Patti Smith & the land of the Woolgatherers, Deptford, NJ... The Story of Hoedown Hall & Woodbury's Soccer Fields

Not all history is ancient. Sometimes the past and present are related in subtle ways not directly conceivable at first glance. Imbuing importance on places and buildings that have made an impact on one's upbringing is intrinsic in most sentient beings. Even nobler is the ability to see beyond one's direct personal experiences and recognize that the history of a place transcends singular lifetimes. The recognition of a place's importance in time and space transmuted with direct personal involvement can produce the alchemical gold of historic preservation. For in preserving the history of a place (its naturally infused magic) one is able to commune with the dead and bridge a gap from past to present and ultimately the future, allowing it to permeate the confines of the base “here and now.” 

Memories help shape future dreams but memories can only truly live in the present. Thoughtless elimination of magical places from the present rob the future of its memories and leave many without the potential to dream. Preservation allows for the persistence of dreams. Patti Smith just 14 years ago tried to save a place relevant to her childhood, one linked with her development as an international artist and a place not only of historic, agricultural, and cultural importance but also one naturally infused with a mystical quality. However, her plans to preserve and persist the magic for future dreamers was compromised by backdoor deals made by local ‘presentist’ politicians who forgot how to dream, stuck singularly in the here and now.

Often referred to as the "punk poet laureate,” a lot has already been written about Patti Smith and her time spent in 1950's-60's Deptford, New Jersey. Her upbringing in the small development of Woodbury Gardens (about one block from the Woodbury border) in Deptford was pleasant enough on certain levels but undesirable for a budding artist thirsty for culture. Deptford during this period was already in the throes of forgetting a largely rural existence in favor of the rapid suburbanization project that was sweeping the nation. Unfortunately the suburbs are not exactly known for providing diverse culture. Smith in a 2009 interview states, 

“I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library and that was it. There was nothing else. I loved my childhood, I loved my siblings, I loved being a child, but I craved culture. Once I saw art I wanted to see more art. I fell in love with opera and I dreamed about going to the opera. But there was nothing in New Jersey, and the first time I went to New York City, I was in total heaven.  

I had been made fun of a lot growing up, because I was a skinny kid with long greasy braids who dressed like a beatnik. I didn’t really fit in where I grew up; I didn’t look like the other girls – I didn’t have a beehive. And in New York, suddenly I just blended in with everybody else. Nobody cared. I didn’t get stopped by the cops. I wasn’t yelled at from cars. I was just free. And I think that’s what New York represented to me more than anything – freedom.”

In his book Patti Smith: America’s Punk Rock Rhapsodist, Eric Wendell writes, “Although life may have been easier in South Jersey, Smith ultimately found her existence there to be constrictive. During this time, Smith began to question the concept of gender within the confines of 1950s suburbia. Smith detested the overly feminine details that were ironed onto women’s personalities within society.” 2 

It was also her time in Deptford that she referenced in her song "Piss Factory, "the B-side off her first ever music single originally released in 1974. The song was written mostly about the abusive, small-minded people she had worked with during her teenage years in Deptford. She tells in a 1976 Penthouse interview, “The stuff those women did to me at that factory was more horrible than I let on in the song. They did shit like gang up on me and stick my head in a toilet full of piss.” 3 

A 1978 Rolling Stone article rhetorically questioned what the source of her driving spirit was and wondered if it was a “proclivity for dreaming so much that her peers in Woodbury Gardens, New Jersey, all thought she was a weirdo.” 4 One thing for certain, even whilst describing the trying experiences in her track "Piss Factory," she rises above and makes a bold promise to Deptford, one that she actualized through projection:

And I will get out of here-- You know the fiery potion is just about to come In my nose is the taste of sugar And I got nothin' to hide here save desire And I'm gonna go, I'm gonna get out of here I'm gonna get out of here, I'm gonna get on that train, I'm gonna go on that train and go to New York City I'm gonna be somebody, I'm gonna get on that train, go to New York City, I'm gonna be so bad, I'm gonna be a big star and I will never return, Never return, no, never return, to burn out in this piss factory. And I will travel light. Oh, watch me now.

So why would an internationally important artist nearly 30 years after she left an area that kept her from flourishing as an artist have any interest in returning even after vowing she wouldn’t? Well for one, it was family. During her rise as a star, she never hid from anyone her love of family. Her mother and father, her sisters, etc. all chose to stay in the Gloucester County area (her parents having moved to Lansing Drive in Mantua a year before she left for NYC.) But it was another component that inspired Smith enough to purchase, preserve and invest in the area: a sense of place. Hannah MacKenzie for the Project for Public Spaces defines a place as an “environment in which people have invested meaning over time. A place has its own history—a unique cultural and social identity that is defined by the way it is used and the people who use it." 5 Just across the street from her childhood home on Cedar Street (now known as Tacoma Blvd. or E. Red Bank Ave.) there existed such a place.  

