2 10 21 https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/5d94eac0fafe294d65709896e0dc8aca.jpg 86eddcec41502d24f44810beba07bfb6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Photograph by Jacob Lechner Significance 305 Cooper Street is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, described in its nomination as “one of the most distinguished extent attached townhouses of the American Queen Anne Revival style in the nation, and probably was one of the best of the early urban works of its architect, Wilson Eyre.” Also a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, the residence was home to a prominent Camden physician, Henry Genet Taylor, and his family for seventy-five years. Restored by Rutgers University, it serves as the <a href="https://writershouse.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Writers House</a> of the Department of English. Architectural style Queen Anne Revival Date of construction 1885-86 History The exuberant townhouse at 305 Cooper Street created a stir in Camden when it appeared in 1885-86. Unlike any previous house in the city, and surpassing most built thereafter, the building reflected a highly individualized embrace of Queen Anne style that discarded the staidness and symmetry of its neighbors on Cooper Street. “This structure will mark an entirely new departure in Camden architecture, being of an entirely new ornate character,” the Camden County Courier forecast as construction began in June 1885. At least some of the locals were not pleased. The new residence was “the subject of considerable criticism from architects and others,” the Morning Post noted as the house neared completion the following January. The spectrum of opinion hinted in the local press ranged from a tempered mention of the “unique residence on Cooper Street [that] attracts so much attention” (Morning Post, January 16, 1886) to a more barbed referenced to the “costly and peculiarly constructed residence" (Daily Courier, November 4, 1886). The Philadelphia architect who designed the home, <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/25852" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wilson Eyre</a>, was then early in his career but on his way to becoming one of the most sought-after residential architects on the East Coast. Known for individuality, creativity, and attention to detail, his work included mansions for prominent people in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, and he later designed the fountain for Logan Square on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Path to Cooper Street Henry Genet Taylor, 50 years old when he moved his family into the new house on Cooper Street, came from a family with deep ties in the medical community of Philadelphia and Camden. His father, Dr. Othniel Taylor, had gained prominence in Philadelphia for his role in combatting the cholera epidemic of 1832; moving to Camden in 1844, when Henry Genet and his two brothers were boys, the elder Dr. Taylor was among the organizers of the Camden County and city medical societies. Henry Genet Taylor’s mother, Evelina, descended from English Quaker settlers of West Jersey and reflected family heritage in the naming of her sons. Her lineage included an indirect line to Edmond-Charles Genet, also known as “Citizen” Genet, the first ambassador from France to the United States during the 1790s. Thus Henry was known throughout his life as “Genet,” his given middle name. An older, named Othniel for his father, had the middle name Gazzam from his mother’s side of the family. A younger son had an unusual first name, Marmaduke, and his mother’s maiden name, Burroughs, in the middle. Henry Genet Taylor remained in his boyhood home in the 300 block of Market Street as he largely followed his father’s path to the University of Pennsylvania medical school and leadership positions with the medical societies and <a href="https://stpaulschurchcamden.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church</a> across the street from their house. His life took a more dramatic turn, however, with the outbreak of the Civil War. Newly graduated from medical school and appointed assistant surgeon for the <a href="http://8thnj.org/history" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eighth Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers</a>, he deployed deep into Virginia to treat the wounded and recover the dead. In four vivid letters published in the West Jersey Press during 1862, he recounted his experiences, including the <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/williamsburg-the-battle-of/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Battle of Williamsburg</a> and an encounter with General Stonewall Jackson while on a pass behind Confederate lines to retrieve wounded Union soldiers. Taylor continued his service later in the war with the Third Army Corps, which placed him at the Battle of Gettysburg. He mustered out of the Army in 1864, but military service remained a fixture of his life through the National Guard and medical examinations for the Board of Pensions. After the Civil War, while launching his private practice, Henry Genet Taylor joined with his father, brother Othniel, and other prominent Camden residents to establish the Camden Dispensary, which became another lifelong position of service. Founded in 1867 with funds left over from bounties raised to hire substitute soldiers for the Union Army, the dispensary provided medical care to indigent patients. The dispensary operated in a former fire house on Third Street south of Market with the younger Othniel Taylor, a pharmacist, in charge of day-to-day operations. Only after the death of both of his parents (his father in 1870 and his mother in 1878) did Henry Genet Taylor take steps to establish his own household and family. In 1879 when he was 42 years old, he married Helen Cooper, who was 10 years younger. Their union set a course toward the home later built at 305 Cooper Street because the new Mrs. Taylor was a descendant of Camden’s founding family, which had extensive land holdings north of that thoroughfare. She had grown up amid an extended family of aunts and uncles in the “Cooper Mansion” between Second and Front Streets, the later site of Johnson Park. The Cooper heirs sold most of their property for development from the 1840s through the 1870s. But in 1885 the 305 Cooper Street double lot—the only undeveloped parcel remaining on the block—came back into the family through a mortgage foreclosure and sheriff’s sale. Helen Cooper Taylor’s aunt, Elizabeth, gained title to the land. How and why the Taylors commissioned Wilson Eyre to design their new home is unknown. But Cooper Street in the early 1880s was becoming a setting for homes grander than the three-story brick rowhouses built a generation before. Enormous mansions anchored the area around Sixth and Cooper, and houses for the length of the thoroughfare gained new front yard space in the early 1880s when the City Council agreed to move the curbs of Cooper Street toward the center by twelve feet on each side. The more pastoral setting prompted a wave of architect-designed houses, with 305 Cooper Street among the trend setters. Physician’s Home and Office Among its many other unusual qualities, the house at 305 Cooper Street was purpose-built to serve as both a home and office. Such a dual use was common among physicians, were becoming plentiful on Cooper Street during the 1880s in anticipation of the opening of nearby <a href="https://www.cooperhealth.org/about-us/our-history" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Hospital</a>. But this house was designed from the start to serve both purposes, not adapted. The front entrance enabled visitors to proceed in either of two directions, into the office or the family quarters. A separate unusual front entrance descended from ground level to enable deliveries and servants to reach the back of the house through a passageway, out of sight of both patients and family. The Taylors—a family that had grown to include two young sons—settled into the new house at the end of the summer of 1886, after their customary annual sojourn in Cape May. The next year, Taylor was among the physicians appointed to a staff position with the newly opened Cooper Hospital, which became another of his lifelong affiliations. The family’s prosperity was tempered by loss, however. Shortly before the move to Cooper Street, Genet’s older brother Othniel, the mainstay of the Camden Dispensary, died from heart disease at the age of 52. Then, less than a year after the move, an infant daughter born to Helen and Genet died at four months of causes that were not publicly disclosed. In the custom of the time, the funeral for the child, Helen Elizabeth Taylor, was held at home. More funerals followed in 1890 for Genet’s younger brother Marmaduke, a lawyer, who died from acute peritonitis at age 54, and seven months later for Marmaduke’s widow Agnes, who had cancer. These deaths added to the Taylor household their minor niece, Annie. Despite such sad beginnings, the Taylors and their descendants remained at 305 Cooper Street for a remarkable seventy-five years, longer than most owners in the neighborhood. The Taylors raised two sons to adulthood, Henry G. Taylor Jr., who was known as Harry, and Richard Cooper Taylor. Domestic servants were also a constant presence, typically Irish or German immigrants who lived in rooms on the third floor. During summers the Taylors, like many other wealthy families in Camden, left the city for extended weeks or months in resort areas. The Taylors customarily spent their summers at Cape May, but during the 1890s extended their travels to more distant resorts. In this era of railroad tourism by those who could afford it, the Taylors at first sought out the health benefits of areas with mineral springs. Both Genet and Helen endured chronic health challenges, for his part rheumatism and gout, and for her the aftereffects of surviving typhoid fever. Their summer journeys took them to White Sulphur Springs and Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, and Hot Springs, Virginia. While not abandoning Cape May, over the next decade, they widened their travels into a circuit that also included resorts in Lake Placid, New York, and St. Catherines in Ontario, Canada. The benefits were noticeable to Dr. Taylor’s neighbors in Camden, for example prompting the Morning Post to note in 1895, “Dr. H. Genet Taylor is home again after two months of recreation looking well, and to quote the genial doctor, feeling chipper and young again.” Henry Genet Taylor headed the household at 305 Cooper Street until he died in 1916 from “ailments incident to old age,” including recent bouts with pneumonia and influenza. At 79, his lifespan had far exceeded his brothers, and the accolades that followed his death pointed to his lifelong devotion to health care, including his service during the Civil War. Cooper Hospital installed a memorial tablet in the main corridor. The Cooper Street house passed to his widow, Helen, who lived until 1936, and then to their sons. A new generation of Taylors at 305 Cooper Street began in the 1920s, after Henry Genet Taylor Jr. married Maude Denney, the daughter of a local banker. Their two children carried on the names that had become common: another Henry Genet Taylor (III), born in 1925, and another Helen Cooper Taylor (named for her grandmother but known as “Tottie,” born in 1927). The younger Helen Cooper Taylor carried on the family tradition in medicine by enlisting in the <a href="https://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/c.php?g=860714&p=6167910" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">United States Cadet Nurse Corps</a> during the Second World War, when she was 17 years old. Continuity and Change Throughout the continuity of the Taylors’ ownership, North Camden was changing around them. Construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), completed in 1926, prompted civic boosters in Camden to envision Cooper Street as a commercial thoroughfare. Real estate interests fueled speculative buying, selling, and converting of former residences into offices and apartment buildings. The Taylors eventually joined this trend, in part. While they remained in the home, after Helen Cooper Taylor’s death in 1936 her son Henry Genet Jr. converted the upper floors into apartments of one to two rooms with tile baths, showers, and Pullman kitchens. By the time of the 1940 Census, the occupants included not only the Taylor nuclear family but also tenants who represented a spectrum of working life in Camden: Arthur Beckman, age 21, a draftsman at the New York Shipbuilding Co.; Mary Lord, 23, a social worker for the YWCA who had been born in Hawaii; Margaret Miller, 30, a public school teacher, and her roommate, Jeanette Bloombaum, 40, a bookkeeper for the Works Progress Administration; Mildred Patton, 23, a restaurant dietician, and her husband Paul, 22, a piler for a transportation company; and Beatrice Watson, 43, a saleswoman in a department store. For about 10 years between 1940 and 1950, the tenants included Agnes Draper, a longtime teacher who had been the first principal of Camden High School. The neighborhood around Third and Cooper Streets became considerably more dense with apartment dwellers, including young children who were products of the baby boom that followed the Second World War. They attended the Cooper School on Third Street north of Linden, which placed them at risk from traffic to and from the factories on Camden’s waterfront. In 1952 one of the Taylors’ tenants, Jennie Seavers, mobilized the Cooper School PTA to call attention to the danger. Seavers and other women from the PTA joined hands to form human chains across the intersections of Third Street with Cooper and Linden Streets to block drivers for six minutes while their children passed and to demand that the city install traffic signals. Two months later, without acknowledging the role of the protest, the city complied. Historic Preservation By the time Henry Genet Taylor Jr. died in 1961, his son had moved to Florida and his daughter had married and lived in the suburbs. North of Cooper Street, rowhouses built during the 1860s and 1870s had deteriorated from intense use and neglect by absentee landlords, and redlining imposed in the 1930s discouraged investment. Rutgers University had announced a plan to demolish houses between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge to create an expanded campus through urban renewal. Like other longtime residences in the area, 305 Cooper Street was offered for sale as an apartment house, not a home. “Close to Rutgers College,” said the advertisement. “Attractive stone building in excellent condition, six apartments plus entire first floor which can be made into three additional apartments. Never a vacancy. A good investment. Asking $35,000.” By the late 1960s, 305 Cooper Street and other nineteenth-century buildings in Camden found a protector in Edward J. Teitelman, a psychiatrist by profession with a keen appreciation for historic architecture. He purchased 305 Cooper Street, where he lived with his wife, Mildred, and two sons; <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">303 Cooper Street</a> next door, where he opened a mental health clinic; and other properties on Cooper and Lawrence Streets. As a member of the <a href="https://newtonmeetingcamden.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Newton Friends Meeting</a> on Cooper Street between Seventh and Eighth, in 1966 he argued for its protection from a state highway project then threatening the building. “If Camden is ever going to revive,” he said, “these places ought to be here. There should be some evidence of what was.” Teitelman, who later became chairman of the Camden Historical Review Committee, turned scholarly attention on his home at 305 Cooper Street. With cooperation from the Taylor family, he documented the details of the structure and advocated for its significance in American architectural history. In 1970, while serving as preservation officer for Camden County, he successfully nominated his house for listing on the <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail/c2c6844d-0dac-420b-a0d7-c516e8c924e2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Register for Historic Places</a>. It was, he stated, “one of the most distinguished extent attached townhouses of the American Queen Anne Revival style in the nation, and probably was one of the best of the early urban works of its architect, Wilson Eyre.” In 1980 Teitelman published a comprehensive article about the house in Winterthur Portfolio, a prestigious journal of decorative arts and material culture, and in 1983 it was documented for the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/nj0011/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Historic American Buildings Survey</a>. These acknowledgements of the significance of 305 Cooper Street set a precedent for designation of the Cooper Street Historic District, approved for the National Register in 1989. Teitelman’s advocacy for Cooper Street buildings extended into the late 1980s, when he opposed demolishing houses in the historic district to create a site for a federal courthouse annex but lost the fight. In 1999, he argued against running the New Jersey Transit <a href="https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Transit_RiverLine" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Riverline</a> through the historic district. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, 305 Cooper Street was among properties owned by Teitelman that appeared in legal notices related to back taxes. Finally, in 2001 a trustee for Edward and Mildred Teitelman sold 305 Cooper Street as well as the house next door (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">303</a>) to Rutgers University. The house built for Henry Genet and Helen Taylor sat in deteriorating condition for a decade, until Rutgers approved $7 million to rehabilitate it and a house across the street (312) for use by the university. The result at 305 Cooper Street, a grandly restored <a href="https://writershouse.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Writers House</a> for the Department of English, in 2016 received a <a href="https://smparchitects.com/ribbon-cutting-at-rutgers-writers-house/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Grand Jury Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia</a>. Associated architects/builders <a href="https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/25852" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wilson Eyre</a>, architect. Restoration by <a href="https://smparchitects.com/ribbon-cutting-at-rutgers-writers-house/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SMP Architects</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Teitelman, Edward. “Wilson Eyre in Camden: The Henry Genet Taylor House and Office.” