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. 

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. 

Village Hall

Downtown South Orange is one of the last places one would expect to find a large vacant building. Despite this I kept driving past the old Village Hall and noticed it was falling into disrepair. One day I decided to park and investigate.

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The gorgeous tudor building with its looming clock tower and German half timber styling is arguably the most iconic structure in the bustling downtown. 

It was designed by E. K. Rossiter, who was best known for his work designing homes for the wealthy. The building originally functioned as offices and a courthouse. It opened in 1894, 25 years after the township was incorporated. 

In 1975 the building was added to the NJ Register of Historic Places. A year later it made it to the National Register. It seems that the space was vacated around 2010, when a federal grant was issued to restore the building. Work stopped after the interior was almost entirely gutted, and the structure stayed that way for nearly a decade. 

Work finally began again in 2019 to restore the building and open a restaurant inside. The restoration is full swing, and the restaurant is expected to open later this year. 

St Michaels Hospital

The story of St Michael's Medical Center is one of the longest of all the Newark care facilities, going all the way back to 1868. At the time a rented space on Bleecker Street was being used for a hospital.  Land was purchased and a small, simple building with a chapel on Central Avenue was erected and opened in 1871.

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There was also a home on the property which was used as a temporary hospital, which is a common theme with most of the general hospitals in the region. Rumors say one of the first times Black and White folks ever marched together was during a dedication ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone for the building.

The Franciscan order who commissioned the hospital had the idea that the city would help sustain the facility. At the time the city of Newark desperately needed medical care facilities. Unfortunately the city had no interest in taking on any expense. After they decided not to be involved, local Catholics were asked to donate money to help keep the hospital operating and expanding. Donors were promised a bed in the hospital if ever necessary. The hospital advertised "130 beds open to all, without distinction of race or color" in the 1874 Newark City Directory. The need for more hospital space was increasing, so the hospital underwent a large expansion project in 1888. Renowned local architect Jeremiah O'Rourke was tasked with designing the new wing, as he was the chief architect for the Archdioece of Newark at the time. O'Rourke is better known for designing the Basillica of the Sacred Heart, but he can also be found on this blog for his work on Jersey City's St Lucy's Church.

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The new building absorbed the original structure somewhat seamlessly. Pressed tin was thrown up throughout the halls. This covered the original skylights that once lit the halls of the structure. An emergency exit was added onto the right side of the original building, capped with a peak giving the impression of a tower. Most importantly, a large chapel was incorporated into the new design. The space featured a vaulted ceiling with tight ribbing and plaster ornamentation.

The corners of the ribs were decorated with colorful stenciling. The relatively small room had the grandeur of a much larger worship space, a true testament to the skill of Jeremiah O'Rourke.

In addition to being beautiful the hospital was also developing quite a reputation by the turn of the century. The hospital claims to be the site of the first open heart surgery in the state. They also take credit for instituting the first cardiac catheter program.

The hospital wouldn't continue to grow so handsomely, however. Over the years the hospital became a mash up of different architectural styles. The mansard roof over the original structure was removed, and an extra floor was added to the structure. An art deco wing was added to the left of the O'Rourke building at some point in the 30's or 40's. By 1960 modern buildings were popping up on the property, drawing away from the beauty of the O'Rourke building. After the rebellion of 1968 property values in Newark dropped significantly, and the hospital capitalized on this by purchasing a large portion of property on the block behind the complex. Many homes were demolished, and In 1969 the most disruptive construction to date began.

A large new white building sprouted up behind the original buildings. The hospital now resembled a short T. By this point it was impossible to tell that the property used to be 2 separate blocks. A few decades later the most modern section of the hospital was built. It was around this time that hospital operations moved out of the oldest buildings on the property. The hospital chapel was deconsecrated, and the buildings were left to rot. The hospital slowly began to decline, and was shuffled around quite a bit. In 2008 Cathedral Health Services sold the building to Catholic Health East. Two years later plans were unveiled to transform the campus with a massive redevelopment, but those plans never came to fruition.

I first tried to get inside the hospital as a teenager back in 2012. I ducked into the basement with the hope that I could find a stairwell that would bring me into the now abandoned portion. My goals were dashed as a large security guard caught me almost immediately and escorted me out of the hospital. I was disappointed, but at the time the interior of the hospital was sheathed in drywall and drop ceiling so I didn't think I was missing much. I nearly forgot about the hospital until they announced that they were filing for bankruptcy protection. The hospital was then sold to Prime Healthcare, who took control of the hospital in 2016.

