2 10 21 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/3a12ccb3c7c2764eca687d5031d7746c.jpg d3b9777c3142a594c14ec26a2ae3a8cb https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/87e37318d82fa64e9dcf0967d322c7e9.jpg 3c7963464a504b72fa3c8c4c80266914 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/8f3f217f460f620d275a824cf8a311a1.jpg 1cd76384a1344dceb1e6bd837d5f1546 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. Architectural style Originally a Greek Revival rowhouse, modified with Italianate influences and bay windows during the early twentieth century (prior to 1926). Date of construction 1853 History In March 1853 the Philadelphia Public Ledger 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 415 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</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. For most of the century following their construction, the houses at 415 and 417 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. 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." But for nearly eighty years, 415 Cooper Street had just two long-term resident families: the Brownings (c. 1860-1901) and the Franklins (1904-1938). Widowhood and Boarders Jerusha Browning, who headed the household at 415 Cooper Street by 1860, was a member by marriage of the prominent Browning family of South Jersey. Her husband, Lawrence, had 17 siblings born from his father's two marriages, which gave Jerusha a vast network of relations while she lived on Cooper Street for more than two decades after the death of her husband. By marriage or lineage, her relatives included the Doughtons and Hollinsheads next door (413 Cooper), the Hinchmans (417), and other Browning households across the street (414) and in the 500 and 600 blocks. Jerusha apparently rented the three-story brick row house from its original owners, who relocated to Philadelphia but retained title until the 1880s. We cannot know why she made this choice, given that she and her son, Abraham, had inherited considerable property after her husband's death in 1858. If the $12,000 in inherited real estate lay in the South Jersey countryside, where the Brownings were extensive land holders, she may have opted for the proximity to neighbors or the potential to support the household by taking in boarders. In 1860, the residents at 415 Cooper Street included Jerusha, then age 60, Abraham, 26, another son, George, 22, daughter Margaret H., 30, and a servant, Margaret Welsh, 20. During the 1860s and 1870s, various other Browning relatives lived with Jerusha's family for short periods of time. They also continued to employ servants, including Lydia Pernell, who was African American, in 1874. Over time, however, Jerusha and her daughter Margaret began to accept boarders in their home. This began in a genteel manner by 1876, when Jerusha was 76 and her daughter 46, and their boarders included the English-born architect <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/47" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arthur Truscott</a> and his two brothers in the insurance business, James and Millwood. They would have been low-risk boarders, given that they were nephews of an insurance man already established in Camden. Of the three Truscott brothers, the architect remained with the Brownings the longest, for at least twelve years between 1876 and 1888. During this period, he established his architecture practice in Philadelphia and designed the <a href="https://www.preservationnj.org/listings/new-jersey-safe-deposit-and-trust-company/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New Jersey Safe Deposit & Trust Company building</a> at Third and Market Streets in Camden (1887). Later he served as a supervising architect during construction of the Camden High School built on Park Boulevard 1916-18. His firm Baily and Truscott also contributed new buildings to Cooper Street with the Chateauesque trio of houses at 538-42 Cooper Street (c. 1892)--later retained as facades for the LEAP Academy Charter School--and the Colonial Revival house at 514 Cooper (1903). After Jerusha Browning died in 1884, Margaret continued to operate the boarding house and to advertise it actively in Camden newspapers. She offered rooms for boarders on the second and third floor, in some cases connecting rooms that could be rented together. She remained in the home and in the boarding house business into her 70s. The Browning family association with 415 Cooper Street ended at the turn of the twentieth century, with Margaret H. Browning's death in 1901. From Horses to Automobiles The next long-term occupant of 415 Cooper Street, Joshua B. (for Benjamin) Franklin, purchased this house as well as the adjacent 417 Cooper Street in 1903. Franklin and his family lived in 415 Cooper while renting out the house next door. He improved the properties by adding wood front porches in 1913, in keeping with similar additions elsewhere on the block. He may have added the bay windows to the second and third floors, which are evident in an aerial photograph of Camden taken c. 1926 but not in a photograph of the block earlier in the twentieth century. Franklin, born in 1861, moved from his family's farm in Burlington County to Camden during the city's fast-growing 1880s, when he was 21. He went to work for his uncle Joseph Franklin at the livery stable on Second Street between Cooper and Market and continued the business after his uncle's death. The Franklins became well known in Camden as they rented horses and carriages to the city's social and political elite. The business had a good location close to the Delaware River ferry crossings to Philadelphia and apparently yielded a good living, as Joshua Franklin purchased two other homes, at 224 Linden Street and 116 Cooper Street, before acquiring 415 and 417 Cooper. He joined fraternal organizations, including Lodge 15 of the Free and Accepted Masons. When Franklin moved into 415 Cooper Street, his family consisted of his wife of 15 years, Mollie, and their 4-year-old daughter Edith. He was a notable enough in the community to cause his daughter's fifth birthday party to be reported in the Camden Courier Post. His personal fortunes soon took a tragic turn, however. Little Edith contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1907 at the age of 8, news that "came as a painful shock to various sections of the city where the family is well known," the Courier-Post lamented. By the end of the same year, Mollie Franklin also died, from the effects of a longstanding heart ailment. She was 38 years old. In the wake of these personal tragedies Joshua Franklin remained at 415 Cooper Street, and his community connections may explain the prominent tenants he attracted to his investment property next door: the dentist Elmer Bower, for example, and the medical inspector for Camden schools, Henry Davis. In 1909, Joshua Franklin was married for a second time, to Chellie Smith, a widow who had been working as a saleswoman for several years since her husband's death. Joshua and Chellie continued to live at 415 Cooper Street for the next 25 years, at times renting rooms to others. At the livery stable, Joshua Franklin suffered two serious injuries: in 1913, a severely broken arm that was treated by Dr. E.A.Y. Schellenger at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/72" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fifth and Cooper Streets</a>, and in 1914 a near-electrocution that occurred during a Nor'easter when a live wire fell onto a telephone before Franklin picked up the receiver. The burns required treatment at Cooper Hospital. The appearance of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/automobiles/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">automobiles</a> in Camden during the first two decades of the twentieth century brought change and eventually the end of Franklin's livery stable. As his customers preferred their new automobiles to carriages pulled by horses, Franklin's business dealt more often with commercial clients, such as the city newspapers who still used horses to pull their delivery trucks. Franklin himself entered the automobile business with partners between 1921 and 1923, but by then in his 60s he retired and closed the stables as well. He continued to live at 415 Cooper Street with his wife, Chellie, until he died at home in 1938. In reporting his death, the Camden Morning Post recounted how his 78 years of life had spanned the age of liverymen to the age of the automobile. Professionals and Entrepreneurs The sale of 415 Cooper Street from the Franklin family to Dr. Benjamin Gross in 1943 marked a transition of uses to rented offices and apartments. Gross, a proctologist who lived in Merchantville, based his practice at 425 Cooper Street for about ten years before relocating the office to Collingswood. Other office tenants through the second half of the twentieth century included an accountant, a lawyer, and a dental practice. In the early twenty-first century, 415 Cooper Street gained new life as a restaurant location, at first operated by Rutgers-Camden graduate Elizabeth Ashley, then living in Cinnaminson. In addition to opening Lizzie's Cooper Street Cafe in 2003, she bought and renovated 417 Cooper Street next door to offer rental apartments to Rutgers-Camden students. Two other restaurants subsequently operated at 415 Cooper Street: McCargo's Restaurant (2006), a project of Camden native Aaron McCargo Jr., later a winner of Next Food Network Star, and another cafe (2007) operated by Ramona Breggeta. In 2007 Rutgers University purchased 415 Cooper Street from its most recent owner, Karen J. Giroux of Highland Park, N.J., for $500,000. Illustrations 1. 415 Cooper Street, 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner) 2. 415 Cooper Street, early twentieth century, prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society) 3. 415 and 415 Cooper Street with additions of front porches and bay windows on 415, detail from c. 1926 aerial photograph. (Library Company of Philadelphia) Significance 415 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district's nomination for the National Register identifies significance in part 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." Together with the adjoining buildings 413-21 Cooper Street, 415 is one of the nineteenth-century homes that qualified Cooper Street for the National Register. Its notable history includes a connection to the prominent Browning family of South Jersey and to the architect Arthur Truscott, who lived in 415 Cooper Street as a boarder for at least twelve years. Lives of residents at 415 Cooper Street also illustrate matters of illness and death and changes in technologies of transportation. The home also embodies the pattern of transition from residential and professional to commercial uses identified as justification for listing the Cooper Street Historic District on the National Register. Rutgers purchased 415 Cooper Street in 2007. Associated Individuals For details about occupants of 415 Cooper Street, link to 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 415. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Second corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Sources Camden City Directories, New Jersey and U.S. Census Records, 1860-1940 (Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers, 1850-2007 (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Property Report, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office (2006). Structure Survey, New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Note on sources: 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. Questions / needs for additional research 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 415 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 400 Block 415 Cooper Street Accountants Architects Attorneys Automobiles Boarding House Boarding House Operator Burlington County Childhood Collingswood Death Dentists Doctors Extended Family Horses Illness Injuries Investment Livery Stable Merchantville Porches Renovations Restaurants Rutgers-Camden Typhoid Fever Widowers Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/e6d095749280003cc512cb78a109e073.jpg 788b6862485144125bd6fb1fc623ed4a https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/bfc6a7b032eccf390cca76cc9a9c3947.jpg fec7335650ea1fdd808c433f8678f688 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 419 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. The district is defined as representing broad patterns of American history, including the importance of ferry connections between Camden and Philadelphia: "By its geographic location, Cooper Street literally became South Jersey's thoroughfare to downtown Philadelphia. The fortune of Cooper Street, and of Camden as a whole, rose when people and goods moved through them to board ferries to the larger city across the Delaware River." This is amply illustrated by the history of 419 Cooper Street, which through the nineteenth century housed a series of families with livelihoods tied to business in Philadelphia. As an investment property generating income, 419 Cooper Street also represents financial strategies of widows during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The building's twentieth century history reflects the historic district's stated significance as a place of "change from residential and professional to commercial." Rutgers connections to this property extend to the 1960s, when Rutgers students were among apartment tenants in the building. Rutgers purchased the property in 2007. Architectural style Originally a Greek Revival rowhouse; new brick facing added after 1985, when the original facade is visible in a photograph taken that year for structures surveys by the New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Date of construction c. 1848 Illustrations 1. 419 Cooper Street, photograph taken September 2010. 2. 419 Cooper Street, early twentieth century prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society) History The adjoining rowhouses at 419 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a> Cooper Street were among the first to be built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family descendants began to divide and sell their inherited property during the 1840s and 1850s. A broker and volunteer firefighter living in Philadelphia, Joseph R. Paulson, and his wife Mildred K. Paulson bought these lots in 1847. At least one house existed on the property by the end of 1848, when Joseph Paulson, at the age of 36, drew up an agreement that revealed expectations of an early death: he placed the properties in trust with his mother-in-law, Hester Keen, with instructions that she collect rents to support his wife and children, a son also named Joseph (then 13 years old) and daughter Emily (then age 5). A death notice for Joseph R. Paulson appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 29, 1849. The family invited relatives, friends, and members of the Humane Engine Company in Philadelphia to his funeral “from his late residence, Cooper Street, near Fifth, Camden, N.J.” They proceeded from there back to Philadelphia on the Arch Street ferry for his burial at Monument Cemetery. His cause of death was not made public. The property on Cooper Street, as he intended, remained a source of rental income and periodically a home for his descendants for the next 75 years. Philadelphia Commuters Some of the nineteenth-century tenants of 419 Cooper Street demonstrate the historic importance of Camden, and Cooper Street in particular, as a transportation corridor between South Jersey and Philadelphia. Homes on Cooper Street allowed for a short walk to the Delaware River ferries for commuting to Philadelphia. By 1862, during the Civil War, 419 Cooper Street had become home to Joseph Fearon, a wholesale grocer who had his business at 19 S. Water Street in Philadelphia. In addition to Joseph's wife, Catharine, the Fearon household included five children aged 12 and younger and two Irish-born domestic servants. Another Philadelphia-based food merchant, fruit importer Silas Warner, and his family lived at 419 Cooper for several years during the 1870s (c. 1871-73). Family Legacy As the original owner, Joseph Paulson, intended, the Cooper Street property supported his wife during her lifetime and upon her death conveyed to their two children. The siblings, adults by the time of their mother’s death in 1875, then divided ownership of the houses on their inherited land. Joseph Paulson's daughter, Emily, became the owner of 419 Cooper Street and a smaller house at the back of the property facing Lawrence Street. The homes continued to be rented to tenants. Camden, Philadelphia, and the World In 1880, Census takers encountered an unusually international family who rented 419 Cooper Street for at least two years (c. 1880-82): The head of household, widowed Matilda Evans, age 54, reported her birthplace as Germany. Her three adult sons and one daughter, all in their twenties, reported having been born in South America and that their father was from New York. The household also included a servant, Jane Laverty, who had been born in Ireland. Some Camden city directories identified the adult children as boarders, suggesting that 419 Cooper may have operated as boarding house during this period. From c. 1883 to 1897, a Philadelphia manufacturer of silk and wool hats, Robert S. Nickerson, resided at 419 Cooper Street with his wife Elizabeth and adult daughter Jennie Gay while commuting to his business across the river at 63 N. Second Street. The move marked a significant change for Nickerson, whose business had been operating in Philadelphia since 1836. But during the 1880s, Camden was growing rapidly and houses near the Delaware River waterfront offered attractive prices and easy access to the ferries. The sometimes-frantic nature of ferry commuting is suggested by a report in the Camden Morning Post on May 26, 1888, which described Nickerson attempting to leap onto a ferry departing from Philadelphia while clutching an umbrella and bottle of pickles. He ended up in the river, still clutching his possessions when rescued. The Nickersons, who previously lived in Philadelphia, occupied 419 Cooper longer than most other nineteenth-century occupants, almost 15 years. They typically employed one live-in domestic servant, for at least five years Annie Redgate, a daughter of Irish immigrants living elsewhere in Camden. In 1897, Jennie Gay Nickerson's wedding took place in the home. In a Society of Friends ceremony, she married Richard Albert Wills, a widowed insurance agent. Robert and Elizabeth Nickerson, then in their late 50s, moved with their daughter into Wills' home farther east in Camden, at 752 Wright Avenue, where they formed an extended family with a granddaughter born in 1899 and Wills' two older sons. Dentistry on Cooper Street When Cooper Hospital opened during the 1880s, medical professionals increasingly lived and practiced in homes on nearby Cooper Street. Among them, for more than thirty years Dr. Elmer E. Bower had his dental practice in the 400 block. Bower, a native of Berks County, established his practice in fast-growing Camden immediately after finishing dental school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1888. He and his wife Katherine raised a family in a series of three homes that also served as Elmer's dental office--419 Cooper Street, where they lived and worked between 1899-1908, was the second of the three (after <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/76" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">405</a> Cooper, 1889-1898, and before moving next door to <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>, 1908-c.1920). By the time the Bowers moved into 419 Cooper, their family had grown to three children: a son Chester, age 16, and daughters Helen, 12, and Sarah, 8. In the decade they spent at this address, the Bowers experienced both tragedy and joy. Much of the family's attention turned to the poor health of daughter Helen, whose particular illness is not known from public records. For the benefit of her health they relocated between 1904 and 1906 to more rural Hammonton, then well-known as the location of the Hammonton Sanitarium operated by Dr. James Peebles, a specialist in chronic illnesses. The move was to no avail, however. Helen Adaline Bower died in Hammonton on September 15, 1906, at the age of 20. The next family milestone occurred two years later, when the Bowers' son Chester Bertalette (his mother's maiden name) married and established his home next door to his parents, at 417 Cooper Street. The elder Bowers and their daughter Sarah soon moved there as well, creating an extended two-generation family. Elmer Bower continued his dental practice at the 417 Cooper address until he retired around 1920. A Widow's Family Home While 419 Cooper Street housed a series of renters during the nineteenth century, it passed by inheritance to the descendants of Joseph R. Paulson. Thus it offered an available refuge when <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary A. Paulson</a>--the widow of Joseph R. Paulson's son (also named Joseph R.)--established a new home for herself and three children following the death of her husband in 1911. The family had most recently lived in Haddonfield, but before that, from 1897 to 1907, they had resided in another Paulson family property, 421 Cooper Street. When the widowed Mary Paulson returned to Camden in 1912, she generated income for her family by renting out the 421 property while living next door in 419 with her children Joseph Jr., then age 19; Charles, then 17; and daughter Ruth, 9. The Paulsons' extended family at 419 Cooper also included Emily L. Paulson, the sister of Mary's late husband, who had inherited the home as well as the smaller house behind it at 424 Lawrence Street. Born c. 1841, Emily lived much of her adult life with her mother, Mildred, and then her brother. But for at least ten years, while in her 60s c. 1900-1910, Emily had lived as a patient at the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane. The nature of her mental illness is not known from public records, but at this West Philadelphia institution she would have experienced the "moral treatment" philosophy advocated by the founder of the hospital, Quaker physician <a href="https://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/timeline/1801/tline14.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride</a>. Kirkbride's philosophy advocated humane treatment in beautiful surroundings, and the institution in Philadelphia inspired many other "Kirkbride Plan" hospitals around the country. In this era, causes for admission to the institution could range from grief and anxiety to severe forms of insanity. At the time of Emily's residence, the hospital's roster of patients included wives and daughters of merchants, lawyers, and other people of prominence. At age 70, Emily returned to Camden as a member of Mary Paulson's household, and the Paulsons remained at this address for the next two decades. The two teen-aged sons, both musically inclined, opened a music studio in the home to teach other young men how to play the mandolin or violin. Soon they faced more life-altering choices as the Great War began in Europe and especially when the United States entered the conflict in 1917. By then, the oldest son, Joseph Jr., still claimed 419 Cooper Street as his home address but had landed a job as an orchestra leader for a theater in Juneau, Alaska. He served as a musician in the U.S. Navy, 1918-19. His younger brother Charles served closer to home, in the quartermaster's office of the U.S. Army in Sea Girt, New Jersey, 1917-18. Both returned home to 419 Cooper Street: Charles by 1920, when the household consisted of his mother, age 54, aunt Emily, 77, and 17-year-old sister Ruth, who later became a teacher at Hatch Junior High School. Joseph returned home during the 1920s after a brief wartime marriage and later divorce. The Paulson family's association with 419 Cooper Street lasted until the 1930s. Transfer of the property from Emily to Mary Paulson for $1 in 1931 suggests that Emily had died, and by 1937 the house was up for sale. In the midst of the Great Depression, the original price of $10,000 