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol 15, No 3 (Autumn 1980): 229-55. Research by Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, and Mikaela Maria Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 305 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 305. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 305 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Structure on the National Register of Historic Places, contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District. 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 200s 2010s 300 Block 305 Cooper Street Activism Apartments Camden Dispensary Children Civil War Cooper Family Death Doctors Gout Heart Disease Historic Preservation Immigrants Nurses Peritonitis Philadelphia Queen Anne Renovations Restoration Rheumatism Rutgers-Camden Servants Teachers Tourism Typhoid Fever https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/940a071ba366045ec585e356e7f866b0.jpg 52136e1b6a3bb96d7ad03cefc860084b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Illustrations Photograph by Jacob Lechner Significance 329 Cooper Street is a contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District, which is listed on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places. The anchor of a row of three houses built in the early 1850s, it supports the district’s significance as a collection of residences representing the nineteenth-century history of Camden. It further demonstrates the district’s stated significance as an illustration of transitions from residential and professional to commercial use. Its early history as a home to large families offers a resonant connection with its later purpose as the location of the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Childhood Studies</a>. Architectural style Greek Revival, obscured by later renovations. Date of construction c. 1851 History When George Bockius, a leather tanner from Philadelphia, bought land at the northwest corner of Fourth and Cooper Streets in 1851, his property was in the rapidly developing fringe between settled Camden and farmland to the north that had been owned by the Cooper family since the late seventeenth century. By the time Bockius and his family moved to 329 Cooper Street, in 1853, the Philadelphia Public Ledger was taking note of the “many beautiful and elegant improvements made on and about Cooper Street.” The newspaper observed, “There are now in process of construction on it some fifteen commodious dwelling houses, and every lot on it, from the river to Sixth street, has been sold to persons who will immediately improve them.” Bockius bought enough frontage on Cooper Street – forty feet – to build two rowhouses but erected just one, leaving a side lot along Fourth Street. His house anchored a row of three similar residences, each constructed of brick, three stories high. Bockius came to this newest area of Camden from Philadelphia’s oldest. His lineage traced to the colonial-era settlement of Germantown, and his family’s tannery operated in the traditional leather district around Third and Callowhill Streets near the Delaware River. The location near the waterfront gave the tanners good access to the skins that they imported from Mexico, South America, and Asia, and their operations north of Vine Street separated the hot, noxious activity of boiling and tanning skins from the heart of the city. The Bockius tannery, a longstanding family business, specialized in morocco leather, the soft product used for gloves, shoes, and book bindings. <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/ferries/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ferries</a> between Camden and Philadelphia allowed Bockius to move his young and growing family to new surroundings while still tending to his business. In 1849, he had married Elizabeth Frances Logan (known as Fanny), the daughter of a Philadelphia merchant. She bore two children by the time they relocated to Camden, and three more after they moved. By 1860, their household consisted of George, then 38 years old; Fanny, ten years younger, and the children ranging in age from one-month-old Peter to a nine-year-old daughter, also called Fanny. The Bockius household also employed domestic servants. In 1860 they included two women, Irish immigrant Mary Dwire, 26 years old, and Mary Sanders, 19, who was born in Pennsylvania. A third servant, a man named Orman (Armon) Barranger (variously spelled Barringer or Barrenger), was 22 years old, born in New York, and identified by Census takers as “mulatto.” When he registered for the draft in Camden in 1863, he listed his race as “coloured” and his occupation as “waiter.” As the Bockius family grew, it also experienced loss. One child, 5-year-old Maria Logan Bockius, died in 1858 from causes not made public. In 1861, Fanny Logan Bockius was 10 years old when she developed “dropsy,” the condition of swelling later called edema, which can be an indication of disease in the heart, kidneys, or liver. In the custom of the time, funerals for the children were held at home before their burial, which took place at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. A relative or family friend memorialized Fanny with a poem published in the Camden Democrat, beginning: How sweetly, e’en in death, that fair young face Shone out amid the flowers clustered there; One felt, tho’ beautiful, each blossom placed To deck her form, were even still less fair. Yes, beautiful she looked, so soon to lie Enclosed within the vault at Laurel Hill; So soon removed from earth, so young to die— Yet must we bow submission to His will. The Bockius family returned to Philadelphia after the death of young Fanny. The move also coincided with the expanding business interests of George Bockius. During the 1860s he took an active role in organizing a trade association, the Morocco Manufacturers’ Exchange, and he expanded his investments to include a ferry line between Philadelphia and Gloucester City, a railroad on South Broad Street in Philadelphia, and a coal company in New York. The house at 329 Cooper Street was rented to tenants until its sale to a new owner in 1865. Wealth and Health Like the Bockius family, the owner of 329 Cooper Street for the next 15 years had ties to Philadelphia and a large family. Cooper P. Knight, a fish and provisions merchant on the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia, had long lived in Camden in a house on Third Street with his parents and siblings. He started his own family there after marrying Catherine Fisher, who was known as Kate, in 1859. Although the Knights were Quakers with roots in Woodbury and New Castle County, Delaware, the wedding took place in Philadelphia at the First Presbyterian Church. The Knights moved into 329 Cooper Street in 1865, filling the house once again with the activity of young children. In the 1870 Census the family consisted of Cooper, age 44, Kate, then 32; six children ranging in age from 1 to 10; and Kate’s father, James Fisher, 68. They employed two domestic servants: Anna Potts, 32 years old, who had immigrated from England, and Martha Hatton, age 18, who was born in Pennsylvania. In addition to the servants, the family had luxuries that reflected financial prosperity: a gold watch and a piano. Cooper P. Knight had sufficient wealth to join other Camden and Philadelphia investors in capitalizing an oil-drilling venture in West Virginia. The family’s fortunes at 329 Cooper Street illustrated the tenuous relationship that could exist between health and wealth in the nineteenth century. In 1874, Cooper P. Knight experienced chest pain while out riding. A doctor provided medication, but “about half-past two in the morning Mrs. Knight was awakened by the struggling of her husband and found him dying, and dissolution speedily ensued,” the Camden Democrat newspaper recounted. He died at age 49, leaving Kate a widow with six children. They remained in the Cooper Street house, although with less household help. In the 1880 Census, when the children ranged in age from 9 to 20, their one servant was a 12-year-old girl, Florence Bickington. She was illiterate without knowledge of her mother’s identity, suggesting she might have been placed out to work by an orphanage. The death of Kate Knight in 1880 left her oldest daughter, Emily, the head of the household. The siblings could not sustain tax payments on the Cooper Street home, which was seized and put to sheriff’s sale in 1882. The siblings stayed together but moved to Stockton Township, the more rural area that later developed into the Cramer Hill section of Camden. Physician’s Family The sheriff’s sale of the Knight family’s home occurred during a decade of transformation for Cooper Street. During the 1880s, the thoroughfare was increasingly favored by physicians, often recent graduates of Philadelphia medical schools who found the growing city of Camden a good opportunity for starting new practices. The trend was encouraged by the construction of Cooper Hospital, which opened in 1887. Dr. J. Orlando White, head of the next family to live at 329 Cooper Street, followed the path of many other Camden physicians but was ahead of the trend for Cooper Street. Born in Atlantic County in 1847, White came to Camden as a young man to study medicine with a member of the Cooper family, Dr. Richard M. Cooper, and then enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania medical school. By 1871, he settled his family and practice into a rented house at 326 Cooper Street (across from the Knight family then at 329). He married Elizabeth Starr, the daughter of a prominent Camden industrialist; they had one son who died in infancy and another, Jesse, who was about 10 years old when they moved across the street. In the same block, Dr. White’s widowed mother, Mary, lived with one of his sisters at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/82" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">325 Cooper Street</a>. Although considerably smaller than the earlier families at 329 Cooper Street, the Whites still employed two domestic servants, usually Irish immigrant women. During their first years at this address, from 1883 to 1887, the household also included Elizabeth White’s father, Jesse W. Starr. Then in his 70s, Starr had made and lost a fortune as proprietor of the Camden Iron Works, <a href="https://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/HGSv19.1830-1831" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a massive foundry</a> that produced pipes for the water, sewage, and gas works of growing American cities. The company held contracts and franchises from Boston to San Francisco, and Starr’s prosperity became Camden’s good fortune through acts such as the donation of a site for new city hall. The iron works foundered during the financial panic of 1873, however, and began accumulating debt that led to voluntary bankruptcy in 1878. Starr, whose personal wealth had been estimated between $2 million and $3 million, lost his home, real estate, and horses to satisfy creditors. A widower, he spent the last years of his life with his daughter at 329 Cooper Street. He died there in 1886 of “nervous prostration,” at age 77, after exhibiting indications of dementia. While the Whites lived at 329 Cooper Street, the doctor pivoted from the practice of medicine to another matter of public health, the promotion of water plants and sewage disposal plants. (Perhaps not incidentally, the public works projects he promoted required pipes, which continued to be produced by successor owners of the Camden Iron Works.) He also led a legal fight to retain his wife’s standing as the sole designated heir of Jesse W. Starr, which was contested by her three brothers. Despite the bankruptcy ordeal, the estate amounted to several hundred thousand dollars. J. Orlando White lived until 1909, and 329 Cooper Street remained home for Elizabeth White for twenty-eight years longer, until her death in 1937. Unlike other widows on Cooper Street, she did not rent rooms to boarders; nor did she follow the practice of living with adult children (her married son, Jesse, lived in Merchantville). She shared the home only with servants, usually a married couple. For a remarkably long period—at least 15 years, from 1913 to 1928—her employees were James and Lucy Harris, African Americans who were born in Virginia. In their 30s and 40s while working for Elizabeth White, their lives had spanned from the Reconstruction era in the South to the wave of migration north that became known as the Great Migration. Lucy Harris had family ties in Philadelphia—at least one nephew, who worked as a porter at the Union League. Another member of the Harris family, Robert, was employed as a butler in the home of Elizabeth White’s son Jesse. End of an Era After the death of Elizabeth White, her son and daughter-in-law placed it in the care of a housekeeper and lived there themselves between 1940 and 1943. But the era of single-family homes on Cooper Street had passed. Since construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), completed in 1926, real estate interests in Camden had pushed conversions of residences on Cooper Street into offices and apartment buildings. By the 1940s two institutions of higher education, the College of South Jersey and the South Jersey School of Law, also were a growing presence. These forces combined to chart the future of 329 Cooper Street. In 1949, the College of South Jersey purchased 329 Cooper Street from the estate of Jesse S. White. The acquisition added to the collection of buildings that the college, founded in 1926, was acquiring in the vicinity of Cooper, Penn, and Linden Streets. A short walk from Cooper Street, the former mansion of advertising pioneer Francis Wayland Ayer at 406 Penn Street had been purchased by the college in 1946 for its main offices. At 329 Cooper Street, the college embarked on a renovation to create recreation rooms and a snack bar for students on the first floor and classrooms on the second. The strategy of campus expansion soon changed, however, when the College of South Jersey and the South Jersey School of Law affiliated with Rutgers University in 1950. Although 329 Cooper Street had been so recently renovated for student use, Rutgers developed a master plan for new buildings on an expanded campus to be created by urban renewal demolition in the area between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Cooper Street houses were spared from demolition because of their perceived commercial value, but Rutgers sold 329 Cooper Street in 1954 to a dentist and his wife, Saul and Frances Artis. Dentistry and Donation Saul Artis was among many other professionals during the 1950s and 1960s who made their living in Camden but chose not to live there – a common pattern in the decades following World War II. Saul, a graduate of Camden High School and the University of Pennsylvania Dental School, had served in the Army Dental Corps in the Panama Canal Zone. Following the war, he established his dental practice in Camden, but after marrying Frances they and their three children lived in Haddon Township. Although living in the suburbs, the Artises invested in Camden, purchasing not only 329 Cooper Street from Rutgers but also the adjoining rowhouse, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/81" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">327</a>. The buildings served as Saul’s office as well as rental apartments for students. While other buildings in North Camden suffered from the neglect of absentee landlords, the Artises participated in the Cooper Street Association, which carried out beautification and maintenance projects. In 1960, they remodeled 329 Cooper Street into modernized offices and apartments. The project reoriented the building to place its entrance on the Fourth Street side, and the addition of an exterior stair tower allowed inside stairs to be ripped out to create more room for offices and apartments. A former stable behind the house also was remodeled and converted into an air-conditioned office. While the Artises invested and remodeled, Rutgers carried out its urban renewal plan for the adjacent blocks to the north. Appreciating the growth of the university next door, by 1981 the Artises donated their buildings to Rutgers; Saul Artis still maintained an active dental practice at 329 Cooper Street until he retired, even after it became the Rutgers-Camden admissions office. The building, named the Artis Building after the donors, also served as the campus financial services office before being renovated once again for a new purpose. In 2018, 329 Cooper Street and the adjacent rowhouse at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/81" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">327 Cooper Street</a> became home to the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Department of Childhood Studies</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 329 Cooper Street, visit the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15gz3_mGk3FcNl0TPaOZAq6B1CHvOpqRcY7a99xkp_l4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Residents Database</a> and scroll down to 329. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Note on sources: Earlier historic structures surveys placed George Bockius at 325 Cooper Street, but property deeds establish that he lived at this address, 327. Research by Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, Melissa Bryson, and Mary Katt. Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 329 Cooper Street Subject The topic of the resource Description An account of the resource Contributing structure, Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 300 Block 329 Cooper Street African Americans Apartments Atlantic County Black Migration Camden Iron Works Children College of South Jersey Death Dentists Doctors Dropsy Fish Haddon Township Heart Disease Leather Manufacturers Merchantville Philadelphia Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Virginia https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/8647158bce125025f304bbb7304b26b1.jpg 91e6ee1c16471d13f15396b3a09fe1f6 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 321 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 Italianate rowhouse supports the district’s designation for architectural merit and offers a valuable contrast to the adjacent <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/83" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">323 Cooper Street</a> built in Queen Anne style 20 years later. The house also reflects the historic district's statement of significance that Cooper Street demonstrates "change from residential and professional to commercial." The 321 Cooper Street building began as a family home then turned to professional and commercial uses in the twentieth century. The residents of 321 Cooper Street connect this address with varieties of pharmacy and medical practice in the nineteenth century and demonstrate Camden’s role in forging connections between Philadelphia and the nearby countryside. As an office building for Rutgers-Camden, in the twenty-first century 321 Cooper Street houses the <a href="https://cure.