Mid-Century New Jersey: The Garden State in the 1950s ©2020 County of Middlesex. All rights reserved No portion of this publication may be reproduced. The concept and contents are the exclusive property of Middlesex County. Division of Historic Sites and History Services 1050 River Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854 732.745.3030 TTY: 732.745.3888 history@co.middlesex.nj.us John A. Pulomena, County Administrator Researched, written, and designed by Gordon Bond Funded by Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders New Jersey Historical Commission
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“Hawaiian Beauty” pinball machine, 1954 Courtesy James Sullivan, Del Music Company
The 1950s was an era of great prosperity, economic growth, and changes that made a lasting impact on our society and even the physical landscape. With the end of the Second World War, returning GIs moved back into the workplace and created a postwar housing boom that transformed farms into suburbia. With disposable income, families purchased a television to watch their favorite shows, children played with windup toys, and teenagers listened to the radical sounds of rock and roll music. During this period the automobile became more than just transportation; it created a car culture of backyard mechanics, auto racing, drive in movies, and a mobile society that traveled along a newly-built superhighway system. The 1950s would also be forever defined by its style. The midcentury modern look, the futuristic feel of the jet age, and the kitschy Doo Wop architecture of the Wildwoods, all became hall marks of the buildings, furniture, cars, and everyday objects of the period. Against this backdrop of economic prosperity and growth, however, were also dark days. The Cold War was ever-present and created a fear that witnessed civil defense shelters spring up in the basement of buildings and school children who learned how to “duck and cover” under their desks. In addition, our landscape was dotted by Nike Missile bases that protected our society from attack. The story of the 1950s, however, was not universal. The scale of cultural, social, and economic experiences differed depending on race, gender, class, and orientation. The modern civil rights movement would take root, laying the groundwork for the defining changes in the next decade of the 1960s. This monograph mirrors an exhibit titled “Mid-Century New Jersey: The Garden State in the 1950s,” that was mounted at the Cornelius Low House/ Middlesex County Museum. Historian Gordon Bond acted as a guest curator, researching New Jersey during this period, and has done an excellent job at conveying a compelling story. The exhibit closed in 2020, and the culmination of that work can be found within these pages. We hope you enjoy reading about this fascinating decade. —Mark Nonestied Middlesex County Historian Division Head, Middlesex County Division of Historic Sites and History Services
Seeburg Model B jukebox, c. 1952 Courtesy James Sullivan, Del Music Company
Mid-Century America emerged from the Second World War with all the swagger of a new superpower that had just beaten fascism and was making the world safe for democracy. The postwar boom propelled unparalleled economic growth towards a bright and shiny future of atomic power and gleaming appliances. Changes that began in the prewar period—the rise of the suburbs, processed foods in supermarkets, super highways and automobile culture, rock ‘n’ roll, expanding roles for women, the Civil Rights movement— were accelerated in the transformation of
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mid-century American culture. Not that it was all a brave new world. One’s share of the prosperity was often limited by race, gender, and orientation. Indeed, the stage was set in the 1950s for many of the social changes that would be considered iconic to the ‘60s. New Jersey was both a reflection and source of many of the transformations of the 1950s. Did you know rock ‘n’ roll was born in Wildwood? Or that ShopRite Supermarkets got their start in Newark? How about how an experience in a Maple Shade tavern shaped the future of a young seminary student boarding in Camden named Martin Luther King, Jr.? In this booklet, you can explore how midcentury America influenced New Jersey, and how New Jersey influenced midcentury America.
G.I. Bill
Postwar Along with the rest of the nation, New Jersey celebrated the end of World War II, when the Japanese signed an official surrender on September 2, 1945. (Nazi Germany had already surrendered on May 8, 1945.) The Garden State was ready to welcome home the 550,129 men and women returning from service in the U.S. armed forces and to honor the 10,372 who were lost in the fight. Employment in the state had about doubled between 1939 and 1945, largely due to wartime industries that turned out $12-billion worth of military orders, the fifth highest in the country. Some economists expressed concerns once those government orders dried up, there would not be enough employment for all the returning veterans, taking the nation back to the dark days of the Great Depression that preceded the war. The U.S. economy regained its peacetime footing, however, and ushered in a period of remarkable growth and prosperity. Americans, tired of the austerity forced by rationing, were ready to start spending again. Advertising, which had encouraged saving money as a patriotic duty, now extolled the virtues of spending as an equally patriotic duty to stimulate the postwar economy.
