First and Most Recent Newarkology Walking Tours

On January 6th, 2007, I showed here a foto of the four of us (not counting our guide) who went on the very first Newarkology walking tour, which was originally intended to cover only the part of Broad Street from the Four Corners (Broad and Market Streets) to and around Lincoln Park. Inasmuch as that took less time than planned, Jeffrey Bennett, our guide, suggested that, if we'd like, he could tell us something about MLK Boulevard as far as Springfield Avenue, and we could then walk on Market Street back to the Four Corners. We liked.
+
Eric K. and I have been on every discrete Newarkology tour, tho I did not attend the repeat of the Weequahic tour. Five of us walked in 23-degree weather on February 4th, 2007. Cue music: "What I Did For Love" (of Newark). (The links are to two different, and equally fine videos of the same magnificent song from the musical A Chorus Line, which I never saw.) The Ironbound tour of August 11th, 2007 attracted 18 or 20 walkers. This most recent Newarkology walking tour, August 10th, 2008, was the first to be announced in the Star-Ledger, and over SIXTY people joined the tour. I don't know if the Star-Ledger will mention the next Newarkology walking tour, of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery October 25th. (We saw part of that cemetery on the frozen tour of the North Ward, as above, so I'll have to check with Jeff as to whether he has more info to offer on this new tour.)
+
We are really going to miss the Star-Ledger if the people at McClatchey newspapers can't find a way to make it turn a profit, and so shut it down. ¡Que tragedia! Perhaps whoever it is in the Ironbound who won the $126 million MegaMillions lottery — did s/he ever come forward? (Oddly enuf, someone I know said they won, but had a good reason not to come forward right away. But they might have been pulling my leg.) — can get McClatchey to offer the Star-Ledger for sale to Newarkers. Maybe s/he could put together an employee buyout (think "Roseanne Conner" and "Edgar Wellman" in Roseanne Barr's classic sitcom) that would create the writers and unions into partners in making New Jersey's biggest paper a success again, even in the Internet age, thru an electronic edition that finds a way to make money, and thru a hardcopy edition that offers the million and more people who LOVE Newark a way to capture images of this magnificent city in permanent, glossy form. OK, here's an idea for the Star-Ledger, free: on the last day of each month, print a glossy, full-page calendar of the coming month, complete with key events, and with a big picture of a Newark (or Newark-area) sight in full color at the top, above the fold. If you like that idea, I've got a million of 'em. All rite: a hundred of them.)
+
In any case, to keep you from having to switch between an old blog entry and a new one, I show here, first, a view of Jeff and the four of us passing by the construction of "The Residences at Cottage Place" on MLK, walking north from West Kinney Street on May 13, 2006.

And now, here is the same group of townhouses, completed, with the most recent tourgroup passing by on August 10th, 2008.

A block south of there is the southern end of the new construction. Here, the horde of us August 10th are seen walking south and rounding the corner of Kinney Street to look at the old Kenney Hospital. Interestingly enuf, Jeff said that another hospital, the original Beth Israel, was on the very corner that the group is passing by, and he thinks the architecture of the new apartment complex may reflect some of the features of that vanished structure. The new, apartment, building on that corner was not quite complete on August 10th, as you can see from the blue X's in the windows near where Jeff stands with the bullhorn that the size of the group required.

This last foto today shows more of the architectural detail Jeff spoke to. It's too bad the weather was so gray that day. It even started to rain very litely before the tour ended. Everything looks better in brite sunlite. Except some people.