Upscale Housing

Here's a view of the entry courtyard of a medium-rise condo complex opposite Gateway Center on Mulberry Street in Downtown Newark.

It is near the 37-story Raymond-Commerce Building that is now being converted from offices to apartments. Its success inspired the developers of that complex to bet that there's a market for upscale housing in Newark. Between those two residential buildings and others to be created around Military Park, Downtown Newark should have a substantial presence of middle- and upper-class people to support a vibrant, 24-hour urban lifestyle within 5 years. This is a great time to be in Newark.

Like Day and Nite

I've mentioned that the sky is a palpable presence in Newark, even Downtown, and here's another picture to prove it. It shows a late afternoon sky to the right of One Newark Center, the Seton Hall Law School building. Whatever the liting conditions of the sky might be, they are picked up by the reflective glass fronts of Downtown's various modernist highrises. Dramatic liting, dramatic window tones.

Here's a wider and lower view of the same general vicinity at nite, showing early evening traffic on McCarter Highway (Route 21). If this is less than crisply focused, it is because I did not have the camera on a tripod, but you get the picture. The distant brite lites at center top, just to the left of the FBI Building, are floodlites at a baseball field in Harrison across the Passaic River from Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium (hidden by One Newark Center from this vantage point). Some nites there are baseball games on both sides of the Passaic. Dueling floodlites.

The low white building in the foreground is the Gateway Hilton Hotel, one of two major hotels (with the Robert Treat) in the Downtown heart of things.

Lion in Spring

Today being Sunday, I offer a picture of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, past one of the sculpted lions in Branch Brook Park. Inasmuch as today is expected to be a mild but drearily gray and rainy winter day, I offer a view of a sunny spring day as antidote.

I was born one day before winter and am now in my 62nd Northeastern winter, but I could, frankly, do without winter altogether — except that winter is the only thing that keeps fire ants, Africanized bees, and other tropical invaders at bay. Indeed, there was a yellowjacket nest in an inconvenient location in my yard this past year that this season's freezing temperatures should remove, since yellowjackets do not overwinter from year to year in the same nest. Let's hope their next nest is in some unused corner of somebody else's yard.

Military Park-ing

Tho you wouldn't know it by looking at the greensward and size of the trees today, Military Park, an old Revolutionary-era drill and parade ground, houses a large underground garage, built in 1958. The foto below shows the entry pavilion for pedestrians, at Center Street, across from NJPAC. Tho NJPAC stands to the left, outside the frame of this picture, you can see part of the Robert Treat Hotel and the red lettering of the Maize restaurant above the right downslope of the roof; One Gateway Center in the distant background at the top of the left downslope; One Newark Center (Seton Hall Law School building) in front of that, and part of an NJPAC banner announcing the then-current season, far left. The pavilion is bathed in sunshine just before a winter sunset.

View from the Far Shore

Today's foto shows a view of the northern portion of Downtown from alongside the Hess station in Harrison, looking past the Bridge Street bridge across the Passaic River. The large flag on the IDT Building is now stretched on a frame, but I haven't had a chance to take an updated foto.

Waiting for Spring

It was sunny this afternoon, but cold and windy. We're less than halfway thru the winter, at the start of what is ordinarily the coldest period of the year, the last week of January and first two weeks of February, but the forecast for the next few days is not at all bad. My thoughts are naturally now turning to spring, in part because any seeds I want to start should go into pots indoors fairly soon.
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One big reason I left Manhattan was to have space for a garden and be surrounded by green and flowering things. The house I bought happened to be overrun with wisteria vines. They have invaded the trees in the back of the yard to the north and run all the way up to the front of my house, wrapping around the wrought-iron supports for the roof over my front porch.

I have to think about where I do and do not want the wisteria to grow in future years. There are some good spots, like the fence behind my house (below), and some bad spots. But wherever it grows, its lush purple flower clusters certainly briten up the spring.

Big Doings on Smith Street — Not All Good (8 pix)

New houses have been popping up like mushrooms all over the Central Ward, but my neighborhood, Vailsburg, in the West Ward, had seemed pretty stable. No longer.
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On Monday, I walked to get some test results (cholesterol and such) from Dr. Patel on Sanford Avenue, about 4 blocks away, past two construction sites. Then I walked to the post office for 2-cent stamps and then across the street to Komishane's Pharmacy at Stuyvesant and 18th Avenues. I was able to get my prescription, but their lottery machine was out. So rather than heading directly home, I walked back uphill to Sanford and then across to Silver Street (the far end of my block) to Gomez Supermarket for lottery tix (one each for the Monday and Tuesday drawings). As I walked down the short slope to Smith Street (mine) I noted something I'd never noticed before. There's a new house just beyond the two trees that bloom so brilliantly in the springtime that I chose that scene as the second picture for my Newark website.