Returning service members were eager to get on with lives the war had put on hold. The federal Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944—popularly known as the G.I. Bill—eased them back into civilian life. Benefits included tuition and living expenses to attend college or vocational/technical school, low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, and one year of unemployment compensation. While the industries of other nations had been severely diminished by the war, U.S. factories and infrastructure remained intact, giving an important edge in the world economy. At the same time, competition was brewing between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence on the future of postwar Europe and Asia. Development of nuclear arsenals on both sides accentuated the rising tensions as they waged a “Cold War” in places like Germany and a proxy war in Korea.
FDR signs the G.I. Bill in the Oval Office, June 22, 1944.
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Hat, jacket, dog tags, name tags, U.S. Army Second Armored Division insignia patch Courtesy Gražina and Darius Strolia The items shown here belonged to Vytautas Strolia. Born in Lithuania, he was 10-years-old when World War II began. His parents, Juozas and Zenta, remembered the deprivations of Russian occupation before World War I and then-recent liberalism of the Weimar Republic in Germany. Fearing the Russians more than the Germans, the family fled into Nazi Germany. His mother resorted to stealing food from German army encampments. Though Zenta had spoken several languages as an opera singer and telephone operator before the war, if caught, she would pretend to only speak Lithuanian, explaining she thought the supply tent was a shop, thrusting a few coins into the soldier’s hands. Young Vytautas remembered the joy of having a rare pat of butter because of this. The family, including Vytautas’s two younger brothers, survived on their wits until he contracted diphtheria. After being refused treatment as immigrants by hospitals, Juozas father signed his then-13-year-old son up in a Nazi youth program. He carried him out to where some junior soldiers were digging a ditch and dropped him there. The officers took him to the hospital where he nearly died but managed to recover. Around 1949, the family filed for refugee status to come to the United States. Sponsored
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by a family in Boston, Vytautas was sent on ahead to New York where he was given a train ticket to Boston and $20 for meals and other necessities until he reached his sponsor family. His train didn’t leave until that night, and at the station he saw a cart full of oranges, something he had not seen in five years. He could not speak English, but he showed the merchant his money and bought cup after cup of freshlysqueezed orange juice at 50 cents a cup, walking around the station and gawking at the skyscrapers. Zenta died before the rest of the family joined him. Vytautas later went to college at the Boston Conservatory of Music and played organ in a church on Sundays. Thanks to his musical talents, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he was assigned to play a glockenspiel in the Army Band stationed in Germany. When they looked closer at his records, however, they discovered he had been a Nazi and sent him home to face deportation. He explained the circumstances and that his father signed him up as a child, not out of agreement with the Nazi ideology, but in an effort to save his son’s life. The law made no allowances for this, however, so he pled his case to Massachusetts Representative John W. McCormack, who introduced HR 3964 of the 83rd Congress: “A bill for the relief of Vytautas Strolia.” And so, Vytautas Strolia became a U.S. Citizen by an act of Congress. He moved to Edgewater, New Jersey in around 1968 and then Fair Lawn in 1975. He became a computer programmer and worked to preserve Lithuanian music against Russian attempts to destroy it (a room is named for him in the Lithuanian National Library). He died in 2007 at age 79. His story reflects postwar immigrant experiences that remain relevant today. According to his daughter, Gražina Strolia, “He mowed his lawn and painted his porch and liked Polynesian food. He lived in the New Jersey suburbs and paid his taxes. He loved his wife. He taught his kids how to ride a bike and made them the best, fattiest blynai (Lithuanian crepes) you ever saw. He was good. He was ordinary.”
Gender Roles
Suburbia New Jersey’s landscape changed considerably during the 1950s, beginning with the postwar “baby boom.” The state’s population had grown modestly from 4,160,165 in 1940 to 4,835,329 by 1950—a gain of 675,164. Between 1950 and 1960, however, it jumped to 6,066,782, adding 1,231,453 people—making NJ the eighth most-populated state in the country. Suburban communities had clustered around urban and industrial centers since the 19th century. The mass return of veterans looking for jobs and to start families, however, caused an affordable housing shortage. Unprecedented automobile ownership meant the working class could live greater distances from work. Combined with the G.I. Bill’s low-cost mortgages and other federal housing subsidies, homeownership became an increasingly attainable feature of “the American Dream”—and the American suburb grew apace in response. The growth of the suburban population created new demands for household goods, services, and infrastructure, leading to everything from supermarkets to superhighways.