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE)</a>. Architectural style Italianate Date of construction 1867 History The building at 321 Cooper Street is a survivor of a pair of Italianate rowhouses built in 1867 for two prominent Camden business and civic leaders, Joseph De La Cour (321) and Benjamin Archer (next door, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/85" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">319</a>). An advancement in style from the nearby Greek Revival rowhouses of the 1850s, 321 Cooper Street and its neighbor inspired the West Jersey Press in 1867 to invoke a vision of home life from the song popular during the Civil War era, “Home Sweet Home.” Noting the superior workmanship and the latest home comforts, the newspaper commented, “It is by the addition of such buildings as these that will make Cooper Street in reality what it has been jokingly styled, the ‘Fifth Avenue’ of Camden.” Completing the picture, De La Cour and Archer installed iron fences on white marble foundations between the street and the side yards of their adjoining homes. Pharmacy and Public Service Joseph C. De La Cour had been the proprietor of a drug and chemical store in Camden for thirty years by the time he and his family moved to Cooper Street from their quarters near the store (Third and Arch Streets). De La Cour, whose father was French, was born in New York in 1813 but spent most of his boyhood in in Philadelphia. He went to work there as a cabinet maker, but he studied pharmacy and chemistry at night. In 1836, he bought his Camden drug store. He and his wife, Elizabeth, lived adjacent to the store in a household that grew to include two children and often other extended family members and employees. The De La Cour pharmacy expanded into a manufacturing business. The same year the De La Cours moved to Cooper Street, the druggist bought a brick building at Front and Arch Streets for an enlarged laboratory. As manufacturing chemists and pharmacists, De La Cour and his son (also named Joseph, also a pharmacist) produced and sold compounds and supplies for other drug stores. Their products included extracts, ointments, syrups, and powders of various kinds, and they became especially well known for a non-irritating adhesive plaster. The company also gained a contract to provide surgical equipment to the United States government. Joseph and Elizabeth De La Cour also devoted energy to civic and charitable activities. Joseph served as a city alderman and for many years was a member and treasurer of the Camden Board of Education. During the 1860s, the couple joined their neighbors in founding the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-Home-Friendless-Children.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a> to provide shelter and aid to poor children. Elizabeth De La Cour joined the women of home’s Board of Managers, who raised funds and oversaw the facility as it grew to serve as many as forty children, including those who lost fathers in the Civil War. While altruistic, the home also reflected prevailing attitudes toward the poor by seeking to bind out children to homes where they could learn useful trades. At 321 Cooper Street, the 1870 Census recorded a multi-generational De La Cour household that included Joseph C. De La Cour, then 57 years old; Elizabeth, 50; their daughter Emily, 27; and their recently married son Joseph Loriot De La Cour, 32, with his wife, Mary, and 1-year-old son, Joseph Carl De La Cour. (Joseph L. De La Cour was a veteran of the Civil War, having enlisted in 1861 with a Zouave unit that deployed to Virginia and guarded railroads near Alexandria for three months; while there, they were visited by President Abraham Lincoln.) Also in the De La Cour household in 1870 were the elder Joseph’s mother, Mary Peall, 76 years old, and two Black domestic servants: Rachael Green, 42, and Tinsey Weeks, 17. During the 1870s, the father and son pharmacists were among the founders of the New Jersey Pharmaceutical Society, which sought to advance the science of pharmacy and establish professional standards through state regulations. After forming in 1874, the group achieved a state law governing the practice of pharmacy, including a requirement that drug stores be managed by registered pharmacists. Joseph L. De La Cour served as vice president and president of the society during these productive years. The composition of the De La Cour household evolved in the 1870s, first with the death of Mary Peall in 1874, at the age of 80. Around the same time, Joseph L. and his family moved to their own home on Sixth Street, but meanwhile Emily De La Cour married and brought a new son-in-law to 321 Cooper Street. With her husband Edward F. Nivin, a Philadelphia tin dealer, Emily bore two daughters, who were 3 and 2 years old by the time the 1880 Census documented the extended family. The household continued to employ two domestic servants, but in 1880 they were white, Irish immigrants: Mary McCort, 40, and Elizabeth Murphy, 25. The De La Cour family lost an anchor in 1883 when Elizabeth De Le Cour died at age of 64, two days before Christmas, from an illness that was not publicly identified. The Board of Managers of the Camden Home for Friendless Children published a tribute in the Camden Morning Post, calling her “ever ready with her time, strength and means, to help on the good work.” Elizabeth De Le Cour also held title to the family home, which upon her death became the property of her daughter, Emily Nivin. While Joseph C. De La Cour continued to head the household at 321 Cooper Street, it was increasingly a home full of Nivins, who had two more children by 1885. In 1887, De La Cour marked his fiftieth year in business while still at this address, but soon thereafter he moved in with his son on Sixth Street. When he died in 1891 at the age of 79, he was described admiringly as “one of the oldest and best-known citizens of Camden.” The Nivins built a new house in the adjoining side lot to the De La Cour home, at 323 Cooper Street, but lived there only briefly. The De La Cours’ era on Cooper Street ended in 1890, when both houses were put up for sale. Eclectic Medicine During the early 1890s, 321 Cooper Street changed hand several times, in part due to court actions related to debts of new owners. While the title transferred from one owner to the next, for about two years, in 1892 and 1893, the house gained a high-profile new use as the “medical parlor” of James Parker Finlaw. A familiar face in Camden from the portrait that appeared in his constant advertising in the local newspapers, Finlaw offered remedies for “chronic diseases of all kinds in both sexes.” In the ads, he published testimonials to his success treating everything from throat and lung diseases to hemorrhoids to “female complaints of all kinds.” He had been in the business for twenty years by the time he came to Cooper Street. Finlaw was a practitioner of “eclectic medicine,” a nineteenth-century method of healing that stressed plant-based remedies and avoided chemical compounds, over-drugging, and invasive surgery. Finlaw, born on a Salem County farm in 1847, came to this field following service in the Civil War. While still a teenager, in 1863 he had enlisted in the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0002RC" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Second Cavalry Regiment of New Jersey</a>, which skirmished, fought, and foraged for two years in the middle and deep South. After the war, he apparently remained in the midsection of the country; he married a woman from Ohio, and by 1876 they settled in Hutchinson, Kansas. In Kansas, Finlaw apparently discovered eclectic medicine. He attended Kansas Eclectic College in 1879 and then returned East to attend and graduate from the <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-cc42-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eclectic Medical College of the City of New York</a>. The year after he graduated, in 1885, he was back in South Jersey with a home and office on Broadway in Camden. He was a rare eclectic practitioner among the many mainstream doctors who came to Camden from the medical schools of Jefferson College and the University of Pennsylvania. Conventional medicine frowned upon the alternative practices of eclectics, but Finlaw appealed to patients with his copious advertising. A characteristic headline offered “Dr. Finlaw’s Dyspepsia and Liver Cure, Which Will Remove All Obstruction to the Comforts of Healthy Womanhood.” The ads identified him as “J.P. Finlaw, M.D.” and offered assurances that he had graduated from a “regular medical school.” Among the many published testimonials, a signed statement from the city editor of the Camden Democrat declared that Finlaw was not “a quack.” The editor went on to “cheerfully recommend Dr. Finlaw’s medicines, the dyspepsia and liver cure especially.” While in Camden, Finlaw rented offices at several locations, tending to favor places where he could advertise proximity to Cooper Hospital, the bastion of the local medical establishment. He also expanded the reach of his practice by publishing treatises and incorporating as the Finlaw Medicine Company. Shortly before moving to Cooper Street, he took an extended trip through the West, and upon his return advertised the advantages of his clinical study “of the morbid changes which take place in the human system under different climatic influences.” By moving to 321 Cooper Street, Finlaw claimed another location of medical respectability in a neighborhood populated by some of the city’s most eminent physicians. Along with the medical parlor, Finlaw’s household included his wife, Elizabeth (Lizzie), and three children who ranged in age from 10 to 14 at the time they arrived on Cooper Street in 1892. They moved again in 1893, when they bought a house on south Sixth Street, thereby regaining the opportunity to advertise a location near Cooper Hospital. They remained in Camden until at least 1900, but in later life Finlaw returned to Kansas. When he died there in 1933, he was still remembered in Camden as a “patent medicine doctor” who “had a large following who believed implicitly in his remedies.” Philadelphia Merchant Following the brief interlude of the medical parlor, 321 Cooper Street had more conventional occupants. A produce merchant who worked in Philadelphia, Richard Augustus Brice, bought the property in 1893, and it remained the Brice family home for the next 24 years. Brice, who was born in Maryland, gave up farming in the late 1870s and moved to Philadelphia to engage in the business of acquiring farm produce and reselling it in the city. Chickens, eggs, potatoes, peaches, and more arrived in Philadelphia from the farms of Delaware and Maryland for resale by Brice and his partner, Joseph E. Hendrickson, another former Maryland farmer. By 1893, the year he moved to Cooper Street, Brice had his own produce establishment near Front and Callowhill Streets in Philadelphia. The Brice household at 321 Cooper Street was headed by Brice and his second wife, Margaretta (Rice) Brice. When they married in Philadelphia in 1876, Brice was a recent widower with two young daughters. They lived briefly in Philadelphia, where Margaretta oversaw renting rooms in their Vine Street home to boarders, but relocated to Camden by 1880. They had five additional children, three of whom were still young enough to be at home and attending school in 1893. The 1900 Census recorded the household at 321 Cooper Street as Richard Augustus (he was called by his middle name), then 55 years old; Margaretta, 44, and three of their children ranging in age from 9 to 16. The family employed domestic servants, at least periodically. One, Mary Alston, lived with the family in 1902, and the 1905 New Jersey Census documented the presence of a 14-year-old Black “house girl,” May Fisher. In addition to the employment of servants, the family’s achievement of affluence was marked by their purchase of a cottage in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1900. On Cooper Street, Brice was a rare Democrat among the many Republicans who then controlled local politics and frequented the Camden Republican Club, then at 312 Cooper Street across from Brice’s house. Brice ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat from Camden City Council in 1889, and in the 1890s he supported the “Committee of One Hundred” reform movement. In addition to fielding candidates for office, the Committee of One Hundred spurred a wide-ranging investigation of city-awarded contracts. The effort turned up little malfeasance, but its targets for scrutiny included the Camden Heating and Lighting Company led by Brice’s neighbor at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/83" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">323 Cooper Street</a>, John Burleigh. From time to time, the Brices’ older children returned to the household. Their oldest son, Charles Augustus Brice, triggered sensational headlines in local newspapers in 1896 when he penned a suicide note after a quarrel with his father and a girlfriend. In 1904 and 1905, the same son’s then-wife sued for divorce, and the subsequent court hearings again filled news columns with the private and business affairs of the Brice family. Charles Brice was back at home with his parents and other adult siblings from 1905 until 1910. Richard Augustus Brice experienced failing eyesight in his later years and relied on his sons to carry on the produce business, renamed R.A. Brice & Son. He died in 1910, but Margaretta Brice remained at 321 Cooper Street until 1917. She then moved to the family’s shore home in Ocean City and lived there until her death in 1933. Commercial Cooper Street After the departure of the Brice family, 321 Cooper Street served as home and office for two Camden dentists: John Owens, who rented the property in 1920, and Milton J. Waas, who owned the house from sometime after the Brices left until 1926. This ended the era of 321 Cooper Street as a single-family home as construction of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) brought change to Cooper Street. Expecting a business boom for Camden after the bridge opened in 1926, local boosters and real estate interests sought to transform Cooper Street into a more commercial corridor of office and apartment buildings. In 1926, 321 Cooper Street conveyed to Julia M. Carey, a 26-year-old daughter of Irish immigrants who was staking out a career in real estate sales after working as a stenographer and notary. On behalf of the Bell-Oliver Corporation, she sold three Cooper Street houses—321, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">421</a>, and 521—to investors and stayed on to manage and remodel them. In the case of 321, the investor group retained her name as “The Carey Company.” The Camden Courier-Post reported on the work of the "energetic realty lady" on September 11, 1926. Effectively block-busting a residential street into commercial uses, Carey renovated 321 Cooper Street into an apartment house, gave 421 a <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mission-revival makeover</a> to create an office building, and converted 521 into offices for lawyers. The next occupants of 321 Cooper Street demonstrated the effects of Carey’s efforts. One of the apartments became the Be-Del Beauty Shop, which opened in the building in 1927 and offered “permanent waves and all other ranches of beauty culture work” in a “newly and modernly equipped—beautifully and comfortably appointed” salon. The apartment tenants reflected the spectrum of working-class life in Camden. In 1930, they included Julia Carey and her sister, Anna, and a railroad clerk whose wife was an officer worker in the RCA radio factory. By 1940, there were two employees of the radio factory, a shipper for a printing company, a railroad clerk, an advertising copywriter for a department store, a housekeeper, and a secretary in a public school. By 1950, the range of occupations was similar, but each apartment had at least one child under the age of 5 – evidence of the post-World War II baby boom. A tenant in the late 1950s, Betty Lichtman, operated a reading group for children. Despite the increase in population density, the apartment venture was not profitable enough to outweigh the debts for renovation. The building began to appear in notices for sheriff’s sales as early as 1929 and again in 1932 as the Great Depression bore down on Camden. Additional changes in ownership occurred until 1954, when the house was put up for auction, advertised as six apartments and six baths, located near the Walt Whitman Hotel and one block from Campbell Soup and RCA. “Excellent professional location,” the auctioneer promised. “Always 100% occupied. Long waiting list. Two apartments on each floor, private entrance, separate gas and electric meters, fire escape, all new copper piping, large yard through to Lawrence Street, detached two-car garage building.” Vintage Living By 1980, when the City of Camden surveyed and documented the ownership of historic structures on Cooper Street, the 321 Cooper Street apartment house had been donated to Rutgers University. A new campus for Rutgers-Camden had grown in the blocks between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge during the 1960s and 1970s. While the campus replaced blocks of similar rowhouses through urban renewal demolition, 321 and other former residences on Cooper Street had been spared because of their perceived commercial value. The appeal and potential of Cooper Street buildings increased with the advent of federal tax credits for historic preservation projects and later in connection with a new federal courthouse annex completed at Fourth and Cooper Streets in 1994. In 1991, Rutgers entered into a partnership with a redevelopment firm, Vintage Living, to rehabilitate both 321 and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/69" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">411</a> Cooper Street into modernized offices. The buildings’ locations across the street from the site for the new federal courthouse then under construction positioned the buildings well for legal offices, the project managers believed. Renovations proceeded, but by 1998, back taxes owed on the properties forced a sheriff’s sale and led to the title transferring entirely to Rutgers. Thereafter a building of Rutgers-Camden, 321 Cooper Street at first housed offices for the <a href="https://www.leapacademycharter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LEAP Academy</a> University School and the <a href="https://clc.