September 7, 2008
Battlefield Latest Holdup for Rail Line
By COLEEN DEE BERRY

MANALAPAN

WHEN prosperous central New Jersey farmers built the Freehold-Jamesburg Agricultural Railroad in the early 1850s, little did they suspect they would be laying the ground for a controversy a century and a half later.

The rail line the farmers created to transport crops ran straight through the heart of one of the largest American Revolution battlefields. On June 28, 1778, George Washington's Continental Army fought the British to what many historians consider a draw in what later became known as the Battle of Monmouth.

When the farmers built their railroad about 75 years later smack through the site of the old battlefield, no one objected.

"In the 1850s the farmers were most concerned about getting their crops to New York City, not with preserving a battlefield," said James T. Raleigh, president of the Friends of Monmouth Battlefield.

Now, that same rail line seems to be an ideal location for a new commuter rail plan to serve parts of central New Jersey, an idea that officials from Monmouth and Ocean Counties have been promoting. The problem is, the old battlefield was granted National Landmark status in 1966, and New Jersey and National Park Service officials object to the line running through the historic site.

...

The battlefield objection is the latest in a long line of roadblocks to the Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex rail line, often called the MOM line. Proponents contend that the passenger line is needed to ease congestion in the Route 9 corridor.

 

Boyd Theater makes endangered list

By Inga Saffron Inquirer Architecture Critic

With the celebrated Boyd Theater once again for sale, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed the art deco movie palace on its annual list of the 11 most endangered historic sites in America.

June 5, 2007
In Camden, Campbell Co. Says It May Go if Sears Building Stays
By KAREEM FAHIM

CAMDEN, N.J. - For decades after it was built in 1927, shoppers drove to the Sears, Roebuck & Company store on Admiral Wilson Boulevard just beyond the center of town. A colonnaded temple to both commerce and the automobile, the store, in the classical revival style, had a lot with parking spaces for about 600 cars.

But in 1971, as the middle class fled the city, the store closed, and reopened at a mall in nearby Moorestown. In the years afterward, most of the drivers who stopped by this despondent stretch of freeway were visiting seedy strip joints. And the old Sears building went on to become a car dealership, then an office. Today it is vacant, vandalized and in need of repair.

Now, amid an effort to revive a city mired in a crippling cycle of crime and unemployment, the Campbell Soup Company, Camden's longtime and most prominent corporate resident, has proposed expanding its presence and transforming the area where the empty store sits into an office park.

The soup company is prepared to spend $72 million to improve its headquarters, and has also promised to help lure developers to an adjacent office park with the help of $26 million in state funds. But the company's pledge comes with one nagging caveat: The Sears building, which is listed on state and national historic registries, must come down. If not, Campbell Soup, which has been an enormous presence in the city since 1869, may abandon Camden and go elsewhere.

Sunnyside Gardens
Brick Houses, Winding Paths and Unexpected Sharp Elbows
Photographs by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

By JEFF VANDAM
Published: December 31, 2006

The 16-block enclave of Sunnyside Gardens in western Queens, a co-operative garden community built in the mid-1920s and home to about 8,000 people, has always had a close-knit feel.

That closeness was built into its master plan, which called for modest, two-story brick houses and the occasional apartment building separated by shaded, intimate walkways. Among those who strolled along these paths was the pioneering urban historian Lewis Mumford, one of the original co-operators.

Yet in recent weeks, some of the talk in Sunnyside Gardens has turned sour over the subject of whether the community should be designated a historic district, a move that would protect it from future changes.

Community leaders have been working for four years to win the designation, and their efforts finally seem ready to pay off. The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission is poised to schedule an initial hearing on the subject. In response, however, some residents have begun to argue against the change, on the ground that it would spur unwanted gentrification and thus force out the very people who give Sunnyside Gardens its special character. These opponents say they are getting considerable flak from their neighbors.