New turret on MLK

There is new housing under construction all over the city nowadays. Here is an apartment complex going up on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, an area that has been largely untouched by new housing until now. You can see a lot of turrets like this on older buildings in Newark. I'm pleased that some newer homes have adopted the turret as a signature style too.

Old townhouse

Lots of new townhouses are being built all over the city, mostly unadorned brick-fronted or having a combination of siding and brick. Older townhouses have rather more character, like this one on Lincoln Park owned (I understand) by one of the city's power couples, Clement and Mary Sue Sweeney Price. They are, respectively, a Rutgers-Newark professor and the Director and CEO of the Newark Museum.

Rodino Building

The Federal Building on Broad Street in Downtown Newark is named for the late, long-time Congressman Peter Rodino, who played a major role in the Watergate hearings. I don't know what the statuary in front of it is supposed to represent. It looks vaguely like a twisted P and R, as in the Congressman's initials, but perhaps it is supposed to have some other significance. Next time I'm by there in the daytime, perhaps I'll find a plaque that explains what it is.

In looking for an online elucidation of the statue's meaning, I came across this interesting factoid: the electricity for that building, for New York's federal building, and now for the Statue of Liberty all comes from wind power! But I did not find any description of the statue.

Divine hotel

On last month's walking tour, I learned that a hotel I have passed by used to be part of the empire of Father Divine. Our guide mentioned that because of a strict rule of celibacy, men and women stayed on separate floors. Father Divine's movement is still going, but dying out because of that rule. That Father Divine, whom I heard of as a child, had a Newark connection is another bit of Newark history I hadn't known.

Union Gospel Tabernacle

For this "Church Day" on the Newark USA fotoblog, I offer a picture of Union Gospel Tabernacle on MLK Boulevard. To the right of the church you can get the barest sense of why this roadway was formerly called "High Street", since the ground slopes down and away from this high point. The forms beyond are unclear in the distance, but the fact that there is a distant view should at least be plain, even at this resolution.

I know nothing about this church other than its name, location, and modernist form.

Camp Frelinghuysen

We sometimes hear that Newark is the third-oldest major city in the United States (after only Boston and New York), but its history is not widely appreciated even by current residents. We are the home base of the New Jersey Historical Society (which I have still to get to), but don't spend much energy on drawing attention to our place in the Nation's history. Now and then, however, you do run across a plaque like this one in Branch Brook Park near the lions on the lake. (If you don't know what I mean by "the lions on the lake", see the third foto in this blog's entry of April 10th.)

For visitors whose monitor resolution does not permit the text in the foto above to be read easily, I produce a closer view below.

The stone squares' context

In looking thru the pix from among which I selected yesterday's foto, I found this view of last month's flowering cherry trees. I initially took this fotograf to show the young Oriental mommy bending over her toddler while the daddy crouches by the lakeshore, camera in hand (sort of like me, except that I can't crouch due to knee surgeries). I now see that this picture shows a whole bunch of the square stones I showed up close yesterday, lining the bank of the lake. They start on a flat area of the bank that you wouldn't think people could slide from. So it would seem that stabilizing soil that might otherwise move under the weight of visitors is the better explanation, which would suggest that the squares you see are mere tops to deep columns. But I don't know that (and think the Parks Administration would look askance at my digging down between them to see how far below the surface they go).

The mystery grows.

Stone squares

Last month while taking pix in Branch Brook Park, I chanced to see this area of what appear to be granite squares embedded in the sloping bank of the lake near Sacred Heart Cathedral.

You can judge their size by the part of my foot showing in the foto. I don't know if they are just an inch or two deep, merely intended as traction to keep people who step there from sliding into the water, or are the top of stone pilings perhaps a foot or two long designed to stabilize the bank and keep it from eroding. Does any reader out there know?
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In any case, it's a visually interesting detail I hadn't noticed on prior visits.

Old Courthouse area

Today, I just want to show the Old Courthouse in its setting near Essex County College, on a glorious spring day.

