Camden Past and Present

It's been a bit, but I've been pretty busy with grad school. For my urban redevelopment course work I have the opportunity to right about Camden fairly often. Here is my first paper, which I believe a pretty useful way of understanding the city's history. Because of length constraints (which I still went over) some things got glazed over, so feel free to contact me if you want me to elaborate on any points I make. Most definitely not a peer reviewed paper, so please any minor grammatical junk. Without further ado:

Camden City is a microcosm of the growth and decline patterns that characterized urban centers in the 21^st century.  Though several cities in the region and the nation followed a similar pattern of decline, the historic, geographic, and economic circumstances of each community vary. This paper will explore the circumstances unique to Camden and analyze how they contributed to the city’s locational advantage, industrial boom, and subsequent struggles in population and housing in the last half of the century. This three-part historical framework will be used to understand the city’s spatial form. Together, spatial and historical analyses will inform a concluding discussion of Camden City’s opportunities and challenges in redevelopment.

Camden is a 10 square mile settlement situated on the shore of the Delaware River.  Two smaller bodies of water, the Cooper River and Newton Creek, segment Downtown Camden from its East Camden and Fairview neighborhoods, respectively.  Camden and its surrounding settlements have low elevation which rarely comes to a steep grade. This combination of factors allowed for easy transportation and trade by foot, horse, ferry, and (eventually, to the city’s advantage) train.

The city was also aided geographically by its location opposite the river of Philadelphia, which was established in 1682 and grew rapidly as a population and trade hub for the young United States. Although the settlements that would merge to become Camden City pre-date Philadelphia’s founding -- the Dutch West India Company’s Fort Nassau was completed in 1620 -- they were smaller family settlements by separated by stretches of forest. The first plats were not laid until just before the American Revolution, and even then the city was composed of three disconnected villages that did not begin to filter together until the city’s incorporation in 1828. In the city’s first census in 1840, the population was a mere 3,371. By the following census in 1850, Camden had been selected as the Seat of Camden County, the origin of the Camden & Amboy Line (one of the country’s first rail lines, and the first to connect the thriving Philadelphia and New York City Markets), and numerous manufacturing facilities. The city’s population grew by the greatest percentage in its history, nearly tripling to 9,479 residents. 

Shortly thereafter, the Camden and Atlantic Raildroad was completed and construction began on behalf of the Camden Horse Railroad Company (CHRC), which established the region’s first trolley line. The former was the first connection from Philadelphia to what would become the booming tourist destination of Atlantic City. Camden benefited from the increased ferry traffic from Philadelphia tourists (there was no bridge or tunnel to Philadelphia at that point) and in return helped to create the region’s tradition of “going down the shore.” The latter, the CHRC, electrified at the turn of the century, leading to enhanced coverage and speed on its lines.  

Camden’s rapid rise in transportation accessibility and its location on the Philadelphia-New York trade route attracted intensive business and industry in a very short period. According to the City’s own published history, Camden housed 80 manufacturers in 1860 and in just ten years this number had grown by more than 50% to 125. One of the companies established in that period was the Campbell Soup Company, the current Fortune 500 Company that invented condensed soup. Just after Campbell Soup made a major expansion in 1894, two other major companies were established in Camden. The first, the Victor Talking Machine Company (established in 1900) was a pioneer in audio recording technology. After its merger with the Radio Corporation of America, RCA Victor was the largest recording company in the United States for most of the twentieth century. Also established in 1900 was the New York Ship Building (NYSB) Corporation, which prospered during World Wars I & II. At its peak, NYSB was the most productive ship building entity in the United States and employed over 30,000 people. More than anything, industry -- and these three companies in particular -- defined Camden, NJ.  The city’s largest absolute gain in population, a growth of nearly 22,000 people, occurred from 1910 to 1920 as a result of rapid industrial expansion. This growth brought diversity to the city’s neighborhoods, which formed into ethnic enclaves of German, British, Irish, Italian, Polish, African American, Jewish, and later, Puerto Rican descent. The city’s diversity and entrepreneurial spirit further contributed to Camden’s culture, where the first fried panzarotti became a New Jersey delicacy and the first drive-in movie theatre thrilled American audiences. 