plummeted by more than half over three years until the house finally ended up listed for sheriff's sale to satisfy back taxes. Charles Paulson made his living as a salesman and shopkeeper, married, and began his own family in Camden and later Haddonfield; by 1940, Joseph Paulson worked as a musician at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Mary Paulson, meanwhile, went to live with her by-then-married daughter Ruth Soistmann in Merchantville, ending the era of 419 Cooper Street as a single-family home. Apartments and Offices In 1940, with new owners Richard Gebbie, who owned a radio shop, and his wife Alice, a nurse, 419 Cooper Street began its transition to multi-family housing and commercial uses. While living in the home, the Gebbies rented apartments to at least two other families. By the 1950s they moved to Moorestown but retained ownership of the building until 1960 and rented to a series of office tenants, including a doctor, an attorney, and real estate agents. Brokers Mortgage Service, a mortgage company located in the nearby Wilson Building, next held title to 419 Cooper Street while renting out apartments and offices. Among the renters in the early 1960s, Rutgers student Joan Jarema made news as a finalist for sweetheart of the Kappa Sigma Upsilon fraternity. She later married another Rutgers South Jersey student, Anthony Santerlas. Real estate and legal offices continued to occupy 419 Cooper Street from the 1960s to the 1980s as the building passed from ownership of attorneys William Keown and Philip Daniels, who had their office in the building from 1965 to 1982, to a series of absentee investors. In the mid-1980s, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/james-florio/F000215?r=11&q=%7B%22house-committee%22%3A%22Energy+and+Commerce%22%2C%22subject%22%3A%22Finance+and+Financial+Sector%22%7D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Congressman James J. Florio</a> had an office on the first floor. AKJ Investment, based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, sold the building to Rutgers University in 2007 for $510,000. Associated Individuals For all known occupants of 419 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>. Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Communicate corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Sources Camden City Directories (Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). National Register for Historic Places, Cooper Street Historic District Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services Structures Surveys (1985) and Office of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office, Property Reports (2007). U.S. Census, 1850-1930; New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915; and U.S. Military Records (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 419 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 419 Cooper Street 424 Lawrence Street Aging Apartments Attorneys Congressional Office Death Dentists Extended Family Germany Greek Revival Grocers Haddonfield Hammonton Health and Medicine Ireland Manufacturers Mental Illness Merchantville Moorestown Musicians New York City Philadelphia Real Estate Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Society of Friends South America Teachers Weddings Widows World War I https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/bccf2be593494953528898fa92b4a99a.jpg d34376f3b4da30b37055cb4a19f090d2 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/9d3e59ea1482fc62da01e3035b708308.jpg f1e123e52e6c1ac1142a7e8b04fbc5d5 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/5f894fd3ae04bf37fbdcb639ecceacb5.jpg b360f4fd1bdc23c4ae7b84d6441ac541 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/e1f81fe58d97f03a530b4074c3ec01c1.jpg f9329f8aa7bf2c05257b0caffed7ff20 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 421 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. One of the earliest houses to be built on the north side of Cooper Street, the house is distinctive in representing financial strategies of widows during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The house also reflects the historic district's statement of significance that Cooper Street demonstrates "change from residential and professional to commercial." The 421 Cooper Street building began as a family home then turned to professional and commercial uses in the twentieth century. The Mission Revival renovation, likely completed within the district's stated period of significance (1810-1937), invokes Spanish influences and represents the home's adapted use as an office building. The building also has a notable history associated with women's entrepreneurship on Cooper Street, the experiences of childhood and youth, and health services (for sight and hearing). A graduate of Rutgers Law School had an office at this address for many years, and during a period in the 1970s Rutgers students lived in dormitory-style space upstairs. Rutgers acquired the building in 1999. Architectural style Originally a Greek Revival row house, 421 Cooper Street has been embellished by Mission Revival details added during the twentieth century renovation of the building for business uses. Date of construction c. 1848, remodeled c. 1926 History The adjoining rowhouses at 421 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419</a> Cooper Street were among the first to be built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family descendants began to divide and sell their inherited property during the 1840s and 1850s. A broker and volunteer firefighter living in Philadelphia, Joseph R. Paulson, and his wife Mildred K. Paulson bought these lots in 1847. At least one house existed on the property by the end of 1848, when Joseph Paulson, at the age of 36, drew up an agreement that revealed expectations of an early death: he placed the properties in trust with his mother-in-law, Hester Keen, with instructions that she collect rents to support his wife and children, a son also named Joseph (then 13 years old) and daughter Emily (then age 5). A death notice for Joseph R. Paulson appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 29, 1849. The family invited relatives, friends, and members of the Humane Engine Company in Philadelphia to his funeral “from his late residence, Cooper Street, near Fifth, Camden, N.J.” They proceeded from there back to Philadelphia on the Arch Street ferry for his burial at Monument Cemetery. His cause of death was not made public. The property on Cooper Street, as he intended, remained a source of rental income and periodically a home for his descendants for the next 75 years. A Soldier's Family during the Civil War From 1863 (perhaps earlier) until at least 1869, 421 Cooper Street was the rented home of the Harbert family: Samuel C. Harbert, a dealer in agricultural implements in Philadelphia; his wife, Georgianna; and daughters Mary Virginia and Ella. During the first two years of the Civil War, Harbert served as regimental quartermaster in the New Jersey Fourth Infantry Regiment. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0004RI01" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New Jersey Fourth</a> participated in the defense of Washington until March 1862 and then advanced into Virginia and saw action in battles that included Yorktown, Bull Run, and Fredericksburg. Another Camden soldier, 17-year-old Thomas James Howell, demonstrated affection for Harbert's daughter Mary in <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/This_Will_Make_a_Man_of_Me/LyJsDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letters he wrote home</a> before being killed at the Battle of Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862. Harbert mustered out of the New Jersey Fourth in January 1863 and thereafter served as an officer in the U.S. Volunteers Paymaster's Department Infantry Regiment until November 1865, reaching the rank of major. He also served on the Camden City Council from 1869 to 1871, when the family relocated to Philadelphia, his place of business. Samuel (1818-1888), Georgianna (1821-92), and the daughters are buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia. Family Legacy As the original owner, Joseph Paulson, intended, the Cooper Street property supported his wife during her lifetime and upon her death conveyed to their two children. The siblings, adults by the time of their mother’s death in 1875, then divided ownership of the houses on their inherited land. Joseph Paulson, bearing the same name as his father, became the owner of 421 Cooper Street and a smaller house at the back of the property facing Lawrence Street. The homes continued to be rented to tenants. Hazards of Youth in the 1880s From around 1883 until 1892, the home at 421 Cooper Street was rented by the Kean family (sometimes spelled Keen, but apparently not related to the property owners). William C. Kean, a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and his wife Sarah, headed a family with two daughters and five sons living at home during this period. Sarah Kean's brother, Robert W. Downing, served as Comptroller for the Pennsylvania Railroad, which by 1888 also employed one of the Kean sons, then 17-year-old Charles A., as a clerk. Camden newspapers recorded some of the experiences of the Kean sons, illustrating some of the hazards of youth the late nineteenth century. In 1884, 18-year-old Edmund suffered a severe contusion of his foot during a rough ride on a ferry boat in fog. In 1885, he made the news again for impertinence to the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, which expelled him. In 1888, 15-year-old Harry and 13-year-old Joseph (known as Josie) were involved in a tree-cutting accident at their grandparents' farm near Woodbury, with Josie suffering axe cuts to his ankle. ("The shoe saved the foot from being entirely cut off, " the Camden Morning Post reported.) One of the boys, Robert (known as Bertie) did not live to adulthood. He died in the 421 Cooper Street home in July 1890 at the age of 13 from causes not publicly reported. The Camden Morning Post described him as "a bright and promising lad and his affection nature made him a favorite with his companions." As customary, his funeral service also took place at home. In 1893, the Camden city directory announced the Kean sons as "removed to Philadelphia," and their parents were also across the river by the time of the 1900 Census (at 527 Broad Street, an area favored by transportation magnates). One of the Kean sons, William Jr., became a real estate developer of homes in the Germantown section of Northwest Philadelphia. Security for a Widow The Paulson family returned to 421 Cooper Street by 1897, opening a new period when the house again served as a source of income for a widow with young children. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mary A. Maxwell</a> was 27 years old when she married a widower 30 years her senior, Joseph R. Paulson—the son of first owner of 421 Cooper Street. Joseph lived in Philadelphia, listed in public records variously as an optician, cutlery maker, and jewelry merchant. With Joseph, Mary had two children and together they moved back to Camden and the 421 Cooper Street home. By the 1900 Census, the household consisted of Joseph, age 64; Mary, age 34; their sons Joseph Jr., age 6, and Charles, age 5, and a housekeeper, 55-year-old Clara Brewer. By 1905, Brewer's place had been taken by 21-year-old Rachel Ball, an African American who like many others in the early twentieth century had migrated north from Virginia. The family also added a daughter, Ruth, born 1902. The Paulsons lived at 421 Cooper Street for at least a decade and then, by 1910, made another move to the more fashionable suburb of Haddonfield. Still, they retained ownership of 421 Cooper Street. In 1911, when Joseph died, the family's former home became a source of financial security for Mary and her children. Mary rented out 421 Cooper Street to other families while living next door at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/40" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">419 Cooper Street</a>, the other half of the Paulson family property that had passed to Joseph’s sister, Emily. The house at 421 for almost a decade became the rented home for another extended family headed by a widow, Clara Starn, until that family moved in 1920 to Merchantville. It remained a source of income for Mary Paulson and her family until 1925; its change of ownership that year warranted a story in the Camden Courier-Post to note that the property had been in the hands of only two families--the Paulsons and the Coopers--since Camden's earliest history. 