Known locally as Thomas’ Field, after Charles Crabbe Thomas (more on him in a bit) there stood an old farmhouse, outbuilding and barn fronting a 13-acre stretch of former farmland. But they were not simply “old buildings.” In her book Woolgathering, Smith writes, “There was a field. There was a hedge composed of great bushes framing my view. The hedge I regarded as sacred – the stronghold of the spirit. The field I revered as well, with its high, beckoning grass and powerful bend. Beyond, to the right, was an orchard, and to the left a white-washed barn with the words HOEDOWN HALL above the double doors. Here, on Sunday evening, we all would meet and dance to the fiddler and the fiddler’s call.” 6 These nights spent square-dancing and listening to live music had a significant impact on Patti and her future life as a musician. In a 2004 interview Smith explains, “I was raised across the street from Hoedown Hall - a square dance hall - and that music is part of me. The fiddlers’ call. The peoples’ response.” 7

Hoedown Hall pictured in 2002
photo by Linda Smith Bianucci

Hoedown Hall’s history began with local Woodbury attorney Charles Crabbe Thomas (whose office happens to have been directly across the street from my own house in Woodbury). Thomas was a square dance enthusiast and began publishing the American Squares newsletter in 1945. The newsletter steadily grew in format and content over the following seven years under Thomas’ editorship and is still in print under a variant title even today! Thomas organized week-long classes of square and folk dancing across the United States.

In 1952 Thomas and his Quaker wife Elizabeth “Biz” Moses, also a square dance enthusiast settled on the 13-acre farm in Deptford just over the Woodbury boundary line. Soon after, they opened Hoedown Hall which was first located in the Thomases’ barn and later in an outbuilding with a reinforced floor to withstand the pounding from 150 or more feet on square dance nights. It was the largest venue for live folk music and square dancing in South Jersey at the time. 8

Charley Thomas is credited as being the first square dance caller to appear on a regular TV program on WPTZ in 1947 and had his own radio program on WCAM as well as appearing on WBUD, KYW and WIP as a guest artist. He has authored books and has made records for Continental, Remington, Playtime, Pontiac, and Guyden record labels. The Square Dance History Project, a wonderful online archive has many Thomas items including links to a complete set of American Squares scans and even recordings of ole’ Charley himself making his original dance calls. Listen HERE and HERE.

Charles and Biz Thomas selling records presumably at Hoedown Hall
image credit: Square Dance History Project

But the magic of the land doesn’t stop at the Hoedown Hall. The farmland historically was owned by Samuel Pote Watkins, Jr at least as far back as the 1870’s. Watkins, Jr was grandson of the Revolutionary War Navy Captain Jeremiah Simmons (1748-1798). Simmons was First Lieutenant, armed boat “Warren,” Pennsylvania Navy, September 19, 1775; First Lieutenant, First Company, February 24, 1776; promoted Captain-Lieutenant, May 28, 1776, Pennsylvania Artillery; Captain of the “Arnold Floating Battery,” Pennsylvania Navy, October 1, 1776; and Captain of the Pennsylvania Ship, Morning Star, 1780-81. Samuel P. Watkins, Jr’s father, also of Woodbury, authored the Complete Set of Improved Lunar Tables ; For Clearing the Effect of Refraction on Lunar Distances published by Thomas Dobson & son, Philadelphia, 1820). 9-15

1877 Deptford Township map detail showing Watkins' parcel (14A) and farmhouse.
The surrounding Cloud family was related by marriage.

Perhaps it was the combined power of these ancestral connections, mirrored in the land that Smith honed in on. A 2002 New Yorker article writes of her magical connection with the field:

She describes sitting at a window in her room at night while her sister Linda and her brother, Todd, who was two and a half years younger than Patti, were asleep. She believed that she could see a community of people, a community that spoke a strange language, moving around in Thomas’ Field, the land across from her house. “It was an eidetic vision, much like those that Blake had as a child,” Patti says. “I believed that those people lived there, gathering light. And I believed that God inhabited that place.” 16 

