LAWRENCE GAZETTE

We are a newsroom of your neighbors. The Lawrence Gazette is for local people, by local people. As part of the community, the Gazette does more than just report the news—it connects businesses with their customers, organizations with their members and neighbors with one another. As such, our staff sets out to make our town a closer place by giving readers a reliable source to turn to when they want to know what’s going on in their neighborhood.

EDITOR

Bill Sanservino (Ext. 104)

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Dan Aubrey, Rich Fisher

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST

Kevin Nerwinski

AD LAYOUT AND PRODUCTION

Stacey Micallef (Ext. 131)

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

Christine Storie (Ext. 115)

Community News Service

9 Princess Road, Suite M

Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

Phone: (609) 396-1511

News: news@communitynews.org

Events: events@communitynews.org

Sports: sports@communitynews.org

Letters: bsanservino@communitynews.org

Website: lawrencegazette.com

Facebook: facebook.com/lawrencegazette

Twitter: twitter.com/mercerspace

15,000 copies of the Lawrence Gazette are mailed or bulk-distributed to the residences and businesses of Lawrence 12 times a year.

TO ADVERTISE call (609) 396-1511, ext. 110 or e-mail advertise@communitynews.org

A proud member of: by a number of qualified Democrats interested in serving on the Lawrence Township Council,” Powers said. “I want these folks to know early on that there will be at least two opportunities to run for Council in the November 2023 Election.”

Lewis, who had served on the Lawrence Township Council since 2012 and served as mayor in 2014 and 2015, left the Council to take a seat on the Mercer County Board of County Commissioners.

Lewis was replaced by Catherin MacDuff effective Jan 17. Her term expires at the end of this year. MacDuff is an attorney at the Stevens and Lee law firm in Lawrence Township.

MacDuff focuses on Superior Court trial and appellate matters relating to public contracts, licensing and regulation of cannabis entities, the Open Public Records Act, local government and administrative law, public policy matters addressing legislative intent, and the drafting of legislation.

Prior to joining the, she served as a law clerk to retired Superior Court Judge Catherine Fitzpatrick. Her past experience also extends to serving as Legislative Aide to Assemblyman Anthony S. Verrelli of New Jersey General Assembly.

John Ryan has been selected by his fellow members on Lawrence Township Council to serve as mayor for the next two years. Ryan released the following statement following his selection at the township’s annual reorganization meeting on Jan 3:

“I have been a Lawrence Township resident for 37 years. My wife Linda and I have raised three beautiful daughters, Rebecca, Megan, and Hannah. Along with our daughters, we have two amazing grandsons, Asher and Elijah.

“I retired from UPS four years ago after 28 years of service as a tractor trailer driver. I was a proud member of Teamsters Local 177 and a Shop Steward for many years.

“I was selected to fill a vacancy on Council in 2019, then elected by the residents in 2020 to a four year term, all while serving on numerous boards and committees.

“As Mayor you will find someone who always comes prepared and willing to go the extra mile for the residents of Lawrence. I am also someone who is accessible and straight forward. I look forward to serving you the next two years.”

Community foundation awards $2M in grants

The Princeton Area Community Foundation, based in Lawrence Township, has awarded some $2 million in Community Impact and COVID-19 Relief & Recovery Fund grants to local nonprofits.

More than 60 organizations working on a broad variety of needs in the community, including arts education, community building, education, food insecurity, health, supporting senior citizens and other vulnerable populations, and youth development received this funding, made possible by generous community contributions.

Funding was mainly unrestricted, giving organizations an opportunity to address the challenges of economic uncertainty due to the pandemic and inflation. Unrestricted grants in this round provide the flexibility organizations need to use the funding where it is most needed, which will help them build financial and programmatic resiliency.

“These nonprofits are doing impactful work in region, helping the most vulnerable among us,” said Jeffrey M. Vega, President & CEO of the Community Foundation. “We are able to award these grants thanks to generous donors who have created funds over the last 30 years to support our community grantmaking and leadership.”

More than 40 percent of the funding was awarded to organizations working on education and youth development programs, followed by those working to help vulnerable populations and alleviate food insecurity.

Nine of the grants were awarded from See AROUND TOWN, Page 6 the COVID-19 Fund, because vulnerable residents are still dealing with the lingering effects of the pandemic, such as learning loss and the mental health crisis among young people. The remainder of the grants were funded through the Community Impact Grants program.