Green City

Few outsiders realize how green much of Newark is. Sure, we have some paved-over parts of town, like the heart of Downtown, but even there, trees abound on most blocks of most streets. Dignified landscaping and even the occasional patch of grass — grass! in a major city's downtown area — dot the city. As new buildings are raised, I hope the developers will continue to incorporate lush green places into their projects to keep Newark green.
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Here's a picture of the lawn and plantings around the older of MBNA's two new buildings Downtown. (See the other, yesterday.)

Downtown lawn

After a couple of days with many pix each, let's return to a Foto a Day. Today's foto is the first of two days' pix showing some of the grass around the two MBNA buildings on Market Street and University Avenue. This is the grass outside the newer of these two new buildings, both built within the past five years for the credit-card issuer, which has now been bought by Bank of America, which also has a branch just west of these two structures, making a trio of BofA buildings in a row in Downtown Newark. (I've noticed on the bus recently that the ATM that was outside the bank building (formerly a Fleet branch) has been removed and the wall patched over sloppily. The stones align but don't match in color. I hope BofA fixes that. If they haven't done so within a few weeks, I'll show a picture here in hopes of shaming them into a cosmetically seamless repair.)

This is not the only patch of grass in Downtown Newark, but may be the lushest.

Hopewell Baptist Church

Yesterday I showed the exterior of this fine building. Today I present some interior views. The colors may be off, because artificial liting produces problems for cameras. I have tried to correct, from memory, and the sanctuary does look much like this even if the shades are slitely off.
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The first thing you notice on arriving inside the church is the enormous dome. Your eyes are involuntarily swept upward, which was presumably the intent of the architect, to make people think of a 'higher' power.

Then you might notice the stained-glass windows.

In the window below, the exterior of this very building is shown at the top. As our tourguide, Jeffrey Bennett, put it, this was a sign of how connected with this area the original Jewish congregation felt, that they would put Biblical characters in a Newark setting. So there is a little Hopewell in the big Hopewell.

And this one contains one of the many Stars of David that the Christian congregation has left intact.

As you can see from these examples, the ornate stained-glass windows are memorials to the dead. The base of the dome is ringed by stained-glass windows, but only four are ornate, presumably memorial windows. The others are a uniform plain pattern.

It would seem the congregation left long before the rest could be replaced with memorials.
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The altar is under its own arch, a repetition of the domed theme.

Here's a closer view, showing a shallow dome of the Earth behind the cross, with North America at the top, another evidence of the American connection that the original Jewish congregation felt. They were not yet Zionist.

I've saved perhaps the best foto for last, a view of the pipe organ at the front of the building. The liting may be a tad more dramatic than you'd see, but the liting in this picture was the hardest to adjust.

The congregation of Hopewell Baptist Church is very lucky to have such a wonderful space to meet in.

B'nai Jeshurun (of old)

As I said last Saturday I might,* this weekend I devote both Saturday and Sunday to pix of the former B'nai Jeshurun synagog and present Hopewell Baptist Church, which I saw, outside and in, on Jeffrey Bennett's walking tour a week ago today. Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath; Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, so both are appropriate days to spotlite this magnificent building.
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Today we'll focus on the exterior, which, except for a black-and-white sign on the front, suggests that the building is a synagog in that the most prominent feature other than its magnificent, shallow dome (in the ancient-Roman style), is the Ten Commandments tablet that stands above its entryway. Here's a picture of that part of the building as you might see it in passing by on Clinton Avenue, past a little strip mall. Did the architect of the strip mall intend to reflect the architecture beyond? I don't know. If not, the conformance between the rooflines is a happy accident. If so, the match of roof angles could have been closer.

Here you see the church from the far side of MLK Blvd. A tree frames the view on the left, as trees play so big a part in most views of Newark. Very often, you actually have to frame your foto carefully in order not to include a tree! We are a green city — not a black city, not a white city. Newark is Green City. Green Newark didn't spring up overnite. Our great trees took decades to develop, but they are here now, and stand strong for the future, as do human Newarkers.