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Community Leadership Center</a>. It later became home to the <a href="https://cure.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE)</a>. Associated Individuals For a list of all known occupants of 321 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 321. Sources Bynum, W.F., and Roy Porter, eds. Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 1993. Camden, Philadelphia, and Chestertown, Maryland, Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Dorwart, Jeffrey M. and Philip English Mackey. Camden County, New Jersey, 1616-1976: A Narrative History. Camden County, N.J.: Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission, 1976. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Research by Charlene Mires, Lucy Davis, and Joseph Bozzuto. 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 321 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 2010s 300 Block 321 Cooper Street Apartments Camden Home for Friendless Children Civil War Committee of One Hundred Democratic Party Dentists Doctors Druggists Extended Family Italianate Maryland Merchants Ocean City Philadelphia Produce Real Estate Redevelopment Renovations Rutgers-Camden Veterans https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/fd717c211a595e81ce06306a5198326c.jpg ad7bc1b6cf9f38965f3b7bd2721b557e 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 The building at 319 Cooper Street is a landmark of Camden’s industrial history and Cooper Street’s emergence as an educational corridor. Built in 1960, the building was originally the headquarters of Local 103 of the International Union of Electrical Workers, which represented labor at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). It stands on the former site and side yard of an Italianate rowhouse built in 1867 (a twin of the surviving adjacent structure, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/84" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">321 Cooper Street</a>); residents of the home included a prominent business and civic leader of Camden and an activist in women’s reform organizations. The union headquarters of 1960 became a classroom building in the 1970s for the Camden Campus of Camden County College and in the 1980s for the Juvenile Resources Alternative School and Kane Business Academy. Purchased in 2000 by Rutgers University, the building served temporarily as the high school for the LEAP Academy University School and in 2013 became home to the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://honors.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Honors College</a>. Date of construction 1960, on site of Italianate rowhouse built in 1867. History Before a classroom building stood at 319 Cooper Street, the lots beneath it were the site and side yard of a three-story, brick Italianate rowhouse built in 1867. It was one of a pair that included the surviving structure next door (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/84" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">321</a>). The houses were built for two prominent two prominent Camden business and civic leaders, Benjamin Archer (319) and Joseph De La Cour (321). They were advancements in architectural style from Cooper Street’s Greek Revival rowhouses of the 1850s, so striking that they stirred the West Jersey Press to describe them with a reference to the popular song of the Civil War era, “<a href="https://balladofamerica.org/home-sweet-home/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Home Sweet Home</a>.” Noting the superior workmanship and the latest in home comforts, the newspaper commented, “It is by the addition of such buildings as these that will make Cooper Street in reality what it has been jokingly styled, the ‘Fifth Avenue’ of Camden.” Completing the picture, Archer and De La Cour installed iron fences on white marble foundations between the street and the side yards of their adjoining homes. Urban Prosperity and Reform For more than four decades, 319 Cooper Street was home to the Archer family, headed by Benjamin F. and Mary W. Archer. They moved to the new residence from their previous home at 227 Cooper Street, and by 1870 their household consisted of Benjamin, then 36 years old; his second wife, Mary, 31; a 12-year-old son from Benjamin’s first marriage, George; and a 1-year-old daughter, Helen. They employed two domestic servants, both Irish immigrants: Rosie MacEntire, 40, and Bridget Rogers, 35. Benjamin Archer was near-lifelong resident of Camden, born in 1833 to Philadelphia parents who moved to the emerging city across the river when he was an infant. Both cities remained important in Benjamin’s life; in his early adult years, while still living in Camden he worked as a wholesale grocer in Philadelphia near the riverfront. His life took a turn, however, after he married Kate Starr, the daughter of a Camden iron manufacturer, in 1857. His new father-in-law, Jesse W. Starr, took him into the family business: the <a href="https://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/HGSv19.1830-1831" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Iron Works</a>, a massive foundry that produced pipes for the water, sewage, and gas works of growing American cities. The company held contracts and franchises from Boston to San Francisco, generating employment for foundry workers and wealth for the Starr family. Benjamin and Kate Archer had one son, George, while they lived in the Starr household in Haddonfield early in their marriage. But struggles lay ahead. In 1864, Kate Archer died at the age of 26 from causes that were not publicly disclosed, leaving Benjamin a widower with a young son while still in his early 30s. He remained a partner in the Camden Iron Works, but in 1865 he remarried. Mary W. Sloan, a schoolteacher prior to their marriage, bore one child before the family moved to 319 Cooper Street—a daughter who died in 1866 at the age of 3 months. The next was Helen, born in the new home in 1869, who survived. Struggles in business also lay ahead. The financial panic of 1873 strained the iron foundry, leading Benjamin Archer to depart the business in 1875 before it reached the stage of voluntary bankruptcy. His familiarity with urban utilities from those years at Camden Iron Works apparently worked to his advantage, however. After a short period with another iron foundry in Burlington, Archer took a lasting position as manager of the Camden Gas Light Company, which held the city’s franchise for gas street lighting. He had also attained a degree of status and business reputation to qualify as a director on important corporate boards, including the National State Bank of Camden. During the 1870s he was among the incorporators of a company to build a turnpike between Haddonfield and Berlin; in the 1880s he was among the investors who built the first cottages at Barnegat City on the Jersey Shore. His prominence in Camden included elective office; a Republican, he served on the City Council and Board of Chosen Freeholders. Benjamin and Mary Archer’s family grew to include an additional son, F. Morse Archer, born in 1873. They were active members of the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-religion/camdennj-church-centenaryme.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church</a> at Fifth and Cooper Streets, where Benjamin served on the board of trustees and led Sunday School and Mary, who had been educated at the M.E.-affiliated Pennington Seminary, took leading roles in the Ladies’ Aid Society and the Women’s Home Missionary Society. When the church contemplated expanding with a new building in 1893, the Archers hosted the meeting for reviewing the plans. When a new pastor arrived, the Archers were the couple in the receiving line who introduced their neighbors. The Archers’ affluence gave them the means to contribute to social welfare. During the financial panic of the 1870s, Benjamin Archer joined committees to provide aid for the poor through a Relief Society and a Soup Society. But it was Mary Archer who took the most prominent role as a social reformer, especially in the 1890s after her children were grown. She joined the Camden branch of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/womans-christian-temperance-union" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Women’s Christian Temperance Union</a> (WCTU), a national organization that had formed in the 1870s to promote prohibition and abstinence from alcohol. By the 1890s, the organization also engaged campaigns for prison reform, labor laws, and woman suffrage. Mary Archer served as treasurer of the Camden branch and as a representative at regional and national conferences. She supported the WCTU prison reform platform by advocating for a matron to be appointed to oversee the Camden City Jail. Mary Archer was one of the driving forces in the WCTU’s creation of a Camden “Boys’ Parlor,” envisioned as a wholesome environment to divert news boys and other youth from juvenile delinquency. Opened in 1891 in rooms on Arch Street, the project sought ways “by which neglected boys may be lured from the resorts now enticing them, such as the pool room, and similar places frequented by the idle and vicious, and by the aid of such a helping hand, lifted to good citizenship,” the Camden Morning Post reported. The project evolved to offer carpentry lessons and entertainment, albeit alongside lectures on temperance. Archer, the treasurer of the project, instituted a savings program that encouraged the boys to deposit pennies into a collective bank account instead of spending them on cigarettes. Over time, the project added programs for girls and additional training for industrial trades. When boys were too old for the parlor, they were referred to the YMCA or assisted with job placement. The house at 319 Cooper Street remained the Archers’ residence until 1910. At times they provided homes for elder relatives, and they always employed two domestic servants – for a remarkably long period from the mid-1880s until 1910, an Irish immigrant woman named Jane Lynn, and for a time her daughter with the same name. The children grew up, married, and left home. Both boys went to Princeton. George joined his father at the gas lighting company; Morse continued to Harvard Law and later returned to Camden, where he was appointed assistant prosecutor. Helen Archer followed her mother into church and reform activism, nurtured in this direction by childhood fund-raising fairs for the Camden Home for Friendless Children. When she married in 1892, her first home with husband Richard Develin was directly behind her parents at 318 Penn Street (although the Develins later moved to Merchantville). In the first years of the twentieth century, Benjamin Archer advanced to president of the Camden National Bank after many years on the board of directors. He was by then in declining health with debilitating rheumatism, however, and sought respite with long stays at hot springs and mountain resorts. When he died at home in Camden in 1903, the Camden Courier eulogized his contributions to the city. “During his active business career [he] was identified with most of the public enterprises that have promoted the growth and prosperity of the city, and was ever among the foremost to participate in any movement having its welfare in view,” the newspaper editorialized. Helen Archer remained at 319 Cooper Street until her death in 1910, when she was recalled as “quite active in religious and charitable work,” especially the Boys’ Parlor, the WCTU, the YMCA, and the Centenary M.E. Church. Funeral Director and Banker After the Archer family, 319 Cooper Street briefly became a rental property that was converted into rooming house and restaurant called the New Stratford. By the middle of 1912, however, the house had a new owner and full-time resident, prominent funeral home director Fithian S. Simmons. Perhaps best known as the director of 1892 <a href="http://americanliteraryblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/whitmans-funeral-and-burial.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">funeral</a> for the poet Walt Whitman, Simmons had been in business in Camden for decades. By moving to Cooper Street, he established a residence separate from the funeral parlor on Market Street that had previously been his home. Simmons was born in Port Elizabeth in Cumberland County, New Jersey, in 1855, and by 1870 moved to Millville to learn undertaking and cabinetmaking. At the age of 20, he went to work as a salesman for a Philadelphia undertaking supplies firm, but he left after two years, moved to Camden, and started his own funeral home. He married a young woman from Millville, Alverta Stanger. By the time they moved to 319 Cooper Street in 1912, Fithian and Alverta Simmons were in their 50s – roughly the same age as their new home. They quickly commissioned alterations that added porches to the front and side, suburban-style upgrades that were becoming common for Cooper Street’s older residences. They had no children, but a nephew, Dr. Harry H. Grace, lived nearby at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">303 Cooper Street</a>; they also had a vast network of acquaintances created through Fithian Simmons’ many memberships in clubs and fraternal organizations. The household typically employed one domestic servant, in 1915 a second-generation Irish maid and, unusually, in 1920 a woman who had recently immigrated from Jamaica. The Simmons’ affluence also supported trips to Europe, and they were early adopters of the automobile. Fithian Simmons’ customary life transformed during the 1920s, at home and in business. He was left a widower when Alverta died from influenza in 1919, the second year of the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/influenza-spanish-flu-pandemic-1918-19/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">global epidemic</a>. Shortly thereafter he created a new family of sorts when he co-founded the Camden Club in an available house next to his own (315 Cooper Street). He was immediately elected president of the businessmen’s club, which remained an institution on Cooper Street for nearly two decades. Simmons also remarried in 1922, making 319 Cooper Street also the home of his new wife, Roberta, who had also been previously widowed. In the early 1920s, Fithian Simmons retired from undertaking and focused on other business interests, which included directorships of building and loan associations and the Central Trust Company, which he had co-founded with other Camden businessmen in the 1890s. From 1922 until 1927 he served as president of the bank. Fithian and Roberta Simmons remained at 319 Cooper Street until 1939, when he died at the age of 83 and she several months later at 71. They left bequests to siblings, to nieces and nephews, and to Cooper and West Jersey hospitals. The household belongings, including antiques and a 1938 Packard sedan, went up for auction to settle the estate. Union Headquarters The era of 319 Cooper Street as a single-family home ended with Fithian and Roberta Simmons. The street had largely transformed to commercial uses during the 1920s, indirectly as a result of the Delaware River Bridge (completed in 1926, later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). Camden boosters and real estate interests, expecting a business boom, promoted the transition of Cooper Street into a commercial thoroughfare. They bought, sold, and converted former residences into office buildings and apartments, including the twin to 319 Cooper Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/84" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">321</a>), which became a six-unit apartment house. The next house to the west, 315 Cooper Street, became the Camden Club headed by Fithian Simmons. The next chapter for 319 Cooper Street reflected another aspect of Camden’s history, its emergence and decline as an industrial powerhouse. By 1943, during World War II, the rowhouse at 319 Cooper Street became headquarters for the union that represented workers at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Local 103 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers. RCA’s massive production complex at the foot of Cooper Street was then running at full strength to fulfill defense contracts. But in the wake of a series of labor conflicts and strikes in Camden during the 1930s, RCA had begun to move most of its production work to other parts of the country with cheaper labor. Wartime production masked the full impact of these moves on Camden, which after World War II retained primarily high technology elements of the company. The union headquarters at 319 Cooper Street was a place for shop steward meetings, elections of officers, and charitable activities of the union. But rival unions also struggled over representation of RCA workers, with consequences for the headquarters building. By 1950, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America lost its role as bargaining agent to its rival, the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE). In a settlement between the unions, the IUE received title to 319 Cooper Street in 1951. In 1959, the IUE broke ground for a new two-story office building in place of the rowhouse at 319 Cooper Street and its undeveloped side yard. The demolition was in keeping with urban renewal practices of the era, including plans by Rutgers University to demolish adjacent blocks of nineteenth-century rowhouses to create an expanded Camden campus. In place of the Italianate house built in 1867, the union commissioned a thoroughly modern, glazed brick and glass commercial headquarters designed by William L. Duble of Erlton, N.J. The new building housed an auditorium, administrative workspaces, and a wood-paneled conference room and office for the union president. The new IUE headquarters, opened in 1960, became the setting for the mass meetings about prospects of RCA layoffs and for voting on contracts that averted a strike in 1967 and ended a 10-week walkout in 1970. In 1963, the headquarters also was a point of departure for busloads of Camden industrial workers bound for the August 28 massive March on Washington, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Renovations for Classrooms The IUE remained at 319 Cooper Street until 1973, then moved its local headquarters a block away to Market Street. A new era opened for 319 Cooper Street as a classroom building for a series of educational institutions, signaling Cooper Street’s emergence as an educational corridor. Renovations in 1974 transformed the union headquarters into the “urban campus” for Camden County College, which had its main campus in suburban Blackwood. With offerings that included classes in Spanish for Camden’s growing Puerto Rican population, Camden County College stayed until moving to a new building at Seventh and Cooper Street in 1978. After Camden County College, 319 Cooper Street served as home to the Juvenile Resource Center (JRC) Alternative School and, next, the proprietary Kane Business Institute. Owned by Rutgers University since 2000, the building became a temporary location for the high school of the LEAP Academy University School, then a Rutgers-Camden classroom building, and beginning in 2013 home for the Rutgers-Camden <a href="https://honors.camden.rutgers.