Note that the house you can just barely see past the trees has windows. Compare this photo, taken yesterday.

Note that there are now no windows on the wall beyond, and that the building goes much farther back to the left. (I see a lot of windowless walls in new construction in Newark.) Maybe this new house was built during the summer, when the trees are so full that you don't notice anything beyond.
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There was no construction activity on Monday due to the rain. The excavation mid-block was a shallow, odd-shaped lake, but Tuesday the workers were able to pump out the water, and this is what I saw.

I then walked toward the corner of Smith and 18th Avenue. Before I got there, I saw workers moving a window into place. Tho I was beyond ideal range, I took this picture to capture the moment.

Note the pickup truck under the window at issue. It comes into the story shortly.
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I reached the corner and took a closer shot of the two houses going up 5 feet apart on 18th Avenue at Smith Street.

A man sitting in the pickup called to me, smiling. It turns out he is the owner/builder, John (?) Amaral (I'm better with last names than first), who used to live 3 blocks south of 18th Av. He now lives in Sussex County but is investing in the old neighborhood.
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As we chatted about the changes in Newark and his project in particular, his workmen started to move another big window into place, and this time I got an action shot.

Amaral is optimistic about his buildings, in that they are less than a block from the No. 1 bus, which heads right Downtown, stopping at Newark Penn Station, then proceeding thru the Ironbound and on to Journal Square in Jersey City, linking New Jersey's two largest cities with one bus.
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From Newark Penn, the PATH carries commuters expeditiously to Downtown Manhattan via downtown Jersey City, or thru Greenwich Village and Chelsea to Herald Square; NJTransit trains zip to New York Penn in 20 minutes; and the 108 bus reaches the Port Authority Bus Terminal in a half hour. Alternatively, the 107 bus connects southern Vailsburg and Irvington to the Port Authority directly. And, as the start to today's blog entry should indicate, you can easily walk to many local businesses when work doesn't take you out of the neighborhood.
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When I heard that the builder's name was Amaral, I asked if it was Spanish. Nope. Portuguese. Very good!
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Newark has the largest concentration of Portuguese-speakers outside of Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) countries, and I mentioned that I've been hoping for an influx of Portuguese and Brazilians to other areas of the city than the Ironbound. I asked if he was doing advertising in Luso-Americano, a Portuguese-language newspaper founded in Newark in 1928. He said no, but the real-estate broker who is handling his buildings does speak Portuguese.
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I commented on what he plainly appreciated, that this is a great location for Portuguese families or groups of singles. A cluster of friends could live in Vailsburg all along the No. 1 route and just hop on one bus to head to the Ironbound for parties and special occasions.
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I told him I want to draw people in from Manhattan who would be very happy to get out of the crammed-jammed life in exorbitantly expensive Manhattan or even the overpriced Outer Boros. Amaral's two houses will each have a garage and utility room on the ground floor, complete with washer and dryer, and I know Manhattanites are sick of laundromats and having to dance to somebody else's tune. I can do laundry at 3 o'clock in the morning if I want to (and I often do). I don't have to sit around and wait, for fear that somebody will move (or steal) my clothes or I'll lose a sock that sticks to the side of the drum.
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He said that the price differential between even Newark and Jersey City is striking. Each floor of his houses contains 1,250 square feet. In JC, he says, each floor might be sold as an apartment to itself. His houses offer two and half floors plus garage for a tiny fraction of the square-foot cost of housing in Jersey City, much less Manhattan.
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Mr. Amaral also told me why there are so many windowless walls now. Newark's building code requires at least 3 feet of clearance between buildings for windows. His two buildings are 5 feet apart, which means that one of them can have windows on the wall between but the other cannot! So the one on the right has windows; the one on the left has none on the inner wall. I suppose people who have lots of paintings, prints, or family fotos to display might like that. I, however, really like having windows on all four sides of my house.
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Speaking of windows, here's what the house on the right looked like after the workmen aligned the new window.