Temple B'nai Jeshurun left Newark for South Orange decades ago, in the Bad Old Days of white flite. It later left even South Orange for Short Hills (still in Essex County) in 1968. It had been part of Newark's cultural and religious landscape for over a century. But history doesn't mean much to some people.

Note what the inscription says. Apparently the people of congregation B'nai Jeshurun did not believe what their own (wise, but disrespected) ancestors inscribed, because they did not rally the strength to pass thru the bad times to emerge into the good times today.
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I suppose the congregation left South Orange for reasons other than race, since South Orange is a lot whiter than Newark. But it is 'darker' than Short Hills.
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Here's a closer view of the rooftop with the Ten Commandments tablets. Excuse the moiré pattern. Can't be helped. Cameras see what cameras see. People rarely or never see a moiré pattern, but cameras often do.

Here's a detail of the upper façade pierced by ornate windows.

And here's a detail view of the lower façade's portal doorways.

These exterior views are nice, granted. But you ain't seen nothin' yet. Come back tomorrow to see the interior.
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* I just checked what I said last week, to see if I promised to do this or only indicated I might. As I reviewed that day's entry, and others below it, I realized that this fotoblog is now my favorite site on the Internet. If you like it too and have not yet bookmarked it, why not add it to your bookmarks or "Favorite Places" now, and tell others about it?

Owls to Newark

There is an expression in German "Like carrying owls to Athens", which means the same as the British expression "taking coals to Newcastle" (a port in Northern England that was a major center for the export of coal), that is, doing something unnecessary because there's already plenty there. Exactly what the "owl" represented is unclear, that is, actual owls nesting among the crevices of the Acropolis, or figurative owls, meaning either the wisdom represented by the owl or the coins that bore the owl on one side as many of our coins bear an eagle on one side. Newark has both eagles and owls, at least in statuary.

In case you don't recognize that ornate rooftop frieze, here's a larger view.

If you still do not recognize it, that may be because you can't see the peaked roof above, which slopes away too low to be seen from this angle. The view is, of course, the top of the central tower of Arts High on MLK Boulevard. Purty, huh?
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It is insufficiently appreciated that Newark is one of the Nation's largest "college towns", there being over 27,000 students in institutions of higher education within the city. So the owl is as appropriate a symbol of Newark as the lions you can see in statuary form elsewhere around Newark.

Window view

Following up yesterday's foto of a view inside Newark Penn Station, here's a view out a couple of windows toward the far southern end of the platform of Track 1. The two buildings are Gateway One on the right and Gateway Two on the left.

Track 1

I'm back to commuting to New York, at least for a while, and took some pix in Newark Penn Station while waiting for the train. This one turned out looking a bit abstract because cameras see things differently from people. Especially do cameras that apply automatic exposure and focus controls see things differently.

That's an Acela locomotive on the tracks. Amtrak owns the trackage and the station, which can be very irritating because on-time NJ Transit trains often have to wait for late Amtrak trains to pass before they are allowed to enter. New Jersey should just buy Amtrak and run the damned thing right. NJTransit knows how to run a railroad, and one thing it would not do is delay on-time trains to accommodate late trains.

Arena steel rises

I was heartened to see, near the start of Saturday's walking tour, that steelwork has indeed started to rise on the Newark Arena. By the time Cory Booker takes office July 1st, the outline framing of the entire structure should be in place, and only an idiot would even try to cancel the project at that point. Booker is supposed to be brite, but he said as recently as two weeks before last week's election that he would review the contracts carefully and if there is any way to cancel the project, he would do so. Let's hope he was just grandstanding.
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This is the way the project looked last Saturday, from two slitely different viewing spots on Broad Street. This first picture centers on the construction crane and contains an illusion whereby it looks like the crane is lifting the microwave-antenna mast atop One Gateway Center. The original foto shows that there is actually a considerable gap between the bottom of the crane's hoist and the top of the mast, but the mind's eye draws a line between the two.