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Honors College</a>. Multiple renovations for educational uses left the building unrecognizable as a landmark of Camden’s labor history. The modern office building of 1960 disappeared behind a brick façade that harmonized with the traditional materials used in Cooper Street’s older rowhouses—yet at the same time, obscured much of the building’s past. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 319 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 319. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Cowie, Jefferson. Capital Moves: RCA’s 70-Year Quest for Cheap Labor. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. Dorwart, Jeffrey M. and Philip English Mackey. Camden County, New Jersey, 1616-1976: A Narrative History. Camden County, N.J.: Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission, 1976. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 319 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Former union headquarters, site of demolished Italianate rowhouse. 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Automobiles Banking Barnegat City Camden County College Camden Iron Works Cumberland County Death Demolition Education Funeral Homes Influenza Italianate Labor Unions LEAP Academy Manufacturers Men's Clubs Methodist Episcopal Modern Philadelphia Porches RCA Reform Renovations Rheumatism Rutgers-Camden Women's Christian Temperance Union Women's Clubs https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/b3a6a0a589a1e3792dd940e81971c219.jpg eebdf685e5c08cd429e28e5504f2a87a 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 Before its demolition, 311 Cooper Street represented transitions from residential and professional to commercial uses, one of the qualifying “broad patterns of history” for listing the Cooper Street Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. A survey of historic structures in 1985 deemed the building “an integral and significant element to the streetscape,” The building was acquired by Rutgers University in 2000 and later demolished. Architectural style Original residence, Second French Empire; renovated with Georgian-revival façade. Date of construction Original residence, 1870; renovated 1919 and 1928; demolished c. 2002. History The double-lot home built at 311 Cooper Street in 1870 was among the most substantial on the block, similar in scale to the surviving structure on the <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/78" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">northeast corner of Third and Cooper</a>. In contrast to its neighbors, the three-story house described as “handsome” by the West Jersey Press set a new standard for materials with its façade of Chester County green stone, “which is just now attracting the attention of capitalists and builders.” The style of the home was Second French Empire, distinguished by a mansard roof that resembled other new houses then under construction in North Camden. The first family to live at 311 Cooper Street moved from a rowhouse in the next block (229 Cooper Street) and remained in their new residence for more than three decades. William E. and Caroline Lafferty came to Camden from Wilmington, Delaware, where they were married in 1849. William Lafferty, 46 years old in 1870, worked as superintendent of the New Jersey Chemical Company, a Camden manufacturer of fertilizers and other chemicals. The Lafferty household included Caroline, 40, and William and Caroline’s three daughters, ranging in age from 5 to 20. (A fourth daughter had died in the 1850s at the age of 4.) The Lafferty family typically employed two domestic servants: in 1870 they were Black women who were born in Delaware; by 1880, they were Irish immigrant women. The Lafferty daughters followed divergent paths. The oldest, Cecelia, had a developmental disability that Census takers in 1880 defined as “dementia.” While a teenager in the 1860s, she spent at least two years at the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; by 1880, she was institutionalized at the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. Also known as Kirkbride’s Hospital, the facility with finely landscaped grounds in West Philadelphia was regarded as the best standard of care for its time. The next daughter in age, Emily, finished high school but did not pursue a profession or trade. The youngest, Minna (Minnie), attended the Preparatory School of Swarthmore College but did not continue to college there; she later reported completing four years of college. In 1892 she married a lumber merchant, William Stroud, and followed the path of many former Camden residents by living in Merchantville and Moorestown. The Stroud household included a son and Minna’s sister Emily, who did not marry. The Lafferty family apparently lived a quiet life on Cooper Street, unlike many of their neighbors who played leading roles in political, civic, and social organizations. William E. Lafferty was steadily a vestryman at St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church for thirty years and served as its treasurer. His service later merited a memorial window in the church. Members of the Lafferty family lived at 311 Cooper Street until the deaths of William (in 1904) and Caroline (in 1908). During their years in the home, the environment around it changed markedly with the construction of an adjacent house at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a>. That house, built in 1885 for Dr. Henry Genet Taylor, filled the double lot to the west and attached to the existing houses on both sides (303 and 311). The three houses formed an unusual row of substantial houses built at different times in contrasting styles. Coal Connections When advertised for sale in 1908, 311 Cooper Street was described as a “handsome stone front residence” with solid walnut interior finishing. Its next owners, from 1910 to 1919, came to Camden from the west-central Pennsylvania coal-mining town called Glen Campbell (so named for the Glenwood Coal Company and its superintendent Cornelius Campbell). The new residents of 311 Cooper Street, Samuel L. and Margaretta Clark and their children, had deep business and family ties with their hometown that they maintained throughout their years in Camden. Samuel L. Clark, a coal merchant, was 30 years old when the family arrived on Cooper Street; Margaretta was 31, and their three sons ranged in age from 5 to 9. The family employed two domestic servants, documented in the 1910 Census as Isabella Bryson, age 18, and Florence Burley, 16, both born in Pennsylvania. A year after the family came to Camden, the Clarks had an additional child, a daughter, born in 1911. The Clarks sent their children to the private Camden Friends School, and in the case of their oldest son, David, to Penn Charter School in Philadelphia to prepare for his later entry to Princeton. The advent of the automobile helped the Clarks maintain their connections in the Pennsylvania coal region. Shortly after buying 311 Cooper Street, they added a brick garage at the back of their property, facing Lawrence Street. They motored each summer to Glen Campbell, where Samuel Clark retained roles in businesses run by his brother, Joseph Clark, a future Pennsylvania state senator. The Clark family controlled the First National Bank of Glen Campbell and a number of companies engaged in extraction of coal, gas, oil, and other natural resources. The Clarks lived at 311 Cooper Street until 1919, when they advertised the home for sale, stating “Reason for selling—Business in Philadelphia; have purchased a home over there.” They moved to Merion, in the fashionable Main Line suburbs west of the city; Samuel Clark later served as president of one of the Clark family companies, the Royal Oil and Gas Corp., which had offices in the Philadelphia National Bank Building. Apartment Conversions The Clarks advertised their home for sale as a single-family residence, calling it a “most desirable home,” with 14 rooms, three baths, electric lights, and vapor heat. But in 1920 Cooper Street was on the cusp of a transition toward a commercial corridor with a greater density of residents living in apartments. The Helene Apartments, Camden’s first rental apartment building for upper class tenants, had opened in 1912 at the nearby southeast corner of Cooper and Third Streets. Although several more years would pass before the most concerted push to convert North Camden houses into apartments, in 1920 that transition came to 311 Cooper Street. Work began in December 1919, and by 1920 the new “Kinney Apartments” offered “seven complete housekeeping” units in the “best residential section, five blocks to ferry.” The tenants included white-collar professionals and businesspeople, including an insurance agent, a variety of salesmen, a physician, a clergyman, and a corset maker. A more intensive redevelopment of Cooper Street occurred later in the 1920s, reflecting aspirations for a business boom in Camden following completion of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge) in 1926. To create a larger, more modern apartment building at 311 Cooper Street, a real estate company demolished the stone façade of 1870 and replaced it with a Georgian-revival style brick front; a rear addition extended the building to the full depth of the lot. The result was a 32-apartment building with units of one, two, or three rooms, all with baths. The Segwyn Realty Company called the new building the Bloom Apartments, named for the company treasurer Hyman Bloom. Through at least 1950, the building continued to attract business and professional tenants, including a significant number of public school teachers and employees of RCA. By the 1960s, Spanish surnames among the tenants reflected the increasing presence of Puerto Ricans in North Camden during the decades following World War II. The apartment building had a resident superintendent until at least 1959, but in later years fell into disrepair and financial difficulties. Corresponding with Camden’s post-industrial decline, the building began to appear in legal notices related to back taxes by the mid-1980s. Still, surveyors for the Camden Bureau of Planning considered the building to be a historically significant structure in 1985 as they prepared to nominate Cooper Street as a historic district. “Though this building experienced an extraordinary alteration to its front façade, it remains an integral and significant element to the streetscape,” the structure survey form noted. The Cooper Street Historic District achieved National Register status in 1989, but conditions at 311 Cooper Street deteriorated. In 1995, the Courier-Post described the building as a “dilapidated apartment complex” when reporting on the stabbing of a homeless man in a hallway. A resident elsewhere in the 300 block of Cooper Street told the newspaper that “the apartment complex is no stranger to drunks and alcoholics who are rowdy.” Another transformation for Cooper Street was afoot by 2000, when administrators of Rutgers-Camden saw opportunities to increase the visibility of the university by buying properties adjacent to its existing campus. The Camden campus had been created through urban renewal demolitions in the early 1960s, but Cooper Street’s buildings had been spared because of their perceived commercial value. By 2000, 311 Cooper Street, which was then on the city’s foreclosure list, became viewed as a prospect to be renovated into a graduate student dormitory. The university encountered objections from officials and residents concerned about the loss of a taxable property to a tax-exempt state institution. But ultimately Rutgers purchased the building for $100,000 and stated intentions to spend an estimated $1.5 million to restore and convert it to student housing. By 2002, Rutgers proposed instead to demolish the apartment building, which was authorized following public hearings. Two decades later, 311 Cooper Street consisted of a fenced lawn with a modular office structure at the back of the property. Associated Individuals For a list of known occupants of 311 Cooper Street, see 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 311. Associated architects/builders Builder (1870): Joseph Bozarth Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Sen. Joseph O. Clark House, Glen Campbell Borough, Pa., 2011. New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services, Historic Sites Inventory No. 0408204 (Bloom Apartments, 311 Cooper Street), 1985. Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 311 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Lawn and modular office structure, site of demolished contributing structure of the Cooper Street Historic District. 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s African Americans Apartments Automobiles Bridge Impact Chemical Industry Coal Delaware Demolition Disability Garage Georgian Revival Main Line Suburbs Manufacturers Mental Illness Merchantville Pennsylvania Philadelphia Redevelopment Renovations Rutgers-Camden Second Empire Servants St. Paul's Episcopal Church https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/733102c43e0b8f4acab96b99ad5de365.jpg 9d23d325c2e895cf6bffd6d406ce0aaf 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 The office building at 315 Cooper Street reflects Camden’s transitions and needs during an era of industrial decline. Built in 1966, the building first served as headquarters of the Amalgamated Food and Allied Workers Union Local 56, creating a tie between Cooper Street and Camden’s longstanding role in the food processing industry. In the 1980s, the building became home to the Camden County Juvenile Resource Center (later known as the Camden Center for Youth Development). The modern building took the place of a c. 1855 Greek Revival-style home owned by prominent Camden residents, including John W. Mickle, the namesake for Mickle Street and the former Mickle School. During a period as a rental property in 1870-71, the residence served as home to the Collegiate School of Camden, a private school. From the 1920s through the 1940s, before it was demolished for construction of the office building, the house at 315 Cooper Street was a hub of men’s club activity as headquarters for the Camden Club and later the Moose Lodge. Architectural style Modern Date of construction 1966, on site of previous residence built c. 1855. History During the 1850s, the north side of Cooper Street began to fill with houses as Cooper family heirs sold their land for development. Among this first generation of structures in the 300 block, 315 Cooper Street ranked as one of the largest and most substantial. A double-lot, brick, Greek Revival residence, 315 Cooper Street first served as home for a retired physician from Cape May, Joseph Fifield, and his wife, Lydia. After Lydia Fifield’s death in 1858, the home was owned briefly by Albert W. Markley, a recent president of the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Bank in Philadelphia (who lived at other times at 218 and 420 Cooper Street). The 315 Cooper Street house gained a notable new connection in 1861, when it was purchased by John W. Mickle, whose family roots extended to seventeenth-century settlement in the region that became South Jersey. Mickle, a retired sea captain with extensive investments in turnpikes, railroads, and ferry operations, lived a scant few months in 315 Cooper Street before his death later in 1861. But he brought with him an extended household that included widows of his brother and nephew, who remained in the home through the end of the 1860s. John W. Mickle’s memory lived on in Camden through the naming of <a href="http://msr-archives.rutgers.edu/archives/Issue%2014/features/schoop.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mickle Street</a> and the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden-school/camdennj-school-mickle.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">John W. Mickle School</a>. Mickle was honored not only for his prominence in business but for his public service in the New Jersey State Assembly and in the convention that drafted the New Jersey Constitution of 1844. His survivors also recalled his seafaring days carrying trade between the Port of Philadelphia, Europe, and South America. His distinctions included transporting Princess Charlotte of France to join her father, Joseph Bonaparte, while he lived on an <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/point-breeze-bonaparte/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">estate in Bordentown</a>, Burlington County. Collegiate School and Boarding House The heirs of John W. Mickle rented 315 Cooper Street to tenants beginning in 1870, although family members returned to live there intermittently when it was not otherwise occupied. For about two years beginning in 1870, the home became a girls’ boarding school. The Ladies’ Department of the Collegiate School of the City of Camden at 315 Cooper was an extension of a private day school that Reverend Martin L. Hoffer, a Presbyterian minister, had been running since 1868 in a former Odd Fellows’ Hall at Fourth and Market Streets. Hoffer, who lived in Beverly, Burlington County, had previously operated a boys’ boarding school in Beverly and a military boarding school for boys in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His Collegiate School in Camden offered instruction in classical and commercial subjects for boys and girls (in separate classrooms). Viewed by the West Jersey Press as “important step in the permanent growth and prosperity of our city,” Hofford’s school on Market Street and its boarding school extension at 315 Cooper nevertheless proved to be short-lived. By 1874 he moved to other ministerial posts. The girls’ boarding school, acquired by new teachers and with a different name, continued two years longer nearby at 312 Cooper Street. The Collegiate School on Market Street, after a brief closure, reopened on Market Street under a new principal. After the departure of the Collegiate School, the owners of 315 Cooper Street continue to offer it for rent or for sale: “A three-story brick house ten minutes’ walk from the ferry,” read an advertisement in the Camden Morning Post in 1879. “Contains all conveniences; heated throughout; stationary wash stands in bed rooms; two water closets; two kitchens; stationary wash tubs; underdrained; dry cellar.” For about five years, 1878 to 1883, 315 Cooper Street became a boarding house operated by Mary A. Lanning, who lived there with her husband and adult son, as many as seven boarders, and two servants. Recorded in the 1880 Census, the boarders included a lawyer, a bank teller and his wife, a sea captain and his wife, and a hardware dealer. The servants were Susan Boyer, a Black woman who was widowed, and likely her son John, age 12. Neither of the Boyers could read or write. Family Home The house at 315 Cooper Street became a family home once again in 1883, when a dispute among heirs of John W. Mickle led to a court-ordered sale of the property. For the next 26 years, 315 Cooper Street was owned and occupied by attorney Peter V. Voorhees, his wife Louisa Voorhees, their son James Dayton Voorhees, and usually three to four domestic servants. They previously lived several blocks away at 430 Linden Street, part of the 1870s development known as Linden Terrace. The names of the new residents of 315 Cooper reflected the depth and breadth of their family histories. Peter V. Voorhees had a family lineage that traced to seventeenth-century Dutch settlement of Long Island, New York. Peter V., born in New Brunswick in 1852, graduated from Rutgers College in 1873 and then moved to Camden to study law with his uncle, Peter L. Voorhees. The younger Voorhees followed his uncle’s specialization in real estate law and became, among other roles, a representative of the Cooper family trust. In 1881, he married Louisa Clarke Dayton, whose family history extended to seventeenth-century English settlers of Boston. Later generations lived in Somerset County, New Jersey, and Louisa’s father, a lawyer, moved to Camden after graduating from Princeton College. Louisa’s uncle, <a href="https://nj.gov/oag/oag/ag_1857-1861_dayton_bio.