Tag: street parked car

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Polhemus House, #69 Washington Street

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The Polhemus House on July 21, 1960:

Anne Mabry writes:
“I remember the Polhemus House as a beautiful mansion owned by the Newark Museum that they allowed to run down, simply because they didn’t have the money or the imagination to use it. One day in the early 1990s, I passed by and discovered it had as its ‘owner’ a little black cat that liked to hang out on the stoop.

“The Polhemus House was demolished in 2011 after the Newark Museum determined it was an imminent hazard. A familiar scenario to preservationists, which goes by the term ‘demolition by neglect.’ The site was transformed into a park reflecting the house’s footprint, which itself succumbed to further demolition with the Newark Museum’s ambitious expansion and construction of apartments.

“Today, not a trace of the Polhemus House remains.”

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W side Plane St looking S from #116, rear yard Newark Museum, on June 10, 1960

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Guy Sterling writes:
“I bought my first house on this street back in the 1980s and lived here for 40 years. When I first moved in, there were packs of wild dogs roaming the street at night. From my bed late at night, I could hear groups of them howling during nightly dog fights on the empty street. By that time, most of the buildings shown in this photo were abandoned, lived in by squatters, or set on fire during arsons. I would walk the whole street of abandoned buildings, boarded up with plywood, or simply left open to the rain and wind. Today, this history is all parking lots.”