NPCL's Tour Guide Liz Del Tufo, long time Newark resident and NPCL's newly elected President. 

In Celebration of Historic Preservation Month: "In The Trust We Trust" featuring Restored Newark Landmarks

The New Jersey Historic Trust founded in 1967 and now part of the NJ Department of Community Affairs, works to preserve historic resources across the state and gives sums ranging from $25,000 to $2 million for plans, repairs, and restoration work of Newark historic treasures.

On May 2, The Newark Preservation and Landmarks Committee will begin the celebration of Preservation Month by visiting the following sites. The five-hour bus tour will visit or pass many of the 20 buildings and sites that have received a total of $8.6 million from the state agency during the past 20 years. The aided locations include houses of worship, public buildings, mansions, theaters, social agencies and cemeteries. All of the sites are on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places.

We start our day at the Newark Museum where we will talk about the Ballantine House and its carriage house and learn how the historic trust support will benefit the Polhemus House. Then, on to the Essex County Courthouse where the trust helped to complete the restoration of one of the most magnificent buildings of America's "Gilded Age".

The first large synagogue to be built in Newark is now surrounded by the programs and gardens of the Greater Newark Conservancy. With the financial support of the trust, the synagogue is being rehabilitated for use as program headquarters for the conservancy.

Our next stop will be at Queen of Angels R.C. Church. Built in 1861, this was the first African--American congregation in Newark. On to the Stanley Theater, a 1927 movie theater, now home to the Newark Gospel Tabernacle.

We will end our day with a walk through Mount Pleasant Cemetery established in 1844 followed by a stop at the former Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co. Now serving as the Newark AIDS Consortium, where we will have refreshments before heading back downtown.

During our tour we will pass other historic structures that have received funding through the New Jersey Historic Trust.

 Reservations are recommended, and can be made at the Landmarks Committee office, 973-622-4910. Tickets are $30 for committee members, and $35 for all others.

Click here to read more details about the tour at our blog

The six-hour excursion, aboard a chartered bus and the Newark City Subway, will focus on The WPA in Newark: Lasting Legacies of 1930s Stimulus Packages. It will be led by Elizabeth Del Tufo, who has conducted scores of tours in the last 25 years.

Visitors saw evidence that visionary officials in the Depression days not only pumped money into job-creating bridges and roads, but also constructed great buildings, parks, and transit systems that still serve and beautify Newark and other towns, Del Tufo asserted.

Departing from The Newark Museum at 10:30 a.m., the tour group traveled to the two large terminals that both opened in 1935 the original Newark Airport and Pennsylvania Station.

The airport building, whose opening was attended by aviator Amelia Earhart, was the first central passenger terminal at any American airport, and at one time was the busiest in the nation. In 2000-2001 it was relocated and restored by the Port Authority, and serves as an administrative and public safety building. Visitors can see exhibits on the early history of aviation, and climb to the original control tower.

The second stop will be another Art Deco masterpiece. Penn Station, one of the busiest in the United States, serves 50,000 riders on weekdays on Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, PATH, the subway, and local and long-distance bus lines. The depot was designed by McKim, Mead & White, and the WPA arts program decorated the grand waiting room is adorned with stylized medallions of different forms of transportation.

Tourists  boarded a subway car for a 15-minute ride under downtown Newark and along the edge of Branch Brook Park, with scenic vistas of lakes and woods, and the towers of Sacred Heart Cathedral Basilica. New Jersey's oldest light-rail line, which also opened in 1935,was built in the bed of the old Morris Canal.

At the northern end of the park, the group can stroll through Essex County's 33rd annual Cherry Blossom Festival. The park contains more than 2,000 trees, some of them planted by the WPA. The county and the Branch Brook Alliance are planting hundreds more trees, with a goal of 5,000 by next year. Branch Brook is the oldest and largest piece of the nation's first county park system.

The tour bus returned to the museum, which exhibits several treasures acquired in the 1930s. The Lyons Farms Schoolhouse, erected in 1784 near what is now Elizabeth and Chancellor avenues in the Weequahic section, was dismantled stone-by-stone by the WPA and rebuilt in the museum garden in 1938. The federal arts program also helped develop the institution's famed Tibetan exhibit, and added nearly 2,000 paintings, drawings, and other works to its collections.

Famed writer Philip Roth looks at a souvenir booklet prepared by NPLC President William Mikesell during a tour of sites mentioned in his books. Liz Del Tufo, tour leader, is at the right in this crowd outside Roth's boyhood home in Weequahic.

Participants in a landmarks tour saw many of the settings for Philip Roth's prize-winning novels, and then met the celebrated Newark-born author himself.

The five-hour bus tour of "Philip Roth's Newark" on Oct. 23, 2005 was one of the most successful ever held by the Newark Preservation & Landmarks Committee.

Roth, one of the most distinguished authors to come from the city, has used his hometown as a backdrop for many of the 26 books he has written during the past half-century. He has won every major American literary award, including the Pulitzer Prize, and became only the third living writer to have his works selected for the Library of America.

Points of interest along the way included Weequahic High School, from which Roth was graduated in 1950. Other sights were Newark Beth Israel Hospital, where Roth was born; the old YM-YWHA on Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard (formerly High Street); and the Riviera Hotel on Clinton Avenue, where Roths' parents began their honeymoon.

The tour buses also traveled through Weequahic Park and the adjoining residential neighborhood, which are on the National Register of Historic Places. During the last century Weequahic was home to a large, thriving Jewish community, and it is still a prestigious area.

The tour program began with a slide presentation at Congregation Ahavas Sholom at 145 Broadway, the last original synagogue still functioning in the city. Then the group went past the Newark Public Library on Washington Park, which played a major role in Roth's 1959 novel, "Goodbye, Columbus." That book won the first of his two National Book Awards..

At various points along the way, excerpts from Roth's books, which include "Portnoy's Complaint" and "American Pastoral," were read to the tour group by Robert Steinbaum, publisher of the New Jersey Law Journal.

Roth, who lives now in Connecticut, said in a recent interview that he draws on his memories of Newark to provide authentic environments in his books. "In some places around my neighborhood, I am still able to see what used to be there," he declared.

At the conclusion of the tour, the author told his fans that the honor from his native city meant as much to him as a Nobel Prize. He had been a finalist for the 2005 award in literature shortly before the Newark event.

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