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">William L. Dayton</a>, served in the United States Senate and in 1856 was the young Republican Party’s candidate for vice president of the United States. Honoring Louisa’s family legacy, the Voorhees’s son was called by his middle name, Dayton. Peter V. and Louisa Voorhees had been married about two years when they moved to 315 Cooper Street with one-year-old Dayton. A second child, a daughter named Elsie born in 1883, died just before her first birthday while the family vacationed at Lake Minnewaska, New York. A death notice in the Philadelphia Times stating that she died “suddenly” suggests an accident or other unexpected cause, but the details were not publicly disclosed. Thereafter, they remained a family of three as Peter prospered as a lawyer, Louisa engaged in charitable activities, and Dayton grew up at 315 Cooper Street and went on to college at Princeton. The domestic workers in the Voorhees household included Celina (or Selina) Kammerer, who stood apart from other domestic help on Cooper Street through an unusually long term of service and her nationality. While most white domestics on Cooper Street were Irish immigrants or native-born, Kammerer was born in France. No evidence exists to explain how she came to be employed in the Voorhees household or why she stayed so long, but she was present throughout their time at 315 Cooper Street. Public records reveal only that Kammerer was born between 1850 or 1860, that her mother was French and her father either French or Prussian, and that she immigrated to the United States in 1866. Most other domestic servants who worked for the Voorhees family were Irish immigrant women, but by 1900 the family also employed a Black butler, Jesse Bailey. Born in Virginia in 1850, Bailey likely came to Camden as part of the emerging wave of Black migration out of the South to northern cities. In addition to the large home on Cooper Street and domestic servants, the affluence of the Voorhees family enabled extended summer vacations to the Jersey Shore, Maine, the Adirondacks, and Florida. Like others of their social and economic standing, they had leisure time and resources for tourism to resorts by rail. During the 1890s, they also traveled by ocean liner to Europe and from the West Coast by sea to Japan. At home, Peter V. Voorhees’s legal work included handling the Cooper family’s sale of their Cooper Street land between Front and Second Street for use as a public park—later known as Johnson Park. At the pinnacle of his legal career, between 1900 and 1905, he served as an appointed lay judge of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals. Like other men of his station, Voorhees maintained a network of positions on local boards of directors, including the Camden Republican Club (at 312 Cooper Street, across from his house), the Camden City Dispensary (which provided medical care to the indigent), the West Jersey Title and Guarantee Company, and the First National Bank. He served as a vestryman of St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church on Market Street. (He was not, however, connected with the 1899 creation and naming of Voorhees Township, which took its name from then-governor <a href="https://www.nga.org/governor/foster-mcgowan-voorhees/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Foster McGowan Voorhees</a>.) The Voorhees family remained at 315 Cooper Street until the 1906 death of Peter V. Voorhees from multiple ailments that followed a serious bout with pneumonia the previous year, and the 1909 death of Louisa Voorhees from unspecified diseases. This ended the era of single-family ownership at this address. Dayton Voorhees, who served in World War I and then became a professor of politics at Princeton University, did not return to the family home. By 1915 it was rented out and divided between two households, one headed by James Buckelew, the superintendent of the West Jersey and Seashore Railroad Company, and the other headed by Lewis Larsen, a salesman. By 1920, the tenants were real estate dealer William P. Hollinger with his wife, Frances; three young children; and two domestic servants, a married Black couple James and Susan Taylor. A Domain of Men During the 1920s, Cooper Street experienced transition from a residential to commercial thoroughfare, largely through the efforts of real estate interests who anticipated a business boom coming with the 1926 completion of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge). While many former residences on Cooper Street became apartments or office buildings, 315 Cooper Street gained a new purpose as a club house for Camden’s professional men. The Camden Club came into existence through the efforts of a Camden undertaker, Fithian Simmons, who lived at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/85" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">319 Cooper Street</a>, next door to the vacated Voorhees home. The club filled two voids: on a personal level, Simmons poured his energy into the club following the death of his wife, Alverta, during the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/influenza-spanish-flu-pandemic-1918-19/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">influenza epidemic</a> in 1919. For Camden’s elite, the club offered a gathering place for men following the demise of the Camden Republican Club, which had been an anchor of men’s sociability on Cooper Street for decades. Supporters of the new Camden Club contributed $1,000 each to raise the funds to transform the Voorhees “mansion,” as the Morning Post described it, into a “luxurious clubhouse.” Membership required a $100 initiation fee and the same amount each year in annual dues. With Simmons serving as president, the Camden Club sought to be the equivalent of the leading clubhouses for men in Philadelphia. The remodeled building offered a restaurant open day and night; parlors and reception rooms; rooms for billiards, card-playing, and other games; and four bedrooms on the third floor. By all outward appearances, the club thrived during the 1920s and celebrated its tenth anniversary with a dinner at 315 Cooper Street early in 1931 with “members and guests comprising leading business, professional and political notables,” the Morning Post reported. By that time, Simmons remained involved as president emeritus. The Camden Club’s finances were not secure enough to survive the Great Depression, however. After purchasing the building for $14,000 in 1920, the club had taken out a mortgage for $100,000 to finance its ambitious remodel. By 1938, the club had fallen into default on the mortgage and owed thousands in back taxes to the City of Camden. With numerous prominent individuals and companies implicated as bond holders for the club, the building went up for sale to settle its debts. Another fraternal organization in similar straits benefitted from the Camden Club’s demise. The <a href="https://www.mooseintl.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Loyal Order of the Moose</a>, Lodge 111, founded in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1888, had been active in Camden since 1909. The local lodge had opened a grand new headquarters on Market Street in 1929, but it fell into default on the mortgages and receivership by 1934. Having lost ownership of its hall to banks, the Moose Lodge opted in 1939 to buy the former Camden Club at 315 Cooper Street. For the next twenty-five years, the clubhouse became the hub of social and service activity for the men’s Moose lodge and the auxiliary Women of the Moose. Sports banquets, movie nights, dances, and other events were occasionally punctuated by police attention to liquor sales on Sundays and the presence of slot machines. Like other fraternal organizations of its time, the lodge restricted its membership to white people only, a limitation not overturned by Moose International until 1973. Union Headquarters By the 1960s, Cooper Street stood at the edge of an urban renewal zone. Between 1962 and 1964 Rutgers University created a new Camden campus through demolition of houses in the blocks between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, between Third and Fifth Streets. Although Cooper Street was spared wholesale destruction because of its perceived commercial value, the longstanding houses at 315 and 319 Cooper Street fell to demolition. Both became the sites for new union headquarters buildings, with 315 the site of a new, modern office building built in 1966 for the Amalgamated Food and Allied Workers Union, Local 56. Next door at 319 Cooper Street stood another strikingly modern structure built in 1960 for the International Union of Electrical Workers, Local 103. Together, the buildings created ties between Cooper Street and two of Camden’s longstanding industries, food processing and sound recording. The Amalgamated Food and Allied Workers Union Local 56 – Meat Packing Division purchased 315 Cooper Street as the previous longtime occupant, the Moose Lodge, moved to temporary new quarters farther east on Cooper Street at the Walt Whitman Hotel. Formed in 1940, by the 1960s Local 56 represented workers in fisheries, canneries, farms, grocery stores, and food processing plants throughout New Jersey and at the General Foods plant in Dover, Delaware. Its work included organizing migrant labor in South Jersey, which in 1967 prompted a visit to Cooper Street by a delegation of Vietnamese tenant farmers escorted by the U.S. Department of Labor. Later known as the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 56 remained at 315 Cooper Street until 1982, when it opted to leave Camden for a building in Pennsauken that offered more space and easier, more ample parking. Youth Services By the time of the union’s departure, the economic and social circumstances of Camden had produced needs for greater social services for residents experiencing poverty, homelessness, or other effects of the sharp decline of industry in the late twentieth century. Responding to the needs of youth in these conditions, a nonprofit organization, New Ventures Management, purchased 315 Cooper Street and made it the headquarters for the Juvenile Resource Center (JRC). The center, led by former Camden school board member Stella Horton since its founding in 1978, provided juvenile offenders with alternatives to incarceration, including an alternative school, counseling, and employment programs. The JRC continued its work on Cooper Street for decades, changing its name in 2003 to the Camden Youth Development Center (CYDC) after receiving a $1.2 million grant from the William Penn Foundation to join forces with the Camden City Youth Services Commission. Surrounded by that time by buildings purchased by Rutgers University, in 2012 the CYDC also gained an executive director, Felix James, with connections to Rutgers as a graduate of the university’s law school in Camden. Continuing operations in the 2020s, the CYDC stated its mission as “embracing and using the assets of young people to meet their needs and successfully address the complex work they must do to transform their communities and neighborhoods.” Its services encompassed leadership development, tutoring, employment preparation, college preparation, and “providing emotional, social, spiritual, physical, and cultural proficiencies.” Evolving from the original JRC focus on alternatives to incarceration, the CYDC in the 2020s stressed civic engagement as a pathway to success. Associated Individuals For a list of all known occupants of 315 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 315. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com and Genealogy Bank). Camden City Directories (Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. New Jersey State Census, 1885-1915, and U.S. Census, 1850-1950 (Ancestry.com). New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services, Historic Sites Inventory No. 0408205 (315 Cooper Street), 1985. Prowell, George R. The History of Camden County, New Jersey. Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886. Research by Charlene Mires and Lucy Davis Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Questions / needs for additional research Papers of the Amalgamated Food and Allied Workers Union Local 56 are available for future research at Rutgers University Libraries Special Collections (New Brunswick). 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 315 Cooper Street Description An account of the resource Modern office building on former site of a c. 1855 residence. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 300 Block 315 Cooper Street African Americans Attorneys Banking Beverly Black Migration Boarding House Bridge Impact Burlington County Camden Dispensary Cape May Death Demolition Doctors Domestic Life Dutch Food Industry France Greek Revival Influenza Judges Labor Unions Maritime Men's Clubs Modern Pennsauken Pneumonia Presbyterians Renovations Republicans Schools Social Services Tourism https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/d9d7f03996a2529006719e2c23bc9b27.jpg 205a9dbb9284a15f2b93cfcb2e791411 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Buildings Description An account of the resource Houses and other structures on Cooper Street in Camden, N.J. Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance The building at 211 N. Fifth Street originated as a single-family home, among the earliest to be built north of Cooper Street during the period when Cooper family heirs sold their inherited land for development. It stands within the boundaries of the Cooper Street Historic District, although not assessed as a “contributing structure” due to extensive remodeling. Nevertheless, 211 N. Fifth Street has a significant history dating to its construction a few years prior to the Civil War. It has been a home for prominent families, a men’s clubhouse, a boarding house and apartment house, and an office and residence for prominent Camden physicians, among other uses. Owned by Rutgers University since 2005, the building by 2021 served as offices for the Rutgers-Camden Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Architectural style Obscured by twentieth-century renovations; assessed as apparently Italianate in Historic Structure Report by John Milner Associates, 2003. Originally a three-story structure, reduced to two stories by renovations in the 1950s. Date of construction c. 1857 History The house at 211 N. Fifth Street is a testament to Camden’s urban development during the 1850s and 1860s, after the city gained new status as the seat of government for Camden County. Built c. 1857 at the back of two Cooper Street lots owned by Thomas Wharton Dyott Jr., a Philadelphia wholesaler of patent medicines, the three-story brick residence was among the first to be built north of Cooper Street as Cooper family heirs sold their lands for development. If Dyott and his family occupied the new house facing Fifth Street, as city directories suggest, the household included Thomas Wharton Dyott Jr., a white man in his late 30s; his wife, Sarah, also in her 30s; four children ranging in age from 8 to 16, and possibly two Irish immigrant domestic servants (who were with the family in 1860, at their next address). Dyott commuted from Camden to his patent medicine business in Philadelphia, a remnant of a much larger enterprise developed by his father (for whom he was named). The elder Thomas Dyott had immigrated England in 1805, opened a drug store, claimed to be a doctor, and became one of the nation's leading purveyors of patent medicines. In need of bottles for his remedies, by the 1820s the elder Dyott also established a thriving complex of bottle-making factories in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. That venture grew into a company town called <a href="http://www.philaplace.org/story/722/">Dyottville</a> but collapsed in bankruptcy after a run on its bank during the panic of 1837. The patent medicine business remained active during the 1850s as T.W. Dyott & Sons. The wholesaler marketed remedies such as “<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/2">Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup</a>” for quieting babies and cures for rheumatism, liver ailments, and other maladies. Civil War Veteran, Public Servant When Dyott sold his Camden properties in 1860 and returned to Philadelphia, the house at 211 N. Fifth Street conveyed to a nearby neighbor on Cooper Street, retired merchant David Vickers. By 1862, it became the home of Vickers’ daughter, Hannah Gibson, and her family. For the next two decades, the Gibson family infused 211 N. Fifth Street with experiences of the Civil War, public service in government, entrepreneurship, and family life in Camden. When the Gibsons moved in, the household included Henry C. Gibson, a white man in the wholesale paint business, in his late 40s; Hannah, also white, in her late 30s; and their three children, who in 1860 ranged in age from 17-year-old James to Lillie, age 9, and Hannah (in some records, Anne), age 3; and domestic servants. The