Alas, even this usually very safe neighborhood has its urban ills, chief among them drugs and associated crime. I'm sorry to report that as I was working on this blog entry, I heard a loud knock at my door just before 1 a.m. It was a young policeman who wanted to know if I'd heard any gunshots! I told him I did hear one loud noise, a couple of hours earlier, I thought, tho I wasn't paying attention. I'd have no way of knowing if it was a gunshot — what do I know about gunshots? — nor where it might have come from, or if it was just a firecracker, which one does sometimes hear around here, but usually in the days leading up to the Fourth of July.
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It turns out that not 300 feet from my front door, some black kid in his 20s, probably involved in the drug trade, was shot dead by a single shot to the back of the head in the middle of the street. Now that I think about it, it occurs to me that maybe he was brought by car from another neighborhood to some quiet, out-of-the-way place, forced out of the car at gunpoint, and then shot dead by people who have no connection with this neighborhood whatsoever but were just looking for a quiet place, away from prying eyes, where they wouldn't be recognized even if they should be seen.
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These things happen in every major city of this country, tho this is the first time a killing has happened on my block in the 5½ years I've lived here. I've waited for the bus or walked home from the bus at nite with no problem. Jersey City alternates with Newark and New York on the local news for stories about violent crime. New York has all New Jersey cities put together beaten by a wide margin. And, as I told the cop, the only way things ever get better is if new people move into an area and demand change. Too many urban neighborhoods have become complacent about crime. Newark is working hard on moving the drug trade out of this city, and, as I write, there are a bunch of police cars and cops investigating this extremely unusual incident. They've brought in brite lites to illuminate the scene so they can look for evidence without waiting for daybreak.

When I lived on 46th Street, in Hell's Kitchen (Manhattan), there was a fatal shooting in broad daylite on 44th Street, same block crosstown. At least this shooting was in the 'dead' of nite.
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I want good people to invest in and move to Newark, but I want them to do so with the clear understanding that no city in the Northeast — or much of any other part of this country — is safe from crime.
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Oddly, the episode of Roseanne on Nick at Nite that is running as I write concerns a burglary of the house nextdoor to Roseanne and Dan, in the mythical small city of Lanford, Illinois.
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Neither Newark nor even Lanford is Mayberry (tho, now that I think about it, there was one famous episode of the Andy Griffith Show in which the state police descend upon Mayberry to catch an escaped convict, whom 'hick' sheriff Andy outwits while the state police look on uselessly). Nor is Jersey City, Mayberry. Nor, most pointedly, is New York.
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If I'm going to live in a city — and I'm not a Mayberry kind of guy, so I definitely am going to live in a city — I want to live in a house of my own that I can easily afford, a home surrounded by trees, flowers, veggies, and herbs I can put in or take out.
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When I lived in New York, I lived in Hell's Kitchen, zip code 10036, which I found reasonably safe. I tried to compare crime rates to my new zip code, 07106, but the website I found showed 10036 to be comparable in crime to some of the worst neighborhoods in Manhattan, so I couldn't trust any comparison at that site. I had to rely upon my instincts, honed by 35 years living in Manhattan. In 10036, I could afford at best to rent a one-bedroom apartment with windows on one side. In 07106, I could afford to own a three-story house with windows on all sides. I'll take 07106 any day, one serious crime every 5½ years or not.

Patio Life

The foto below shows my patio in Vailsburg at the end of the growing season. Some of the lush greenery is already yellowing. I should have taken pix a week earlier.

To the right is my wrought-iron patio set of round table and four chairs. Toward the back is a chaise longue I can catch the sun on. The red flowers are impatiens, popping up from planter benches. The pink flowers are also impatiens, but in pots separate from the benches. To the left are planters from which I harvested cherry tomatoes and peppers. Parsley, celery, carrots, and basil grew in other parts of the yard, and next year I'll put in much more.
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The patio is a concrete platform peculiar to my house, which had, many years ago, been the floor of a pigeon coop the previous owners erected. Now it serves as a firm base for a charcoal grill (not shown) and seating. This is in Newark proper, not the suburbs. For the same size property I would pay property taxes TWICE as high, or even higher, just outside the city line. Why would anyone do that?

Sky and Skyline (Manhattan)

New Yorkers tend to think the world ends at the Hudson. It does not. Manhattanites also tend to think that anything more than 4 miles is a voyage to the other side of the world. The foto below gives some indication of how close Newark and Manhattan are.

One Gateway Center (the building from which this foto was taken) to Times Square is 13 miles by road, a 20-minute drive via the Lincoln Tunnel in off-peak hours. My house is 4 miles west of One Gateway, but it takes me only 30 minutes to drive to Greenwich Village via the Holland Tunnel. I have a three-story house, plus basement, with windows on all sides, 70-foot trees, yards for flowers and veggies on all four sides, and a driveway so I don't have to circle the block looking for a parking space (tho on my block, there's always parking). For a cramped little studio apartment in Greenwich Village, my friend Don pays half again what I do. I get tax benefits that renters don't get, and have accumulated equity I can use to finance a low-interest loan if I need one. And if I want to meet friends in the Village I just hop in my car and I'm there in a half hour, 45 minutes if there's a delay at the tunnel.
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Manhattan is great for the rich, who can afford a spacious apartment high in a tower with a great view. But at some point you have to come down to ground level, to that crowded, noisy, dangerous street life that Manhattanites tolerate but no one should have to.

The Sky and Newark

I chose today's foto to spotlite two related things: the sky and the airport, both very important in Newark.

