Ohav Shalom Synagague

 

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The original shul building of the Ohev Shalom synagague was built in 1916. The facade was made of clay orange brick with subtle limestone accents and stained glass windows. Men and women each had their own entrance to the building, which was gender segregated. 

A small school building was added to the right side of the sanctuary in 1928.

The inside of the sanctuary was much more decorated than the outside. Beautiful hand painted zodiac symbols formed a band across the turquoise field of the ceiling. A grand chandelier hung down from the center. Beautiful stained glass filled the windows on each level.

During services the girls and women of the congregation sat on the balcony while boys and men occupied the main floor. Curtains were hung to divide the genders as is customary in orthodox Judaism. 

Over the next few decades the congregation slowly dwindled until there weren't enough men to sustain a minyan. In 2003 the synagague closed for good. The building was sold to B'nai Yakkov Shlomo Mordecai, another orthodox group.

As far as I can tell the B'nai Yakkov Shlomo Mordecai congregation never ended up using the building. Instead they let it sit vacant for more than 20 years as water and animals forced their way in, laying waste to the building. 

Eventually the buildings were sold to John and Maryan LLC who promptly filed for demolition permits. Initially the community pushed back, but after the developers agreed to salvage the stained glass windows the permits were eventually approved. After a brief flash of popularity in the Urban Exploration community the buildings were demolished by 2026. 

The demoliton of Ohev Shalom had an impact on the city's historic preservation perspective. Council members discussed being more insistent that developers save the facades of historic buildings they plan to demolish. Its a step in the right direction for sure. Hopefully the conversation shifts again to full on preservation before the city loses all its historic charm. 

Thanks for reading.

Good Shepherd Church of Faith

 

The Good Shepherd Church of Faith was built in 1866. It was a small wooden building with few ornamental elements used primarily by an Episcopal congregation 

Services stopped being held in the church sometime around 2013. The ancient building had already fallen pretty seriously into disrepair by then. 

The most unique feature of the building was definitely the barrel vaulted pressed tin ceiling. 

It was finally sold in 2024. The new owner promptly got to work repairing the roof and fixing up the exterior. The building is currently being used as storage until the new owner finds a practical use for it. 

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Temple Shaare Zedek

A few decades ago the town of West New York had a thriving Jewish population. This small brick building at the corner of Palisade and 54th was once a bustling place of worship for these men and women. As the years passed the demographics of the town changed, and before long there was a completely new cultural landscape in the region. However, the Temple of Shaare Zedek hasn't changed a bit. 

The building complex consists of the sanctuary and an attached school building. The sanctuary was built in 1916 and is constructed of yellow brick with limestone trim and an attractive copper dome on top. 

Inside is an attractive display of stained glass and plaster with a wraparound balcony.

Shaare Zedek was an orthodox temple, meaning it needed to have a "minyan", or a group of 10 men, in order to sustain their prayers. With the changing demographics of the town the shul could no longer draw that many men, so the congregation ceased at the end of 2015.

The building was already in pretty awful shape by the time the group disbanded. Before long water had worked its way through the roof and into the main sanctuary. Local kids had used the place to hang out, so there was some trash inside the sanctuary, as well as some graffiti. 

After sitting idle for a few years, the building was listed for sale in 2019.

I was driving past the shul one day in 2021 and was surprised to see a bunch of workers inside. They were stripping all the rotted woodwork and garbage out. It was really strange to see the whole sanctuary cleared out of all the seating. 

I asked the workers whether the building was going to be demolished or renovated. I was delighted when they told me it was being renovated into a new school building for the town.

I was both shocked and dismayed the next time I drove by the building to check on it. The entire structure from the second story up was gone. Most of the stained glass windows were missing, and the dome was entirely stripped back to the steel framework. 

By the time I got back during the day, even the skeleton was gone. 

The new school will probably end up looking nothing like the beautiful old Synagague. Im so grateful I was able to see it at all, though I'll always regret not having better photos. 

First Presbyterian Church of Atlantic City

As someone who grew up in North Jersey, Atlantic City might as well have been Las Vegas. None of my travels as a kid ever took me past it, so I didnt see it in person until I was grown. They were both known to have a gruff reputation, corrupt history, and gambling. Despite that, the city actually holds several really distinctive civic buildings. The subject of this article is one such space that has unfortunately been lost. 

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

The original First Presbyterian Church complex was built on the same site between 1856 and 1857. The main building was a handsome carpenter gothic structure with a tall, distinctive spire above it's bell tower. It also had a detached secondary chapel along S. Presbyterian Avenue. Corrupt crime boss and republican politician Nucky Johnson married in the old building in 1906. Johnson is ficticously portrayed by Steve Buschemi in the hit HBO series "Boardwalk Empire". 