This second picture shows the wider Downtown context.

I'm very pleased that the project is proceeding. If I weren't so cool and sophisticated, I'd say I was "excited".

Brick Towers

I hadn't known the location of Brick Towers, where mayor-elect Cory Booker lives, until I asked Jeffrey Bennett, the guide on our walking tour Saturday. He said we were just coming up to it, he thought. There on MLK Boulevard was a leafy complex of two tall brick buildings that looked, I thought, pretty nice to be a 'notorious public-housing complex'. Besides, I thought the Stella Wright homes, which I saw explosively demolished more than three years ago, were the last of the high-rise public housing projects in Newark.
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An older woman was standing by the steps to the plaza, and I asked her if this was Brick Towers. She nodded. I asked which building Cory Booker lives in and she pointed to this one, to the right of the plaza.

She then volunteered that I was talking to the president (of the tenants association, I assume), and then expressed indignation that tho the outside looks fine, it's all torn up inside due, she says, to actions by the Housing Authority, not the tenants. She says the Housing Authority wants an excuse to tear the buildings down. I don't know why they would, because they look fine.
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Virginia Jones is her name, and she demurred when I asked if she would like to be in the picture for this blog. (I told her I have a fotoblog about Newark and gave her my card.) She'd prefer that other tenants be in a group shot, but I don't know when I'll get back there. I said I'd be happy to have a group picture if someone could arrange it and notify me. So maybe someday soon you'll see a group of Brick Towers tenants here, and learn more about the complex.

Lincoln Park church

It's "Church Day" on the Newark USA blog again, so let's look at two pix of what began as a church for the Dutch Reformed Church, a Calvinist sect like the Presbyterians. When the area ran out of Calvinists, it became Iglesia Roca de Salvacion (Rock of Salvation Church).

There is some disagreement about the original name and date of construction. NJChurchscape.com says:

Although it appears in many records as the First Reformed church, chiseled above the main entrance is "Clinton Avenue Reformed Church."

I'll take their word for it, since I didn't notice that when I was there and I don't have that area of the building in my fotos.
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The Newark Preservation & Landmarks Committee says it was built in 1873. NJChurchscape says 1870.
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On one thing everyone agrees: it is a magnificent structure.

Took the tour!

Today was the first walking tour conducted by Jeffrey Bennett, webmaster of the Newarkology website, which focuses on Newark history as reflected in surviving structures, statues, and the like.
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I headed out a tad late, to meet up with the group at the start point, the Four Corners (Broad and Market Streets). But my car battery was kaput! I've had trouble lately and guess I just have to bite the bullet and buy a new battery. No obstante. (Not to be stopped,) I headed for the bus. The No. 1 (yup, No. 1 in the entire state of New Jersey) runs on 18th Avenue, the southern end of my block. I got to the Four Corners 35 minutes late, so walked quickly (for me; I've had surgery on both knees) south on Broad Street to catch up, but taking pix along the way.
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Approaching Symphony Hall, I saw a little group with a guy in the khaki pants and maroon shirt that Jeff (or should I have called him "Jeffrey"?) said he'd be wearing. He saw me coming and waved to let me know that that was indeed the tour group. I don't know how he recognized me from 500 feet, but he did.

I listened as Jeff told us something of the history of Symphony Hall. It was built by the Shriners (a division of the Masons), but they couldn't keep it going, especially inasmuch as some members did not come thru with the money they had pledged. Then it served as a movie theater and, later, as home to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra — thus the hall's current name. In 1997, however, the Symphony moved to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. How rude. Well, at least NJPAC is also in Newark, the cultural capital of New Jersey. Indeed, if New York (that spoiler) weren't part of the Tristate Metropolitan Area, Newark would be the cultural capital of the region!
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Symphony Hall continues to serve as a major performing arts venue. Patti LaBelle has sung there, and plays by the likes of Tyler Perry have stopped by.
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As we set off, I noticed a gentleman planting flowers in the tree pits along Broad Street, and was struck by how much better the sidewalk looked with that little addition. Compare the picture above with the picture below to see if you agree.