Newark has one of the Nation's busiest airports: 13th in number of domestic passengers and 5th in international passengers (33 million total passengers last year). It is the 22nd busiest in the world in passengers and 21st in cargo.
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It also has one of the first and tallest air-traffic control towers in the Nation.
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Sources differ about where the first air-traffic control tower in the world was built. Cleveland Hopkins International Airport claims it had the first, in 1930. An MIT webpage claims that honor for Newark in 1935. I wasn't around at the time so cannot resolve the dispute. Let's just say that Newark had one of the first.
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The tower standing today, the only structure that breaks the horizon in the picture above, was built in 2001, and, according to the Skyscraper Page website, is the seventh tallest 'building' in Newark, at "99m". That's 325 feet in American. The tallest control tower in the United States is Orlando's, at 345 feet. That will soon be surpassed by one of 398 feet being built in Atlanta (at the world's very busiest airport). But the tallest air-traffic control tower in the world, 426 feet (130m), stands in Asia, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. That shouldn't be too surprising. After all, until recently, Kuala Lumpur also held the world's tallest building, the Petronas Towers (tho only thin spires actually poke higher than the Sears Tower in Chicago).
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Newark's tower is taller than JFK's, which was the world's tallest when built, in 1992, and may be third tallest in the Nation, after only Orlando and Miami.
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Tho it may be tall as air-traffic control towers go, you'll note from the foto above that it is dwarfed almost to nothingness by the sky, which is a conscious presence in Newark. In Manhattan, to see the sky you often have to look straight up. In Newark, even in the area of Downtown with the densest concentration of tall buildings, you can always see the sky, and the shifting lite on buildings and clouds sometimes produces nearly magical effects. Is the sky so lustrous only in Newark, or did I just rediscover how wondrous it always was after having lost sight of it during 35 years in Manhattan?

Rugged Skyway

Not all of the skyways connecting the nine buildings of the Gateway complex are identical. The one to the Legal Center has distinctive X-shaped struts that form striking frames to the view out the windows.
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The rugged solidity of the structure is reassuring to people walking thru it above busy Raymond Boulevard, but the view looking lengthwise is not particularly striking.

It is only when you are in the walkway and look out that you see the dramatic effect upon the view.

Crossing Raymond Boulevard at street level is risky business, even with a traffic lite controlling traffic, because when traffic isn't racing down the Boulevard, it's turning from Raymond Plaza West. And the lite isn't long enuf for people who move slowly. Crossing thru the skyway not only is safer as regards traffic and weather, but it also affords pedestrians the opportunity to enjoy the view from mid-roadway and a certain remove. To rework the recently adopted Tourism New Jersey slogan, "Newark: See for Yourself".

Skyway to Railway

The foto below was taken inside the elevated walkway between the Gateway Hilton Hotel and Newark Penn Station, looking out toward the station in beautiful Downtown Newark.

All-weather pedestrian passageways raised above street level connect Penn Station with the Legal Center, Hilton Hotel, Gateway Center (four office buildings), and two parking garages. They permit pedestrians easy movement between buildings without worry about traffic, rain, or icy sidewalks, but have been criticized for cutting the Gateway complex off from the life of the city. There's something to that, but the skyways are not forbidden to ordinary Newarkers. Rather, they link retail spaces the way malls do in the suburbs. And tho they can get chilly in the dead of winter, you can still slip over to get a slice of pizza in Penn Station at lunchtime in shiftsleeves.
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I've been in skyways in downtown Duluth, Minnesota, and nobody there complains that they are a racist conspiracy against 'the community'. Duluth gets cold and snowy, and all-weather skyways just make a lot of sense there. They do in Newark too. Even if it didn't get cold here, which it sure does, there would still be the advantage that pedestrians don't have to wait for traffic lites to change or risk being run over by the buses, private cars, and taxis that zip along city streets in that busy neighborhood. This is the kind of vertical separation of pedestrian and automotive traffic that futurist city planners have visualized since at least the 1939 New York World's Fair. And Newark has it. In fact, it would make good sense to extend the skyways to the Newark Arena to make the walk from Penn Station warmer, faster, and safer.

Mansion Detail

Here's a closeup of the main entrance to the Krueger-Scott mansion, a wide view of which appears in yesterday's entry.

It would look a lot better without razor wire.

Krueger-Scott Mansion

One of the sad hangovers of Newark's bad old days is the miserable condition of the most expensive house ever built in Newark, the Krueger-Scott Mansion.

One of the few remaining residences that evoke Newark's past industrial success, the Krueger-Scott Mansion presents an outstanding example of highly ornamented Victorian design. Gottfried Krueger, a German immigrant and wealthy brewer, built the mansion as his home in 1889 and lived there until 1914. Louise Scott, believed to be Newark's first African-American millionaire, operated a beauty school and lived in the mansion from 1966 until 1982. The Krueger-Scott Mansion has remained a constant presence in an area that has undergone considerable change and economic decline.