young daughters grew to adulthood in the Fifth Street house. Between 1878 and 1880, the household also included Hannah’s younger brother, David Vickers. The Gibsons’ move to Fifth Street coincided with Henry Gibson’s return from military service during the Civil War (he previously served in the <a href="https://dos.myflorida.com/florida-facts/florida-history/seminole-history/the-seminole-wars/">Florida Seminole Wars</a>). In May 1861, Gibson led 101 men from Camden to Trenton to muster into service with the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNJ0003RI01">Third Regiment – Infantry – New Jersey Volunteers</a>. The regiment joined a reserve division at the First Battle of Bull Run in July and engaged in the Battle of Munson’s Hill in August. Gibson returned to Camden to staff a recruiting office and concluded his military service in August 1862; shortly thereafter his son James enlisted and served until 1864. After the war Henry Gibson served as a Republican member of the Camden Board of Chosen Freeholders, and he was among the incorporators of the New Jersey Chemical Works, a manufacturer of chemicals and fertilizers located on Cooper Creek. The women of the Gibson family—Hannah and her daughters—left few traces in the public record. Hannah Gibson became owner of the home following the death of her father in 1865. The domestic labor of running the large household was borne at least partially by female domestic servants, but the Gibson women apparently did not act on this advantage to pursue public activities outside the home. The Gibsons’ domestic servants included Catherine Powell, an Irish immigrant who could not read or write, who was recorded with the family in 1860 while they still lived on Cooper Street. Their domestic workers at 211 N. Fifth Street included Anna Maria Ballet, who in 1875 was convicted of stealing about $50 worth of clothing from the Gibson house and sentenced to one year in state prison. In 1878, the Gibsons employed Anna A. Lloyd, whom the Camden city directory identified as “colored.” Following the death of Henry Gibson in 1875, the house at 211 N. Fifth Street became an important instrument of security for his widow and daughters. They remained in the home until 1880, and Hannah Gibson derived income by renting the building out to tenants while living in other nearby houses until her death in 1895. Men’s Club House During the late 1880s and early 1890s, 211 N. Fifth Street served as a club house for two white men’s clubs, first the Camden Republican Club (1887-89) and then the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-Wheelmen.htm">Camden Wheelmen</a> (1889-94). Both organizations remodeled and redecorated the interior to suit their purposes and comfort, and both employed Black men who lived in the building and did custodial work (one also operated a barber shop). The “tastefully fitted up club house” of the Republicans was “the finest in the city,” according to the Camden County Courier. In addition to the parlor, library, reception room, and kitchen on the first floor, on the second floor the Republicans installed pool and billiard rooms, a card room, and a barber shop. (The resident barber was Charles H. Griffin, a Black man whom city directories also identified as a janitor.) At the time, the house had a veranda on its south side, which provided a stage for political and social events in the yard. In 1889, the Republicans gave up their lease and moved to still larger and grander quarters at 312 Cooper Street (later the Alumni House for Rutgers-Camden). Taking their place at 211 N. Fifth Street were the Camden Wheelmen, a sports and social club rooted in the <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/cycling-sport/">bicycle craze</a> of the late nineteenth-century. The Wheelmen kept many of the amenities from the Republicans but also used a back room on the first floor for their “wheels” and turned part of the third floor into a gymnasium. The third floor also included quarters for a janitor, identified in city directories as Levin J. Saunders, a Black man who also worked as a messenger for the Pennsylvania Railroad. His son Clarence, also a messenger, was listed at the 211 N. Fifth Street address for several years, raising a question of whether more of the Saunders family may have also lived on the third floor. According to Census records, Levin Saunders was married and with his wife, Elizabeth, had at least three sons and one daughter. Saunders remained employed by the Wheelmen (renamed the <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-TheCarteretClub.htm">Carteret Club</a> in 1893) at their later locations on Penn Street and Cooper Street. The men’s clubs of 211 N. Fifth Street demonstrated the racial disparities of Camden of their era, with prominent white men with leisure time served by Black male employees. Further elements of racism were evident in activities of the Wheelmen, who in addition to their many sporting pursuits put on <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/minstrel-show">minstrel shows</a> for public audiences in Camden and other nearby venues. A popular form of entertainment for white audiences, minstrel shows in the nineteenth century featured white performers in burnt-cork blackface makeup who ridiculed the mannerisms of Black people. Members of the Wheelmen produced and performed in these shows during their years on Fifth Street. During this period, the League of American Wheelmen also barred Black riders from membership. Boarding House The death of the longtime owner of 211 N. Fifth Street, Hannah Gibson, in 1895 led to a sheriff’s sale of the building and opened a period when subsequent women owners and tenants operated boarding houses at this address. Their boarders also were primarily white women, who represented the spectrum of life circumstances and economic strategies available to them in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Elizabeth Peterson, a white widow who had been working as a sewing machine operator, obtained a mortgage and purchased 211 N. Fifth Street in 1899 from another widow who had acquired the building at the earlier sheriff’s sale. Born in England, Peterson had immigrated to the United States in 1886. During her ownership, 211 N. Fifth Street also became home to her adult daughter and a changing cast of boarders who included a widowed woman who worked as an editor and a single woman who worked as a forewoman. The boarders also included female employees of the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back">Esterbrook Steel Pen Company</a>, then one of Camden’s most prominent industries, and a woman who made her living by dressmaking. By 1910, the boarding house keeper at this address was Isabel Dubois, a white widow then 60 years old, who rented the building and made it home for her 86-year-old mother and two adult daughters. One daughter, Edna, worked as a legal stenographer, and the other, Isabel, as an accountant for the <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company">Victor Talking Machine Company</a>. The boarders in 1910 included a 70-year-old widow with an independent income, a single woman who worked as a title clerk, and another single woman employed in candy manufacturing. The ownership of 211 N. Fifth Street passed in 1911 from Elizabeth Peterson to Anna Janke, a white widow whose husband had been a bank clerk and a veteran of the Civil War. While city directories indicate residents with different surnames living together with Janke between 1911 and 1914, some were relatives (including her sister, Anna Platt). Janke’s social activities, reported in Camden newspapers, suggest a middle-class life not common for boarding house keepers. When Janke bought the home, the Camden Morning Post noted the sale and her intentions to thoroughly renovate – perhaps a sign of transition back to a single-family home or at least fewer occupants. Janke hosted card parties and was active in the New Era Club, which promoted college education for women and proper hygienic care of babies. Another woman who lived in the Janke home, Harriet Branson, hosted meetings of the Beethoven Club. Medical Office The next transition for 211 N. Fifth Street aligned it with nearby Cooper Street’s evolution into a location for medical professionals. The transformation had been underway since the 1880s, when <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/camdennj-cooperhospital.htm">Cooper Hospital</a> opened nearby. Residences serving dual purposes as doctor’s homes and offices included 211 N. Fifth Street’s neighbor on the corner of Fifth and Cooper. There, at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/72">429 Cooper Street</a>, surgeon Edward A.Y. Schellenger lived with his family and maintained his practice between 1898 and 1917. The house at 211 N. Fifth became a doctor’s home and office in 1915, when Dr. Alfred I. Cramer Jr. purchased the building from Anna Janke. Cramer, who was white, listed the Fifth Street home in city directories as the business address for his practice as an eye surgeon. It also became the family home for Cramer’s wife, Annie (a member of the locally prominent Browning and Doughten families) and their three sons and one daughter ranging in age from two months to seven years old. The Cramers made “extensive improvements” to the home, according to local newspapers. They employed two domestic servants, a sign of their economic and social standing. In 1915 the servants were Nellie McCabe, an 18-year-old Irish immigrant who cooked for the family, and Winifred Lyons, a 19-year-old daughter of Irish immigrants employed as a nurse. One of the previous owner’s tenants, a single woman who worked in the garment industry, also remained in residence with the Cramer family. Cramer, a graduate of Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, was affiliated with Cooper Hospital and active in Camden’s public health movement to combat the spread of disease in poor neighborhoods. He also invested in real estate, which was the primary business of his extended family. In the late nineteenth century Cramer’s father, Alfred I. Cramer Sr., and brother Joseph had transformed farmland adjacent to Camden into <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/camden/camdennj-cramerhill.htm">Cramer Hill</a>, a neighborhood for local shipyard workers. The development was later annexed into the city and remains a neighborhood of Camden. Real estate considerations may have played a role in Dr. Cramer’s investment in the Fifth Street home and the Cramer family’s subsequent move to suburban Moorestown in 1924. Cramer bought 211 N. Fifth Street shortly after legislatures in Pennsylvania and New Jersey began planning for a bridge or a tunnel between Camden and Philadelphia. Those plans came to fruition in 1926 with completion of the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge), which terminated in Camden a few blocks north of 211 N. Fifth Street. The bridge project triggered a wave of real estate speculation in North Camden and a booster campaign to transform Cooper Street from a residential street into a commercial district. Amid these disruptions, many wealthy families moved from Camden to suburban Merchantville, Haddonfield, or (like the Cramers) Moorestown. Automobiles helped to make the moves not only possible but preferable for their owners in need of garages and parking spaces. The Cramer family retained 211 N. Fifth Street as an investment property, and it remained Dr. Cramer’s office location until his death in 1929. Inherited by his wife, Annie, the building reverted to multiple-family use as an apartment building from the 1930s into the 1940s. The tenants in those years included married couples and single women, their occupations ranging from school teachers to clerks, skilled tradespeople, and factory workers. The building also continued to house a medical practice: from at least 1931 through 1943, the office of another eye surgeon, Dr. George J. Dublin. While maintaining the office on Fifth Street, Dublin, a World War I veteran, lived in the Parkside section of Camden with his parents, who were Russian immigrants in the retail clothing business. In 1937 Dublin also bought a house across the street from his office, at 214 N. Fifth, but in the years after World War II he married and joined the post-World War II suburban migration to Cherry Hill. Renovations and a Jewish Family Home By the 1940s, 211 N. Fifth Street was more than eighty years old and deteriorating, like many other houses of similar vintage in North Camden. In 1937, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) <a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/39.1/-94.58">“redlined” the blocks north of Cooper Street</a> and west of Tenth Street as “hazardous” based on perceived negative characteristics of the housing stock and residents. The stigma affected even the most substantial homes, like 211 N. Fifth, by branding the area as high-risk for mortgage lenders. Nevertheless, in 1945 a new owner saved 211 N. Fifth Street from its declining state and remodeled it to serve as his family home with two medical offices on the first floor. Dr. Charles Kutner began renting in the building in 1943, then bought the home and started renovating in 1945 when he returned from three years’ military service during World War II. Kutner, the son of Jewish immigrants from an area of Poland under Russian control, grew up in South Camden among six siblings. His father worked as a baker. Although his parents spoke only Yiddish when they arrived in the United States and could not read or write, Charles graduated from high school, then Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and by 1926 had his medical degree from the University of Maryland. While attending medical school in Baltimore he met his future wife, Leah Friedlander, who was also Jewish. They married in 1927 and returned to Camden, where they had two daughters. Dr. Kutner became active in public health initiatives, especially the fight against tuberculosis in Camden public schools, and Leah Kutner participated in Jewish woman’s organizations. They joined the Jewish country club, Woodcrest, in Cherry Hill. The Kutners’ renovation of their new home preserved the building but altered its original form and nineteenth-century character. They removed the dilapidated third floor, making 211 N. Fifth Street into a two-story structure without its original roofline and cornice. Inside, the resulting living quarters on the second floor had varied levels, somewhat like the split-level designs that were becoming popular for suburban family homes. They divided the first floor into two medical offices, one for Dr. Kutner and the other rented to Dr. Walter Crist, who maintained his practice in Camden while living in West Collingswood. The Kutners also solved the problem of parking space for an automobile by buying an adjacent small rowhouse on Lawrence Street and converting it into a garage. A new two-story, brick-faced concrete structure at the rear of both buildings connected the garage with the Fifth Street house. The Kutners and their daughters lived at 211 N. Fifth Street through the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, the period when Rutgers University began other buying other nearby properties. After their daughters were grown, Charles and Leah Kutner stayed until at least 1962, when urban renewal demolition began to clear nearby blocks to create the Rutgers-Camden campus. They later lived in suburban Cherry Hill, but Dr. Kutner commuted daily to his medical practice at 211 N. Fifth Street until 1989 and rented the rest of the building to commercial and medical tenants. The occupants during the 1970s included First Harlem Management Corp., which specialized in management and technical assistance for minority entrepreneurs. Real Estate and Rutgers When the Kutners sold the property, following the death of Leah Kutner in 1989, 211 N. Fifth Street became one among many Camden properties owned by real estate investors Alfred and Ninfa DeMartini of Cherry Hill. The building housed legal and real estate offices until 2005, when Rutgers purchased it together with a package of other properties in the area of its expanding campus: 526 Penn Street, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75">423 Cooper Street</a>, and 428-430 Lawrence Street. The building subsequently served as offices for Disability Services, Communications and Events, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) before becoming home to the <a href="https://graduateschool.camden.rutgers.edu/">Graduate School of Arts and Sciences</a> in 2021. The building’s long history as a family home, men’s club house, boarding and apartment house, and site of medical practices was reconstructed in 2022-23 by graduate students in the Rutgers-Camden Department of History. Associated Individuals All known residents and businesses are listed in the Fifth Street Database: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T57JcKt9zThByrso2xqFx88JTozS_reaNc7X-JngTVo/edit?usp=sharing">click here</a>. Sources Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers (Newspapers.com, GeneaologyBank). Camden City Directories (Camden County Historical Society and Ancestry.com). Camden County Property Records. Digital Photographs Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. New Jersey State Census, 1885, 1895, 1915, and U.S. Census, 1870-1950 (Ancestry.com). Structure Survey, 211 N. Fifth Street, John Milner Associates for New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services. Note on sources: The historic structure report for this property dates it as c. 1860. This research updates and corrects the record. Research by Sebastian LaVergne, Charlene Mires, Victoria Scannella, John Sprague, and Gina Torres. <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yfDIQTpKUWaOtoxOYtJPV?si=8ec95c1068ab499b&nd=1&dlsi=ffab6e22084b421a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Listen to a podcast</a> about this project. Posted by Charlene Mires Send corrections to cmires@camden.rutgers.edu Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 211 N. Fifth Street Description An account of the resource Built c. 1857, former residence within Cooper Street Historic District. 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 211 N. Fifth Street African Americans Apartments Bicycling Boarding House Camden Republican Club Camden Wheelmen Cherry Hill Children Civil War Clerks Club Doctors Factory Workers Fifth Street Jews Manufacturers Men's Clubs Moorestown Politics Public Health Public Officials Renovations Rutgers-Camden Servants Sports Women's Clubs World War II https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/files/original/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/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/ece34aef8698963b458aaa8b7b3298b1.jpg 0dd4a90701b0114e3f98463ce2df8901 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 Streets and Blocks Place Residence, business, or other entity. Significance When nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the Cooper Street Historic Street included buildings in the 400 block of Lawrence Street 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. <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/browse?tags=Lawrence+Street" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Link to house histories</a>.