Vineland Training School

As an avid explorer of old asylums, it's been a bit of a mission of mine since the mid 2000s to document as many institutions as I can. So many have been lost with little to no documentation, and as that happens the stories they hold begin to fade away. The story of the Vineland Training School is an important one, and one that I've wanted to tell for quite some time.

Source

The Vineland Training School was founded in 1887 in the Millville home of Steven Olin Garrison. Garrison, a Methodist minister, had two developmentally disabled siblings. His family had long been pushing to get the state to open an asylum to research and treat children who are born in such a way. Vineland philanthropist B.D. Maxham heard of his mission and donated the Scarborough mansion and 40 acres along Landis Ave. to Garrison the following year. 

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

The New Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feeble Minded Children, later renamed the Training School at Vineland, was the very first instition for the developmentally disabled in the state. Those living at the school learned various vocations as well as farming, and lived in small cottages rather than the large, linear plan institutions like Trenton and Greystone state hospitals. The Training School at Vineland was one of the earliest "cottage plan" aslums in the country. It influenced different institutions all over the country including the seperately ran Vineland State School. That facility opened across the street from the training school one year later.

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

 

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

The campus continued to expand, with more cottages being built in 1892 onward. As the facilility grew, Steven Garrison began to fall ill. Recognizing the need for a contingency plan for the school, he began the search for his successor. The man he chose was Professor Edward Johnstone, who at the time was the Principal of Instruction at the Indiana School for Feeble Minded Youth. Steven Garrison passed away at the age of 46 on April 17th, 1900. 

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

One of the first major decisions Edward Johnstone made was choosing a new director of research. Henry H. Goddard was chosen for the position in 1906. Goddard was a professor working at the Pennsylvania State Normal School. Despite the somewhat jarring and institutional name, a normal school is essentially a university for teachers. This position gave Goddard a large amount of influence and credibility. Now, at the Vineland School, he was in charge of the first research laboratory for intellectual disability in the united states. 

Goddard was a fervent eugenecist, believing that those with developmental disabilities should be segregated from the general population and advised to not reproduce. In 1908 he introduced the IQ test to America, having translated and reformatted the Binet Intellegence Scale to English for the first time. This was done after thorough testing on the population at the training school. Two years later he would coin the term "Moron", and introduce it into clinical use to describe those with an IQ of 59 to 70. He dubbed those with an IQ of 26 to 50 as "imbeciles" and those who landed between 0 and 25 "idiots". All of these groups, as he believed, should be weeded out of the gene pool for the betterment of society as whole. 

In 1913 a seperate farm colony of the training school was formed on a acre plot of land southwest of the main campus, but still within city limits. The campus was constucted using the labor of those who would go on to live on the property. The new campus was dubbed "The Menantico Colony". 

At the same time, Henry Goddard began an "intellegence testing" program at the isolation hospital on Ellis Island. The end result of the testing determined that up to 80% of the steerage-class immigrants coming to this country were "feeble minded". Surprisingly this xenophobic arrogance didn't completely discredit him, it actually seems to have led to him getting a better job.

Goddard left Vineland in 1918, one year after his Ellis Island findings were published. He went on to become the Director of the Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research. His work was eventually largely discredited, but not before his influence made significant and long lasting changes to the landscape of psychology, and the lives of millions.

Stanley Porteus, an Australian immigrant, took over Goddard's position as Director of Research. As much as I love the fact that an immigrant took over a xenophobe's job, Porteus was quite problematic himself. He held stong beliefs about caucasion people being intellectually superior to all other races. 

Porteus served for six years before moving on himself, which brought psychologist Edgar Arnold Doll to Vineland. Doll is best known for developing the Vineland Social Maturity Scale in 1935. The scale measures social function, and is still widely used by psychologists. 

Despite the hopeful and noble purpose with which the Training School was founded, conditions and care at the facility began to decline. Federal funding towards research was being shifted away from private institutions, removing one of the pillars that had held up the school. The cottages on the campus were deteriorating, and the exterior fire escapes mandated by new building codes left the students vulnerable to unauthorized entry. 

