Follow Our Discoveries

Graduate students at Rutgers-Camden are exploring the history of the Cooper Street Historic District, which borders our campus.  Watch this blog for our discoveries in the archives!

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,...

You’re Invited! Cooper Street Showcase

What's happening on Cooper Street?  A lot!  Join us on Thursday, October 10, for pop-up exhibits, performance and story-telling, and a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Cooper Street and Cooper-Grant as historic districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places. If you have ever lived, worked, or attended classes on or near Cooper...

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...

Typewriter’s Companion: Cleaning Brush

The typewriter rose to popularity in the 1880s, when it revolutionized the sphere of industry and infiltrated global culture. Typewriters could be found on every desk in every office building, and many households flaunted their new typing abilities in letters to family and friends. It was typical to receive an instruction manual with the purchase...

Mystery Bottle of Cooper Street

Everyone loves a good mystery.  There is a thrill which accompanies the search for the truth, even when it has been buried for more than a hundred years.  Such is the case with the nondescript bottle I selected from the Cooper Street dig site.  The bottle is unembossed, meaning that it did not have any...

MASONS IMPROVED Fruit Jar by Ashley Angelucci

As French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once stated, "Objects are what matter. Only they carry the evidence that throughout the centuries something really happened among human beings." At times artifacts or objects are easy to pass by without a thought, yet they hold an abundance of information about a society's' ideas, beliefs, and culture. As I...

Glass Syringes Found on Cooper Street

Of the artifacts displayed at the Rutgers University Alumni House, 312 Cooper Street, Camden, New Jersey, there are two items which easily catch the eye of any visitor. These artifacts are eye-catching because they are easily identifiable as needles or syringes.  Yet, there is still an air of mystery about them.  Upon closer inspection, they...