Phil Yourish writes:
“After my dad returned from fighting in Europe during World War II, we moved with my mom into Baxter Terrace public housing. Public Housing was still racially segregated. I remember growing up in public housing. On snow days, I remember riding my sled on the sidewalk down the slope of James Street to Washington Park. On the way, we passed the houses and corner store where my parents shopped for groceries. All of this is now demolished.”
James Hollaway writes:
“I grew up on this street. On the corner was the Armel “French Ice Cream” shop. Next door there was a candy shop. And next to that a Chinese laundry. I bought ice cream and candy there ever day. One block down was Frank’s Meat Market. When Mr. Frank grew old and left town during white flight, I bought his shop. I had just returned as a GI from the Vietnam War, and it was the first business I owned. I put my heart and soul into that place, selling meat to all the neighbors on my street. One day, some youths came into my shop and held me up at gunpoint for my money. That was it for me. I closed my shop the next day. My old meat shop is now a corner store church. It belongs to my neighbor Bernard Wilks from Dominion Fellowship Ministries.”
Bill Chappel writes:
“One day the City came and demolished the ice cream shop, the candy store, and the Chinese hand laundry. My house is right next door and shared a party wall. I was afraid that my house would collapse along with it. The laundry is now a vacant lot and our neighborhood dog park. The City owns the land, and it’s their job to mow the lawn. A few years ago, I called the City to tell them this, and they told me they had forgotten this land was still theirs. So I took it on myself to mow the grass with the machine Mr. Hollaway bought me. As I get older, keeping this vacant lot clean gets more and more difficult.”
James Hollaway writes:
“I was born on this street and lived here all my life. I just turned 80 last year. This was the Piacek house, belonging to a white family from Poland. I used to play with their son. Their kid grew up and left home. One day, the house went silent. We learned weeks later that there had been a murder in that house.”
East side Pennsylvania looking northeast from southwest corner of Vanderpool on May 18, 1961:
Theresa Randolph writes:
In 1934, my parents paid $1,500* to buy that house at 167A Pennsylvania Avenue in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. I was born five years later in 1939. We were the first black family in the neighborhood. Neighbors on one side of us were Italian. Neighbors on the other side were Polish and Irish. Most people in the neighborhood were white immigrants from Europe.
Now the tavern on the corner at 171 Pennsylvania Avenue was named Stern’s Bar and & Grill. It was owned by a Jewish man. My dad and other blacks soon learned that this store owner refused to sell to black customers. You could enter and sit down, but he would just refused to serve you. We learned to avoid Stern’s tavern and to bring our business elsewhere. That wasn’t much of a problem back in those days because we had a choice of many other taverns and corner stores in the neighborhood. We could walk everywhere, and all the businesses that we needed were within walking distance of our home.
167A Pennsylvania Avenue:
Stern’s Tavern is now closed. Theresa Randolph’s house was demolished and transformed into what is now a parking lot for City of Newark garbage trucks.
Carolyn Peggy Smith writes:
“I was renting an apartment at 29 Watson Avenue in fall 1965. I was living here with my dad Samuel Q Cody, my mother Shirley Cody, and my one-year-old son Anthony Smith. I don’t remember much about the other businesses on Watson Avenue. But I do remember that down the street at the bottom of the hill was White Castle, where we went for hamburgers and fast food on special days. That was a real treat!
“It was a racially integrated neighborhood. On the ground floor was C Nesmith’s grocery story, where I used to buy candy, sodas, and other daily goods for our home. All told, there were probably a dozen family-owned grocery stores and hundreds of small businesses in the area. And now there are almost none.
“I went to school just up the street at the Peshine Avenue Elementary School. Those were the days when we did not have a car. We had to walk everywhere. It was more work to get around. But it was easier to stay physically in shape when almost everything we needed to buy was nearby.
“After having my son Anthony, the highway came through our neighborhood and took us from our home.”
Note: Interstate 78 was built in the 1960s and displaced about 8,000 Newark residents in the Weequahic neighborhood, as well as at least 500 family-owned businesses. A few of these businesses were on Watson Avenue, which used to be a commercial street before the highway came through. The winter 1965 city directory records the names of a few of these Jewish-owned and black-owned family businesses, just months before they were demolished:
– McCall’s Hair Fashions
– Fisher Bros Cleaners
– Hillco Frozen Meats
– Les Femmes Beauty Shop
– Norman’s Beauty Shop
– C Fong Laundry
– Leola’s Variety Shop / Neighborhood Barber Shop
– Norman’s Prescription Pharmacy
– Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church of the Living God.
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