1920s Disruption, Opportunity, and Renovation During the 1920s, a series of disruptions and transitions led Camden boosters to view Cooper Street as a potential business corridor. Construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), completed in 1926, caused demolition of nineteenth-century homes in nearby blocks. Near the Delaware waterfront, the Victor Talking Machine Company demolished a block of Cooper Street homes to expand its factories. Commercial-scale buildings such as the Wilson Building, Camden's first skyscraper (620 Cooper, completed 1925), and the Plaza Hotel (500 Cooper, completed 1927), began to appear. Controversially for longtime residents, Cooper Street was widened in anticipation of increasing automobile traffic. In the midst of these transitions, 421 Cooper Street changed from a family home to an office building. It was one of a series of renovation projects managed by Julia M. Carey, a 26-year-old daughter of Irish immigrants who had worked as a stenographer and notary before finding new opportunity in real estate sales during the 1920s. On behalf of the Bell-Oliver Corporation, she sold three Cooper Street houses--321, 421, and 521--to investors and stayed on to manage and remodel them. The renovations by the "energetic realty lady" were reported in the Camden Courier-Post of September 11, 1926: at 421 Cooper Street, Carey turned the home into an office building, and leased an office there for herself. (Meanwhile, she turned 321 Cooper Street into an eight-unit apartment house and 521 into offices for lawyers.) It appears likely that Carey was responsible for the Mission Revival-style ornament that obscured the original facade of 421 Cooper Street. This Spanish-influenced style, which originated on the West Coast, had been rare in Camden but made two other appearances on Cooper Street during the 1920s: in a new commercial building at 525 Cooper and in the Chalcar Apartments building in the 200 block. The renovation of 421 Cooper Street, with enlarged windows and structural changes necessary to install the new Mission Revival ornament, is visible in an aerial photograph of the vicinity of the Delaware River Bridge approach taken c. 1926. The completed renovation can also be seen in the 1947 advertisement published at the top of this page. Julia M. Carey lived at least briefly, c. 1929-1931, in one of the apartments she created at 321 Cooper Street. She remained involved with the neighborhood until at least 1940, when the Camden city directory listed her as having a real estate office at 521 Cooper. Helen's Beauty Shop After the renovation of 421 Cooper, the building had a variety of office tenants, including an insurance agency and promoters of the new Arlington Mausoleum in Pennsauken. But the business tenant who became most well-known to Camden during the 1930s and 1940s arrived in 1933, when <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/39" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Helen Waters</a> opened a beauty shop on the second floor. She vigorously promoted her business with display advertising and flattering promotional articles in the Camden newspapers, encouraging the women of Camden to come to her for the latest in hairstyling and cosmetics. By the time Helen opened her shop at 421 Cooper, she had been widowed and her work as a beautician supported two daughters. The 1930 Census found her at age 30 living at the Harding Villa Apartments on Federal Street while her daughters Patricia and Dorothy, then aged 9 and 10, lived with her parents Daniel and Lida Chester elsewhere in Camden. Helen, who had an eighth-grade education, worked as a beautician for Binder's Beauty Shop in Philadelphia before opening her own establishment at 421 Cooper Street, where she and her daughters also came to live. In 1938, Waters added cosmetics and facials to her business. Her daughters both graduated from high school, including at least one year at Mount St. Mary's Academy run by the Sisters of Mercy in Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1940, living with their mother at 421 Cooper, Dorothy worked as a typist and Patricia as a telephone operator. Patricia actively promoted a women's basketball league in Camden for former high school players. Other businesses and organizations, including the Camden County Real Estate Board and the Camden County Democratic Party, had offices in 421 Cooper while Helen operated the shop and lived upstairs. In 1945, after both of her daughters had married, Helen bought the building but retained ownership only until 1947. When she put 421 Cooper Street up for sale, it offered an office suite on the first floor, additional office space on the second floor, "plus three nicely planned apartments with modern tile baths." Helen continued to operate her beauty salon in the building until at least 1950, but after its sale she moved behind it to 426 Lawrence Street. Residential, Professional, Commercial During the second half of the twentieth century, 421 Cooper Street served all elements of the transitions noted in the justification for naming Cooper Street a historic district on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places in 1989. Its next owner, Ernest F. Birbeck, was an optician who moved his practice from the Plaza Hotel, then nearby at Fifth and Cooper Street, into 421 Cooper in 1950. He commuted from Pennsauken until he retired in 1967. His business tenants included a hearing aid center and a eyewear shop whose co-owner, B. Morozin, became the next owner of 421 Cooper. Under Morozin's ownership in the early 1970s, Rutgers-Camden students lived upstairs in space advertised as "dorm style" with a kitchen, dining room and air conditioning, for up to 10 people. The Rutgers connection to 421 Cooper Street continued when another office tenant, lawyer Joseph Liebman, purchased the building in 1977. Liebman, a graduate of Rutgers Law School in Camden, lived in Philadelphia but according to information published in the Courier-Post had an office in 421 Cooper Street for fifty-five years. After one more change of ownership to another Philadelphia attorney/investor, Raymond Quaglia, Rutgers acquired the building in 1999. On February 27, 2020, the Camden Historic Preservation Commission voted unanimously to dismiss with prejudice an application by Rutgers to demolish 421 Cooper Street. It further recommended reconstruction of the building, including restoring the facade. On March 6, 2020, a request from Rutgers for emergency demolition of 421 Cooper Street was declined by the Historic Preservation Office of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on the basis that the building's condition resulted from long-term deterioration. On June 11, 2020, the Camden City Planning Board voted unanimously to deny Rutgers' request to demolish 421 Cooper Street. Illustrations 1. 421 Cooper Street in 2019. (Photograph by Jacob Lechner) 2. 421 Cooper Street, indicated by arrow, early twentieth century prior to 1913. (Camden County Historical Society) 3. 421 Cooper Street, circled, c. 1926, showing renovation. (<a href="https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A61821?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=5ef67e7ccf54ba06b0c8&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Photograph detail</a>, Library Company of Philadelphia) 4. Advertisement, Camden Courier-Post, September 20, 1947. 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 421. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. Digital Photographs Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. New Jersey State Census, 1885, 1895, 1915, and U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Property Report, 421 Cooper Street, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Structures Survey, 421 Cooper Street, New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Note on sources: The historic structure report for this property dates it as “before 1885.” This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Charlene Mires, 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 421 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 400 Block 421 Cooper Street African Americans Apartments Attorneys Beauticians Bridge Impact Childhood Civil War Cosmetics Death Domestic Life Extended Family Greek Revival Haddonfield Health and Medicine Injuries Merchantville Mission Revival Opticians Pennsauken Philadelphia Railroad Workers Real Estate Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/1a58545206a4032c8a0b31422adb830d.jpg b4d8fa46048454ef5ab9b406158ecd92 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Early twentieth-century photograph, Camden County Historical Society. Significance 423 Cooper Street was the site of a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district is defined as representing broad patterns of American history, including: "The buildings within the district include Camden's best remaining examples of Federal houses and its most intact examples of nineteenth-century houses as well as important office and bank buildings of more recent vintage. These buildings demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." The latter transition was well illustrated by 423 Cooper Street, which began as a family home then became a funeral home from the 1920s through the 1960s. The house was demolished in the early 1990s. Date of construction c. 1847, renovated 1875. History The house that stood at 423 Cooper Street for nearly 150 years was among the first houses built on the north side of Cooper Street as Cooper family heirs sold their land for development. When they began to divide their land into building lots in the 1840s, Camden was seeking new status as the seat of government for newly designated Camden County, formed from Gloucester County in 1844. Building Lives in Camden Jesse Townsend and his wife, Elizabeth, came to Camden in 1847, two years after they were married at the Byberry Friends Meeting in the rural northern reaches of Philadelphia. They had one infant daughter when Jesse took a job as a clerk at the State Bank of Camden, one of the institutions that marked the emergence of Camden as a city in its own right, not merely a satellite of Philadelphia across the river. The Townsends purchased the 423 Cooper Street lot and in their new house, likely a Greek Revival brick rowhouse like others in the 400 block, their family grew during the 1850s to include five children – four girls and a boy – in addition to Elizabeth Townsend’s mother, Mary Wilson. Jesse Townsend ascended to cashier of the bank. When he also entered into partnership in a flour and grain business, his business partner Caleb Parry also lived with the family for a time. In 1862, the Townsend family sold the house and moved to 215 Cooper Street, closer to the bank at Second and Market Streets. New owners who lived in Woodbury rented out the house for the rest of that decade. Notably, in 1870 the tenants of the house included Richard and Mary Esterbrook, immigrants from England. Richard Esterbrook was the founder of the Esterbrook Steel Pen Company, founded in Camden in 1858 and on its way to becoming one of the world’s leading producers of steel pen nibs. The house underwent a major renovation by its next owner, Frederick Rex, a bank clerk in his 20s who later became a prominent attorney. When advertised for sale by its previous owners from Woodbury, the house was described as having “six chambers, and bath room, parlor, dining room and kitchen; water and gas in the house which is in good order.” Rex apparently saw room for improvement and contracted with a builder in 1875 to “tear down, build up, and repair” the 30-year-old rowhouse. The result was