Penns Grove National Bank & Trust Company

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

Penns Grove National Bank & Trust Company was established by John Danby in 1900. As far as I can tell it was the first bank ever established in the newly incorporated borough. After outgrowing their first two homes, a brand new structure was built at the corner of Main and Oak streets in 1928.

The building itself was a humble yet handsome two story red brick building with limestone trim. Each bay was separated by a series of fluted pilasters. Six arched windows on each side and a half moon above the front doors allowed the space to fill with natural light. 

The most significant moment in the bank's history came in 1934, when a group of armed men attacked two employees outside the building. The employees had $130,000 ($3mil today) in cash, which was being prepared for payroll at the nearby DuPont plant. After grabbing the cash the robbers fled un a stolen car, which they ditched in the farmland just outside town. All of the members of the heist ended up getting caught, but most of the money was never recovered. 

Salem County experienced servere economic turmoil throughout the 1980's, and Penns Grove was no exception. Deindistrialization and advances in agricultural equipment left the region with few good paying labor jobs and a large out of work population with mortgages to pay. By the time the bank closed in 1991 it was one of the few buildings left standing on the block. Everything else had been demolished after sitting abandoned for years. 

In the early 2000's the borough began a redevelopment initiative to bring life to the long blighted section of Main Street, using the riverfront as an anchor. Things never really took off though, and decades later the area still remains a blighted mess. 

Another redevelopment plan launched in 2024 sought to establish a land bank to try and tackle blight. However, the W. Main Street district was not specifically mentioned in the plan. I fully expect the rest of the structures on the block to eventually be demolished, as they've been deteriorating for 35 years at this point. Only time will tell.

Thanks for learning with me. 

Woods Cotton Mill/Wheaton Plastics

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

The Mays Landing division of the Woods Cotton Mill was established in 1867. At the time it was one of the largest employers in region. At the company's 50th anniversary they they built the iconic building along Rt. 559.

Three years later the company installed a hydroelectric dam and re established themselves as the Mays Landing Water Power Company.

The mill closed in 1949 after 82 years in business. The property didn't stay idle long though. It was purchased and reopened the following year by the rapidly growing Wheaton Industries. Wheaton was a Millville based glass container company  who used the Mays Landing site to manufactured plastic bottles and cosmetic jars. 

Alcon, a Montreal based company who had acquired the business announced it would be closed by October of 2004. Though only 74 people worked at the Mays Landing site at the time, the closure was part of a broader exodus on manufacturing jobs throughout the region. 

The machinery was removed from the site and repurpossed at other nearby Alcon facilities. Mays Landing didn't want the property to sit abandoned, so the Mill Complex Redevelopment Plan was announced in 2005. Tragically, a large fire destroyed several original buildings on the property in September 2007 during the conversion process. 

The 1917 builing and powerhouse were mostly built of concrete, so they managed to escape the fire without any damage. The charred remains of the 1800's buildings were demolished, and the renovation plans were dashed. 

Finally by 2023 new plans were announced that a Weehawken based redevelopment group would try once again to convert the site to apartments.

As of 2025 the complex still sits abandoned, waiting to find a new life. 

Holmes-Tallman House

New Jersey has always been packed with people, but that density was largely relegated to the cities and surrounding areas in its early history. However, the last few decades have seen an unprecedented level of residential and commercial development on once quiet farmlands. These changes have come at a tremendous ecological cost, and constant blows to our stock of historic buildings. One recent example comes to us from the small town of Jamesburg. 

The large home at the corner of Rhode Hall (formerly Browns Corners) and Cranbury-South River roads was built in 1860 by a man named Francis Holmes. Holmes purchased the property from Aaron Gulick, whose family are some of the earliest colonizers of New Jersey. 

The home was a gorgeous three story Carpenter Italianate presence. It boasted a corbel-studded wraparound porch on the first floor and was crowned by a large square cupula. From the moment it was finished, it stood as one of the finest examples of the architecture style in New Jersey. 

Francis Holmes sold the property with the home on it back to the Gulick family in 1869. James Gulick sold the property again just a year later, this time to a man named Jacob Tallman.

The construction of the NJ Turnpike in 1951 changed the landscape of Jamesburg forever. What was once a small, out of the way farm town was now the site of one of the busiest traffic corridors in the nation. The beautiful old home continued to defy time thanks to the meticulous care of the Tallman family. 

In 1979 the home was nominated to be on the National Register of Historic Places. It was an easy decision for the committee; the home was listed on the register that same year. 

The Tallman family loved and maintained the home for well over 100 years. During that time, the Turnpike continued to widen to accomidate the booming population it served. It didn't dramatically change things much in the small town of Jamesburg until 1991. That's when exit 8a was finished. The following decades saw massive warehouse and residential development. The population increased by roughly 150% between 1980 and 2000.