While gender roles tended to remain rigidly defined in the first half of the 20th century, World War II had opened up new, if temporary, opportunities for women. With so many men in the armed services, women were encouraged by the U.S. government to offset labor shortages, especially in factories engaged in manufacturing critical to the war effort. Aside from factory work embodied by the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” women filled a wide variety of jobs previously considered the domain of men. Additionally, many volunteered to serve in specific women’s reserve organizations in the different military branches. They proved themselves to be just as capable as the men, and many genuinely enjoyed the chance to work in jobs beyond traditional domestic roles. At the war’s conclusion, however, there was a general expectation that women would return to being wives, homemakers, and mothers, making room for the large numbers of returning men who would need jobs. Advertising, television shows, and movies reinforced traditional gender roles as the ideal for the American family. Women were portrayed as the stay-at-home mom, cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children. The man was the breadwinner, who mostly went to work during the day and took on masculine domestic tasks like mowing
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the lawn, home repair, and the weekend barbeque. The robust economy and earning power for men enabled many households to be supported on a single income, further enabling such home life.
Disposable Income Between the end of the Great Depression and the successful transition from a wartime to peacetime consumer economy, most Americans saw their disposable income rise some 60 percent between 1940 and 1960. This translated into increased consumer demand for all sorts of goods and services. Since most industry was within the United States, this increased demand translated into more jobs and better wages, generating even more disposable income. A robust American “middle class” was born. The postwar period is sometimes referred to as the “long boom”— on average, a steadily improving economy from 1950 through the 1970s. The benefits of this boom did not, however, reach all Americans. The average median family income for African Americans in 1950, for instance, was nearly 55 percent lower than their white neighbors.
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Period magazine ads from LIFE, Better Living, Collier’s
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1 3-way Moss lamp with turning figurine 2 Ashtray Private Collection 3 Better Homes & Gardens, New Mother’s Guide
Courtesy Janet Aspinwall
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This mock-up of a mid-century modern living room is based on 1953 furniture loaned by Whitey Warner from his parent’s house. Other period items were loaned as indicated below. 5 Look Magazine
Private Collection
Mechanix Illustrated
Courtesy Janet Aspinwall
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Lounge chair 3-fixture Moss lamp with turning figurine Corner table
9 3-piece sectional sofa 10 Kodak Brownie 500 8mm movie projector Courtesy Guy & Lillie Suabedissen 11 Mad Magazines
Courtesy Keith and Sharon Helsby
12 Ladies Home Journal, Better Living, Redbook Courtesy Janet Aspinwall
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13 World Book Encyclopedias C. 1956
15 Rotary telephone
14 Typewriter and case Courtesy Middlesex County
Courtesy Janet Aspinwall
Freeholder Director Ronald G. Rios
Courtesy Marc Morgan
16 Fountain pens and ink Private Collection
17 Desk 18 Matching chair
19 Mansfield 35mm slide projector Courtesy Guy & Lillie Suabenissen 20 Grundig 706 Magestic W/3D radio Courtesy Dave Smela
& the Hub Kings
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Food
Mid-century proliferations of supermarkets, fast food, and appliances changed how Americans ate.
After the Great Depression and World War II, when the future of the United States was still an open question, many approached the 1950s with a renewed optimism about American ingenuity and progress. Modern life was moving fast, and timesaving convenience was valued—especially with the chores of food shopping and preparing meals. While some changes began much earlier, they accelerated with postwar prosperity. The kitchen was considered the domain of women, so advertisers extolled the virtues of convenience foods to them—no need to spend hours creating satisfying meals for their family. New time- and laborsaving kitchen appliances were also being advertised to women— combined freezer-refrigerators, electric and natural gas stoves
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and ovens, electric mixers and blenders, electric can openers, pop-up toasters, and dishwashers to clean up afterward—all in designer colors. Kitchen products like Tupperware® and Saran™ Wrap encouraged home economy by repurposing leftovers to offset the higher prices of processed foods. ABOVE: Detail from 1951 A&P supermarket ad, LIFE Magazine. LEFT: “The American Family Cookbook” by Lily Wallace was a complete cookbook from the 1950s, aimed at women as homemakers.
