Follow Our Discoveries

Graduate and undergraduate students at Rutgers-Camden are exploring the history of the Cooper Street Historic District, which borders our campus.  In 2021, we are expanding our research area to encompass the central blocks of the Rutgers-Camden campus. Watch this blog for our discoveries in the archives!

318 Penn Street: A Glimpse into 1930s Childhood

The apartment building at 318 Penn Street was energized by a youthful spirit in the 1930s. Throughout the twentieth century, newspapers traced the daily activities of citizens across the nation, and local newspapers, such as the Courier-Post and The Morning Post, recited incidents of crimes, deaths, marriages, and other incidents of daily life in the...

North Side of Linden Street

By Kevin Wakefield The residents living within the odd numbered dwellings between 401 and 433 Linden Street formed a core part of the Camden, New Jersey community. From the 1880s to the early 1900s, professionals and their extended families made up the bulk of residents along the street. They ranged from confectioners to homeopathic physicians. By the...

Academies, Teachers, and Universities: Education on Penn Street

By Audrey Johnson The north side of Penn Street, between Fourth and Fifth streets, in Camden, New Jersey was once a prominent area filled with residents, businesses, and an active and diverse community. That is, until urban renewal demolition of the entire neighborhood took place in the 1960s. The north side of Penn Street, between...

How the North Baptist Church Created Community in Camden

The North Baptist Church Library A Multi-Purpose Asset to North Fourth Street By Tia Antonelli From 1896 to at least 1950, the North Baptist Church Library stood at 317/319 North Fourth Street, and it made its presence known in a multitude of ways. The building served as a library, of course, but it wore many...

The Boarding Houses of Cooper Street

Researched and written by Sheri J. Ezekiel John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip (AFC 1939/001), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress What is a boarding house? A boarding house is usually a family home in which lodgers rent a room for one or more nights. Sometimes they would stay from weeks to...

Employees of Victor Talking Machine Company and Radio Corporation of America on Cooper Street

Investigation & Interactive Map / By Audrey Johnson / Before the introduction of Victor Talking Machine Company to the Camden waterfront in 1896, the city of Camden went through a great population growth. Between 1850 and 1900, the population grew from 9,500 in 1850 to 58,000 by 1890, and 75,000 by 1900. The Camden waterfront,...

Cooper Street Researchers in the Spotlight

Two graduate students who participated in the 2017 research project "Women of Cooper Street" describe the impact of their work in stories posted by Rutgers-Camden: Read about Rachel Craft, newly graduated and beginning work as a historian with Hunter Research in Trenton. Read about Sharece Blakney, whose research about the Jubilee sisters of Cooper Street...

Soothing Babies with Mrs. Winslow

The small cylindrical bottle stands at just under five inches tall and one inch in diameter. Text prominently embossed along its length identifies its former contents as Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, Curtis & Perkins, Proprietors. The traditional account of the medication is that it was first created prior to 1844 by a Mrs. Charlotte Winslow...

Little Dead Girls and China Dolls

It's time to explore the creepy and possibly haunted! When we first began our project on the items found at the location that now houses the student's of our wonderful Rutgers-Camden I was unsure how it was going to go. I had never researched an object as we are doing here, and I was concerned that...

Researching a Beer Bottle By Drinking More Beer – All on Cooper Street

“Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.” - Thomas Jefferson I think my research has been going well! I never thought I would be able to write a 15-20 page paper on an old beer bottle, but now that I have found so much information, I have no...