We then headed farther south, toward Lincoln Park. (I was tempted to say "Downtown", except that directions in Newark are still somewhat confused in my mind. "Crosstown", as in the designation of the #90 and #94 buses, means north-south. Downtown Newark begins, on the west, at about University Avenue, and seems to end on the east at Newark Penn Station. Thereafter, going east, you're in "The Ironbound". But shouldn't the Ironbound be merely farther "Downtown", for being farther east, if north-south is "crosstown"? It's very confusing, especially if you have become accustomed to the pattern of Manhattan, where Uptown means north(east) and Downtown means south(west).)
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We walked past the ruins of South Park Presbyterian Church, rgwb along the northern edge of Lincoln Park, then past the splendiferous First Reformed Church (originally a Dutch Reformed Church, the church my Protestant ancestors adhered to, tho my immediate family is mixed, Catholic-Protestant). We viewed the urban mansions of several of Newark's most illustrious families, including the present home of a Rutgers professor and his wife, CEO of the Newark Museum.
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Then we crossed over first into Clinton Park (Colleoni Park, for the statue there) and then into Lincoln Park itself; looked at some of the things inside the park; then ended up at the magnificent statuary (around a tall flagpole) that is called "Planting the Standard of Democracy".

You know, I had thought the figures around the base of the flagpole were only about 3/4 lifesize, but now, looking at this picture, I think maybe they are closer to actual size.
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At that point, the tour had lasted one and three quarters hours, but neither our guide nor the group had wearied. So we got a bonus, a guided tour of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (formerly "High Street"), from the Lincoln Park end as far as Springfield Avenue.
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Along the way, we stopped at Hopewell Baptist Church, which was built as B'nai Jeshurun, a Reform Jewish synagog. Our guide, being himself Jewish, was able to tell us something of the religious attitudes of the congregation, more than just the date-history of events. He said that the interior is magnificent, and that Hopewell did nothing to erase the traces of the building's Reform Jewish past. The congregation started as extremely liberal, and non-Zionist. After it left Newark for South Orange, it became less liberal and pro-Zionist. They should have stayed in Newark. Come on back!
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We pressed him to see if we could get inside. We all walked a couple of hundred feet back on the left of the building and found a guard who was willing to let our little group in, tho he was initially confused, because a Jewish family intimately connected with the history of the building had reserved time to tour the building tomorrow! Tho we had not reserved time, the generous and indulgent black gentleman on guard duty turned on the lites and let us in.
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The interior is stunningly beautiful, as you will in time see, as I upload pix to this site, perhaps next Saturday (the Jewish sabbath, for the B'nai Jeshurun period) and Sunday (the Christian sabbath, for the Hopewell Baptist period). For tomorrow's "church day", however, I'll show something else.
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The old B'nai Jeshurun Newark puts to shame every other synagog I have ever visited. I admit that's not a great many. I've seen a lot more cathedrals and distinguished churches. But I'm sure you would be hard-pressed to find, anywhere on Earth, a more magnificent synagog than what Reform Jews built in Newark as B'nai Jeshurun. Stay tuned, and you'll see pictures of that wonderful building.
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We then walked the rest of the distance to Springfield Avenue (which really does go all the way to Springfield, Union County), past Arts High School, (the former) Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Saint Mary's (R.C.) Church, and Saint Benedict's Academy, then back to the Four Corners.
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The weather was glorious, despite a forecast of possible showers. I got sunburned! (I have got to find my straw hat with the wide brim.) I hope I don't peel. Like most people, I look better with a suntan than pale.
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I took 158 pictures along the path of this tour, about 150 of which are not bad. (I remembered to take a spare battery but didn't need it.) I erased the eight shots that weren't so hot. Now, as far as anyone knows who looks at the camera's chip or my computer copy, I took zero bad pictures. What a terrific fotografer! Zero bad pix!
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Eric, another of the participants in the tour, had a film camera with a wide-angle lens. I envied his wide-view capability, since I don't have a wide-angle lens on my digital. That comes only with cameras costing hundreds of dollars more than mine.
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I really enjoyed the tour, and highly recommend that anyone interested in Newark history sign on for Jeffrey Bennett's next walking tour, of the Weequahic area in southern Newark sometime in June or July. Contact him directly for specific date, time, pricing, and other information.
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The pictures I took on the tour provide me a rich treasure-trove to keep this picture-a-day fotoblog going for weeks, without my having to take one more picture. But, of course, I'm always taking pictures. I carry my camera with me much of the time, and never know when something will force me to trip the shutter.