This came to a head in 1979 when a deaf child was mutilated and murdered inside his cottage. Police completely ignored reports of a tall blonde stranger who had been seen around and even inside the cottage on several occasions. Three fellow students were blamed for the murder, two 15 year olds and an 18 year old boy. The families and several staff members objected to the charges, as they were all harmless and not physically capable of causing the injuries to the deceased boy. The boys also said they saw the previously described tall blond man inside the cottage when they came upon the body. These reports went nowhere, and as far as many people are concerned the murder was never solved. The boys who were blamed never ended up facing any formal punishment. Two of them even continued to live at the training school. 

The following year, two reporters from the local newspaper "The Record" went undercover at the instition to try and see how things really operated. Valerie James and Henry Golman exposed multiple instances of physical and sexual assault on students, as well as a prevalent cover-up culture. Multiple members of the administration ended up being arrested after the exposé, including the president of the school at the time, William Smith. James and Goldman ended up winning well deserved awards for their work. The act likely influenced Governor Richard Cody to do a similar undercover investigation at Marlboro state hospital a few years later. 

The future was uncertain for the school at this point. The state of New Jersey was about to step in and and shut the facility down when a private organization named Elwyn announced they were going to take over 

in 1981. Elwyn's main mission was to depopulate these institutions and reintegrate their students into society through group homes. One of their first major missions was to clean up the decrepit Vineland facility. They began moving students out of the aging cottages and tearing them down. By the early 1990s they began building new group homes on the campus itself, the first construction the property had seen in nearly 100 years. The remaining cottages were vacated and kept around for storage.

The now depopulated Vineland Campus was put up for sale in 2022. By this point all of the remaining cottages were boarded up and in severe disrepair. They were all demolished, in an effort to make the campus easier to market. The only historic buildings that managed to survive were the old Scarborough mansion and the "New School", which became an apartment building. As sad as it is to see the important campus bare, the facility had become outdated, and simply was not able to offer the students the level of care and comfort that they deserved. Even though the buildings are mostly gone, the story of the Vineland Training School will go on to serve as an important reminder that providing the best care means learning and evolving over time. Who knows what the next big breakthough will be? All I know is I hope I can be there to help tell the story. 

 Thanks for learning with me everybody.

Howard M. Down Generating Station

 

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

Vineland is one of those New Jersey cities that most folks in my native Essex County seem to know very little about. Whenever I'd bring it up, people would shrug their shoulders and say "I really don't know, it's just a weird little place in the pines". The city actually has a fascinating history though. It was founded by a man named Charles Landis who intended it to be a "temperance town". That meant no alcohol was to be sold or consumed within the district. It was this prohibition that led Dr. Thomas Welch to develop his famous fruit juice from the city's namesake grapes. The term "moron" was coined by a doctor working at the Vineland Developmental Center, which still remains a major employer within the city. In addition, Vineland holds the only municipal coal generating station ever constructed in New Jersey. Or, at least it used to. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

The original generating station on the property dated back to 1900. For context, this was only a couple decades after we started burning coal for electricity in the United States. Despite being somewhat revolutionary it was a small facility with equipment that was extremely inefficient by today's standards. The two belt driven stationary engines only generated a combined 270kw.  It wasn't long before the plant needed to be upgraded. A new boiler and a 750kw  generator were installed in 1917. Another 1000kw generator was added just a few years later in the early 1920s. Around this same time the Atlantic City Electric Co began to see the borough's electrical generating capacity as a threat to their business. After failing to muscle the utility out of providing service beyond their border, they offered $1.5 million for the existing plant. The borough was poised to follow through, which sparked outrage among the citizens. They voted down the sale, opting to keep the plant under local control. After the strong show of support the utility felt the need to upgrade the plant again. In 1929 a 3,000kw turbine was installed, the plant's most efficient generator yet. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

The plant was completely reconstructed in 1936 with funding from the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. The original 1900s building was unfortunately demolished to accomidate the construction. This rebuild added another 4,000kw to the plants capacity. However, with more generating capacity came more boiling hot waste water that needed to be dealt with. This is one of the reasons generating stations are usually built alongside bodies of water that can be discharged into. Since no such waterway existed in Vineland, a small cooling pool was constructed across the railroad tracks from the main plant. The water was pumped over to the pond where it was dispersed into the air to cool. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