Nearby lived an old man who sold minnows from his house which Smith describes as a “tumbling shack, painted black and set back in an overgrown patch. The word BAIT was stenciled on the tilting roof.” The area children feared him as he sat overlooking the land in the nearby shadows of his wife’s grave. When a young Patti mustered enough courage to ask the old man who the people were she saw in the field at night, he responded with a turn of his pipe: 

 “They be the woolgatherers…”

Another definitive shaping experience linking Thomas’ Field in Deptford, NJ to Patti Smith’s rise as an artist was documented in her song "Kimberly," her self-proclaimed “most intensely autobiographical” song off her classic debut release, Horses currently celebrating its 40^th anniversary release this year. She explains in a 2005 New York Times article, ''Kimberly is my youngest sister. There were four in our family. I helped raise her when she was a baby, which I sometimes resented. I think I was 11 or so, and I was holding her, and there was this terrible fire in the field by our house.

''It was a strange night -- the planets looked bright, the moon was full, and I watched a barn go up in flames. It was full of bats and owls, and it went up so quickly. I could hear the bats screaming. For a young person, it seemed apocalyptic. I looked at this baby in my arms, this child completely dependent on me, and that taught me a lesson.'' 17

The barn that had burned that fateful night was of course the original location of the Hoedown Hall before it had been relocated one building over. 

Hoedown Hall lasted a remarkable 35 years when it finally closed in the 1980’s. In 1992 Charles Crabbe Thomas died. In 1998 Patti Smith purchased Thomas’ Field and the proudly standing Hoedown Hall. Her plan was to restore the Hall and shape the Field as a public park and preserve the densely-wooded character of the 13-acre parcel. She was to dedicate the park to her younger brother Todd who passed away in 1996; the Smith siblings having played together there when young. She called it her “long-range dream,” but the County of Gloucester did not care much for her dream as they had other plans for her land. Artists are familiar with compromise, but even this was not an option. 

Bernie Weisenfeld for the Courier Post reported the story over two articles in 2001. He reports that as result of a year-long promise to Woodbury, the County of Gloucester would purchase Soccer fields for the City of Woodbury and unfortunately singled-out Thomas’ Field. 18,19 Weisenfeld writes, that a `broken-hearted and somewhat angry' Smith who attended a public Gloucester County Freeholder’s meeting stated the land wasn't for sale but it would have been taken and paid for through eminent domain if she didn't agree to sell.

Thomas' Field by
Linda Smith Bianucci 2002

According to the report Smith maintained: “I had no choice in this, it was sell or face condemnation proceedings”. I really fought this.” “I'm told I paid too much for the land. My answer to that was, for me, the land was priceless. It's historic. It’s got beauty. It’s got wildlife.” In the end Smith was forced to sell the land to the County for $320,000, the same price in which she paid 3 years earlier. Smith remarked that she hoped the County would “make it as environmentally sound as possible, not have paved parking lots and keep as many trees as possible.” Smith urged that the barn be saved and the site treated with care for the environment. According to area residents after a realization that the County would be razing the Hoedown Hall a petition went around to have it historically recognized. The County eventually purchased the property with funds from an open space preservation tax and proceeded to wastefully tear down the historic structure and level much of the formerly wooded-lot.

Soccer fields could be considered a nice (albeit extraneous) asset for a community to have and Smith noted the difficult situation she was put in remarking, “I wouldn't want to cast a pall upon an area that children are going to be playing on. But as a citizen, I do find it to be a painful ordeal… They will be on wonderful, mystical land, and may they have good games.” Converting this wild and historic land into Soccer fields is yet another check mark in the overall homogenization of Gloucester County's rural roots. Picking another location or a re-scaling of the soccer field plans would have been a better route as the County’s decision (as prompted by the City of Woodbury) to force the property away from Smith was extremely short-sighted.

2011 image at top showing soccer fields
2001 image at bottom showing the wooded lot of Thomas' Field

For an artist who penned titles as "People have the Power," Smith rightfully stated that the whole process  left her feeling "unprotected as a citizen." A mere year-long backdoor deal between the County and the City of Woodbury over Soccer fields absolutely should not have dashed an internationally-recognized artist’s decades-long connection to the land and her dream to give back to her community, a community that still to this day seems to push greatness by the wayside in favor of mediocrity. Deptford, neighboring Woodbury, and ultimately Gloucester County as a whole missed an amazing opportunity not merely for a noble preservation effort in memory of Smith’s family, but also for an opportunity for the area to be included in the annals and folklore of a world-renowned, living legend: the increasing magic that is Patti Smith. One can only imagine how beautiful and special Smith’s contribution would have been to the area.