Detail from the past

I was walking home from the local convenience store the other day and noticed this little stained-glass window in the house at the corner of my block.

Such windows are a graceful touch from an earlier era. Our guide on tomorrow's walking tour will be pointing out many of the historical aspects of the buildings we pass (assuming I'm not kept at the office preposterously late tonite so will be able to make it at 11:15 tomorrow on the southeast corner of Broad and Market — that's the one with the little police hut). Many older buildings have little details that add to the richness of texture, often around the main entrance and just above the first floor. I'll look for such things as we pass. See you there?

New and old in Newark

Today's foto is of a pair of buildings that are intended for recycling from business uses to upscale housing, tho at the time I took this picture, I saw no sign that work had begun. The long, low building used to be Hahne's department store, and the taller building (16 stories) behind is the Griffith Building. The two-building renovation is mentioned at the Emporis buildings website, and I have earlier shown a closer, so not nearly so complete, view of the pair. I took this picture from Military Park earlier this spring, before leaves on the trees would have blocked much of this view.

Saturday is the scheduled date for a walking tour of the area along Broad Street from the Four Corners to Lincoln Park. The guide is Jeffrey Bennett, webmaster of Newarkology, a website that provides fotograffic tours of various Newark sites, complete with historic background, so he won't just be pointing to a structure and giving its name. He's likely also to know something about its place in Newark history.I wonder if this first walking tour will be held if it rains, as some forecasts suggest it might. If you are planning to attend, I suggest you contact Mr. Bennett and ask if it will go ahead, as the great old song put it, "come rain or come shine".

Art, static and moving

Today's foto is of Gutzon Borglum's largest bronze statue, Wars of America, foreground, with NJPAC in the background. Statuary is three-dimensional stationary art. NJPAC is filled with three-dimensional art in motion. Add in the Newark Museum not far from this area, and you have two-dimensional art covered too. You see why I call this New Jersey's most cultured city.

Newark is also the subject of my political blog today, on a comment WABC-TV reported that Oprah Winfrey made to Cory Booker on his winning election as mayor last nite. Click here to see that discussion.

Bridge Street bridge at nite

Here is the northern portion of Downtown as seen from the Harrison shore at nite.

Note how many buildings are lited to draw attention to themselves. Every year there seem to be more buildings floodlited at nite. Our pride is showing.

Highrise housing

Today's foto shows two highrise apartment buildings (I believe) near the Newark Campus of UMDNJ (the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey), as seen from West Market Street. Highrises are still fairly unusual in Newark. Things can't stay that way once the empty lots fill up with the townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings now popping up like mushrooms in all wards. I hope that as Newark grows taller, it stays as green as it is today.