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The church was stripped back to its frame and almost entirely rebuilt in 1909. This was likely done due to the fire hazard the original church building posed. Seneca Red sandstone replaced the old wooden clapboard. The bell tower was moved from the center of the building to the right corner, while the enormous spire was never rebuilt. 

The interior floor plan was dramatically changed as well to accomidate the growing congregation. Seating in the nave was reoriented to face the left wall, which had been opened up and rebuilt to serve as the pulpit.  This allowed the a much more significant balcony to be constructed, nearly doubling the capacity of the sanctuary. Three gorgeous windows were purchased from Tiffany Studios and installed behind the choir loft. 

Atlantic City experienced a significant population decline in the decades after WWII. Eventually the First Presbyterian congregation had become so small they didn't need such a large building anymore. Victory Deliverence Church moved into the space in 1989, making very few changes.

A charity food program known as Sister Jean's Kitchen moved into the building in 1997. Sister Jean was a former chef at several of the large casinos along the shore. One night a decade prior she saw a man digging through the trash for some food. She decided to take the man to a nearby pizzeria and get him something substantial instead. She invited the man to her house the next day for a proper home-cooked meal. This selfless act eventually grew into one of the most substantial charity meal programs in the history of Atlantic City. 

Sister Jean Webster passed away in 2011. The kitchen continued on in her honor, although it wouldnt be long before the program experienced another setback. 

Hurricane Sandy devastated the First Presbyterian building just a year later, forcing the kitchen out. Victory Deliverence came up with a plan to renovate the space, but it never came to fruition, and by 2018 the building was officially vacant. 

The building continued to languish over the years. The Tiffany stained glass was removed from the choir loft, and a number of pews were smashed up and discarded. The doors and windows were replaced by steel VPS panels to prevent further break ins. By 2024, plans were approved to have a cannabis dispensary replace the old church building. 

Demolition began in 2025. Usually thats the end of the story, but this one has a pretty wild twist. I mentioned earlier that the exterior was clad with Seneca Red Sandstone. That wasn't just a filler detail. The geological formation that produces that specific stone is part of a thin network that spans from northern Connecticut to southern North Carolina. The largest band streches from northern Virginia to the southern tip of New York, right across New Jersey. This band produced the stone for our church, as well as several prominent buildings in our nation's capital. Perhaps most notably was the original building of the Smithsonian Museum, known as "The Castle". The quarry that produced the Smithsonian's stone had been out of production for over a century, so they thought they were going to have to make an unflattering compromise duringtheir ongoing renovation. A member of the design team happened to be from Atlantic City thiigh, and knew of the old First Presbyterian Church. They brought a spalled piece of the museum to the old church and held it up; it was a near-perfect match. 

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It took several weeks to pry off all the stone, but the team got it done. The stone was loaded onto trucks and hauled down to the museum. The rest of the structure was torn down, leaving the lot bare for the first time in 168 years. It won't be for long though. A new dispensary means that lot will be on the tax rolls for that same period. City leaders have to be excited about that. 

Thanks for learning with me.

Dominican Nuns of the Perpetual Rosary Monastery

The monastery of the Dominican Nuns of the Perpetual Rosary opened in 1900. At the time, the sisters were worshipping in a pair of old houses along Haddon Avenue. It wasn't until the late 1920s that a large construction project was undertaken to create a proper worship space for the sisters. 

A large, beautiful double chapel was constructed between the houses. Dormitory space was built around an inner courtyard, a design which drew influence from European monasteries. A matching stone wall with heavy iron gates surrounded the complex. The large new building was open for worship by 1927.

At its peak as many as thirty nuns lived at the monastery, each taking turns performing a perpetual Rosary prayer. Life within the walls remained relatively unchanged until 1947, when construction began on the adjacent Lourdes Hospital.

The medical center dwarfed the old monastery, standing tall over the Parkside neighborhood of the city. The sleek new art deco hospital was run by the Catholics, making them great neighbors for the monastery.

After a century of perpetual worship but dwindling occupancy, the building was vacated in 2013. At this  point only a few sisters remained at the Camden location. Once the complex was shuttered they moved up to the Monastery of Mary the Queen in Elmira, NY.

The deceased sisters who were interred on the property were moved to Calvalry cemetery in neighboring Cherry Hill. A St. Michael statue created by DaPrato Studios was given to the St. Michael's school in Clayton. 

Lourdes Hospital purchased the empty monastery the following year. This was the first time I was ever made aware of the building. During a visit to a patient at the hospital, I overheard a discussion about how the sisters had left the building and nobody knew what was going to happen with it next. 