Although the children and their parents that play there today are hopefully having “good games” (my own son being one of them), it is sad to think they may never know what “wonderful and mystical land” they play upon. One could argue this was a case of the “greater good” versus Smith’s personal vision, but Soccer fields have limited appeal to a small subset of a population. A preserved piece of history and a public park would have enriched the lives of many more and given future dreamers the opportunity to weave their own magic in the land of the woolgatherers. 

“And the image of the woolgatherers in that sleepy field drew me to sleep as well. And I wandered among them, through thistle and thorn, with no task more exceptional than to rescue a fleeting thought, as a tuft of wool, from the comb of the wind.” 

– Patti Smith, Woolgatherers 2002

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Notes:

1. http://www.pbs.org/pov/pattismith/on_art.php

2. https://books.google.com/books?id=f6iDBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=%22patti+smith%22+%22woodbury+gardens%22&source=bl&ots=7EMaPtrWiI&sig=oAlCKXd6TNBqsRZUNhwcqWP1k-0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC8Q6AEwBWoVChMI66r5xOjoxwIVySYeCh2imwui#v=onepage&q=%22patti%20smith%22%20%22woodbury%20gardens%22&f=false

3. https://books.google.com/books?id=f6iDBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=%22patti+smith%22+%22woodbury+gardens%22&source=bl&ots=7EMaPtrWiI&sig=oAlCKXd6TNBqsRZUNhwcqWP1k-0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC8Q6AEwBWoVChMI66r5xOjoxwIVySYeCh2imwui#v=onepage&q=%22patti%20smith%22%20%22woodbury%20gardens%22&f=false

4. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/visions-of-patti-19780727

5. http://www.pps.org/reference/placemaking-and-place-led-development-a-new-paradigm-for-cities-of-the-future/
6. https://books.google.com/books?id=9jv7cmDpAw0C&lpg=PA5&ots=BifX5uqwB9&dq=%22patti%20smith%22%20%22fiddler's%20call%22&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q=%22patti%20smith%22%20%22fiddler's%20call%22&f=false
7. http://www.kaapeli.fi/aiu/ps/trampin_ex.html
8. http://articles.philly.com/2013-02-01/news/36661975_1_occupational-therapy-quaker-charles-thomas
9. https://books.google.com/books?id=1HAZAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22samuel%20pote%20watkins%22&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q=%22samuel%20pote%20watkins%22&f=false
10  https://books.google.com/books?id=0C4KAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22samuel%20pote%20watkins%22&pg=PA326#v=onepage&q=%22samuel%20pote%20watkins%22&f=false
11. https://books.google.com/books?id=JfM_AAAAYAAJ&dq=%22samuel%20pote%20watkins%22&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q=watkins&f=false
12. https://books.google.com/books?id=JfM_AAAAYAAJ&dq=%22samuel%20pote%20watkins%22&pg=PA413#v=onepage&q=watkins&f=false
13. http://www.worldcat.org/title/complete-set-of-improved-lunar-tables-for-clearing-the-effect-of-refraction-on-lunar-distances-with-several-other-tables/oclc/17813320
14. https://books.google.com/books?id=0cFYAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22samuel+p+watkins%22+woodbury&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=woodbury
15. https://books.google.com/books?id=HPKIK5i541sC&dq=%22jeremiah%20simmons%22%20navy%20%22morning%20star%22&pg=PA397#v=onepage&q=%22jeremiah%20simmons%22%20navy%20%22morning%20star%22&f=false
16. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/03/11/the-torch-singer
17. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE0D81031F932A25751C1A9639C8B63&scp=1&sq=%22patti+smith%22+deptford&st=nyt 
18. Weisenfeld, Bernie. "Deptford Land to Be Used for Soccer Fields." Courier Post 6 Sept. 2001: B1.
19. Weisenfeld, Bernie. "Musician's property purchased in Deptford." Courier Post 13 Sept. 2001: BB2.

Thomas' Field as it looks today 2015.
Taming of Nature: Check.
Erasing of History: Check.

Truly, the Town's Hall

Ask folks what they feel is lacking in many American "communities" these days and the answer may well be that the very concept of "community" itself is missing. Community can be defined as, "a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals." From the birth of our nation up until around the time of World War II, America was rich with community groups and the "third places" in which they could easily meet. "Third places" being defined as "the social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace," and included at that time: taverns, inns, public squares, village greens, lodges, meetinghouses, coffee shops, etc. Even during times of civil unrest and troubled economic periods, America never turned its back on community engagement and the idea that the public realm symbolized the common good.