By the 2020's the lovely home had fallen into severe disrepair. I would drive past and look at the home whenever I was in the area, slowly watching it fall apart. One day I noticed the back door sitting open, so of course I had to pop inside. I didn't have my camera with me, just my cell phone and a light panel. The house was in remarkable shape inside. It seemed like the Tallman's took as much care to preserve the interior as possible. 

I shut the door behind me and vowed to return as soon as possible to document it property. I ended up driving right past the building on a productive morning of exploring, so I parked out back and walked through the still-open back door. What I found inside was devastating. The entire interior of the home had been ripped apart. This was beyond just scrapping metal; they sawed through the beautiful pine floors, ripped apart the fireplace mantels, and stole the entire wraparound staircase railing. The home had essentially been demolished inside. 

The home will inevitably be demolished since it is now "too far gone" to save. Demolition by neglect claims another one. 

Campbells Pond Pumping Station

 

Source

Situated alongside Campbells Pond in the South Mountain Reservation, this old pumping station has sat empty for decades. It was built around 1895 when the park was founded. 

Famed architect Frederick Law Olmstead desighed every aspect of the park, including the pumphouse. Olmstead is best known for his contributions to the buildings and landscape of Central Park in New York City. 

The pumping stations main function was to supply drinking water to the city of Orange. It had a capacity of 2.5 million gallons per day. The station ran for a number of decades before a fire put it out of operation.

When the county acquired the property and made it a reservation, they dammed up the pond. But they left the pumping station sitting just over the old train bridge that used to carry the trains bringing coal to the building.

Numerous vandals have broken into the building over the years, and there is very little left of its past. Pieces of the old chimney are breaking off and falling down to the ground below, which prompted the county to put up a fence around the structure. 

As of 2024 the county has actually taken some serious strides to preserve the shell of the building. They filled in the basement with all the trail races and the large well in the main room, to ensure nobody would get hurt inside the ruin. They also removed what was left of the wooden roof, which by that point had been burned and thoroughly rotted. I think keeping the shell of the building around is a fanatic compromise, considering it serves no other practical purpose. Make sure to stop by and check it out next time you're in the area!

RCA Building No. 8

The Victor Talking Machine company, established in Camden in 1901, is perhaps one of the most iconic American companies of all time. They started out making phonographs and recording equipment before braching out into the new medium of radio technology. The company expanded into a large manufacturing and office complex in downtown Camden, right at the landing of the Ben Franklin Bridge. The crown jewel of the hulking Ballinger & Perot designed campus was the iconic tower adorned with D'ascenzio Studios stained glass windows depicting the company's trademark "His Masters Voice" logo. General Electric bought out VTMC in 1919 and incorporated it into their new corporation, RCA. Over the next decade they continued to expand the Camden campus, which is when the subject of this article came to be.

Source: Library of Congress 

Building 8 was constructed between 1924 and 1925. This made it one of the few buildings added after RCA had been incorporated. Despite the expansive growth operations at the massive manufacturing center began to dwindle over the next few decades, as was the case with a lot of domestic production. The beautiful D'ascenzo Company stained glass had been removed from the tower windows, and replaced with plywood before finally being replaced again with new, cheaper glass windows.  In the late 1980s the first large scale demolition project began on campus. The two buildings adjacent to No. 8, buildings 1 and 18 were taken down and replaced with surface parking.

By the time General Electric formally vacated the complex in 1992 a majority of the production buildings had been demolished. That included building No. 4, which was attached to building 8. What remained were several warehouses, the generating station, building no. 8, and the iconic "Nipper" Building. The buildings were absolutely ravaged by metal thieves and vandals over the next decade. They found their way to the stained glass windows, and destroyed them. Thankfully the original glass had been removed in the late 1960s and distributed to several universities and museums. The remaining buildings were demolished one by one, The complex became a symbol for the overall deterioration of the city, visible to everyone taking the Ben Franklin into Philadelphia. 

Finally in 2002, after more than a decade of abandonment, the Nipper building was purchased by Philadelphia Developer Carl Dranoff. Work moved quick on the structure which reopened as apartments the following year. Replacement Stained Glass windows were even installed in the tower. Unfortately things almost immediately started to get ugly between the city and Dranoff. Part of the developers plans were contingent on the city doing an environmental survey on building No. 8 and taking on the ensuing cleanup. Afterwards the developer would purchase the building from the city and renovate that into lofts too. However, the city expected an initial loan of 3 million dollars to have been paid off first. Dranofff saw things differently. 

After years of fighting between the city and the developer, The Nipper building was put on the market in 2014. A Colorado based company attempted to purchase the apartment building, but the city refused to transfer the 30 year tax abatement they had granted to Dranoff to the new buyers. Therefore they backed out of the sale. Dranoff then sued the city, claiming they sabatoged the sale on purpose. All this time building no. 8 continued to languish, casting a tall shadow over downtown Camden. 