A boiler capable of producing 72,000 pounds of steam per hour was constructed in 1939. Three years later a second 4000kw generator came online. It took five more years for the plant to see another expansion. The addition brought a new 105,000lb/hr boiler, followed by a 5000kw generator another few years after that. The new boiler could burn either coal or oil, so an oil tank was added on the other side of the train tracks. Several homes between Pear and Peach streets were demolished to make room for the tank. The new unit was also the first to utilize a crossflow cooling tower, which was installed next to the cooling pool. The demand for power in the region continued to increase throughout the 1950s. A man named Howard Down, who was the General Manager of the plant at the time, recognized the utility could benefit from hiring a consulting firm to plan out future construction. Each sucessive expansion was done thoughfully and efficiently thanks to this decision. Another project began in 1952, the largest to date since the remodel two decades prior. A 7,500kw generator was hooked up to the newest boiler which was capable of pushing another hundred thousand pounds of steam per hour through the turbines. A bunch of new switch gear, pumps, and a forced down draft fan were also added to the turbine hall. A 1955 expansion saw the addition of yet another generator. This one was powered by a 130,000lb/hr boiler system and was capable of generating 10,000kw. A new, completely modern control room was constructed above the hall, connecting all the complex machinery together. In 1960 a new unit was added to the eastern flank of the building, capable of generating 16,500kw. Another set of crossflow towers were constructed along W. Pear. With the new unit up and running the facility was able to generate 50,000kw. The plant was now one of the largest municipal generating stations on the east coast. And construction wasn't even complete yet. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

Each time a new unit was constructed it was attached to the eastmost section of the plant. That meant by the time the Unit 10 was added to the plant in the late 1960s they were completely out of space. The company continued to have to purchase and demolish neighboring homes to accomidate their expansion. The cooling equipment for the 1960's unit was constructed on land along Plum Street. Down was now capable of producing just shy of 82,000mw.

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

As time pressed on, greater emphasis was placed on finding cleaner sources of energy than coal and kerosene. The relatively small output of the Down plant and its reliance on coal put it right in the crosshairs. The city couldn't justify retrofitting their old boilers or adding the expensive scrubber equipment that would allow them to continue to burn the fuel the plant was designed for. By 2010 the coal units were decommissioned, leaving only the more modern oil units online.

The following year a 64mw natural gas fired simple cycle generator was installed where the old cooling pool used to be in 2011. The new unit was dubbed Howard Down 11. The crossflow towers for the 1950s units were removed as well to clear up some space. 

Unit 11 was way more efficient and inexpensive to maintain than the old hulking powerhouse across the tracks. In addition, the company built another simple cycle unit in Clayville, bringing another 64mw of power to the grid. Unit 10 inside the old plant was kept around to be switched on during times of peak demand, but those times became more rare as the regional grid stabilized. By 2021 the utility had purchased an adjascent building and began moving all of the offices and workshops over. It was announced the following year that the rest of the old equipment would be decommissioned and the plant would be demolished.

I pulled up outside Howard Down on a warm August morning shortly after the demolition plans were announced. The iconic "Vineland Municipal Electric Plant" sign was dark, but the building was still lit up and humming. I had been keeping an eye on the plant for almost a decade, waiting for it to finally close. I first saw the beautiful brick behemoth while in town to document the former Newcomb Hospital. By then the building was hardly ever being used to generate power, but I remember watching workers going in and out of the front doors when I drove around it in the years after. Ten years after the first time I ever saw it and she still looked exactly the same. 

I was hoping there would be some clue that the workers weren't going inside the building anymore since the demolition was already announced. That wasn't the case. I carefully made my way around the building, eventually making my way to the railroad tracks that bisected the old plant from its modern replacement. It wasn't too long before I was climbing up a ladder that would eventually bring me inside. 