Unfortunately, the mansion is part of the blight remaining in that neighborhood because, altho over $7 million has been expended over the years on renovations, the mansion has never taken on its new role as a cultural center, or jazz club — or anything else — because inadequate security resulted in its being repeatedly looted.
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The photo above is perhaps a couple of years old, but I drove past the mansion a couple of months ago and nothing seems to have changed. I wish it had.
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My friend Joe's truck is in front of the mansion in that picture. Joe is the guy who drove me around Newark years ago, showing and telling some of the great things about this city, and it is because of that tour and my followup investigations that I moved here from Manhattan. At the time I took the picture, I had no idea what the building was, but found information on the Internet. The sign to the right announces that the mansion is to be the future home of an African-American Cultural Center. The sign is falling down. The mansion is standing, but behind a fence topped in razor wire.
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I wish somebody would fix it up and use it for something — almost anything. Maybe Queen Latifah could buy it and make it her New Jersey base. It would be fitting for one black millionairess to restore a mansion formerly owned by another.

Preserving the Past, Building for the Future

Yesterday I showed a detail view of the dome of St. Rocco's Catholic Church on Hunterdon Street, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, so will likely be preserved for a long time. I also admitted that I hadn't known there was a Saint Rocco. Today, let me show a fuller view of the Church and give some background on the church and the saint.

I found the following discussion at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENMSC/1995-07/0807247259. (I have fixed some typos.)

The church was founded to minister to the newly arrived Italian immigrants on November 6, 1899 .... This church was the hub of social and spiritual activity for a large migrant Italian population. ... The first church was a storefront .... after a fire destroyed that building, the parish moved to a[nother] storefront .... Reverend Umberto Donati ... was the pastor who took on the formidable task of constructing a new church in in the midst of the world economic depression. Newark architect Neil J. Convery designed the church after Fr. Donati's dream. Fr. D. wanted the church to be a reproduction of St. Blasius Church in Lendinara, Province of Rovigo, Italy where he studied forty years earlier.
March 1927 opened a basement church in the partially contructed building.
May 9, 1937 the upper church structure was dedicated.
There is a full-sized dome in the classical Roman basilica style, sloping gable roof covered with tile. The church is characterized by cream colored brick, a granite foundation and oak doors. Four Roman Corinthian columns support the lintels in front of the church. There are (3) niches in the top front of the facade in the manner of Roman arches, each containing a statue and bronze plaque.
The interior of the church has 4 murals in the dome depicting the life of Christ: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and theResurrection. There is a balcony that surrounds a good portion of the church. In one section there is an arch colonnade with 8 varieties of Italian marble.
The main (all marble) altar contains inlaid circular marble work depicting ... Christ which is then surrounded by white lilies and roses. In the middle of the altar is a Roman roof, capped by a dome and supported by twelve columns, housing the statue of Saint Rocco. Lots of stained glass windows and a large wooden crucifix and more niches with the Blessed Mother and favorite saints. * * *
Most of this information comes from a pamphlet provided by the church illustrated by several photos.

As for St. Rocco, his birth name was apparently Roch, because he was born in France (in 1295), but he is also known as Rock, Rocco, Rollox, Roque, Rochus. He attended to victims of the plague and developed the plague himself but recovered. He is the patron saint of:

bachelors; Barano, Italy; Castropignano, Italy; cholera; Constantinople; diseased cattle; dogs; epidemics; falsely accused people; invalids; Istanbul; knee problems; Orsogna, Italy; Patricia, Italy; plague; relief from pestilence; diocese of Tagbilaran, Philippines; skin diseases; skin rashes; surgeons; tile makers.

St. Rocco would seem to be an apt patron saint for Newark too. After all, he contracted the plague but recovered. Newark had a touch of the plague in 1967, but is recovering too.
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One sign of Newark's accelerating recovery is a story in yesterday's Star-Ledger about an ambitious addition to the Newark Museum that is soon to start, and be completed in 2009, in time for the Museum's 100th anniversary. The plan is to tear down the side building you now enter thru, which was originally a YWCA, and create a much larger building for contemporary art in its place and extending south all the way to Central Avenue. To finance this work, the Museum is embarking upon a drive to raise $200 million from public and private sources, half for the addition and half for a general endowment to maintain the Museum's programs. I wish them luck, and am glad to see they are willing to bet $100 million on the future of Newark.