</li> <li><a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/neatline/show/from-countryside-to-city#records/57" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Clickable map of Lawrence and Cooper Street house histories</a>.</li> </ul> Date of construction Houses, late 1840s-early 1850s. Garages, c. 1926-1950. History The 400 block of Lawrence Street is a remnant of working-class life in Camden as the city industrialized and its population grew rapidly. The surviving two-story rowhouses in this block date to the late 1840s and early 1850s, when Cooper family landholders began to divide their property north of Cooper Street into building lots. Because the lots extended from Cooper Street, a dominant thoroughfare, to narrow Lawrence Street, buyers had the opportunity to build houses facing both streets. This produced the dual character of the 400 block, with its substantial three-story homes facing Cooper Street as well as the smaller two-story rowhouses facing Lawrence Street. When the Cooper Street Historic Street was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, the Lawrence Street buildings were included 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.” The first owners in this block lived in their Cooper Street-facing houses or leased them to prosperous tenants; the smaller Lawrence Street rowhouses, in contrast, became working-class rental properties. Owner-Developers The Lawrence Street houses developed in four segments. In 1845 and 1846, one of the buyers of Cooper family land, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/54">Hannah Atwood</a>, bought two adjoining lots and over time erected seven structures: three on Cooper Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/70" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">413</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/45" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">415</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/48" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">417</a>) and four on Lawrence Street (<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/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/92" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">420</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422</a>). When rented to tenants, the houses provided a steady income while Hannah’s husband, Jesse Atwood, pursued a career as a traveling portrait artist. In 1846, a Camden County public official and ferry company officer, Isaac Porter, also purchased a parcel in the 400 block for his residence at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/52" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">425 Cooper Street</a> and added two adjoining smaller houses on Lawrence Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>). The lots between the Atwood and Porter properties sold in 1847: A Philadelphia merchant, Joseph R. Paulson, put up two houses facing Cooper Street (<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>) and two on Lawrence Street with a small alley between them (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426</a>). Bank teller Jesse Townsend erected one house on Cooper Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423</a>) and two on Lawrence Street (<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>). These transactions and investments filled in much of Cooper and Lawrence Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets. Of the ten houses built on Lawrence Street, six survived into the twenty-first century. A wood-framed house at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90">416</a> Lawrence was demolished in the 1880s; three others (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>, and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>) were replaced or adapted as automobile garages in the twentieth century. Tenants on Lawrence Street often changed from year to year, but their brief residence on this block made it a place of striving and struggle, births and deaths, and participation in the social and economic life of Camden. By 1854, the 400 block of Lawrence Street had at least six residents, who were documented in the Philadelphia city directory as living on “Lawrence below Fifth” in Camden. The early existence of Lawrence Street houses is also documented by an 1855 building contract that cited two of them (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434</a>) as models for a row to be built elsewhere in Camden. The earliest known residents of the block included a ferryman, a cordwainer (shoemaker), a blacksmith, and a carpenter—the types of skilled trades and occupations that typified tenants on Lawrence Street during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Skilled Trades, Large Families Occupations on the block reflected nearby opportunities to earn a living. Men often worked in construction trades, which would have been in demand as North Camden filled with houses, or in jobs related to livery stables (drivers, blacksmiths, hostlers, and coachmen). Some worked on the waterfront on ferries that plied the river between Camden and Philadelphia or, later, in shipyards. Women worked in needle trades (dress making, tailoring, lace making), took in laundry, or tended to boarders in addition to housekeeping for family members. As Camden industrialized, residents of Lawrence Street also went to work in factories, including the <a href="https://www.hamiltonpens.com/blogs/articles/the-esterbrook-pen-company-from-cornwall-to-the-moon-and-back" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Esterbrook Steel Pen Company</a> and <a href="https://ethw.org/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Victor Talking Machine Company</a> on Cooper Street. Lawrence Street filled with families. The U.S. Census in 1860 recorded large families that would have strained the capacity of the houses, which typically consisted of four or five rooms. For example, Christian Bott, a sawyer, and his wife, Christiana, both German immigrants, headed a family with six children under the age of 10. Their neighbors included Nicholas Snider (or Snyder), a watchman who was born in France, and his wife, Margaret (who was born in New Jersey), who had seven children ranging in age from 5 to 19. Such large families remained common, although not universal, among Lawrence Street’s tenants throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With so many people in such close quarters, the street and backyards would have been active with children’s voices and energy. Women and Children Lawrence Street’s tenants included households headed by women. They were widowed, divorced, or otherwise separated from husbands, and often they were supporting young children. At least two women on Lawrence Street tended young families while their husbands served in the Civil War (one of the children in this circumstance, <a href="http://www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-DrLettieAllenWard.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lettie Ward</a> of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a>, grew up to become Camden’s second female physician). Other women struggled to keep families together. For example, Mary Benbow, a widow who rented 418 Lawrence Street beginning in 1878, for a time surrendered three of her five children to the <a href="https://camdenhistory.com/businesses/camden-home-for-friendless-children" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden Home for Friendless Children</a>. On Lawrence Street, Benbow took in washing to earn a living; two of her sons returned from the children’s home when they were old enough to work and contribute to the family economy. Other struggles of child-rearing surfaced periodically in Camden and Philadelphia newspapers in the form of advertisements, for example an 1859 notice in the Philadelphia Public Ledger that sought an adoptive parent for “a healthy male Child nine months old” and directed inquiries to “Lawrence Street, first house above Fourth, between Cooper and Penn, Camden.” In 1916, an ad placed in the Camden Morning Post read: “Home wanted for 6-year-old boy; lady works all the time; will pay small board. Call evenings. <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/91" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">418 Lawrence Street</a>.” The Diversity of Camden In contrast to the mostly white, native-born homeowners on Cooper Street, Lawrence Street’s population represented many of the waves of migration and immigration that created the city’s diverse population. In addition to residents born in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, immigrants or second-generation Americans who rented in this block had ancestries rooted predominantly in western European countries (Germany, England, Ireland, or France). At various times the street also had at least one Japanese-American resident and several Scandinavians and Canadians. Lawrence Street’s population also reflected the migration of African Americans from southern states to northern cities. During the late 1890s and the first years of the twentieth century, Black tenants lived in three of the Lawrence Street houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/93" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">422</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>). They worked primarily in food service occupations. (One of the Black children who lived on Lawrence Street in 1902, Edward A. Reid, in later life became the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mtcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=%22Edward+A.+Reid%22+Camden+judge&source=bl&ots=E52K5r-7qb&sig=ACfU3U1nmX-QVMAcyB6D_wED5tHMaGDJnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjYvJyHjKGCAxV9v4kEHVPKBaU4ChDoAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22Edward%20A.%20Reid%22%20Camden%20judge&f=false" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first Black judge to be appointed in Camden County</a>.) During the second half of the twentieth century, Lawrence Street also reflected the increasing presence of <a href="https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/puerto-rican-migration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Puerto Rican-born migrants</a> to Camden. From Countryside to City While urban in character, the houses on Lawrence Street originally looked out on a mostly rural landscape extending three-quarters of a mile northward to the bend in the Delaware River. The view changed dramatically from the 1860s through the 1880s as the Cooper family heirs sold more of their property to builders, who filled in the blocks of North Camden with houses built two or three at a time or in continuous rows. Nevertheless, the Lawrence Street houses had a bit of a buffer from dense development because they faced the site of a mansion built by a member of the Cooper family at 406 Penn Street, the next street north, around 1869. (The structure survives as the <a href="https://admissions.rutgers.edu/contact-us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Admissions Office</a> for Rutgers-Camden.) Most Lawrence Street residents lost their direct view of the mansion’s expansive lawn and adjoining undeveloped lots by the 1880s, after a large stable serving the mansion was added to the north side of Lawrence Street. This addition meant that more than half the Lawrence Street houses had the sights, smells, and traffic of the stable twenty feet from their front doors. Automobiles Arrive By the 1920s and 1930s, Lawrence Street tended to house fewer people, with tenants consisting primarily of married couples or families with two or three children. More of the residents worked in factories, and fewer in trades. The advent of automobiles also changed this block as some property owners opted to build garages in place of their rental properties. The long-vacant site of <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/90">416</a> Lawrence Street, where a wood-framed house had been demolished in the 1880s, gained an automobile garage. Another garage replaced two of the Lawrence Street houses (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/96" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">428</a>-<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/97" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">430</a>) to serve the needs of the funeral home then operating at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">423 Cooper Street</a>. Finally, in the 1940s, <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/99" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">434 Lawrence Street</a> was adapted into a garage as part of a renovation of the adjoining larger house facing Fifth Street (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/89" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">211 N. Fifth Street</a>), which left its twin at <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/98" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">432 Lawrence Street</a> standing alone between two garages. The longstanding stable on the north side of the street also became an automobile garage. Six houses remained on a block that had acquired the character of a service alley between Cooper and Penn Streets. They were included in the “hazardous” (or red-lined) zone designated in 1937 by the federal <a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/39.924/-75.159&city=camden-nj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Home Owners’ Loan Corporation</a>. Applying a broad brush, the HOLC deemed all of North Camden north of Cooper Street and west of Tenth Street—deteriorating and stable blocks alike—as high-risk investments because of aging structures and residents perceived as “undesirable” on the basis of income, race, or ethnicity. Survivors of Urban Renewal Red-lining set the stage for later urban renewal, which also impacted the surviving houses on Lawrence Street. During the 1940s, residents on Lawrence Street gained a new neighbor when the College of South Jersey and South Jersey School of Law—the predecessor institutions of Rutgers-Camden—purchased the mansion at 406 Penn Street. While that house became an administration and classroom building, at the back of the property (across from the Lawrence Street houses) the college converted former stables and garages for classrooms and added a building for the law school in 1949. After the college affiliated with Rutgers University in 1950, the growing institution turned to urban renewal strategies to demolish six mostly-residential blocks and create an expanded campus—yet the Lawrence Street houses survived. They stood just outside the south boundary of the urban renewal zone, spared because they occupied the same block as Cooper Street-facing houses perceived as having commercial value. They remained standing as the Rutgers-Camden campus took shape, including a new law school building (constructed beginning in 1969) that backed onto Lawrence Street with a tall brick exterior wall that loomed over the houses on the opposite side. During the second half of the twentieth century, some of the Lawrence Street houses remained investment properties but others were owner-occupied. Recognizing the block as an increasingly rare survivor from Camden’s history, some individuals invested in preservation as well as property. Edward Teitelman, a psychiatrist whose preservation interests in Camden included the Henry Genet Taylor house (<a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/79" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">305 Cooper Street</a>), purchased <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/94" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">424</a> and <a href="https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/95" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">426</a> Lawrence Street in 1969 and held them through the 1980s. The City of Camden also recognized the historic value of the block when drawing boundaries for the <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/89d3ab32-8016-4d49-bdec-1f7cd93b69c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cooper Street Historic District</a>, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. At the time, the Lawrence Street houses were thought to have been back-of-property dwellings for servants working on Cooper Street. Although recent research has disproved this theory, the history of the street nevertheless supports the significance stated in the National Register nomination: that Lawrence Street together with Cooper Street represents “a comprehensive view of Cooper Street’s social history.” Rutgers University acquired the surviving Lawrence Street houses between 2005 and 2007 as it envisioned future expansion of the Camden campus. Most of the houses stood vacant by the early 2020s, awaiting future uses, but one served as the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Food Bank. Associated Individuals For a list of known residents of the 400 block of 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 Building Contract, Benjamin Browning, 1855, Camden County Historical Society. Camden and Philadelphia City Directories. Camden and Philadelphia Newspapers. Camden County Deeds. Cooper Street Historic District, <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/89d3ab32-8016-4d49-bdec-1f7cd93b69c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">National Register of Historic Places Registration Form</a>, 1989. Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America (<a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/39.924/-75.159&city=camden-nj" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Camden, New Jersey</a>). Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1885-1950. U.S. and New Jersey Census, 1870-1950. 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 Lawrence Street (400 Block) Description An account of the resource Nineteenth-century, working-class rowhouses and twentieth-century garages. 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 400 Block Blacksmiths Boarder/Lodger Bricklayers Cabinet Makers Carpenters Childhood Children Coachmen Demolition Dressmakers Drivers Extended Family Garages Historic Preservation Hostlers Investment Laundries Lawrence Street Redlining Renovations Rutgers University Rutgers-Camden Tailors Urban Renewal Widows