a home that stood out from others on the block with Italianate details. Rex then sold the house to the family who also lived there with him, feed and flour dealer Charles C. Reeves, his wife Elizabeth, and their two children. Hardware and Prosperity A sheriff’s sale of 423 Cooper Street in 1886 opened more than three decades of occupancy by members of a prominent Camden retail family, William and Clara Fredericks and their daughter, Edna, born the same year they moved into the house. William Fredericks, born in Camden in 1854, managed the hardware store that his father, Harry, had founded in the 1850s. The store carried the goods that helped to build the growing city – window sashes, doors, and building supplies. While the business prospered, the elder Fredericks also organized the Camden Merritts baseball team, which lasted just a year (1883) but started the career of pitcher William (Kid) Gleason, who later played for the Baltimore Orioles, the Detroit Tigers, and Philadelphia Nationals. When the Fredericks family moved into 423 Cooper Street, the Camden Daily Telegram noted that their “handsome new residence” was being “fitted up in an elegant manner.” The Fredericks family displayed other signs of affluence while living at this address, including the employment of domestic servants even though they remained a small family of three. When Edna Fredericks reached adulthood, at age 20 in 1906 she sailed with relatives to Europe for a summer tour. The family also spent summers at the Jersey Shore, favoring Atlantic City. In 1916, approaching retirement from business, Fredericks put the house up for sale, advertising it as a “three-story brick house in one of the finest residential sections of Camden.” It offered “twelve rooms and handsome tiled bathroom; hardwood floors; pier and mantle mirrors; crystal chandelier; gas and coal ranges, cemented cellars; large yard and side entrance; front and side porches.” After a lifetime in Camden, in 1918 Fredericks retired and the family moved to an apartment in West Philadelphia. Funeral Home The next long-term occupant of 423 Cooper Street reflected the transition of the thoroughfare to commercial uses during the 1920s. The transition, promoted by Camden real estate interests, included conversion of many former residences into offices or apartment buildings. The redevelopment activity accompanied construction of the Delaware River Bridge, later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which opened in 1926. Beginning in 1923, 423 Cooper Street became the residence and funeral home of Charles W. Hiskey, who was assisted in the business by his wife, Matilda. Previously on Sixth Street, the Hiskeys described their new location as a “modern funeral home.” Charles Hiskey developed an extensive network of acquaintances that could be expected to aid the business as he joined various lodges, the Masons, the Kiwanis Club, and other organizations. Matilda Hiskey was a lifelong member of the First Methodist Church. The funeral home remained in operation until 1961, when Charles Hiskey died, five years after his wife. Offices and Demolition A real estate firm next acquired the building and leased to office tenants, including physicians. As an office building, 423 Cooper Street changed hands several times during the 1960s and 1970s, then became the property of Rutgers University in 1984. When surveyed for inclusion in the Cooper Street Historic District in 1985, the building was described as “a highly intact example of one of the most prevalent styles of architecture on Cooper Street” and “a significant contributor to the heritage of the streetscape.” The building was demolished in the early 1990s, creating a vacant lot that remained three decades later. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 423 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 423. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. New Jersey State Census, 1855-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 423 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Vacant lot, site of demolished contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 400 Block 423 Cooper Street Banking Baseball Demolition Doctors Esterbrook Steel Pen Company Funeral Homes Greek Revival Hardware Dealers Philadelphia Quakers Renovations Rutgers-Camden Woodbury https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/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 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. 426 Lawrence Street 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 Daily Courier noted that only two families—the Paulsons and, before them, the Coopers—had owned the parcel since the time of the city’s founding. 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. 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. 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. 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. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. Note on sources: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record. 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/2d498dfb78c6f4708ed8fb1be0a67b81.jpg 6dfb2c8a871b4e2a67041d28eb27e498 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Photograph by Jacob Lechner Significance On the northwest corner of Fifth and Cooper Streets, 429 Cooper Street is among the residences of the late nineteenth century that represent the evolution of the street into one of Camden’s most fashionable addresses and its subsequent transitions following the 1926 completion of the first bridge across the Delaware River to Philadelphia. In its uses over time, the house demonstrates transitions from nineteenth-century trades to real estate development and the practice of medicine in the houses on Cooper Street. In this way it supports the statement of significance of the Cooper Street Historic District for the National Register of Historic Places: “These buildings [in the district] demonstrate the street's change from residential and professional to commercial." Documentation by the City of Camden Division of Planning in 1980 described 429 Cooper Street as “an excellent vernacular working of the Second Empire style [that] contributes to the late nineteenth century quality of Cooper Street with its variety of residential structures.” Architectural style Second Empire vernacular Date of construction c. 1850s-1885 History The northwest corner of Fifth and Cooper Streets has been occupied by a residence since at least 1857, when it was represented on a map of Camden County as part of a row of structures spanning most of the 400 block of Cooper Street. Houses rose rapidly on the north side of Cooper Street for the first time during the late 1840s and early 1850s as heirs of the Cooper family sold their land for development. Among the early owners of the lot at this address was Thomas W. Dyott Jr., a Philadelphia wholesaler of patent medicines who bought the property in 1846 and then the lot next door (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/71" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">427 Cooper Street</a>) in 1852. In business with his father, also named Thomas, Dyott sold remedies such as <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/exhibits/show/excavation/item/2">Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup</a> for quieting babies and cures for rheumatism, liver ailments, and other maladies. The business had grown to one of the nation's leading purveyors of patent medicine under <a href="https://blog.phillyhistory.org/index.php/2012/01/thomas-w-dyott-snake-oil-soda-water-and-the-perennially-seductive-philadelphia-bottle/">his father</a>, who had immigrated England in 1805, claimed without foundation to be a doctor, and started selling miracle cures. Seeking bottles for his remedies, the elder Dyott also went into the bottle manufacturing business and by the 1820s had a thriving complex of factories in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. That venture grew into a company town called Dyottville but collapsed in bankruptcy after a run on its bank during the panic of 1837. The patent medicine business remained active during the 1850s as T.W. Dyott & Sons. City directories list Thomas Dyott Jr. as a Camden resident from 1855 to 1857 at "Cooper above Fourth" (not "Fifth and Cooper"), suggesting that he and his family lived next door at 427 Cooper Street, not on the corner. When he sold both properties in 1860, the 429 Cooper Street lot included a frame house next occupied by Lewis Wilkins, a livery stable operator. Wilkins, who had moved into Camden from Burlington County in the 1850s, had a good location for a stable in the growing city, near the ferries that crossed to Philadelphia. At 51 years old in 1860, his household at 429 Cooper included his wife, Rebecca; their 20-year-old daughter Katura (Kate); Rebecca’s mother, Katura Moore, and her sister, Emeline Dobbins, a nurse. In a later U.S. Census, Kate was noted as having a “spine disease,” which could explain the presence of a nurse in the family. Wilkins, his immediate family, and various other relatives lived at 429 Cooper Street for twenty years, and during that time Wilkins improved the house in keeping with architectural fashion. In 1869, he added a <a href="https://www.oldhouseonline.com/house-tours/the-mania-for-mansard-roofs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mansard roof</a>, a hallmark feature of the French-inspired Second Empire architectural style very popular in the United States during the 1860s and 1870s. In the same year, Second Empire mansards were adopted for a new mansion built nearby by a member of the Cooper family (406 Cooper Street, still standing in the twenty-first century) and for other less grand houses rapidly filling Penn and Linden Streets. Across the river, Philadelphia officials chose the same style for the new <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/city-hall-philadelphia/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">City Hall</a> then under construction. Renovation Mystery After Rebecca Wilkins died in 1880, Lewis Wilkins at age 70 sold his property to a real estate broker, Joseph J. Read. The experiences of the real estate man had spanned the changing worlds of work and opportunity in the nineteenth century. Born in Camden in 1815, in his youth in South Philadelphia Read learned the craft of coopering—barrel-making—and he practiced this trade in Camden as late as the 1860s. But in the 1860s and 1870s Read also began to buy and renovate houses and at least one office building in Camden, and he amassed enough wealth to also invest in property in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Established in the real estate business, the former cooper moved to Cooper Street. Read’s purchase of 429 Cooper Street occurred at the start of the greatest takeoff of Camden’s population, which nearly tripled between 1880 and 1920, from about 41,000 to more than 116,000 people. In the early 1880s, residents of Cooper Street sought to distinguish their thoroughfare in this growing city by narrowing the street to create front yard spaces that allowed for gardens, small yards, or front porches. The change in the streetscape prompted a wave of construction of grander, architect-designed houses. For his part, Joseph Read gained approval from the Camden City Council “to alter and change the frame dwelling house at the northwest corner of Fifth and Cooper streets by extending the same to the house line on the north side of said Cooper Street.” Read’s proposed renovation in 1882 raises a question of when – and how – the original frame house at 429 Cooper Street became the brick house that remained standing at 429 Cooper Street in the twenty-first century. The historic building survey conducted in 1980 prior to National Register listing dated the house as c. 1880, consistent with Read’s purchase of the property. But the sources for this report did not include two key pieces of evidence: local newspaper reports that Lewis Wilkins added a mansard roof in 1869 and that Read in 1882 requested to renovate a house that was frame (wood), not brick. The still-standing brick