St. Rocco's

For many months, I noticed a prominent dome when driving out from the Bergen Street Pathmark to head home, so one day tracked it down to find out what church it belonged to. I had to laff when I discovered that the name of the Roman Catholic Church at issue is "Saint Rocco's"! Eh! St. Rocco's. This is Newark, after all, and much of New Jersey is Catholic, much more so than most other parts of the country. But I never heard of a St. Rocco. It sounded like a joke to me. It's not.
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Here's a picture of Newark's Saint Rocco's RC Church. Deal wit it.

Gracious Downtown Newark

People who do business in Newark's gleaming newer office buildings or pass thru its international airport may not see the statuary that graces our Downtown parks or the ornamented facades of older structures. Here's a view of the Columbus statue in Washington Park and one of the older skyscrapers behind, 15 Washington Street.

Such historic public art and pre-Modernist architecture are part of what makes Newark a distinct place, not Just-Anywhere USA.

Of Premieres and Books

Newark's own Queen Latifah held a premiere, of sorts, for her latest movie, Last Holiday, in Newark last Wednesday. MSNBC.com reports:

the star held a hometown preview for hundreds of guests invited to a city movie theater. She brought her co-star, LL Cool J, and comedian Joe Piscopo also attended.

As she walked down a red carpet set up in the middle of a parking lot, Latifah said she was happy to be back in Newark.

Tho it's very nice of her to hold a premiere party in Newark, why so low-key? Why not a major, star-studded extravaganza at Prudential Hall in NJPAC? Instead of just LL Cool J and Joe Piscopo, why not all kinds of celebs? Oh, not many live here in Newark, as of yet, but there are tons of celebs 15 miles away in Manhattan.
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I wish Queen Latifah, Shaquille O'Neal, Jason Alexander, and other Newark-born or Newark-related stars would bring some major star-studded event to Newark, an awards show or heavy-duty premiere. We need the shine of a little glamor to wipe the grime off Newark's present, undeserved bad rep. A red carpet in a parking lot doesn't do it.
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Another thing Newark needs is a major bookstore, one of those Barnes & Noble's, B. Dalton's, or Borders stores that have a huge selection and places to sit, have coffee, and meet other literary types — but with a big discount section for the less affluent among us who arrive by bus or train rather than car.
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Gateway Center periodically holds a little book fair in the skyways that connect the various buildings.

That's all very nice, but three days of books every three months (or whatever the schedule is), inside an office complex removed from the street doesn't do it. Newark is a big city with no big bookstore. Why haven't our major booksellers seen the potential?

Church Tour Tomorrow

The gent who offered the kind words shown on this blog's entry of January 6th sent me word yesterday of a special event tomorrow. I may or may not be able to go, but perhaps some reader of this blog can make it. (The foto came with the email. I don't know who owns it, but if the rightful owner objects to its being used in this blog, I will remove it. My own foto of Peddie is not nearly so good, and I haven't had a chance to take a better one.)

This Saturday, January 14, 2006, the New Jersey Historical Society will present a tour of the stained glass windows of First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church in Newark, NJ. The tour will focus on the restoration of Peddie's magnificent windows (Tiffany Studios among them) by JERSEY CITY'S OWN MASTER ARTISAN, BARBARA MEISE, who also recently designed two original memorial lancets for the congregation. Ms. Meise and officials from the NJHS will lead the tour, explain the painstaking process of restoring the windows, and take questions. More information provided by NJHS listed below. RESERVATION REQUIRED. Suggested donation of $5.00.

The Stained Glass of First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church Saturday, January 14, 2006, 2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

The Peddie Memorial Church demonstrates the eclectic taste of Victorian architects. Designed by William Halsey Wood, and built in the heart of downtown Newark in 1890, it contains some extraordinary examples of nineteenth-century American and European stained glass. Join us for a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of the church interior with Barbara Meise, who has spent a year restoring many of the stained glass windows, including examples of early Tiffany windows. Expert in restoration, she has also created two new memorial windows for the church. Don't miss the chance to see the interior of this spectacular Victorian treasure, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Suggested Donation of $5.00. Please call 973-596-8500 ext. 234 to make a reservation. Meet in the lobby of NJHS. 52 Park Place, Newark, NJ 07102. Directions from nearby PATH trains and highways: http://www.peddiechurch.org/Directions.htm

In WNET's documentary A Walk Through Newark, historian Barry Lewis said he had never before seen a Baptist church with a dome. It's a very impressive building, at least from the outside. Maybe I'll get inside tomorrow.
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Sorry I couldn't give more advance notice. Perhaps there will be other tours in the future, if not of Peddie, then walking tours of Newark offered by NJHS or some other group they can tell you about.