Local organizations receiving grants to benefit Lawrence Township include:

• Foundation for Educational Administration, which was awarded a grant from the COVID-19 Fund to provide for its Healing Centered Engagement Project (HCE) in Trenton, Hamilton and Lawrence schools. It provides school staff with training on Adverse Childhood Experiences, trauma-informed care and healing-centered engagement.

It also includes monthly coaching sessions: coaches work with school teams, the principals and community organizations to design and implement plans of action.

• People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos, Lawrenceville, to help fund its current programs, which serve low-income and lowliteracy population, as well as to allow the agency to expand its offerings at new sites.

• HomeFront, Lawrenceville, for its motel outreach program, which serves more than 150 vulnerable homeless households, including about a quarter with young children. The organization provides services, including case management, access to children’s programs and delivery of medicine, diapers, toiletries and food, including hot meals.

HomeFront will also receive funds for its Children’s Champion program, which provides case management, support and access to behavioral and mental health therapy, along with healthcare, tutoring, and arts and recreational enrichment for homeless children, a population disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

• Lawrenceville Job-Training Partnership, Lawrenceville, which runs the WorkWell Partnerships–Moving Forward program, providing job and life skills training as well as job placement for previously incarcerated individuals.

• Womanspace, Lawrenceville, to help offset costs, including food, transportation and case management for its Safe House Emergency Shelter. The organization received an additional grant from the COVID-19 Fund to help it handle a surge in domestic violence seen during the pandemic.

• Dress for Success Mercer County, Lawrenceville, for its Career Academy at Trenton Central High School, which provides free career clothing and accessories, as well as career mentoring and job preparedness workshops. Students can take their new skills and outfits to college, summer internships or job interviews.

• Every Child Valued, Lawrenceville, to underwrite administrative and operating expenses. Funding may also be used for programs, including its Breakfast, After School, Summer Enrichment and Tutoring and Mentoring programs for children living in Eggerts Crossing Village.

• PEI Kids, Lawrence, to support its Crisis Intervention for Child Victims of Sexual Abuse and Juvenile Intervention Services programs.

The Princeton Area Community Foundation can assist donors who wish to provide additional funding to any of these nonprofits, which are making a difference in our communities every day. To learn more, contact the Community Foundation at (609) 219-1800.

LTPS hosts conversation about diversity

Lawrence Township Public Schools hosted more than 50 attendees at the first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Community Conversation on Jan. 9.

The event was moderated by Clifton Thompson, the district’s director of DEI, who discussed how DEI is reflected in all aspects of the district.

The discussion panel consisted of Busi- ness Administrator Tom Eldridge, who discussed how DEI values are reflected in the budget process; Assistant Superintendent Rajneet Goomer, who spoke about the distinction between teaching and advocating;

NJ Association of School Librarians president Ewa Dziedzic-Elliot, who discussed the topic of book banning; and Communications Manager Eshaya Draper, who offered his expertise on the importance of two-way communication.

A night out at the Rock

Residents can show their support for the Lawrence Middle School/Lawrence High School PTO and the NJ Devils with a night out at the Prudential Center (Nicknamed the Rock). The Devils are currently in second place in their division as they make a run for the playoffs.

The PTO is offering tickets to the Devils vs. Lightning game on Tuesday, March 14 at 7 p.m. at the Prudential Center in Newark.

There are a limited number of tickets available. To buy tickets, go to tinyurl.com/ deviltixx. Each ticket includes:

• Devils drawstring backpacks & surprise bonus for each student;

• $6 from every ticket goes back to the PTO, which helps support student activities at both the middle and high school; the collection.

• A jumbotron shout-out.

The library was back and running by 1781 and by 1797 had 240 items in its collection. By 1804 the library collection was at 700 volumes and still growing without a permanent home.

That need was addressed in 1900, when the organization became the free public library, and Ferdinand W. Roebling served as its first board president.

The library board purchased the property that had housed the street’s namesake, the Trenton Academy, since 1782, and hired architect Spencer Roberts. Roberts (1873-1958) was a Philadelphiabased architect who had attended Spring Garden Institute and worked for prominent architect Frank Miles Day.

The Trenton library building is an example of the popular Beaux-Arts design popular during the period that has also been dubbed the American Renaissance.