NYTimes article, St. Joseph's Plaza pic

The real estate section of today's New York Times contains a story about a young Newark artist and his inexpensive digs in the Colonnade Apartments, designed by "starchitect" Mies van der Rohe. Mies is the guy who came up with the expression "less is more" to describe his minimalist approach to architecture.
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I met Matt Gosser, the subject of the article, at a group show his work dominated, about the old Pabst Brewery and its immense "Bottle" water tower, at NJIT last December. I liked a lot of what he made, including some furniture cobbled together from castoff industrial parts taken from the brewery during its demolition, that was surprisingly comfy. I particularly liked the swinging couch, conveyor-belt chair, and roller chaise.
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I thought I'd taken a few pictures of that show, but don't recall having seen them thereafter. I just checked my computer files and archival CD-ROMs, and don't see any. So either I didn't take pix (I may have left the camera in the car, and the sidewalks were snowy, so I might not have gone back for it) or they're still in that camera. If ever I find them, I'll show the best here. Meanwhile, you can check a few pix of that show at Gosser's own website, tho I don't see any picture of the couch there. The show looks stark and bare in those pix, but it was actually more welcoming at the closing party.
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Today's "Church Day" foto is of an old church creatively recycled into, among other things, The Priory, a restaurant with regularly scheduled entertainment, and the corporate headquarters of the New Community Corporation, a major force in Newark's revitalization.

The building was originally St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (built between 1871 and 1880), and is a registered historic place on the lists maintained by The Newark Preservation & Landmarks Committee ("Saving a City's Heritage").
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Architecture is plainly the most important of all the arts, because it forms the canvas of public life. Aside from buildings whose forms themselves constitute art, however, great cities pepper the ambient view with individual smaller works of art to complement buildings, commemorate events, delite the visual senses, and sometimes make us think about things in a different, visual way. Newark has a considerable amount of public art, by some hugely distinguished artists of the past, but could use a lot more, by today's up-and-coming artists.
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Artists have led the resurgence of many cities, and given them a panache they would not otherwise have, making them destinations rather than places to pass thru without stopping. I hope the New York Times article gets a lot of artists thinking about how much cheaper it is to live in Newark — $600 a month for an apartment in a landmark building by the world's greatest modernist architect! — than Manhattan, Brooklyn, or other major art centers of this region. To the extent people outside the region see this article, it might also inspire an influx from more distant places. We can use every (good) artist we can get, be it from Bergen Street, Boston, Barcelona, or Beijing.

Wisteria days

I have a lot of work to do in my yard, but even so, the plants I have put in and that were here before I bought this house give me flowers for much of the spring. You can fit a lot of greenery and color into an urban lot (my property, 0.12 acre — that's only one-eighth of an acre — is 55 feet wide by 100 feet deep, but the driveway takes up about 7 feet of that width all the way up the south side of my property front to back).
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Crocuses, which were here before me, come up early, followed by daffodils and hyacinths that I planted, then tulips and azaleas I planted, and, before those blooms fade, wisteria, which was here before me and runs all over my yard, from the rear retaining wall to the fence between my small front and side yards, and up onto the wrought-iron supports for my porch roof. Oddly, however, last year's showy display on the fence between my back yard and the 4-family house nextdoor didn't come up this year. I don't think I cut it back, but it's not there this year. Instead, the vines are climbing a tree toward the back of my property, so I anticipate a showy display there next year. It has already climbed into the branches of the trees nextdoor, but the blooms are too high to make a good picture. The human eye perceives plainly some things that a camera cannot do justice.
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Here is the wisteria on my porch. To its left is the trunk of an oak tree covered in English ivy. Beyond is the single-family house on the other side of my property. The wisteria is taking over that side of the porch, and I must cut it back because some of its vines are wrapping around my wrought-iron bench, and any breeze would likely push loose vines into the face of anyone sitting on that bench (which is beyond the frame of this picture, to the lower right).

Now, a view from my driveway of the clump of blooms on the wrought-iron fence that demarks my front yard.

This is a very big, and very good, change from the apartment living I suffered for 35 years in Manhattan.

Another construction crane

One sees cranes in Newark nowadays a lot more than outsiders might think, because they don't appreciate how much construction is taking place to build the New Newark. I tracked down this crane to a parking structure being enlarged at NJIT (the New Jersey Institute of Technology), in the University Heights section of the city. I assume it is for NJIT, not just adjacent to it. That suggests that NJIT overall is expanding, another vote of confidence in Newark's future by major institutions that have found Newark a very congenial place for their work.