Quietly, I worked my way through the maze of boilers from different eras. I wasn't sure what I was going to find when I got to the generator hall. So often when these stations get updated the old generators are ripped out or torn apart for pieces and scrap. Thankfully that wasn't the case here.

Walking down the hall was like walking through history. Generators of different sizes and from progressively different eras lined the room from one end to the next, eight in total.

I did the best I could to document everything, but I only had my phone on me. I intended to return and shoot everything on my real camera, but time got away from me. While doing research for this post I opened up the street view and was horrified to see that demolition was already in full swing. I was sure by the time abatement started all the local power plant goons would be posting the place all over social media. I never saw another photo though. Hopefully someone did a better job documenting the building as it was such an amazing and rare relic of power generation. 

Only time will tell what will replace the old generating station now that the building is gone. I'm hoping a memorial display is installed somewhere for folks to see. The old neon sign that once graced the roof is set to be restored and reinstalled next to Howard Down 11. At least that will serve as a small reminder of the plant that powered the town for over a century. 

The Newcomb Hospital

The story of the Newcomb hospital goes back to the early 1920's. Leverett Newcomb, a prominent attorney from the city, donated six and a half acres of land and $225,000 to erect a new hospital.

Old postcared of the Newcomb Hospital

He wanted his hospital to be the cutting edge of modern medicine. Constructed in 1924 with its own power station and x ray machine, the new hospital was certainly living up to expectations. Mr. Newcomb only wanted two things in return for his generous donation. He wanted the hospital to be named for him, unlike all the other regional hospitals named by the towns they were constructed in. His second request was that he be buried on the hospital's property.

Mr. Newcomb died on September 16th, 1926, and as per his request he was buried underneath a beech tree in the parking lot of the hospital. Though the hospital would go on to change significantly over the years, he would remain buried in this same spot.

In the summer of 1959, a new wing was added to the right of the small three story original building. This was only the beginning of the hospitals expansion however.

By 1967, a five story addition was built onto the addition from the decade prior. The building was also expanded on the first floor all the way back to the power plant behind the original structure. The new expansion would take months to complete.

Over the years the Newcomb hospital maintained the purpose with which it was built, becoming one f the largest healthcare providers for all of Cumberland County. At its peak, the hospital had 235 beds spread out through 300,000 square feet of building space. The hospital had come a long way from when it was just a small three story building.

Unfortuneately over the years, the original hospital building was heavily updated. The only room to survive over those 80 years of countless renovations was the rotunda. A large round room with a compass rose style terrazzo floor and decorative marble pillars all the way around the perimeter.

Despite all of the growth over the years, the hospital began to lose many of their patients to the other, more modern facilities in other parts of Vineland. It was sold to the South Jersey Healthcare Group, who went on to close the facility in 2004.

Over the next four years, the hospital fell into disrepair. In 2008, the hospital was sold to the Danza group. The group received a six million dollar urban enterprise zone loan in order to jump start development on the blighted property.

The hospital appeared to have caught a break in 2012, when the UMDNJ had an interest in taking over the structure and operating it as a teaching hospital. However, Governor Christie's budget cuts stripped out the university and left it unable to expand as it planned. The Danza group resorted to trying to track down other buyers, but was left sitting on the property for several more years.

Finally in 2015, The Danza Affiliate organization for the hospital announced plans to chop up the property and build mostly assisted living units on the site of the hospital. However, the proposal also called for 11,000 square feet of existing Newcomb hospital building space to be renovated and reincorporated back into the new plans for the property. Included in these plans are at least a portion of the original facade, which is a relief for preservationists after a huge wave of demolition in 2015 saw the demise of seven different disused hospitals across the state.

In December of 2015, a news article ran about the hospital, stating that demolition was scheduled to begin in February of the following year. Developers said that the facility was too heavily vandalized and decayed to save, which was not far from the truth. Over a decade of neglect left the developers with no other realistic option. With only one room original to the construction of the building, it wasn't very hard for me to find myself agreeing. While the hospital served a noble purpose, it now only stands a a testament to the failure of both the he healthcare and historic preservation systems in place of this country. Nobody wants a constant reminder of their failures shoved into their face every day.