Down Jersey: From Bayshore to Seashore Annual Conference of the VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE FORUM Galloway, New Jersey May 7 - 10, 2014 Down Jersey: From Bayshore to Seashore A Guidebook for the Annual Conference of the VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE FORUM Galloway, New Jersey Stockton Seaview Hotel & Golf Club May 7 - 10, 2014 Janet W. Foster, Conference Chair Robert W. Craig, Editor Kate Nearpass Ogden, Photo Editor The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Co-Sponsor Introducing “Down Jersey” Welcome to a place you’ve never heard of, with development of the residential/industrial corridor a name that doesn’t exist on any map. You came that one views along the New Jersey Turnpike to learn about vernacular architecture in a State stretches across the State between the two as maligned as any for its congestion and for big cities. As John McPhee observed in 1967, despoliation of its environment. But you have of “the great unbroken city” that will one day joined this 34th annual gathering because you stretch from Boston to Richmond, the New Jersey know VAF will lead you to the most interesting section is already built. Yet even today, after two places in North America. You also figured it more generations of sprawl, Down Jersey remains wasn’t hard to get here – indeed our conference outside the corridor and distinct from it. location is central to a large portion of the VAF membership. When you looked at our website Look carefully at a map: more than a third before registering, you saw that we’re near some of the State lies below Camden, across from really interesting places that you’d been meaning Philadelphia. Cape May City, the most southerly to visit. Maybe you even heard fellow VAFers point of New Jersey, holds the same latitude as whisper in awed tones, “Greenwich,” “Salem,” Washington, DC. The routes southeast from “Cape May” or “the Pine Barrens.” Philadelphia across the flattening coastal plains first pass through the undeveloped Pine Barrens, While not exactly a secret, “Down Jersey” is the largest open-space preserve on the east coast. interesting precisely because it’s a little off the This pine-filled woodland standing on sandy soils beaten path, a little less traveled than other places was inhospitable to traditional farming, and so in our incredible State. Even most New Jerseyans earned its lasting reputation as “barren” ground. have never been here. This old expression for Early travelers referred to the land of coastal New the southernmost parts of the State appears in Jersey as the “Sandy Barren Desarts.” While print in 1940, with a folklife study by Cornelius in one sense, the name “Pine Barrens” can Weygandt: Down Jersey: Folks and Their Jobs, Pine technically cover the whole sandy coastal rim, it Barrens, Salt Marsh and Sea Islands (New York: is more commonly used to refer to the wilderness D. Appleton, 1940). Weygandt’s description still north of the Mullica River. The “Pine Barrens” stands: in their broadest definition represent almost a million acres of land, some publicly owned and some privately owned, much of it forested in pine My South Jersey…though it has industries, it and oak, and interlaced with streams, bogs and is not industrial as North Jersey is. It is largely marshes; all of it recognized by the State of New farm country and fisherman’s country, with a Jersey for its environmental value as an aquifer of fringe of resorts on the ocean front… enormous importance. As a consequence, it is still largely empty of signs of human occupation, . The flatness all about widens your view; Layout and design by Heidi Hartley. although people have come and gone for the far line of the horizon gives you a sense Logo design by Ryan Schocklin. thousands of years, but the relentless rush of of space; the suggestion on the air of the sea Production by the Graphics Office, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. water and the determined growth of forests have somewhere beyond, with its waves rolling in steadily reduced evidence of material culture Printing donated by the New Jersey Historic Trust. mile after mile for thousands of miles, sets your from all eras. thoughts roving to the world’s ends. You are © Vernacular Architecture Forum 2014. All rights reserved. freed from trammels, your heart takes wing... The Vernacular Architecture Forum But it has hardly been devoid of human activity, for it became, for example, the locus of land- PO Box 1511 People have been coming to and through New grabbing ironworks with their tree-cutting, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22803 Jersey for hundreds of years, yet much of the charcoal-making appurtenances. Further south travel in all that time has been on a northeast- and east the routes pass large farms, places that southwest axis, between (and often to the Copyright in this collective work is © 2014 by VAF New Jersey. Copyright in individual works, including all still support New Jersey’s other moniker, “the aggrandizement of) Philadelphia, New York writing, photographs, maps, artwork, floor