraham Anderson as president in 1897. Three years later, he moved from North Second Street to 303 Cooper Street, which was closer to the bank at Fourth and Federal. During their five years in the Cooper Street house, the McCracken family included Alpheus and his second wife, Lillian, a daughter, and two sons. The family also employed Black domestic servants who were born in the South, an indication of the increasing presence of African Americans in Camden at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1900 just before the move to Cooper Street, they employed Mary Hill, a Black woman identified by Census takers only as born in “the South,” who could neither read nor write. In 1905 their household on Cooper Street included a young widow, Rosa Hayden, a 24-year-old Black widow who was born in Virginia, also unable to read or write. Living with her was a 15-year-old Black youth with the same last name, Frederick Hayden, who was attending school. For reasons not publicly explained, in 1906 the McCrackens moved to Vineland, turning over their house at Third and Cooper to an associate for the nominal sum of $1. The new owner, homeopathic physician Harry H. Grace, was acquainted with Alpheus McCracken through their mutual involvement in the Camden Republican Club (then at 312 Cooper Street) and shared enthusiasm for automobile touring, a new pastime for the wealthy. Grace and his wife, Ellen, established their home and his medical practice at their new address; in 1910, they employed two Black domestic workers, 21-year-old Sadie Hughes and a “house man,” 22-year-old Lorne Flemming (in some records Flemming Green or Lemmond Green), who were both born in Virginia. During this period, Harry Grace also became involved in management of the Central Trust Company, elected to the board of directors in 1908 and then succeeding McCracken as president of the bank in 1915. Grace’s transition from medicine to banking occurred after his own health scare, which was not publicly identified but necessitated traveling to Frankfurt, Germany, for rest and to “take the celebrated baths in the hope of being restored to his wonted health and vigor,” the Camden Morning Post reported. The journey put Grace and his wife in Europe during the summer of 1914, as the First World War began to unfold following the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This apparently cut short the intended treatment of complete rest, as the Graces returned from Europe to Atlantic City, not Camden. Within weeks they traveled again, this time to Rochester, Minnesota, where Grace underwent surgery by one of the renowned Mayo brothers, who soon founded the <a href="https://history.mayoclinic.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mayo Clinic</a>. A year after the surgery, a celebration at the Union Club in Philadelphia marked Harry H. Grace’s ascendance to the presidency of Central Trust Bank, where Alpheus McCracken remained chairman of the board. By 1917, however, Grace left Camden for Atlantic City, where he continued to work in banking. McCracken resigned as chairman of Central Trust in 1918, citing ill health, and later lived in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. The Strenuous Life Unlike many homes on Cooper Street, 303 did not undergo conversion into an office building or apartments during the 1920s, the period of construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). As long as it continued to be owned by physicians, which continued into the 1950s, it remained a family home while also including an office for the doctor. This was the case for Dr. Edward Pechin, who bought the property in 1920 (moving from a house immediately behind it at 300 Penn Street). The household that year included Pechin, then 42 years old; his wife, Anna, 38; and their daughter Dorothy, 13. Like their predecessors at this address, they employed a Black domestic worker, 18-year-old Mary Blackson, who was born in New Jersey to parents born in Delaware. They also employed a white maid, 23-year-old Mary Gleaves, who was born in Maryland. Pechin, who was born in Philadelphia, had come to Camden as a youth to work in a drug store owned by his brother. While his brother maintained the pharmacy, Pechin proceeded to medical school at Jefferson College in Philadelphia, where he graduated in 1903. During that period he appears to have embraced the “<a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/roosevelt-strenuous-life-1899-speech-text/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">strenuous life</a>” philosophy espoused in 1899 by Theodore Roosevelt, who implored men to set aside lives of ease and become strong, individually and for the nation. In Camden, this took the form of the Camden Light Infantry, which formed in 1900, with Pechin participating as a lieutenant by 1904. The group devoted itself to military-style training, and members regarded their participation as cultivating not only physical fitness but also, in the words of a captain of the corps, “habits of mind, self-control, and reverence for the law.” Focusing his practice on internal medicine and treatment of tuberculosis, Pechin became a member of the Board of Managers of the <a href="https://digital.hagley.org/1970200_05385" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Tuberculosis Hospital</a>. Some traces of devotion to an active life continued: in 1911 he sprung to the rescue of a woman who tripped in the path of an approaching freight train; in 1918 he was reported to be close to collapse from overwork while treating patients at Cooper Hospital during the influenza epidemic. Known for tirelessly responding to patients, day or night, he later contracted the flu and pneumonia, which permanently sapped his strength. It came as a “severe shock,” the Camden Morning Post reported, in 1925 when Pechin contracted spinal meningitis. At age 47, he died several days later despite a dozen of his fellow physicians working in shifts to try to save his life with treatments that included spinal taps and brain surgery. His wife and daughter kept vigil. A year later, they left the house at Third and Cooper and relocated to Haddonfield. Jewish Home The next long-term owners of 303 Cooper Street, Dr. Max Ruttenberg and his wife, Anna, came to a neighborhood that had transformed during the 1920s to include a significant Jewish presence. Jewish entrepreneurs were active in renovating 50-year-old rowhouses into apartments during the period of real estate speculation that occurred in anticipation of the Delaware River Bridge. A cluster of Jewish-owned businesses, including a tailor shop, a delicatessen, and an automobile dealership, developed just a block away from Third and Cooper in the 200 block of Penn Street. Although Camden’s Jewish population centered more prominently in other parts of the city, the Ruttenbergs were not the only Jewish family in the vicinity