Ironically, the same forces that made Camden an economic powerhouse would also become largely responsible for its decline. After World War II, the NYSB’s importance waned; in 1967 it ceased operations entirely. Facing competition from other recording companies, RCA Victor also closed its Camden branch in the 1960s and, in search of lower prices and less oversight, moved operations to Juárez, Mexico in 1970. Upwardly mobile white working class families either had secured white collar positions or had been sold on the suburban dream. An increasing share of industrial jobs had become occupied by historically poor African American and Puerto Rican families who were then disproportionately affected by factory closures. Frustrations over job loss were compounded by the Civil Rights Movement’s focus on systemically racist policies like FHA redlining and the segregation of public facilities, which reinforced African American poverty. Racial tensions boiled over into race riots in 1971 and fires, looting, and an adversarial police-civilian relationship left Camden scarred. Even deeper poverty resulted and left the city’s population susceptible to drug epidemics and corresponding cartel violence. Population has declined gradually each decade from its 1950 peak at 124,555 to its current 77,344. Greater than a third of residents live below poverty level. In the past five years, Camden has repeatedly been declared both the nation’s most violent, and the most impoverished, city. The situation could not have deteriorated much further.

Camden’s three-part history as transit hub, industrial boom town, and symbol of urban decay, have shaped the city’s urban form. The region’s first plats were developed as detached single family households more reminiscent of suburban manors. These homes were sited relatively close to churches and early post-colonial industries including mills and tanneries. As the first post office and railroads entered the city, development intensified slightly and a downtown began to form in the classic pattern of row homes with the occasional first floor business below. The streetcar diffused the city, creating long mixed-use commercial corridors surrounded on either side by single- and multi-family row home developments. Massive industries entering downtown Camden filled in the waterfront (leaving little public access) and created a need to build up rather than out, as law offices, financial institutions, and new firms demanded space near existing industry. Industrialization was so profound that it necessitated constructing entirely new parts of the city. Land was acquired from Haddon Township and in 1918 construction began on Yorkship Village, the nation’s first government-planned community. Now known as Fairview, Yorkship Village’s design was based on the Garden City model cities popularized in England earlier in the century. As a result, Fairview is an enclave of single-family detached homes in a sea of two- to three-story row homes and mixed-use corridors. After World War I there was little need to develop additional housing and almost all of Camden’s 22,906 buildings were constructed by the end of World War II. The average age of housing is well over 75 years and the city now faces gradual deterioration; approximately 15% of the city’s buildings are already abandoned.

Despite the city’s desperate state, comprehensive attempts at redevelopment were virtually absent until the turn of the 21^st century. The 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia was the impetus Governor Christine Todd Whitman needed to clear Admiral Wilson Boulevard of undesirable land uses that included strip clubs, liquor stores, and dilapidated hotels. Inspired by the success of the Baltimore Harbor, initial redevelopment focused on large-scale waterfront projects. In just ten years, the waterfront had added its four largest attraction: the Blockbuster-Sony Music Entertainment Center (now the Susquehanna Bank Center), Campbell’s Baseball Field, the New Jersey State Aquarium (now the Adventure Aquairum), and the U.S.S. New Jersey. Waterfront redevelopment has not galvanized investment as quickly as investors hoped and the strategy has been criticized for focusing too heavily on mega-projects and not enough on reinvesting in the city’s residents. 

Future investment must first focus on solving residents’ immediate safety and housing concerns. Data suggest that a new, larger police force may be lowering violent crime and reducing drug cartel activity. However, it is too early to tell whether this trend, if accurate, will continue. Housing restoration is another critical concern to be addressed. The redevelopment of RCA’s Nipper Building into the Victor Apartments has been a success story, and similar, historically sensitive, affordable redevelopment must be prioritized. The best property redevelopment will also be transit-oriented. Camden remains a regional transit hub despite its struggles, and development should be bolstered by the River Line, which acts as a street car when in the city, and PATCO, which is one of only six rail lines nationwide that runs 24 hours a day. 

In  order for any of this redevelopment to truly benefit current residents, the city must focus on employment and restructuring its economic base. This decade has seen the emergence of an “Eds and Meds” strategy of economic development based on the Cooper and Lourdes health systems and engagement with Rutgers-Camden and Rowan Universities. This strategy has proven successful in cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, but academics have voiced concerns that these industries, too, are at the end of their growth cycle. In order to diversify its economy and avoid its mid-twentieth century blunders the city and its redevelopment corporations will have to use the state’s new economic development incentives to their fullest potential. Camden must constantly recall its history, so that it might not perpetuate the same mistakes as before, but instead inform the city’s next age of progress.