plans and other drawings, rests with the creators. Permission for Garden State.” Many roads through “Down City, and their spreading metropolitan regions. reproduction in any form should be directed to the authors or to VAF New Jersey ([email protected]) for Jersey” end at the water; the Atlantic Ocean, Benjamin Franklin has long been falsely accused more information. Copyright is not claimed on works by U.S. government employees within the scope of their the Delaware Bay, or river landings, whence of observing that New Jersey was a “barrel tapped employment: these are principally HABS/HAER line drawings and photographs. Unreferenced line drawings generations of fishermen and oystermen have at both ends,” and in many ways, that caricature made a living. are from public domain sources. Unreferenced photographs are by the authors or from public domain sources. has borne truth into the 21st century. The densest Annual Conference of the VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE FORUM, Galloway, New Jersey, May 2014 i Introducing “Down Jersey” Introducing “Down Jersey” property has caused tremendous development The African-American communities tended to pressure. Even so, the population of the shore be set off by themselves, in marginal places on areas is largely seasonal; in winter, the beaches marginal lands, but always with a church to serve are as deserted as Walt Whitman described them as community center. in 1876: The Baron de Hirsch Fund, established in 1889 to help relocate Eastern European Jews, One bright December mid-day lately I spent purchased land in South Jersey for resettlement down on the New Jersey sea-shore… [I] opportunities. Communities were established enter’d a broad region of salt grass meadows, and synagogues built, and some families took up intersected by lagoons, and cut up everywhere farming. However, many who ended up here by watery runs. The sedgy perfume, delightful had never farmed before, and found it hard to to my nostrils, reminded me of “the mash” and make the challenging soil yield much. Within a south bay of my native island. I could have generation, most of the Jewish settlers relocated journey’d contentedly till night through these to more urban places, and the small settlements flat and odorous sea-prairies. From half past 11 never became the populous towns some till 2 I was nearly all the time along the beach promoters had envisioned. or in sight of the ocean, listening to its hoards murmur, and inhaling the bracing and welcome The most recent wave of agriculturally-driven breezes…. I walked off in another direction…. resettlement occurred after World War II, had a broad expanse of view all to myself with the arrival of European Jews, many with – quaint, refreshing, unimpeded … space, concentration camp numbers tattooed on their simple, unornamented space. arms. They focused on chicken farming, which did work well with the soil and climate, and the Land speculators played a prominent role in nearby East Coast cities provided a robust market 19th-century developments. Their hyperbolic for eggs and poultry. The manure enriched the advertisements brought immigrants to the region, soil, and made possible some farming for family many to try farming – some successfully. There use. The culture and memories of this group of were grand plans to develop towns and cities people are being supported and documented by surrounded by farms, in sometimes utopian the Holocaust Resource Center at the Richard schemes that would also enrich the developers. Stockton College of New Jersey. Egg Harbor City, for example, was planned as a refuge for German Catholics, and street names Commercial farming in the 20th century came to A Map of the country round Philadelphia including part of New Jersey, New York, Staten Island, & Long Island. through the empty woods still commemorate rely on big fields, technologies of fertilizer and Printed in London, 1776. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. German cities: Leipzig Avenue, Frankfurt irrigation, and migrant-workers as field hands. Avenue, Bremen Avenue. The plans for the city The richer soils of Salem and Cumberland were very large, with urban and agricultural lots In the Pine Barrens, dense forest cover prevents hatcheries of many aquatic species are protected Counties provided a better basis for vegetable and within its boundaries, but it never grew to more much of a view even from the low hills that from the open ocean by the narrow barrier dairy farming, but the demands of commercial than a small railroad town. formed from ancient, post-glacial, sand dunes. islands. The Atlantic-facing strips of sand and agriculture are far different than the idyllic view Westerly, closer to the Delaware River, in Salem scrubby vegetation have been almost entirely of the “family farm.” At the corners of fields Others came here precisely because the sparsely and Cumberland counties, the land is more developed as beach resorts today, but were once or in the ranges of outbuildings, one can see settled land allowed them to avoid the bustle and fertile, less sandy.