Elizabeth Edwards School

This old brick building which once stood along Route 9 in Barnegat originally served as the town's first high school. Many locals will remember passing the structure, which opened in 1931. 

 By 1957 the Barnegat Regional High School opened, rendering the original building obsolete. However it wasn't long before the structure reopened as an elementary school. The new school was renamed in honor of Elizabeth Edwards, who was a beloved local educator. 

 The Elizabeth Edwards School lasted for 47 years, but as the newest iteration of Barnaget High opened it fell out of use once again. The building continued to be used by the town for various administrative purposes. A theater group also used the old auditorium. 

One day the town decided to cut the utilities, rendering the building entirely uninhabitable. The school achieved momentary fame once again when it appeared on an episode of Ghost Hunters (S.9 Ep.24) in 2014. The team concluded that the school was indeed haunted by their standards. 

Nearly 20 years after the last class was held inside the school, the town announced the building would be demolished. They determined the building was too far gone to save and that the long vacant building was a hazard. After several items of historical significance were salvaged from the building, the structure was cleared out and demolished in 2022. I had been trying since around 2016 to get inside the old school. It was in sort of a tricky area though, which limited the amount of mornings I could dedicate to trying to sneak in.

When the news of demolition was first mentioned I put it on the top of my to do list. After getting up early one morning my partner and I ventured over to the school before daybreak. She hung out in the car while I made a desperate final attempt to find a way in. Under the cover of darkness I made my way up to the front of the building. I knew all the back entrances were well sealed, so my only hope was that I could get a window open. Fortunately it didn't take long for me to find one.  

I popped inside and walked over to the doors to see if I could get them unlocked. Sure enough it worked, so I ventured back over to my car to get my camera gear and my partner. After timing our moves to avoid the gaze of the early morning elderly speed walkers, we slid back in through the front doors like so many students had over the decades. We were fortunate enough to be able to spend a good amount of time inside, making sure to appreciate the details of each room. The most impressive space in the building was definitely the auditorium, but the whole structure was filled with relics of the past. I'm grateful we were able to get inside the building before anything was removed. The school didn't last much longer.

I'm sure people will continue to tell stories of the structure for years to come though. School buildings generally hold a special significance in the hearts of those who used to attend classes inside them. It's part of what makes them one of my favorite structures to document and write about. Unfortunately when I do it generally means they've been demolished, but at least the photos will be around long after the buildings.

689 River Drive

689 River Drive was a historic old farmhouse in Elmwood Park.

The home was built in 1900, with two additions added making the home 4340 sq. ft. total. The property functioned as a farm, as did the adjascent property. Both homes had large greenhouses and barns behind them.

By 1954 the farms were being surrounded by houses. Homestead Rd was cleared and developed, leaving little space around the greenhouses.

The farm at 689 ceased operations and the greenhouses were demolished in the 1970s.

 In the mid 1980s the home and neighboring farm were sold to be redeveloped into offices. The farm was demolished, but 689 was untouched aside from the demolition of a large barn that used to sit behind the house.

The property was sold in 2009 for $985,000 and sat completely abandoned until 2022 when the trees around the home were removed and the house was demolished.

"The Trees" Home

It's hard to imagine how New Jersey looked in 1775. That is the year the story of "The Trees" begins.

What began as just a humble farmhouse would go on to be one of the most elegant homes in the region when Edward Cone and his family left NYC for the wide open spaces of a town once known as Houghtenville.

Cone began developing the area along with two other prominent former NYC businessmen. They built a golf course complete with its own clubhouse and several modest dwellings, telling all their old NYC associates about their new colony.

The group of men would go on to petition the name of the town be changed to Colonia, and in 1897 that request was granted. Local legend has it the idea to rename the boro Colonia was made in this very house. 

By 2014 the home was vacant, and the new owners of the property had applied to subdivide their property, with the intent of demolishing the historic home. Despite explicit opposition from over 1000 concerned citizens, the subdivision was granted.

The home wasn't demolished right away however. The owner, knowing it was a valuable historic property, left it vacant with utilities shut off for nearly a decade. This, often in conjunction with intentionally leaving open doors and windows, allows animals, water, and vandals to get into the structure. 

These intrusions often accelerate the decay of a building, all but ensuring the owner can eventually claim the property is a burden and cannot remain standing. It happens so often preservationists have even coined the term "demolition by neglect" to describe the phenomenon.

Eventually the owners got their way, and Colonia lost a valuable piece of their history. Satellite imagery in 2022 shows the home has been demolished and the land it once stood on is now bare. Another incident of short sighted foolishness from a state that continues to disgrace their historic buildings.

Maple Street School

As Newark's population skyrocketed well into the 1920's, city infrastructure was being overwhemled by the influx of residents. Particularly hurt by this boom was the public school system. The Maple Street School was built in 1925 to deal with overcrowing at the Hawthorne and Peshine Avenue schools.

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Guilbert & Betelle designed the new building in a modest Collegiate Gothic style, which had become one of the most common architectural styles for schools of the time. The structure was quite large, to accomidate kindergarden through 8th grade. The three story, L- shaped building took up the entire width of the block, and had a gymnasium and a gorgeous auditorium incorporated into the dead space between the wings.

The art department had painted this gorgeous mural backstage, which was painted over by the time we visited. Source

An addition to the right side brought the total square footage to 60,760. After the addition the school was shaped like a U, with the right side being just a little longer than the left. This floorplan is common of "Platoon Plan" schools, which refers to an idealized school design which allowed arts and literacy education to flourish together. Maple Street School is the last platoon plan school Newark ever constructed.