Cultural Shelter from the Cold

Newarkers can take solace in winter at the fact that as the weather turns colder, the cultural scene warms up. The New Jersey Performing Arts Center is a hotbed of activity in the winter, and is easily accessible by public transportation from all parts of the region. The welcome screen of its website shows a rich variety of events, from the musical Cats, to bagpipers and highland dancers, to South African music, to Peking Acrobats, many of them performed in what critic Clive Barnes called "The nation's most glamorous theater", Prudential Hall.

Ticket prices are far more reasonable than comparable New York venues, and at nite, there's even street parking within a few blocks. Come on down!

Office Opportunity

The transformation of Newark's second-tallest building (see the last two days' entries to this blog), from offices to luxury apartments, takes a big chunk of capacity out of the office-space market in Downtown Newark. At the same time, it signals to the real-estate world that Newark is safe not just for daytime visits but also for late-nite and indeed 24-hour business and residency. Once that message gets out, continued development of suburban office campuses inaccessible to public transportation will become unnecessary, and businesses of many types can return to the convenient confines of New Jersey's greatest and most cultured city. That is good news for defenders of open space in this most densely populated of all the states.
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The foto below shows the Raymond-Commerce Building centered in the skyline as seen from the Jackson Street bridge at the dawn of a new day. The luxury apartments in Downtown Newark into which that building is now being converted begin a new day for Newark, for residential real estate to be sure, but perhaps also for commercial real estate.

It is unusual for the tallest buildings of any American city today to be old, but both of Newark's two tallest buildings were built in the 1930s.
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My friend Gaetano, who lives in the Ironbound, said some months ago that his company in Cranford was outgrowing its suburban space, and he suggested to management that they relocate to new digs in Newark. A few years ago, Prudential Financial decided to round up its dispersed North Jersey operations and bring them all together in Newark, for the economies and indeed synergies that such consolidation would entail. Good thinking. But, then, Prudential has, almost unarguably, been Newark's best friend in the corporate world.
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Still, Prudential's world headquarters here in Newark are in a relatively modest building, only third tallest in this mid-size city, and not ranked among even the 200 tallest buildings in the world. As you can see from the foto below, it's a nice enuf little building, clad in white marble. But it's stubby. It should have been built two or three times as tall as it is.

By contrast, Prudential has built a bunch of much taller buildings all over the world — most notably in Chicago (995 feet), Boston (750 feet), and Tokyo (520 feet). I find it very odd indeed that Prudential's world headquarters building is only 374 feet tall.
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Indeed, even the Prudential entertained thoughts, decades before it built its current headquarters, of building a 45-story, ornate masonry HQ in the same "Romanesque Gothic" style as its old headquarters. (See the drawing at http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=103166.) Prudential never did build that however, but instead erected a streamlined 24-story HQ in 1960.
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If Prudential doesn't want to put its imprint on a new skyline for Newark, perhaps some ambitious megacompany will. Maybe Prudential's major competitors would delite in sliting Prudential in its own city by building really tall and exceptionally innovative and beautiful buildings all over Downtown Newark, dwarfing Prudential Plaza as to mock Prudential visually. Might that get Prudential's dander up high enuf to build a superskyscraper for Newark, tallest in the world?
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Wouldn't that be something!
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Alas, New Jersey has too long been the home of "Think Small". That's one reason I left in 1965, for Manhattan, and did not return until 2000, when Manhattan became oppressively overcrowded and expensive.
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In the 1980s, an ambitious developer, Harry Grant, proposed a 121-story tower for Newark that would be the world's tallest building. The website http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=103094 shows an architectural rendering of it, along with this description:

- The Grant USA Tower was an extravaganza planned by now-bankrupt developer Harry Grant in the mid-1980's. Its promoters claimed it would become the tallest building, the tallest structure, and the tallest hotel in the world.
- Plans called for condominium offices up to the 100th floor, a 500-room hotel from floors 100-121, and a 21-story atrium at the very top.
- A green-gold glass facade was meant to symbolize New Jersey, the Garden State. More obvious symbolism was planned in the form of a golden eagle atop a flagpole displaying a huge American flag, and enormous letters "USA" emblazoned across the building's top.

I remember seeing a model of that building in its city setting in a case perhaps six feet square in Newark Penn Station. It would seem that Harry Grant (is he still alive?) was the only architecturally ambitious New Jerseyan in recent history. Where is the new Harry Grant to take us into a new magnificence for Newark?

Key to Development?

Yesterday I mentioned that the second-tallest building in Newark, the 37-story Art Deco office skyscraper 1180 Raymond Boulevard, is being converted to luxury apartments. The foto below suggests visually that this building's fate may be key to the revitalization of Downtown Newark as a place to live more than just work.