Hostess Marketers recognized added opportunities by the presumed spare time new conveniences gave women. “Housewives” were restyled “hostesses,” and encouraged to organize parties with an expanded menu of specialty food and drink options. Mothers increasingly enrolled their children in afterschool activities, and women began forming and joining clubs and organizations. While this shift in how Americans ate at home reinforced women’s domestic roles, it also opened new opportunities. Tupperware became a household name in the 1950s as a popular option for women who wanted to work but also attend to the home. Starting with plastic bowls developed in 1942 by Earl Tupper of Massachusetts, Brownie Wise developed a sales strategy that took advantage of the social networks most housewives already had with the “Tupperware Party.” The idea took off and Tupper made Wise vice president of marketing in 1951. Women could join without a college education and for a minimal investment, working flexible hours from their own home to earn extra income. While some saw Tupperware as a means of economically empowering women at a time of workplace inequality, others criticized it for furthering the restriction of women to the domestic sphere. Sheer day dress, apron, and slip Dress: Courtesy Stephanie Hoagland; Apron: Susan Grotyohann; Slip: Alaina Zulli Period magazine ads from LIFE, Better Living, Collier’s
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Supermarkets Processed canned and prepackaged foods had been around since the mid-1800s but had been more expensive than fresh foods that were purchased at specialty shops (green grocers for fruits and vegetables, butchers for meat, etc.) where the clerk fetched items for the customer. The concept of the self-service “supermarket” started in the 1910s, but proliferated with the postwar rise in personal automobile ownership and suburban development. The shelves of these markets were lined with canned, frozen, and prepackaged foods, and had their own in-house produce and meat departments. Between 1948 and 1958, the number of supermarkets in America had doubled to over 2,500.
Kenmore rotary ironing machine (mangle) with rack and chair Private Collection
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SHELF 1: Universal Cambridge “Circus” pattern salt and pepper set, pitcher, chop plate, nesting bowls - Courtesy Stephanie M. Hoagland SHELF 2: Universal Cambridge “Flower Shop” pattern creamer; Fiesta “Radioactive Red” casserole dish, yellow saucer, green bread plate, “Radioactive Red” soup bowl, white bread plate, turquoise bread plate, white saucer, turquoise saucer - Courtesy Stephanie M. Hoagland; Tin Cup - Courtesy Susan Grotyohann SHELF 3: Three plastic salt and pepper shaker sets, ceramic pepper shaker, Fiesta “Radioactive Red” bread plate, plastic floral salt and pepper shaker set, Mexican figure shaker, house and windmill salt and pepper shaker set, Mexican figure salt and pepper shaker set, cowboy and cowgirl salt and pepper shaker set - Courtesy Stephanie M. Hoagland SHELF 4: Stangl fruit pattern (peach) cup and saucer sets, dessert plates, bowls, serving plate with handle - Private Collection
After World War II, automatic laundry washing machines and dryers became common laborsaving appliances in many homes. The electric motor-driven rotary ironing machine, also called a “mangle,” was introduced as a faster and easier way to iron laundry than using a hand-held iron and ironing board. While home use models are uncommon today, industrial models remain in use by commercial or large-scale laundries.
Kodachrome by Charlotte Brooks or Arthur Rothstein for the 1952 Look magazine article “How Hot Are the Freezer Food Plans?”
SHELF 1: Beater, “Quicker Ways to Better Eating: The Wesson Oil Cook Book” - Courtesy Nancy Turner; Toy kitchen set metal cabinet - Private Collection; “Recipes for Toddlers” (Gerber Products Company) - Courtesy Steve Santucci; toy kitchen set metal refrigerator - Private Collection SHELF 2: Syrup dispenser, “Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two Cook Book,” “Good Housekeeping’s Party Pie Book,” Juicer - Courtesy Nancy Turner; “Pillsbury’s 7th Grand National Cookbook” Courtesy Steve Santucci; “CBS Homemakers Exchange Recipes” (April, May, June, 1951), flour sifter - Courtesy Nancy Turner SHELF 3: Scooping spoon, spatula - Courtesy Nancy Turner; Juicer - Courtesy Guy and Lillie Suabedissen; Peeler, pot masher - Courtesy Nancy Turner SHELF 4: “The Bride’s Handbook” - Courtesy Guy and Lillie Suabedissen; Toy kitchen set metal stove range - Private Collection; electric clothes dryer manual, Frigidaire refrigerator instruction manual - Courtesy Family Collection of Margaret Elsie Bruss
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ShopRite Photographs of Milton Krasner’s supermarket opening as a ShopRite member, North Arlington, NJ, 1953 Courtesy Barbara Krasner New Jersey boasted of a number of regional chain supermarkets, such as A&P and Acme. ShopRite, however, originated in Newark, NJ in 1946 when a Del Monte Foods sales rep suggested independent grocers there try cooperative buying to get better wholesale prices. Starting with seven grocers investing $1,000 each, Wakefern Foods was incorporated December 5, 1946 and started using the ShopRite name in 1951. By 1961, Wakefern had 70 members, totaling $100-million in annual sales. In 1953, Milton Krasner’s supermarket in North Arlington, NJ became the 31st co-op member to join ShopRite. Krasner’s daughter, Barbara Krasner, shared these pictures of the family’s market, taken on the occasion.