The school operated humbly over the years, with very few physical alterations to the structure. Eventually the school became overcrowded like many others, but instead of adding onto the building a nearby synagague was purchased and retrofitted into the Maple Street School Annex. In November of 2010 the school was visited by Michelle Obama as part of her "Let's move!" inititaive which aimed to help put an end to childhood obesity. Only five years later the school and annex were shuttered, as a result of declining enrolment. The buildings were turned over to the Newark Housimg authority to aution off the following year. It was snatched up by BN Property Group LLC. The school sat vacant until 2018 when work began to convert the building into apartments. Shortly avterward the project stalled, and plans changed to reopen the building as a school. By 2021 the structure was open as the KIPP Seek Charter school. I'm very grateful the city is fortunate enough to have such a well built school for the neighborhood children. While I haven't been inside to see the renovations myself yet, I'm hoping they did justice to the historical features pictured above. Regardless, it's nice to see a historic Newark school reopen.

Warren Street School

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The original building of the Warren Street School was built in 1892, after the old school at Wickliffe and School streets was outgrown. It was one of three schools built that year, the other two being Ann Street and Wavery Avenue. The school was just a small 3 story brick building with a rotunda and copper trim and finials on every peak. The architecture of the school was very unique, as the Queen Anne style has rarely ever been used for educational buildings. Apparently Henry King of the O'Rourke architecture firm is responsible for the building. O'Rourke is known for designing many other local landmarks, including the nearby St. Michaels Hospital.

In 1908 Another large section was constructed along Warren Avenue, designed by city school architects Guilbert & Betelle. The pair designed several structures featured on this blog, including the Morton Street School. This new section was built in a tudor style with castle like turrets and arched entranceways, in keeping with the bizzare styling of the old building. Included in this new section was a large auditorium which included a balcony, as well as pressed tin ceilings throughout the structure.

Just beneath the auditorium was a small gymnasium. The room had a two hoop basketball court, and retained its pressed tin ceiling. The auditorium above was also likely adorned with tin, but it was removed during a renovation at some point on history.

A single two story hallway connected the original building to the new addition. The school operated under the stewardship of the Newark Public School district for over a century before closing in 2006. The structure was quickly occupied again, this time under the name American History High School. However they too vacated the building in 2010. 

For years the building remained used as storage for the school district. The lights remained on, as well as the alarm system. At the time I considered Warren to be the most intact of all the shuttered school buildings in Newark I had visited. 

The first time we visited the school the alarm system wasn't active. By the time we made it back it was, and we inadvertently set it off while trying to better document the structure. Within minutes the NJIT police swarmed the structure, so we were nervous to return.

A small fire swept through the basement in 2019, after starting in a room at the rear of the structure. NJIT acquired the building shortly afterwards. 

Then in 2020 it was announced that the school would be demolished for NJIT to build a new residence hall on the site. Demolition began in April of 2021, and by May the building was gone. 

I'm incredibly upset by the loss of the Warren Street School. The structure was one of the most unique school buildings I've had the pleasure of visiting. It was in decent shape, attractive, and could have easily been retrofitted into something useful for the city. To add insult to injury, the building NJIT plans to construct is architecturally unremarkable, to put it nicely. Surely historians will look back on this project as one of the greatest losses of the time for the city. 

St. James Hospital

By the late 1800s there were already several hospitals operaring in and around the city of Newark. However, none of them were in the Ironbound district. The closest was St. Michaels up Central Avenue, still a fair distance away. A new facility was being planned for the Ironbound, but there weren't enough women to provide nursing support. Eventually ground would break for the new building, dubbed St. James Hospital.

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The hospital opened in 1900, on a parcel of land directly behind the St. James Church on Jefferson Street. The building itself was relatively modest, but did boast its own chapel. The hospital building was attached to the school, which at the time was on Madison Street. After a few decades the original building was rendered obsolete, so a new building was opened across the street in 1961. 

The original hospital and school buildings were subsequently demolished. A new school building was built two years later, on the land the original hospital once stood on. The next few decades would be difficult for the St. James parish. In 1979 the beautiful church building, designed by the legendary Patrick Keeley, was demolished. The parish claimed the building was too expensive to maintain. In a city marred by the demolition of some of its greatest buildings, this one stands out among the others. To add insult to injury, the gorgeous building was replaced by a parking garage. The entire campus was now architecturally unremarkable. 

The hospital continued to operate mostly as an emergency hospital for workers injured in nearby factories and roadways. The third floor was used for psychiatric patients. It had a small enclosed balcony, I assume for patients and staff to smoke without leaving the secure ward. The facility merged with 2 other hospitals in the 2000's, St. Michaels and Columbus hospital. The trio became known as the Cathedral Health Network. 

Shortly after merging, St. James and Columbus health were shuttered. The facility officially shut its doors in 2008, though some services were still being offered out of a small building across the parking lot from the main structure. The basement was reopened as a health clinic in 2010, which operated until the Covid 19 pandemic forced the city to consolidate services.

The upper floors of the hospital had already been gutted for years, leaving very little of the past to find. Then in 2021 it was announced that the hospital was set to be renovated and reopened by the Newark School District as an architecture school. 

I visited the structure alone one morning, before any work had been done to convert the building to the school. It didn't take long, as the building was painfully empty. I was still glad to be able to visit this piece of Newark history before it changed any further. The once grand legacy of the St. James parish has been so heavily reduced that one could now pass by without even knowing it was there. I wouldn't be surprised if parish consolidations force the closure of St James within the decade.