In 2017 a large parking lot was built around the monastery. The hospital still insisted they had "no plans" for the old place of worship. The structure had already been suffering for years of deferred maintenance before the nuns even left. I continued to watch the deterioration progress, just waiting for the right moment to make my move.

Lourdes continued using the monastery for storage and for parking security vehicles. Every time I visited Camden I'd drive by to see what was going on with the building. Occasionally I'd see the front gates open, which was my invitation to sneak around inside the complex. Still, I wasn't able to make it inside the well secured structure. 

Lourdes hospital was purchased by Virtua Health Network in 2019. The sale included the monastery, which was now firmly tied into the medical campus. At this point the building had been vacant for half a decade, which signaled to me that the hospital network had no intention of reusing the structure. 

The building languished for another five years before Virtua announced they were planning to demolish the monastery. I assumed I'd have a little bit of time with it until a friend of mine told me equipment was on site and the buildings days were numbered. I already had plans that weekend, so I was panicking. I wasn't sure if I would be able to get down to Camden before demolition started. 

I decided the only chance I had was to sit through the awful traffic after my full work day to get from Essex to Camden. The whole ride down I had butterflies in my stomach, wondering how badly the demolition prep had affected the building. 

I arrived with about an hour and a half left of daylight, meaning I had about 90 minutes to get inside and get my photos. A shift change at the hospital combined with a vigilant security gaurd in the parking lot left me with very few options for approach. I did see that there was one unlocked gate I could access if I timed it right. 

A few cars passed by, but nobody was paying me any mind as I walked into the lot. As I approached the gate my eyes were shooting back and forth trying to get eyes on the gaurd. I couldn't see them, but I was at the gate now. It was now or never in the most literal sense. Just as I was making my way past the gate, security came right around the corner right in front of me. I muttered an explative to myself and turned back towards the driveway, as security drove behind me to ensure I left. 

From across the street I watched until the gaurd went back to his spot in the parking lot. The open gate was now out of play; my options were now extremely limited. The only other way I could figure involved a very visible climb over the front gate. Even that was an imperfect approach, as I wasn't sure there would be a way inside from there. Just as I was working out my chances I noticed my moment was arriving fast. Nobody on the sidewalk, nobody driving in the road, nobody stopped at the traffic light. Before I even knew what I was doing I found myself flying over the top of the fence and heading towards the storm door I had been eyeing from the sidewalk.

I was overjoyed when the door opened right up, allowing me to hide and check to see if I had caused any disturbance. Everything looked good outside, nobody seemed to have noticed me. I had to check my hands for scrapes since the column I had pulled myself up on was topped with broken glass in the mortar; a common Philly area anti-climb measure. Thankfully the glass was so weathered it had actually been dulled over years, becoming little more than a slight discomfort.

The closed door into the building itself was a sobering reminder that I wasn't actually inside the building yet. The handle turned, and the door began to open. Unfortunately it was almost immediately blocked by something on the other side. I gave a few pushes along the handle side of the door to feel out where it was being blocked. The obstruction was around chest height; that means it's either an interior deadbolt or a hasp and padlock. The amount of give led me to believe it was the latter. 

I checked each of the windows on the porch; they were all locked and wood-blocked. I went back to the door which had some give as I mentioned. I pulled the door shut, then pushed again with a bit of force. I could feel the hasp beginning to give, so once more I pulled the door nearly shut, and put all my weight behind my shoulder for one last bump. Finally the screws gave out and the door swung open. 

The inside of the building was as remarkable as I had hoped. There were stained glass windows all throughout the complex. They had been removed from the chapels, but even without them those spaces were still magnificent. Out of all the large monastery buildings throughout New Jersey I've had the pleasure of documenting, this was one of the finest.

I spent about an hour wandering around the building before plotting my exit. I checked on security from one of the upper floors, and noticed from where they were sitting I should be able to walk out that open gate from earlier without them noticing me. And even if they did see me, I was on the way out anyway. My other option was to wait for the sun to go down, which would leave me walking alone back to the street where I left my car in the dark.  It wasn't a very difficult decision.

I waited a few weeks to see what would happen with the building. Occasionally demolition projects will stall or slow down significantly, but not this one. The historic monastery was quickly reduced to rubble. Surprisingly, despite multiple articles discussing the impending destruction, I didn't end up seeing any other photos of the complex. I'm extremely glad I managed to get inside and document the space. 

The space where the monastery once stood will go on to serve the hospital as a parking lot. Another ridiculous loss for the historic landscape of Camden.