In this view, 1180 appears in the middle of the picture, thru a gap in the line of glass-fronted office buildings that form the Passaic River skyline of Downtown Newark.
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For too long, Newark has been a place for the wealthy and middle class to work, not live. The conversion of 1180 is predicated on the hope that people will appreciate that living within walking distance of work is a really pleasant alternative to commuting, and that the pleasures of urban life by a green, historical park punctuated by distinguished statuary will appeal to urban professionals who have had enuf of Manhattan's cram-jammed way of life and want out, even if they will still, for a while, have to commute to Manhattan (well, at least until they can find a job closer to their new home).
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All urban renewal has to start somewhere. The revitalization of urban living in Downtown Newark is about to start at 1180 Raymond Boulevard.

Old Skyscraper, New Apartments

1180 Raymond Boulevard, the second-tallest building in Newark, is being converted from office use to luxury apartments, at a cost of about $106 million. This distinguished Art Deco skyscraper, called the Raymond-Commerce Building for the two streets it touches, is opposite the open plaza of the PSE&G Building and overlooks as well the broad green expanse of Military Park. I don't know if the sightlines permit a view of Manhattan or the PSE&G Building blocks that view, but the presence of Military Park in the immediate vicinity guarantees unobstructed views in that direction and open space aplenty, in perpetuity.
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Moreover, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, where the affluent new tenants of 1180 can attend opera, ballet, symphonies, comedy concerts, and many other cultural events, is a five-minute walk away. The Newark Museum and its planetarium and mini-zoo, are a 10-minute walk away, and Bears & Eagles Stadium perhaps a 15-minute walk away.
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Here's a picture of the building from the Raymond Boulevard side.

I do wonder, however, where the nearest supermarket is. Perhaps the developers, who have bought a lot of property around Military Park, are going to build one.

Today's Foto

I have decided to post here, with fair regularity, pictures of Newark that are not (yet) on my Newark website. I don't promise a-picture-a-day, because exigencies might from time to time prevent me from posting every day, but I have HUNDREDS of pictures of Newark that I'd like to share with visitors. Well, I'll share the good ones. Not all my fotos are keepers.
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The two best things about digital fotografy, from my point of view, are (1) you don't spend money in advance on shots that turn out to be crappy and (2) you can erase the bad ones without trace — so no one need ever know you took a bad shot!
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Here's today's foto, a picture of the stained-glass window over the main entrance of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of St. John the Baptist on Sanford Avenue in my section of Newark, wonderful, safe, leafy Vailsburg.

This is an overview of the church.

This view shows the window as it appears during the daytime. Note that you can't tell from the outside that it is stained glass.

Encouraging Words

I GOT this note of appreciation for my Newark website today under the subject line "Ah, so this is Newark":

Hello,

I stumbled upon "RESURGENCE CITY: Newark USA" as I was looking for information on the Newark City Subway and, reading through it, I was quite impressed by your civic pride. Your writing has definitely
changed my perception of Newark. In fact, my perception of Newark started changing last summer. For the longest time, I knew Newark only through the airport and only through the unflattering mythology that surrounds it. Then last summer, as I was driving to Union, NJ, I made a few wrong turns and ended up in Newark and ended up in a neighborhood that had tree-lined streets and what looked like well-maintained Victorian houses. I was pleasantly surprised, needless to say, for the sight was certainly not the Newark I'd heard of. A few months later in August, I had an appointment in downtown Newark and again I was surprised with what I saw. The beautifully-ornamented buildings in the area clearly suggested the city's grand past.

As I said earlier, I stumbled onto your website via a search for NCS info. I'd seen a photo of a Newark streetcar at another website and I thought, "Holy shit, they still have those in Newark??" (turns out those PCC cars were decommissioned in 2001, but still, for those cars to have lasted in use in Newark that long is quite a feat!). I'd say one of Newark's strongest assets is having a distinct sense of place. Being in Newark, you never feel like you're in Anywhere, USA. You always feel like you're in Newark, USA (for whatever reasons, either good or bad). This is a strong asset in a day and age where place identity is becoming more and more a precious commodity.

Best,
Josef

I replied:

Thank you for your words of appreciation, which I will take as encouragement to keep trying to correct misimpressions and destroy the ridiculously outdated stereotype of Newark as an urban hellhole. Actually, that perception was never really accurate. As you have seen, large areas of the city were untouched by the notorious Riots. Those tree-shaded streets lined with old Victorian homes prove that the city wasn't burned to the ground.
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What people who haven't been on the streets of Newark don't appreciate is how NICE people are. (No, not everybody, and there are neighborhoods I wouldn't walk around at nite by myself, even today, but even that is changing.)
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A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words, so I fill my Newark website and blog with lots of photos. If you should hear people say negative things about Newark and look at you askance when you try to correct them, just point them to the pictures and text at my site and blog. Tell them that a Google search for "Resurgence City" (or, especially, resurgencecity with no space) or "newarkusa" will produce the relevant site immediately, either very high in the search results or at the very top.