The highly visible Building no. 8 had long been considered an eyesore, but that was made worse in 2020 when the building was struck by lightning. Large pieces of the facade fell down to the street below, causing the city to erect a fence around the perimeter of the high rise. The following year a superior court judge ruled that the dispute would go in front of a jury. After two more years of backroom deal making a settlement was finally announced in 2023 that would see the developer receiving a small payout, and the city gaining redevelopment rights to Building No. 8. It was around this time that I visited the structure.

I had been getting rejected at everything I had been trying to access one morning in the city. I decided I had better stop pushing my luck and move on to another city. However, I remembered how accessible the old RCA building that stood downtown looked. The structure was unremarkable, but had a fantastic view of the bridge and Philly from the roof. After taking a moment to smoke a bowl in the car, I headed across the parking lot alone to the hulking shadow of a building. I could tell from the well worn path that the building was both a popular place to hang out for taggers, but also a shelter for some local unhoused folks. Not wanting to intrude on anyones space, I was extremely conscious to be as quiet as possible as I worked my way towards the stairs and began the climb up.

After about a half an hour I decided to get on with my day, so I climbed back down the stairs and headed to my car. I never did end up crossing paths with anyone inside, which was a bit of a relief. Currently the building is still standing derelict, and I'm not sure if it will ever end up being converted. Whatever happens I'll be sure to update the post. 

The Oxford/ Van Nest Gap Tunnel

The Oxford Tunnel was a key part of the Warren Railroad, which allowed the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad to run all the way up to Hampden, NJ via the Central NJ railroad. To this day I'm not sure why they decided this would be a worthwhile endeavor, considering the abundant mountains and valleys of Warren County. However, the history of the American Railroad network has proved to be full of arrogance and determination. The Warren Railroad would be no exception. James Archibald and McAllister & Wiestling were the engineers tasked with figuring out just where this new branch of John Blair's Railroad was to go. 

Source

As the planned line made its way to Oxford in 1853 the engineers discovered the most efficient path would involve blasting a tunnel through Oxford Mountain to reach the Van Nest Gap. A lack of resources and time required that a temporary track be installed to get things rolling while they worked on blasting out the tube.  While the nearby Manunka Chunk Tunnels along the same line were finished in two years, the Oxford tube took nearly nine. Trains finally started using the passage in the autumn of 1862.

As the line aged towards the new century, traincars were getting larger and larger. This presented a problem for the tunnel; the existing tracks didnt allow enough clearance for the bigger cars. Instead of spending any more time and money to expand the tunnel, the company chose to replace the double track with a gauntlet track instead. This allowed at least a single train to make it through the tunnel. The portals were also reinforced with concrete at the same time.

The gauntlet was only a temporary solution. Shortly after it was installed the DL&W Railroad began work on the Lackawanna Cutoff. The new line would allow trains to bypass the backup that was caused by the reduction in traffic at Oxford and shaved eleven miles off the journey.

The former right of way through Warren County began to be referred to as the Lackawanna "Old Road". It was mainly used for freight traffic, occasionally seeing use as a backup when the Lackawanna was delayed or impassable. Trains stopped using the Oxford Tunnel sometime in the 1970's or 1980's. The old road changed hands and saw a few partial revivals which makes nailing down an exact date tricky. I'm sure an area railfan will have an answer in the comments before long. Without regular maintenance the ancient drainage systems that once kept the tunnel manageably damp had become blocked, leading to flooding throughout the passage. By 1984 the marble dedication plaque was precariously exposed and in danger of falling. A team of men consisting of local enthusiasts volunteered to retrieve it, and after doing so it was re-installed at the historic Shippen Manor. 

Source

The first major collapse inside the tunnel is reported to have happened in 2007. That's according to premier New Jersey hiker and historian Mike Helbing. Mike grew up in the area, and is as credible a source as any. The man has hiked and bushwacked his way through more disused former rail bed than anyone I know. A second collapse in 2018 left the tunnel in precarious shape. Route 31 goes directly over the west portal, meaning any further deterioration posed a serious risk to anyone traveling over it. Helbing tried to raise the alarms, but local officials seemingly quashed his concerns. A shoddy fence was installed on the east portal in an attempt to keep people out, but the state owned west portal remained unobstructed for months until they also installed an equally shoddy fence. 

There have been no updates on the status of the tunnel in the last few years. Considering Oxford Mountain is pockmarked with collapsed and flooded abandoned mineshafts, it stands to reason the township and DOT will continue to ignore the problem until they can't anymore. I can only hope nobody is traveling on the roadway above when the next collapse occurs.