house has both a mansard and a front bay consistent with Read’s 1882 proposal – could it be the same house, further renovated with brick facing by Read, or did he rebuild entirely? There is no answer in the known public record, but by 1885 the Sanborn Insurance Company map for Camden lists only brick houses in the 400 block, and the 1891 map depicts a brick house on this corner of Fifth and Cooper Streets. For Read, a recent widower, 429 Cooper Street became the home of his second marriage, in 1881 to Elizabeth Schellenger (in public records of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century also spelled Schellinger), the widow of a sea captain. Their extended household included Elizabeth’s son William Schellenger, a clerk, and Edward A.Y. Schellenger (known as Ned), who during the 1890s completed medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and returned to Camden to practice. While William moved to the Philadelphia suburbs after his marriage in 1891, Ned remained in the household at Fifth and Cooper. After Joseph Read died in 1898, Ned headed the extended family including his mother, his wife Lillian, their son also named Edward, and their daughter Elizabeth. The family also employed domestic servants and a driver for the doctor; those that can be documented were African Americans: Julia Burse, a 36-year-old widow at the time of the 1900 Census, was born in Maryland. Mary Taylor, who worked in the household in 1910, was also a widow, 61 years old and born in New Jersey. She cooked for the Schellengers for at least a decade. Medical Treatments and Tragedies The house at 429 Cooper Street also served as a medical office for Edward A.Y. Schellenger, adding to Cooper Street’s reputation as a location for medical professionals. Front parlors on the first floors of nineteenth-century homes served well as offices, and the physicians were within walking distance of Camden’s Cooper Hospital. Schellenger specialized in surgery, and in addition to a growing practice served on the Board of Managers of the County Tuberculosis Hospital. While occupying 429 Cooper Street, the Schellenger family confronted medical challenges of their own: their daughter, named Elizabeth after her grandmother, contracted polio in 1913. She lived six years longer, until age 18, when a cold developed into pneumonia and caused her death. The Camden Morning Post noted that “although handicapped by deformities,” Elizabeth took an active part in combatting the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/influenza-spanish-flu-pandemic-1918-19/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">influenza epidemic</a> of 1918-19. “She was an accomplished automobile driver, despite her tender years and day after day … she was busy conveying nurses, attendants, patients, and Red Cross workers to and from hospitals.” By the time of Elizabeth’s early death, her father also had succumbed to complications from an illness that was publicly described only as a “serious ailment” that he had treated in others as a surgeon. In 1917, he cited ill health when he resigned his position with the Tuberculosis Hospital. While hospitalized shortly thereafter, he experienced burns from an x-ray that were blamed for a subsequent burst artery that ended his life. He was 47 years old. Office Building The house at Fifth and Cooper Streets remained home for Schellenger’s widow, Lillian, and son Edward until the mid-1920s, but then they joined other prominent Camden families in relocating to suburban Merchantville. Cooper Street was by that time taking on a distinctly more commercial atmosphere as the opening of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) prompted changes such as the construction of the Plaza Hotel diagonally across the street from the Schellenger home. The Schellengers retained ownership of 429 Cooper Street, but a real estate firm renovated the building into offices and at least one apartment. In 1930, the apartment was rented by a church organist and his family. By 1940, the residential tenants included a German-born Naval draftsman and his family and a second household consisting of a widowed artist and her adult daughter, a secretary. In the 1940s, 429 Cooper Street once again became a location for medical offices, this time for doctors who practiced in Camden but chose to live in the suburbs. Among them was the son of the original Dr. Schellenger, also named Edward. The younger Schellenger, a gynecologist, opened his practice after graduating from Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. World War II interrupted his career in Camden as he served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Africa and the Middle East. While overseas, he met the Army nurse who became his wife, Margaret Clayton; they raised their family of two daughters and a son in Merchantville. The younger Edward Schellenger donated 429 Cooper Street to Rutgers University in 1977. After housing student health services for Rutgers-Camden during the 1990s, the building gained a new purpose in 2011 through a renovation that joined it with adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/71" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">427 Cooper Street</a> to create office spaces for the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://history.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of History</a> and the <a href="https://philosophyandreligion.camden.rutgers.edu/">Department of Philosophy and Religion</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of all known occupants of 429 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 429. Sources Camden City Directories, 1840-1940, Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com. Camden County Property Records (FamilySearch.org). Camden and Philadelphia newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Dorwart, Jeffery M. Camden County, New Jersey: The Making of a Metropolitan Community, 1926-2000. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Jones, Carmita De Solms. "Thomas W. Dyott Boot-Black, Glass Maker and FInancier." Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum (October 1926): 226-34. New Jersey Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Note on sources: Previous documentation dated the construction of this house as c. 1880 and labeled it the “Joseph J. Read House.” This research updates the record and raises questions about the date of construction. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 429 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 200s 2010s 400 Block 429 Cooper Street African Americans Apartments Death Doctors Druggists Livery Stable Mansard Merchantville Polio Real Estate Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b3fd7fbac5d8ea05fe050e351fdaacb2.jpg 91e3393d199bcee889b2bc7fe08c4b09 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance This one-story automobile garage demonstrates the changing character of Lawrence Street with the advent of the automobile. The structure was originally a two-story rowhouse, part of a row of nineteenth-century, working-class houses that originated as rental properties erected by owners of grander homes facing Cooper Street. The owner of adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a> purchased and adapted the property as part of a renovation of his Fifth Street-facing home and office. Date of construction c. 1946-55; garage conversion c. 1946. History In 1846, a Camden County public official named Isaac Porter purchased an undeveloped lot extending from Cooper Street to Lawrence Street and thereafter added three structures: A three-story house, 425 Cooper Street, and two smaller rowhouses at the back of the property at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and 434 Lawrence Street. Porter, also an officer of the West Jersey Ferry Company, lived in the Cooper Street house with his family while renting the two smaller houses to tenants until his death in 1867. His surviving sons later divided the property so that one would own the Cooper Street house and another the pair of rental houses. The Lawrence Street houses continued to be treated as properties separate from the Cooper Street house as they conveyed to subsequent owners outside the Porter family from the 1880s through the early twenty-first century. 434 Lawrence Street The 400 block of Lawrence Street had residents listed in city directories beginning in 1854, although the absence of house numbering prevents associating them with specific addresses prior to the 1860s. Isaac Porter’s two rowhouses on Lawrence Street are known to have existed by 1855, when they were cited in a building contract as models for similar houses to be built elsewhere in Camden. An early tenant at 434 Lawrence Street may have been Daniel Bodine, a steamboat captain, who lived on “Lawrence below Fifth” between 1854 and 1860. His occupation may indicate an acquaintance with the property owner Isaac Porter, who served as an officer of the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-WestJerseyFerry.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">West Jersey Ferry Company</a>. Census records of 1860 identify Daniel Bodine as a white man 33 years old, living with his wife Elizabeth, a white woman aged 32. Tenants at 434 Lawrence Street during the last decades of the nineteenth century included a cabinet maker, a police officer, a packer, a machinist, a brick layer, and a paper box maker. In 1870, the tenants were cabinet maker Alexander Haines, who had lived at this address since 1863. A white man who was born in New Jersey, Haines was 52 years old in 1870 and shared the home with his wife, Elizabeth, a white woman 46 years old, also born in New Jersey, and their two daughters. Daughters Anna, 15, and Ella, 11, both attended school. Work for a cabinet maker would have been plentiful in this neighborhood during these years as blocks north of Cooper Street filled with new houses, including the surviving mansion at 406 Penn Street built c. 1869. Behind that mansion and across the street from the Lawrence Street rowhouses, builder William Severns had a carpentry shop at 425 Lawrence that could have afforded employment to Haines and others. Severns, whose rising prominence in Camden led him to later service on the Board of Freeholders, developed a reputation as one of the city’s pioneer builders during the late nineteenth century. Unusually, 434 Lawrence Street had one tenant who stayed for more than twenty years, from the early 1880s until 1913. Rebecca S. Lawrence, a white woman who was around 30 years old when she moved Lawrence Street, had grown up in South Camden with at least four siblings in a family headed by a laborer. Born in 1853, her childhood included her father’s service in the Civil War. By age 18, she went to work in a paper box factory and continued in that occupation throughout her years on Lawrence Street. Having married during the 1870s, she first appeared on Lawrence Street as Rebecca S. Currie (and may have first lived in adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a>). By 1884, however, she had reverted to her birth name; by 1900 Census records identified her as divorced. It would have been unusual for woman to occupy a home by herself, but if Rebecca Armstrong had lodgers or relatives with her at 434 Lawrence Street, they do not appear in public records. The only exception came in 1905, when New Jersey Census takers recorded the presence of one other occupant, a widow named Mary Lake. By the time Armstrong left Lawrence Street, she was in her late 50s. She spent her later years living in Philadelphia with one of her sisters, a widow who worked as a saleslady at the John Wanamaker department store. When she and her sister returned to New Jersey in the 1930s, they lived in Burlington County. At 434 Lawrence Street, Armstrong was followed in 1914 by another household headed by women, a mother and daughter who were both widowed (Martha Delaney and Margaret Wheaton), and the daughter’s 13-year-old son. They moved on when Margaret Wheaton remarried in 1915, creating a vacancy filled by the family of August Sonntag, a woodworker at the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>, for the decade between 1916 and 1926. Sonntag and his wife Jane (also known as Jennie), both white and born in Pennsylvania, represented converging ethnic identities—his parents had been born in Germany, and hers in Ireland. Prior to Lawrence Street, they lived at 301 Point Street, closer to the Victor manufacturing complex. While there, they suffered the death of their oldest daughter, Theresa, who succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 13. On Lawrence Street, they raised their surviving two daughters and one son to young adulthood. Tenants continued to live at 434 Lawrence Street through the 1930s and most of the 1940s, but the character of the street was changing. Lawrence Street began to function as a service alley for automobiles, and garages replaced several of the rowhouses (see <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">416</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a> Lawrence Street). This was the fate of 434 Lawrence Street, which was purchased in 1946 by the owner of an adjacent house facing Fifth Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth</a>). That owner, Dr. Charles Kutner, renovated the Fifth Street house into a home and office and eliminated its deteriorated third floor in the process. Similarly, 434 Lawrence Street was reduced to one story and converted into an automobile garage, with a new concrete-block structure faced in brick joining the two structures in the back. The enlarged 211 N. Fifth Street, incorporating the former 434 Lawrence Street rowhouse, conveyed to Rutgers University as part of a multiple-property transaction with a real estate investor in 2005. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of 434 Lawrence Street, link to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oOkUYd5Qa7w5M0Ga0vWhq9evz980wMElF8jhPuw3GHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street Database</a>. For earlier residents of the block (prior to house numbering), see <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cI-_IVB-ei-no50oQzzTn36wz6gTgtHiIXCxq8_s9Rw/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lawrence Street by Block, 1854-1860</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. Note on sources: When documented for the National Register of Historic Places, the Lawrence Street rowhouses were thought to have been occupied by servants for the homeowners on Cooper Street. This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Charlene Mires and Kaya Durkee; Gina Torres (Charles Kutner research). Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 434 Lawrence Street Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century former rowhouse converted to automobile garage c. 1946. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 211 N. Fifth Street 425 Cooper Street 432 Lawrence Street 434 Lawrence Street Box Makers Bricklayers Cabinet Makers Childhood Children Death Demolition Ferries Garages Germany Ireland Lawrence Street Machinists Packers Philadelphia Pneumonia Police Renovations Victor Talking Machine Company Widows https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/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. Industry and Architects 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. 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. 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">The Inland Architect and News Record</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.) 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. Prestige Rental 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>). 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 West Jersey Press 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. 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. 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 Courier-Post 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. 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 Philadelphia Inquirer’s 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 Courier-Post eulogized him as “a citizen who never will be forgotten, one whose life and character have been and will continue to be an inspiration.” Block-Busting on Cooper Street 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.” 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 Courier-Post 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 woThe 1 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. 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.” In 2016, LEAP Academy University Charter School Inc. acquired 527 Cooper Street from Thomas DeMarco Holdings, LLC, of Cherry Hill, for $310,000. Although a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, the house was demolished in 2024. 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 Camden and Philadelphia newspapers (Newspapers.com) Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society, Ancestry.com) Camden County Property Records Cooper Street Historic District, National Register Nomination, U.S. Department of Interior. Inland Architect and News Record, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, the Art Institute of Chicago Manuals of the Legislature of New Jersey, 1896-97 Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project, Athenaeum of Philadelphia Structures Survey, 527 Cooper Street, New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services U.S. and New Jersey Censuses (Ancestry.com) 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 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/102be0fae6e53064d8daa05e145c9be4.jpg 454bb3c58bd68f131cacb5c9b5477bc1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Camden Post, November 27, 1897. Significance Built during the 1820s and home to two generations of the Cooper family, the mansion at 121 Cooper Street later served as a public library and an important site of activism for woman suffrage and other civic projects led by Camden women. Architectural style Federal, adapted to Second Empire by addition of Mansard roof. Date of construction ca. 1825 History A large brick house, home to descendants of Camden’s founding Cooper family for two generations, stood on Cooper Street between Front and Second Streets for nearly a century, from the 1820s until 1919. The land, later designated as Johnson Park, had been acquired by members of the Cooper family from another English Quaker landholder in 1689. Richard Matlack Cooper, who inherited the property from his grandfather, chose it as the location for a residence that reflected his prominence, wealth, and need to accommodate a large family: his wife, Mary Cooper, eight of their children, periodically other relatives, and the domestic servants whose labor sustained the household. Built by 1825 (possibly earlier), the symmetrical red-brick structure was five bays wide and at least that deep. A brick wall surrounded the residence, a brick stable stood in the rear, and fruit trees shaded the grounds. The home’s first head of household, Richard M. Cooper, played a significant role in the economic vitality of Camden through his roles with the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/businesses/banks/first-camden-national-bank-trust" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">State Bank of Camden</a>, initially as its first cashier (1812-14) and then as its president (1814-42). The bank, one of the institutions that propelled Camden’s growth as a city less dependent on Philadelphia, stood just a block away from the Cooper Mansion (as it came to be known). Cooper also held positions in government, including judge and justice of the Gloucester County courts and state assemblyman. In 1829, he was <a href="https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/C000760" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">elected to the first of two terms in the U.S. Congress</a> on an anti-Jacksonian ticket headed by John Quincy Adams for president. His politics aligned with his banking interests as he opposed President <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/andrew-jackson/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Andrew Jackson</a>’s dismantling of the centralized <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/second-bank-of-the-us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Second Bank of the United States</a>, headquartered in Philadelphia. Cooper’s votes on military matters were consistent with his faith heritage as a Quaker as well as anti-Jacksonian politics. During his first term, he voted against the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-Removal-Act" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Indian Removal Act</a>, which nevertheless passed and forced Native Americans to relocate to territory west of the Mississippi River. During the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/nullification-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">nullification crisis</a> of 1832-33, when South Carolina attempted to declare a federally enacted tariff null and voice within the state, Cooper voted against giving Jackson the power to use military authority to enforce collecting duties on imports. When Richard M. Cooper <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7173544/richard-matlack-cooper" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">died in 1843</a> at age 76, the mansion on Cooper Street and the rest of his property passed in equal parts to his children, with the provision that half of the income from his holdings be reserved for his wife, Mary (who outlived him by more than two decades). She continued to inhabit the mansion, together with her adult unmarried children and domestic servants. Prominent among the siblings were the youngest, who were twins: Dr. Richard M. Cooper and lawyer William D. Cooper, who were around 30 years of age at the time of their father’s death. Dr. Cooper played a leading role in public health in Camden, including co-founding a dispensary to provide medical services to indigent patients. The twins’ older sisters Elizabeth, Mary, and Sarah became known for their support of charitable causes. By 1860, the household of siblings and Irish domestic servants also included a 13-year-old niece, Helen Cooper, whose mother had died. (In later years, Helen married another prominent resident of Cooper Street, Dr. Henry Genet Taylor.) The younger generation of Coopers waited until after their mother’s death in 1869 to renovate the mansion to reflect contemporary architectural tastes. The formerly two-story house became three stories with the additional of a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/mansard-roof" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mansard roof</a>, a European design element that had become popular in France and the United States. Similar renovations were taking place at other older homes around Camden. The West Jersey Press took note of the widespread improvements during these years following the Civil War, observing, “They evince the highest taste in many cases, and some of the buildings metamorphosed possess considerable architectural beauty. The Mansard roof is a great addition, and has been generally adopted, where changes have been made.” The twins Richard and William Cooper nurtured an idea for another Camden improvement, in the form of a hospital. Although both of them died in the mid-1870s before the project could be carried out, their sisters Elizabeth and Sarah and another brother, Alexander, stepped forward to contribute and raise the necessary funds. The Camden Hospital–soon named <a href="https://www.cooperhealth.org/about-us/our-history" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Hospital</a>–opened in 1887. A building for the hospital stood ready by 1877, but it took another ten years to fund an endowment to support its operations. Uncertain Future By 1880, the household at the Cooper Mansion had diminished to only the sisters Elizabeth, age 74, and Sarah, age 76, with four or five servants (most of them Irish immigrants). The sisters’ deaths in the 1880s closed a chapter for the mansion as a family home and opened uncertainty about the future for the