As “Public Art in New Jersey” author Thomas C. Folk notes, the style, “which dominated much of American artistic and intellectual life from the 1870s to the 1920s, existed as both a reality and a mental construct. Not specifically a style or a movement in the commonly accepted art historical sense of those terms, the American Renaissance was more a mood, or a spirit, or a state of mind.”

In addition to encompassing “many diverse idioms of painting, architecture, and sculpture,” the style also “had a broad base of support with many politicians, financiers, businessmen, academics, and men and women of the American middle class. As an idea or mental concept, the American Renaissance held both nationalistic and cosmopolitan ideals and looked to the past and the future.”

The building also hits another historic note for what it is not. As a library history reports, “Contrary to popular belief, the new library was not a Carnegie Library. Between 1883 and 1929, businessman Andrew Carnegie donated funds to construct over 2,500 libraries, but certain cities like Trenton and Newark felt that accepting this money would show that they were unable to provide for themselves.” *

The current Lawrence Library is located in a building that was formerly a massive trucking terminal, but its history goes back to 1960, when a group of township residents gathered more than 1,600 signatures on a petition demanding a branch library.

According to Lawrence historian Dennis Waters, the residents’ request was finally approved in 1961, and that year, the Lawrence branch opened in a small 1,600-square-foot space at the rear of Dunham’s department store in the newlyopened Lawrence Shopping Center. It was an awkward location because it was not accessible from the main parking lot in front.

For the next 20 years, the Lawrence branch remained at the shopping center location, though it moved several times and gradually increased in size.

As time wore on, Lawrence residents grew increasingly unhappy with the size and services offered by the library.

In 1978 the Lawrence Township Library Committee commissioned a report to study the feasibility of leaving the county system and establishing a townshipoperated municipal library, as Hopewell Township had recently done. The report advised against leaving the county system, and the Library Committee accepted its recommendation.

However, the Mercer County Library System recognized that it needed a major upgrade, so during the period from 1979 to 1982 it began planning an expansion that would bring new library buildings to all of its member municipalities.

In particular, it planned a facility in Lawrence that would serve as the system’s headquarters and include a much-enlarged reference department. Financing was provided by the Mercer County Improvement Authority through a $10 million bond issue.

The site chosen for the Lawrence Headquarters Branch was 12 acres at the corner of Darrah Lane and Brunswick Pike. The site contained an abandoned trucking terminal that was originally built in 1953 for Riss Brothers, at that time one of the largest trucking companies in the eastern United States. The property was subdivided, with Lawrence Township receiving the western section, where the Senior Center now stands.

The trucking terminal was very well constructed, so it was decided to renovate it rather than tear it down and start over. Renovation began in the spring of 1983 and on April 7 of the following year it opened.

At more than 40,000 square feet, the branch was five times the size of the branch in the shopping center that it replaced, although some of that space was used by the county system for its headquarters, which moved from Ewing.

In 1994 the MCIA borrowed $15 million to fund another upgrade of the library system, including a 17,000-square -foot expansion at the rear and the west end of the existing building, providing an expanded reference section, additional community meeting rooms, and new offices for the headquarters staff, whose former offices became the fiction department “downstairs.”

The Hopewell Public Library at 13 East Broad Street is housed in the red brick building that once upon a time had been the Hopewell National Bank.

While the current Hopewell library company was founded in 1914, there had been some sort of book or material lending system established as far back as 1802. According to a history compiled by the Hopewell Library, that was when Pennington resident Archilles Wilson ran a library that provided books for Hopewell residents.

The report indicates that a Hopewell Library Company had an organized catalog in 1804 and that it was incorporated twice in 1806, first as the Hopewell Library Company, then as the Hopewell Columbian Library Company a week later. The name change was to indicate the library’s location in the Columbian section of the township, now Hopewell Borough.

While it is unclear what happened to that company, it is clear that other efforts continued to supply residents with books and information. That included the Mrs. M. A. Carter, Library and Fancy Goods company, operating in 1887 on the corner of East Broad Street and Seminary Avenue, and

See LIBRARIES, Page 8 and FDIC-insured up to $250,000 (principal and interest accrued but not yet paid) per depositor, per insured depository institution, for each account ownership category. Please visit www.fdic.gov or contact your financial advisor for additional information. Subject to availability and price change. CD values are subject to interest rate risk such that when interest rates rise, the prices of CDs can decrease. If CDs are sold prior to maturity, the investor can lose principal value. FDIC insurance does not cover losses in market value. Early withdrawal may not be permitted. Yields quoted are net of circulating and traveling libraries organized by the Grange.