Parks building; mayoral debate; walking tour

I channel-surfed last nite into a debate by the four candidates for Mayor of Newark hosted by Cablevision. Every time I see Cory Booker I dislike him more. His eyes were so wide and wild at points last nite that he reminded me of the picture of the Runaway Bride. Remember that? You could see white above the iris in her crazy eyes, and you could see white above the iris in Cory Booker's eyes last nite. Also, he repeatedly disrespected the time limit placed on candidates for their responses to questions, which made him look undisciplined and contemptuous both of rules and of other people's rights.
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State Senator Rice does not come across well on television. He has an impressive resume, and made some valid points, but he lacked the dynamism we would ideally like in the next mayor.
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Nancy Rosenstock, the one white and one woman candidate in the race, is a Socialist Workers Party loon who kept exclaiming that we need to emulate Castro's Cuba.
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Sadly, the candidate who most impressed me, David Blount, apparently stands no chance of winning. Money is too important in this campaign, as it is in almost every race today, and Blount has almost none as against Booker's $4 million!
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I don't know if I will try to stop the Booker steamroller by voting for Rice, or just vote for the best man, David Blount. I'll know when I step into the voting booth next Tuesday, and maybe not a moment sooner.
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Today's foto is of the Essex County Parks Commission building diagonally opposite the Cathedral on Clifton Avenue.

I thought when I first saw this building a couple of years ago that it was the HQ of the Archdiocese of Newark. But there is now a modern building for Archdiocesan offices further up Clifton Avenue (which I will picture here in the future). Maybe Jeffrey Bennett, the webmaster of the Newarkology! website, knows more about this. He is going to guide a walking tour of the area from the Four Corners to Lincoln Park on Saturday, May 13th, for what seems to me a very reasonable $10 per person. He knows a lot more about the background of Newark sights. I know little more than the appearance of some of the sights I picture. But the pictures here do show how well things are going in Newark today.
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Let's hope the next mayor doesn't screw it all up.

Saint Vincent Academy; another mystery solved

In the vicinity of Bethany Baptist Church, a foto of which I showed here April 30th, is Saint Vincent Academy. Its website says:

In the heart of Newark, encircled by one of our most challenged cities, lies a school that has changed the lives of countless women over the past 136 years.

It's a place where an ethnically diverse mix of students has achieved post-secondary education rates of 95%, where school attendance is routinely in the 98% range, where deserving students from Greater Newark can experience the joy of a future filled with possibility.

It's a place of miraculous achievements.
And it's called Saint Vincent Academy.

"True to our founder, St. Vincent de Paul, we are not encouraging the girls to leave the city, but to help make it a better place for people who have fewer opportunities. SVA has always educated young girls for their role as women in society."
Sister Noreen Neary, Faculty, Science Teacher

(Oddly, when I went to check the formatting of that text, I found a different quote, from a different person, as the last paragraph of the passage above. I guess the site floats among quotes, with the beginning passage staying unchanged.)
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Here are two pix, first of a newer section, then of an older section.

The building above is diagonally across the street from the Priory Restaurant at St. Joseph Plaza, which I'll show sometime in the future.

Meanwhile, I got email today that solved the mystery of the tower I showed April 27th.

This was the Borden Milk Company building. I remember when I was a kid the glass milk bottles moving about on conveyors in the building.

I found a couple of references to Borden on the Old Newark website, but no pictures of it in its heyday. That reminds me that Breyer's ice cream used to have an animated billboard we watched go thru its phases as we passed on the Turnpike. I don't know, however, if that was just an advertising billboard or marked the spot of a Breyer's plant.
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Newark is a great location for manufacturing operations of all kinds of perishables to serve the East Coast, since it is midway in Megalopolis and has transportation of every kind right at hand.