of Cooper Street. Moving from their previous home on State Street in 1933, the Ruttenbergs were a family of five: Max, who was an ear, nose, and throat specialist, was 42 years old, and Anna was 36. They had been married twelve years and had three children, a son Bertram, 10 years old, and two daughters, 8-year-old Ruth and 4-year-old Serita. Their Jewish heritage was rooted in Russia. Max had been born there and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1900, when he was 8 years old, during a surge of new arrivals from southern and eastern Europe. Anna was the daughter of a Philadelphia rabbi who immigrated from Russia, as did her mother. In addition to their ties to extended family in both Camden and Philadelphia, the Ruttenbergs participated in networks of Jewish civic, social, and faith activities. Anna, a college graduate and a teacher before her marriage, was one of the organizers of the Camden chapter of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America; she served as chapter president in 1932. Shortly after moving to Cooper Street, in 1934, Max Ruttenberg was elected president of the Jewish Welfare Society, which raised funds to encourage self-reliance of the poor and to provide free medical and legal advice. The family’s religious life centered on <a href="https://bethelsnj.org/about-beth-el/our-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Congregation Beth-El</a>, which had been established in the Parkside neighborhood of Camden during the 1920s. Bertram Ruttenberg had his bar mitzvah there in 1935, followed by a reception at home. The Ruttenbergs lived at 303 Cooper Street for a little more than two decades, from 1933 until 1955. During this period Max Ruttenberg, who had degrees in dentistry from the University of Pennsylvania and in medicine from Temple University, joined the faculty of the Penn Graduate School of Medicine. The children grew up, attended college, and married. During the Second World War, Bertram Ruttenberg—by then a medical school graduate—served in Guam with the U.S. Army medical corps. Bertram’s sister Ruth in 1945 married a Philadelphia medical student who then served in the Army and later in the Air Force. Max and Anna Ruttenberg remained at 303 Cooper Street until the doctor retired in the early 1950s. They spent their later years primarily at the Jersey Shore, and their departure from Cooper Street marked the end of its era as a single-family home. Service to Camden After the Ruttenbergs moved from Camden, institutional and office uses of 303 Cooper Street reflected the changing social landscape and needs of the city. In 1955, the <a href="https://www.campbellsoupcompany.com/about-us/our-story/campbell-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Campbell Soup</a> Fund bought the building and presented it to the Camden County Community Chest and Council, an organization that raised and administered funding for “health, welfare, and character-building agencies and the USO.” The new headquarters was intended as a memorial to <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/leadership/20th-century-leaders/Pages/details.aspx?profile=arthur_c_dorrance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arthur C. Dorrance</a>, a president of the Campbell Soup Company and the first president of the Community Chest before his death in 1946. A plaque placed in the building acknowledged his service. The Community Chest, later known as the United Fund, operated at 303 Cooper for nearly two decades, until moving to 408 Cooper Street in 1972. Its relationships with social service agencies positioned the building to play a role in responding to the city’s needs in the wake of the Camden <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/camden-new-jersey-riots-1969-and-1971/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">riot of 1971</a>. After tensions between police and Camden’s growing Puerto Rican population ignited violence, an ad hoc group of social service leaders met at this location on August 27, 1971, to discuss ways of being more useful to the community and to plan responses to future emergencies. Leading the effort were Angel Perez, director of Community Organization for Puerto Rican Affairs, the Rev. Edward Walsh of Catholic Charities, and Ronald B. Evans, chairman of the Camden chapter of the <a href="https://www.thecongressofracialequality.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Congress for Racial Equality</a> (CORE). The departure of the United Fund in 1972 led to a period of ownership by Edward Teitelman, a psychiatrist and historic architecture enthusiast who also owned the distinctive nineteenth-century home next door (305 Cooper Street) and other buildings on Cooper Street and nearby. During the 1970s and 1980s, the building housed psychiatry practices and a Veterans Vocational Guidance Center (which lost its funding during federal budget cuts in 1980). The address appeared periodically in legal notices for overdue taxes through 1990 and came into the hands of Rutgers University in 2001 through purchase from a trustee for Edward Teitelman. Thereafter it served as an office building for the <a href="https://camden.rutgers.edu/discover-camden/leadership/office-of-chancellor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chancellor</a> and other senior administrators of Rutgers University-Camden. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 303 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 303. Sources Francis Berger, Genealogical and Memorial History of the State of New Jersey (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1910). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society, Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). U.S. Census, 1850-1950, and New Jersey State Census, 1885-1925 (Ancestry.com). Register of Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Civil War, 1861-65 (Ancestry.com). Nathanial B. Sylvester, History of Saratoga County, New York (Philadelphia: Everts & Ensign, 1878). Priscilla M. and Franklyn M. Thompson, "Central Trust Company," <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/ed8dd60e-55a4-4520-9013-b419ce02df74/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a>. Research by Charlene Mires, Scott Hearn, and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 303 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 300 Block 303 Cooper Street African Americans Automobiles Bala Cynwyd Banking Bar Mitzvah Black Migration Bordentown Camden Home for Friendless Children Camden Light Infantry Camden Republican Club Campbell Soup Company Civil War Community Chest Death Doctors Hadassah Immigration Jersey Shore Jewish Welfare Society Jews Lumber Manufacturers Maryland New York Puerto Ricans Riot of 1971 Russia Rutgers-Camden Servants Social Services Spinal Meningitis Tuberculosis United Fund Veterans Vineland World War II