Woodbury's Town Hall in its final day. It was torn down for a gas station.
image: Gloucester County Historical Society

However, early 20th century America saw a gradual shift from the importance it placed on communal, civic engagement (a "we're all in this together" mentality), to an increased interest in isolation and escapism largely brought on by the rise of suburban development and the increasing presence of the automobile. Simply, it became easier to distance oneself from problems than to address them in a civic forum. For example, where in pre-turn of the century America most adults participated in public societies (through the involvement in various lodge groups), and therefore actively engaged in direct civic contributions, by today's comparison there is very little involvement. The belief that it is always someone else's job to fix, is commonly expressed nowadays.

Take the morphing idea of the Town Hall (aka City Hall) as example. The original concept of the American Town Hall is nearly a foreign one by today's standards. Historically the Town Hall was truly an open-access hall or meeting space for the community and usually filled with art, performances, plays, educational lectures, and entertainment. Most towns and cities still retain a Town Hall, but this is in name only. Look inside today's Town Halls and we may find one or two meeting rooms that may or may not be used for community groups, but will predominantly consist of offices for the various bureaucratic functions of a municipality. It is the place you go to pay your tax bill or inquire about a zoning variance or have an ordinance passed. It is certainly not the place you would go to a Halloween ball and dance to a full orchestra band, or enjoy a family evening of roller skating (all things that regularly occurred in Woodbury's former Town Hall).

Research shows that Woodbury's original Town Hall sat on the SE corner of German (now Barber) and Broad Sts and was completed in 1875. It was cherished by the community. The Woodbury Constitution reported the opening as, "The reproach which we, as a community, so long endured, the mortification to which our citizens were for so many years subjected, is now happily a thing of the past. To-day we have an evidence of our city's growth and improvement, and addition to the long list of advantages which our City enjoys, a creditable and satisfactory answer to the imputations that we are standing still. The opening of the City Hall on Thursday evening last was an event which reflected no little  honor on the people of Woodbury, - it is marked a new and better era which is dawning, or has opened, upon this lovely habitation."

Woodbury's Town Hall consisted of a large hall on the second floor affording a comfortable seating capacity of 500, a gallery, and dressing/preparation rooms. It was lit by 37 lamps, heated with two large portable heaters, adorned with cypress and walnut trim, and boasted a 22 foot ornamental ceiling. A dumb-waiter provided convenient access from the basement kitchen. Various local commercial enterprises including a dry goods merchant, restaurant, shoe cobbler, grocery, oyster saloon, J. Elmer Jackson's patent medicine enterprise, barbershop and more thrived on the street level, truly making the building a mixed-use community center. It was also the location of the community library and reading-room, headquarters for the German Singing Society, Salvation Army Headquarters, and housed the town's first gymnasium hosting the Woodbury basketball team's home games. It was also transformed weekly as a skating rink and the town's first (silent) moving picture house in 1907 which featured a live female soloist to sing the illustrated parts. The hall throughout the years hosted many civic lectures and nights of entertainment and amusement for the community. It was the perfect culmination of American ingenuity and expression through culture.

This was Woodbury's Golden Age and with the above in consideration it becomes clear that the more value a community places in the recognition and engagement in Arts and Culture, the greater the health of that community. But as the years progressed and American communities slowly drifted apart to live quite literally among greener pastures, the very concept of community played a decreasing role in American civic life. Woodbury's Town Hall was torn down in 1936 for a gas station, which no doubt paradoxically provided the fuel for many one-time residents to leave Woodbury for good. Nothing replaced the Town Hall as the "civic, social, and athletic" center of Woodbury, and city leaders increasingly focused their energy on converting a residential-based city of proud locals to a drive-through business district and in doing so, forgot about Woodbury's remaining residents and their quality of life. A side effect of this quest to maximize short-term profit is that city leaders essentially forewent the trouble to worry about the town's aesthetic appeal. The story is no different across the nation during this time, when a quick transformation occurred and America's cities and towns went from proud human habitats, to current-day dilapidated, plastic strip malls clusters where consumers go in one end and out the other.

Despite America's decline in participation in civil activities over the past decade, the concept of Creative Placemaking through the arts is gaining steadfastly. Creative Placemaking "is an evolving field of practice that intentionally leverages the power of the arts, culture and creativity to serve a community's interest while driving a broader agenda for change, growth and transformation in a way that also builds character and quality of place." Traditional towns seemingly left for dead have been revitalized through Arts and Culture and have simultaneously increased an awareness of their own local History and importance. Quite simply, the arts stimulate local economies. The NJ Arts Council reports that, state arts funding employs an estimated 17,000 workers, supports 37,000 cultural events, and attracts 5 million visitors who spend $125 million. Perhaps more importantly however, is that the arts have been shown time and again to have the power to bridge divides and bring a renewed sense of pride to residents.