LIBRARIES continued from Page 7 Samuel Davis Stryker, whose will stipulated $1,000 for the community to establish a library.

Today’s Hopewell Public Library was established by members of the socially minded Roundabout Club and opened in a former harness shop on West Broad Street. A few years later it moved to the Fireman’s Hall. A public referendum turned it into a municipal and publicly funded library.

According its own documents, “The library was extraordinarily popular: As of October 1916, with a Borough population of 1,200, the library had 680 active patrons and owned more than 1,300 books, and had circulated 10,127 books over the past year. The library quickly outgrew its new space and moved to 28 East Broad Street in 1924 and shared this new space with the Hopewell Museum.”

In 1964 the library moved across the street to the former National Bank building.

Opened in 1890, it is a simple, solid, yet homey two-floor structure — nothing like the American Renaissance-inspired banks that look like Greek temples.

Here one gets the old-fashioned type of library experience of being greeted by librarians at a desk in front of a wall lined with volumes that chronicle the community.

Although there are sections that show that it was a bank — it has a vault, for example — the building’s small rooms make visiting the library feel like taking a step back in time.

* * *

The Lambertville Free Public Library also feels homey because it is an actual home that belonged to the Lilly family.

The house at 3 Lilly Street was built between 1812 and 1830 on property that Dr. John Lilly purchased from the son of Revolutionary War patriot George Coryell. The building was occupied by the politically and financially connected family through 1880.

According to a brief history compiled by the library, “Over the years, the Lilly Mansion lost its pond and stables and most of its land, which had extended from the newly established Bridge Street east to the cliff and south to Swan Creek. In the 1930s, highway construction claimed most of the east side, and in 1946 the front lawn became the site of a service station; later, other subdivided lots to the south were sold. The increasingly neglected mansion served as the Moose Lodge, as apartments, and as the offices of the Hunterdon County Nutrition Project for the Elderly, until the City purchased the dilapidated building in 1980 and installed the library on the first floor in 1988.”

The library effort goes back to 1881, when 28 community members founded the Stryker Library Association, named after prominent businessman and entrepreneur

The library first opened in 1882 in a room over Cochran’s Drug Store on Union Street before moving a year later to a room at the Masonic Hall on Bridge Street.

As the library reports, “The library’s collection of about 1,300 volumes contained classic literature as well as practical materials for farmers, such as Downing’s ‘Fruit and Fruit Trees,’ Randall’s ‘Sheep Husbandry,’ and Harris’ ‘Insects Injurious to Vegetation.’”

In the early 1950s, the library re-located to the second floor of City Hall on York Street. Some of those original holdings can be found in the library near a portrait of Stryker. *

The New Jersey State Library in the capitol complex in Trenton has a long and fascinating history and a facility shaped by an important design movement.

The library began with a collection of documents used by legislators when New Jersey was an English colony and before Trenton became the state’s capital in 1790.

An actual library started in 1796 when the State of New Jersey assigned the house clerk with the responsibility of maintaining the documents, pamphlets, newspapers, and books used by both the senate and assembly.

As the collection grew, so did the effort to maintain it, and a fulltime librarian was appointed in 1822. By 1883 the library had more than 30,000 volumes and occupied the southern wing of the capitol building — designed originally by Philadelphia-based architect Jonathan Doane, whose colonial and federal design had American Renaissance-flavored modifications and expansions by John Notman (1845), Samuel Sloan (1871), and Lewis Broome, 1889.

The library moved in 1929 to a new art deco-influenced New Jersey State House Annex building, which also housed the State Museum.

The library got its own building when the State of New Jersey created the Capitol Complex during the post-war boom in late 1950s and early 1960s.

The building was designed by Frank Grad & Sons, a Newark-based company noted as one of the leaders in modernist government and corporate architecture.

The antithesis of American Renaissance or embellishments that connected to a particular nation or era, Grad’s approach was influenced by the international style’s emphasis on no-frills simplicity and clean lines — as demonstrated by the open spaces, windows, and sleek furniture.

While this modern style is no longer seen as modern, it — like all the buildings noted — offers both the opportunity to find a book as well as walk into history.