property. At the time of the mansion’s construction, Camden was only beginning to emerge as a city and the Cooper family held most of the land north of Cooper Street as undeveloped property. But the terms of Richard M. Cooper’s will in 1843 had released his heirs to develop the land as they saw fit. At that fortuitous time, when Camden gained in status as the seat of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/locations/camden-county-new-jersey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">newly formed Camden County</a>, building lots sold at a fast clip. The square where the mansion stood, between the industrialized Delaware River waterfront to the west and recently built residential blocks to the east, consequently became a rare open space in the fast-growing, densely developing city. Only two other houses stood in the block, both facing Front Street. During the 1890s, the future of the Cooper Mansion touched off a debate in Camden. The local Women’s Parks Association, formed in 1893, succeeded in persuading the Camden City Council to purchase the mansion and its square from the Cooper Estate for $75,000 (financed by a bond issue) in 1895. The resulting Cooper Park, with its new landscape of curving walks, benches, and streetlamps, raised a question of whether the old mansion should be retained within the more picturesque setting. The Parks Association, which had responsibility for maintaining the square, divided over the issue; for a time, a committee of City Council supported demolition. A flurry of public debate in the fall of 1897 centered primarily on whether the outmoded aesthetics of the building marred an otherwise improved public space. Opponents of demolition argued for giving the mansion a new purpose as a manual training high school or a library. In a victory for a project long favored by the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-texts/camdennj-womansclub-1894-1919.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Woman’s Club</a> (whose membership overlapped with the Parks Association) and other influential citizens, the proponents of the library prevailed. Library The mansion, reduced in size by demolition of a rear extension, opened as the Cooper Library in 1898 with a collection of 2,000 books amassed through public donations. The building remained a residence as well, but only for park caretakers and a librarian. The caretaker from at least 1900 through 1909, Thomas Jones, nurtured the plants and trees of the park and kept it spotless. Known affectionately to parkgoers as “Pop,” Jones shared quarters in the mansion with his wife and teenage son. Jones had immigrated from Ireland as a child; his wife Ellen’s parents also were Irish. Also resident in the mansion-turned-library was the librarian, Marietta Kay Champion. A descendant of the prominent Kay family of Haddonfield, Champion was a longtime Camden resident whose father had been one of the founders of <a href="https://stpaulschurchcamden.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Paul’s Church</a> on Market Street. Champion’s formal schooling had ended in the eighth grade, but she pursued further education through the Camden University Extension, which offered college-level lectures for adults (in that program, she earned honorable mention for a paper on “The Story of Faust” in 1891). Champion also had a keen interest in history. On the basis of documenting her genealogy, she became a member of the <a href="https://nscda.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Colonial Dames Society</a>; later in life, she served as secretary of the <a href="https://cchsnj.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden County Historical Society</a> (which met for a time in the library). The Cooper Library soon became designated as a branch within a small system of libraries in Camden. In 1903, Camden accepted a gift of $100,000 from Pennsylvania steel magnate <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andrew-Carnegie" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Andrew Carnegie</a>, who financed library buildings around the country in keeping with his “<a href="https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gospel of Wealth</a>” philosophy. The new Carnegie-funded building, which opened in 1905 on Broadway at Line Street, became the central <a href="https://www.nj.gov/dca/njht/funded/sitedetails/carnegie_library_camden.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Free Library</a>; in addition to the Cooper Branch Library in the former mansion, another branch opened in East Camden. Women's Activism Just as women had played a pivotal role in establishing Cooper Park and saving the mansion, they increasingly used the Cooper Branch Library as a place for gathering and activism. These activities escalated after 1907, when a renovation installed an auditorium on the building’s second floor. The Camden Woman’s Club, a mainstay of civic and social activity for middle- and upper-class women since 1894, moved its headquarters to the library after the renovation. By 1912, the library began hosting speakers who promoted <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/woman-suffrage/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">woman suffrage</a>, and it hosted meetings of the Camden Equal Suffragist League beginning with the organization’s founding in 1913. Local <a href="https://www.dar.org/">Daughters of the American Revolution</a> met at the library and established a Visiting Nurses Society, which also met there. At the Cooper Branch Library in 1916, with the Great War underway in Europe, local women organized a chapter of the New Jersey Women’s Division for National Preparedness. During the war, the library became headquarters for the Red Cross. Other groups that united women and men for civic betterment—the Civic Club and the Playgrounds Commission, for example—gathered in the library as well. Collectively, these activities made the Cooper Branch Library a center for Progressive Era causes for more than a decade and defined it as predominantly a place for women’s activism. An act of philanthropy in 1915 signaled an approaching end to the mansion’s service as a library and community center. Eldridge R. Johnson, the founder and president of the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>, announced his intention to donate $130,000 for construction of a new, modern library in Cooper Park to replace the older building. Johnson’s factories and offices, the product of rapid expansion since the company’s founding in 1901, stood adjacent to the park. He intended the gift to provide a library more in keeping with the scale and impressive, neoclassical architecture of cultural institutions in major American cities. Although not stated as such in the public record, such a library would compare favorably or potentially outshine to the central Camden Free Library that had been funded by Andrew Carnegie. The new <a href="https://johnson-park.camden.rutgers.edu/library.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Branch Library</a>, constructed behind the old Cooper Mansion, opened in 1919. Then, with only a ripple of public opposition, contractors demolished the mansion. Johnson donated additional funds to renovate and beautify the square, which the city renamed <a href="https://johnson-park.camden.rutgers.edu/history.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Johnson Park</a> in his honor in 1920. Associated Individuals For a list of all known occupants of 121 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 121. Sources Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1910 (Ancestry.com). Camden, New Jersey, Newspapers. Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. "<a href="https://li.proquest.com/elhpdf/histcontext/21st_Congress.pdf">Twenty-First Congress</a>" and "<a href="https://li.proquest.com/elhpdf/histcontext/22nd_Congress.pdf">Twenty-Second Congress</a>" (Proquest). Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cooper Mansion (121 Cooper Street) Description An account of the resource Demolished home to two generations of the Cooper family, later a public library. 100 Block 121 Cooper Street 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s Attorneys Bankers Banking Cooper Family Cooper Hospital Cooper Park Demolition Doctors Eldridge Johnson Extended Family Johnson Park Librarians Libraries Mansard Philanthropy Public Health Public Officials Red Cross Reform Renovations Woman Suffrage Women's Clubs World War I Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Description An account of the resource Residents of Cooper Street Person An individual. Biographical Text John Hanmore and his wife, Eleanor, together with two adult daughters and two grandchildren, were among the first residents of new Cooper Street row houses built between Front Street and Delaware Avenue in 1883. They moved to 65 Cooper Street in Camden from a middle-class, managerial neighborhood of Philadelphia, demonstrating the appeal of Camden as a commuter suburb for the larger city across the Delaware River. The Hanmores' new home was arguably the most desirable of the newly built, three-story homes, standing on the corner of Front and Cooper immediately west of the open square of the Cooper family mansion (later Johnson Park). The Hanmores filled their new home with walnut, oak, and mahogany furniture, installed window boxes for flowers, and added bay windows to the side of their row house that faced the square. One of the adult daughters, Elizabeth Hanmore, offered art lessons for schoolgirls. For John Hanmore, commuting from Camden to his work as a Philadelphia manufacturer of boiler and pipe coverings was likely easier and shorter than before—across the ferry to his business location on Delaware Avenue instead of a streetcar ride of more than 20 blocks from his earlier home at 2323 Green Street in Philadelphia. The family’s presence on Cooper Street proved to be a short one, however, because of John Hanmore’s sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack in 1885. The Camden County Courier described his last moments with dramatic flair: "The deceased had been out riding with his daughter on the evening of his death, and returned about eight o'clock, sat down to the supper table with the rest of his family in apparently good spirits. He was just in the act of handing a cup to his little [grand]daughter when suddenly he fell from his chair to the floor. The members of the family came to his assistance, and raised him up, but life was extinct. Death was caused by paralysis of the heart, induced by consumption." The family remained at 65 Cooper Street for three years longer, but thereafter the property served as a boarding house until its demolition to allow for the 1913 construction of a new office building headquarters for the Victor Talking Machine Company. Time period on Cooper Street c. 1883-1885 Location(s) - Cooper Street 65 Cooper Street Location(s) - Other 2323 Green Street, Philadelphia (previous address) 7 S. Delaware Avenue (business address) Occupation Manufacturer of felt coverings for pipes and boilers Birth Date c. 1825 Birthplace Newburgh, New York Death Date April 4, 1885 Associated Individuals Eleanor Hanmore (wife) Elizabeth Hanmore (daughter) Mary Gerard (daughter) May / Marie Gerard (granddaughter) Roy Gerard (grandson) Sources Camden and Philadelphia City Directories (Ancestry.com) New Jersey and U.S. Censuses (Ancestry.com) Death of John Hanmore reported in Camden County Courier, August 7, 1885; legal notice for construction of bay windows published in Camden Courier-Post, March 31, 1885; art lessons advertised in Courier-Post on various dates in 1884 and 1885; public sale of household contents advertised in Courier-Post, June 6, 1888. Research by Charlene Mires Posted by Charlene Mires Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hanmore, John Description An account of the resource John Hanmore, a Philadelphia manufacturer, moved his family to a new home on Cooper Street during the 1880s. His death changed the family's fortunes. 00 Block 1880s 65 Cooper Street Adult Death Interiors Male Manufacturers Philadelphia Renovations