APA's latest national poll surveyed Millennials and Baby Boomers on community preferences and dispels popular assumptions on how to improve local economies and attract new residents. The wide-ranging national survey finds that Millennials and Baby Boomers want cities to focus less on recruiting new companies and more on investing in new transportation options, walkable communities, and making the area as attractive as possible. With the apparently failing model of 'business recruiting as economic development,' city leaders will be forced to look at alternatives. Creative Placemaking organizations such as the recently established FAF Coalition may hold the secret to the future success of the City of Woodbury.

Today the former site of Woodbury's Town Hall sits as an empty corner pocket-park along Broad Street in the heart of our once-bustling downtown. Not the best location for such a space and what some in the urban planning field might refer to as a "nature band-aid," but an open, green space nonetheless. With such a space there at least exists the potential for something to flourish. Perhaps "community" through Arts and Culture will once again sprout in the heart of our classic American downtown, and perhaps in towns across the entire nation, as a result of effective Creative Placemaking. Only then will we have the chance to come together, connect, and grow as a community. This is the formula for real progress, not only in 1875, but for today as well.

UPDATE: In 2015 this open space became parking for the relocated Police Station, and serves as yet another surface parking lot along Broad street. 

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From the 1877 G.G. Green Daily Advertiser

former Town Hall location today 

Happy 216th Anniversary, Woodbury Methodism!

Ok, so 216 isn't a typical anniversary year you normally celebrate but we just had to share the following Woodbury Daily Times two-page spread from 1922 regarding everyone's favorite downtown, Hazlehurst and Huckel-designed, gargoyle-adorned church. Way back in May, 1922 the Kemble Methodist Episcopal church celebrated 125 years of Methodism in Woodbury. That would make this May in 2014, Methodism's 216th year in Woodbury... if we did our math right! Enjoy the embedded articles below which feature some excellent images (newspaper quality at least) complete with plentiful historical information. Feel free to download or utilize the full-screen option with the toolbar below each article for optimal viewing.

The article unfortunately does not mention the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church which had its beginnings in Woodbury in 1817. It would be remiss not to mention the contributions to Woodbury's religious scene by the Reverends Richard Allen and W.P. Quinn. Richard Allen founded the first A.M.E. in Philadelphia back in 1794! William Dickerson, a prominent Woodbury citizen, became the church's 13th Bishop. Henry Dickerson, William's father, owned a large farm along Broad bounded by Carpenter which stretched back to the railroad. In 1862, he leased some of the land to the Union Army for Camp Stockton, a Civil War training camp for the 12 Regiment NJ Infantry Volunteers.

The One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Methodism in Woodbury Page1

The One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Methodism in Woodbury Page2

Control Car Culture for Better Living

"We have more to gain [by consulting] our planners than our psychiatrists. We can achieve more to improve our relationships with others by participating in community planning, rather than group therapy encounters. What ails us—most of us, anyway—is not that we are incapable of living a satisfactory and creative life in harmony with ourselves, but that our habitat does not offer sufficient opportunities. It hems us in. It isolates us. It irritates and disrupts." – Wolf Von Eckardt

My good friend's mother was killed in an automobile accident last weekend right here in Gloucester County, NJ. A drunk driver took her life. By now, we have all heard the story and the easiest way to deal with it is to shame the irresponsible driver.... but it really goes beyond that. Ray Oldenburg, author of the Great Good Place writes, "Why should a nation of drinkers arrange their municipalities such that drinking and driving are frequently and almost necessarily combined? “Gasoline and alcohol don’t mix,” says the American slogan. Of course they do. Our urban planners mix them all the time and in great doses. See the zoning codes for confirmation." It's time America holds their town and city planners responsible for what they have built and demand change.

Is this the America we all envision?

I grew up with Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street so forgive my leanings towards a properly functioning urban neighborhood rich with community and mass transit. But unfortunately my real life upbringing was quite different. My parents moved us from Philadelphia to the New Jersey "suburbs" because by then car culture was in full swing and had most Americans under a sort of spell. I suppose my parents ultimately felt it would be safer to raise children in a less urbanized environment, not an uncommon thought in those days. However, recent studies show in actuality the opposite to be true. “A 2013 University of Pennsylvania/Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) study challenges the entire notion that suburbs are safer. The study examines, for the first time comprehensively, all kinds of accidental and violent deaths in America. Contrary to conventional wisdom, urban streets are significantly safer than leafy suburbs and rural areas. While counterintuitive at first glance, the finding is not hard to fathom if you think about it. The number one US cause of death from ages 5 to 34 is automobile crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Deadly automobile crashes are far less likely on lower-speed urban streets.” (Top 10 Reasons for a New American Dream)

Sesame Street set... nice mixed use, walkable neighborhood.