I tried several more times to get inside during and after the sale, finally finding a way inside shortly after the complex changed hands. I was pleased to find that the inside had been partially gutted. The ugly modernization work had been stripped away, revealing the expert craftmanship of the 1800s carpenters. The buildings had tall pressed tin ceilings and lancet doorways.

I spent the next several years visiting the hospital regularly with friends. Very few people had discovered the entrance, so my friends and I mostly had the place to ourselves. Unfortunately by late 2017 the hospital fell victim to Instagram popularity. The urban tourist crowd came through and began to destroy the building. Thankfully it didn't last too long, as redevelopment plans were approved the following year. By 2019 renovation was in full swing, and the former hospital was well on it's way to a mixed use conversion. Construction is expected to be complete by the end of 2020.

The Essex County Isolation Hospital

I remember passing by the Essex County Isolation Hospital as a child. By then the campus only had a few buildings left, but the one that caught my eye was the 8 story children's building which stood proudly across the large lawn at the corner of Franklin and Belleville. The structure was quite imposing , made of yellow brick and limestone. The building was still in use, or at least half of it was, by the Garden State Cancer Research Center. As soon as I got home, I researched everything I could about the hospital.

Buildings started to show up on this campus as early as 1905. These structures were designed by the Newark firm of Hurd & Sutton, the principal architects responsible for the Essex County Overbrook Hospital. The county needed a hospital to take care of numerous infectious diseases that were infecting residents of Essex. They already had a psychiatric hospital as well as a tuberculosis sanatorium in what was then the countryside, but the isolation hospital had to be built near the city of Newark.

Before long, the campus was becoming more and more crowded. In addition, the children's ward was insufficient for the demand. In 1929, the crown jewel of the campus was built. The towering edifice was occupied before long, and functioned for decades before the dwindling population of the campus forced the buildings to close.

After the demolition of the Essex Mountain Sanatorium, the county set their eyes on the vacant complex of buildings in Belleville for condominiums. After 3 years of remediation and securing the proper credentials, the county demolished most of the brick buildings in the back of the campus. Two structures in the back of the campus were spared, and renovated into office buildings, and the children's building was occupied by the Garden State Cancer Research Center. Well, half of it was.

The group occupied the administration area and the right wing, leaving the left wing to rot. After a friend of mine posted some photos of the interior, I had to go see the place for myself. After finding a way inside, I was taken aback by the peeling paint and rusting hospital equipment. This was one of the first buildings I ever wandered into, so my friend and I spent almost an hour cautiously walking around. As I mentioned before, the building was still partially active. There were disused floors on the active sides, but they were all totally stripped.

It didn't take very long to finish seeing the wing, so we headed out. We were determined to come back to the hospital at some point, but I didn't get my chance for a while. The cancer center declared bankruptcy in 2011, and was forced to vacate the building. So now, once again, the entire building was empty. Plans were made to visit the building soon after it's closure. Unfortunately we got busy, and a number of break ins and fires kept the building sealed for the longest time. The building eventually sold for 3.7 million dollars. I knew it was time to go back, before I lost my chance forever.

It took a visit from a friend from Idaho to get me back to the hospital. The new owners went around and sealed up the building, but a door they missed swung open we tried it. It was bittersweet walking through the building, seeing all the vandalism that wasn't there during our last visit. After spending some time on the roof, watching the police pull somebody over below, we decided to head out.

After posting some of my shots on an online urban exploration forum, a former patient (who had found the site through photos somebody else took) began to tell the stories of terror and abuse he was subjected to at the hospital. He even tried to escape the hospital at one point, to no avail. Hearing him tell his stories sent a chill down my spine; I had walked the same hallways he is talking about, but without the fear he experienced.

A few weeks after my second visit inside, I decided to drive by the hospital to see what had come of the new ownership. I was surprised and a little saddened to see the entire hospital sealed up, with full dumpsters sitting in the driveway. As I watched the owner toss items out of the building and into the dumpsters below, I felt a calm come over me, knowing that the building was going to be seeing new life, as opposed to all of the other county owned properties which ended up in a landfill. The hospital is being transformed, like everything else around here, into condos. Only time will tell what happens to the building now, I can only hope it is kind.