“Social mobility is higher in compact urban places, Arizona State University researchers found. The more walkable the census block — as measured by Walk Score — the more likely someone from the bottom fifth of income will reach the top fifth in their lives.” (Top 10 Reasons for a New American Dream)  I spent the later years of my childhood inherently feeling that something was not quite right about my car-centric hometown. Of course once I reached adolescence I felt downright trapped and ineffectual. When I was told that I NEEDED to drive and own a car to survive in today's world, even then, I felt the perversity of it all. It felt as if my parents told me I needed an artificial appendage grafted on to me to become really human. All the while, I found my visits to Philadelphia with my friends (via Patco Speedline) to be rich with friendly and rewarding human experience and acceptance, compared to my (dangerous) walks around my small-minded town or local mall which were replete with deriding insults and bullying. My favorite was getting stuff thrown at me from cowardly anonymous drivers.

But how does the presence of the automobile really effect community? Cars, as essential as they have become to survive in America have a serious unintended side-effect. They ruin our living environments. We need only to look at Ye Olde Broad Street here in Woodbury to see it. Pre-auto dominant Broad Street was once lined with mansions. Now you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that would want to live there amongst the roar and rush of the auto. Fortunately, with the recent road diet, we have taken a step in the right direction in returning our downtown to a place for people and not merely a state highway through-road. But with most things, it could be better.

The safest roads in America are ones that are not made for easy speeding. The more "obstacles" such as trolley tracks, twists and turns, or even a nice tree-lined median significantly tame the car and signify to the driver that they have entered the domain of humans. The Charter for the Congress of New Urbanism states, "road engineers [once] put the safety of motorists first by designing road and intersections for speeds beyond the posted limit. The idea was to protect those motorists who drive carelessly or too fast. But when the road is designed for speeding, more drivers take advantage of that invitation, and more mayhem results. Proper traffic engineering today reverses that approach by providing physical cues--including street trees, narrower lanes, and intersections designed for pedestrians--that urge motorists to slow down rather than speed up."

Typical Woodbury, NJ Broad Street residence is now the former Bottom Dollar PARKING lot.
Once a grand residence for people has been relegated as a domain for the automobile.
image courtesy Gloucester County Historical Society

“If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places," says Fred Kent. If you go with the former you get an unsightly, unfriendly, and unwelcoming place devoid of real community. Millions of American's flock every year to the most successful Main Street in America to experience what a downtown could look like devoid of the damaging effects of the automobile. Unfortunately it's all a mirage and goes by the name Disney World, but it was once a reality all across small town America and still exists in other countries. One of the reasons Disney theme parks do not do well outside of America is that in most other countries there exists public realms that are far superior to the artificial ones presented by the Disney corporation. They don't need the fakery, they have the real thing. They don't need to lose themselves in the fantasy realm because their everyday urban life experience is rewarding enough.

People have the upper hand in this typical European street scene

Thankfully even in "the most car-mad country" of America, driving statistics have been steadily falling since 2004. Combine this with studies that show 3 out of every 4 US Millennials expressing they would like to live in a place where they do not need a car to get around, and throw in of course rising gas costs, rising car costs, car maintenance costs, carbon emission damage to the planet and war for oil… the alternative for smart growth to build better, aesthetically-pleasing, human-scaled neighborhoods is a no-brainer. Only 10% of Millennials and Active Boomers want to live in a suburb where most trips are made by car.

Manhattan neighborhood event
image credit: PPS

We can choose to demolish every last vestige of humanity from our towns in favor of more freeways and faster byways or we can choose to relocalize our communities and reduce the necessary miles needed to drive on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. I've blogged before about the self-sufficiency of 18th, 19th and early 20th century Woodbury, and the story is no different from any town in the United States at that time. Everything needed to survive and live happily could be found within a 5 minute walk from one's home. Why are we now forced to get in a car for virtually everything? It is seriously frustrating, wasteful, polluting, and severely imprisoning especially for Americans who claim to value their so-called freedom. I can't help but view the car as some sort of gas-powered wheelchair. We have voluntarily disabled ourselves through planning and zoning. 

Top is what happens when the car is allowed to dominate (looks scarily like most of our rt.45 sprawl)
Bottom is what happens when you bring people into the equation

1.61 people die on average EVERY DAY in New Jersey alone from automobiles. Here we are in America talking about gun control, when really we need auto control. Death by firearms in NJ is actually lower than death by automobile, but Americans in general evince a sickening complacency when it comes to cars and the violence they can inflict. "Between 2003 and 2012, 47,025 pedestrians were killed by drivers in the United States. To put that in perspective, that’s 16 times the number of fatalities caused in the same period by the natural disasters – floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and the like – that get so much more attention. An additional 676,000 were injured, the equivalent of one person every eight minutes." Of course banishing the auto is just not going to happen in our car-crazy-country (not until the last drop of affordable oil is squeezed from the Earth) but we have the means to tame the automobile where they enter our immediate living areas, our downtowns and our streets and avenues. And of course ultimately we need better mass transit options... trains, trolleys, etc. 

In the latest poll from the American Planning Association, two thirds of all respondents and 74% of Millennials believe investing in schools, transportation choices, and walkable areas is a better way to grow the economy than recruiting companies. It's time to really get serious about transportation reform especially with bankruptcy looming for the nation's transportation trust fund. We can't keep throwing good money after bad trying to prop up the unsustainable network of automobile-based infrastructure. NEVER put all your eggs in one basket. We need more options. Had the drunk driver had the ability to walk or take effective public transit home from a neighborhood pub, perhaps my friend’s mother would still be here today.

For many of us, we drive because we are forced to, not because we want to and our sense of community suffers all the more for it... not to mention our safety. The automobile must be tamed. We should never let a machine dominate our lives... or give it the opportunity to take it from us so freely.

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This post dedicated to the memory of Katherine C. Steponick and for all who have been taken from this Earth by a machine.

Green's Almanac Precursor, Daily Advertiser 1877 FOUND!

A recent donation from a Green-relation estate clean-out has revealed a heretofore unknown precursor to the popular August Flower almanac. Before Woodbury's multimillionaire, G.G. Green, introduced the world to his patent medicine remedies by way of his colorful August Flower almanacs, shown above, it is now known that he first experimented with a newspaper format. The first of his almanacs appeared under the title Green's Pictorial Almanac and began publication on September 1878. The newly discovered Daily Advertiser Vol.1, No.1 predates Green's almanac format by nearly a year, with a publishing date of February 22nd, 1877.

U.S. Patent Image

This is the only known issue and the fact that it resembles a common daily newspaper of the time probably had more to do with a clever advertising technique than any desire on the part of the firm to continue regular publication. In any case, the newspaper format was switched over to the colorful almanac, which by 1878 was beginning to grow in popularity and usage for other patent medicine firms. Green's almanac was printed in-house at his Green Avenue, Woodbury, NJ laboratory utilizing his nine printing press fleet (see image below). It proved so popular for him that he took out a patent for the publication in 1882. In 1883 alone, five million copies of his almanacs printed in English, German, French, and Spanish were distributed worldwide. As a result, Woodbury's Post Office ranked seventh in the state for postal revenue. Not bad for a small (but growing) rural community at the time.

Green's Laboratory Printing Room

Editions of the August Flower almanac are routinely found worldwide in academic library and museum collections pertaining to early American ephemera and advertising and this recent discovery is an important part of the U. S. patent medicine advertising timeline. Given its current deteriorating condition and being the only issue in possible existence, it is important that this undergoes professional conservation treatment. As always, if you'd like to donate towards the conservation, collection, and digital preservation of any historic item pertaining to Woodbury this can be done easily via our PayPal donation link to the left. For now, the pre-treated Daily Advertiser has been digitally scanned and we here at the VGPS proudly present this exciting publication for your enjoyment below.* Not to be missed is the Woodbury is Looking Up article found on page three. This virtual tour of 1877 Woodbury clearly describes the notable buildings and surroundings up and down Broad, Delaware, Cooper, Euclid and Evergreen and features the old Colonial-style Gloucester County Court House, Woodbury Town Hall and more. Download and view the following images on your computer for easier reading.

For a more comprehensive chronology for the Green's August Flower Almanac visit: 

An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform 

August 1878 announcement of new almanac publication

* These images are property of the Village Green Preservation Society and may only be used for educational purposes or personal use. A credit statement and link attributing the Village Green Preservation Society, Woodbury, NJ must appear alongside any reproduction.