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Variations of this ShopRite logo were used between 1946 and 1975. Note the silhouetted figure is that of a woman, reflecting the idea that food shopping was primarily women’s work.
Diners
Schnackenberg’s luncheonette menu board From the Collection of the Hoboken Historical Museum Founded by Henry Schnackenberg in 1931, Schnackenberg’s Luncheonette was an iconic fixture at 1110 Washington Street in Hoboken, NJ. It was bought by Joyce and Eugene Flinn in 2013. Its house-made doughnuts and classic egg cream, however, were unable to compete with a new generation of residents looking for healthier fare, and it closed in early 2019 after 88 years. It has been replaced by a salad spot, Alfalfa, though they assure “yes, there will be doughnuts!”
Though rooted in the New England lunch wagons of the late 19th century, the diner remains a quintessential New Jersey cultural icon. Adapted from railcar galleys into fixed structures, they served up simple but filling hot meals at a reasonable price without the fuss of formal restaurant dining. Many opened around the clock in order to cater to shift-workers. Many of the manufacturers of prefabricated diners and cooking equipment were established in New Jersey in the first half of the 20th century. The postwar period is considered the “Golden Age” of New Jersey diners, when many returning GIs saw them as easy start-up business opportunities. During the 1950s diners grew from small “greasy spoon” eateries into larger, informal, family-friendly places with expanded menus. They invited customers with commanding architecture adorned with gleaming chrome, colorful neon signs, and large plate glass windows. TOP & BOTTOM: Swingle’s Diner c. 1953, formerly located on Route 22 in Springfield, NJ, attracted customers with its bright neon sign.
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Discrimination Fast Food Like the diner, the idea of “fast food” actually started in the early 1900s but saw a significant postwar boom. Fast food is a set menu designed to be sold in a restaurant with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredients, and served in a packaged form for takeout. Since customers had the option of eating the meals elsewhere, the evolution of the fast food restaurant closely parallels that of automobile ownership. In addition to national franchises such as White Castle, McDonald’s, Burger King®, etc., New Jersey was the home of iconic burger food joints named White Manna. Designed to promote fast food, the original was styled as the “diner of the future” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens. The building was purchased by Louis Bridges and moved to Jersey City, where it opened along busy Tonnelle Avenue on June 2, 1946 and has operated there ever since. The current owner, Mario Costa, bought the business in 1979. During the 1950s, White Manna added carhop service. Bridges owned five White Manna diners in New Jersey, but only the Jersey City and Hackensack locations remain. TOP: The original White Mana in Jersey City, NJ. Note the name was spelled with one “n” at that location. BOTTOM: White Manna Hamburgers in Hackensack, NJ.
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Not everyone shared equally in America’s postwar economic boom. Despite state antidiscrimination laws, African Americans faced bias that was reflected by their experiences dining out. On February 16, 1955, the Trenton Evening Times published the results of a yearlong study by the Trenton Human Relations Self-Survey Committee. Their volunteers had telephoned restaurants, taverns, and hotels in New Jersey’s capital asking “Do you accept Negroes as patrons?” Out of the 93 establishments polled, 46 answered “yes,” 18 “no,” and 29 replied evasively. The results reflected a common implicit discrimination experienced by many.
Kitchen Table Donated by Robert Mayer; Juicer Courtesy Steve Santucci; Faux Food Division of Historic Sites and History Services This table is typical of the style found in many kitchens in the 1950s.
Car Culture
A postwar boom in automobile ownership changed the New Jersey landscape.
By 1950, there were some 25 million automobiles registered in the U.S. Most were prewar models in poor condition because no consumer autos or parts were manufactured while resources were diverted into the war effort. Once restrictions were lifted, a robust American automobile culture asserted itself, and by 1958 the number of registered cars had jumped to over 67 million. This auto boom transformed the American culture and landscape.
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Parkway & Turnpike New Jersey’s highway development predated In 1948, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1956 Federal Aid was created to build another toll road Highway Act. The Garden State Parkway between Fort Lee in the northeast (GSP) toll road was constructed and Pennsville Township in the between 1946 and 1957, southwest, effectively linking up ultimately stretching the Manhattan with Philadelphia. 172.40 miles from Its 117.20 mile length was Cape May in the completed in 1951. south to Montvale in the north at the New York State border. The GSP was designed to be aesthetically pleasing with trees, grass, and flowers that also served practical functions such as blocking lights from oncoming traffic From the Collections of The New Jersey Historical Society, All Rights Reserved and providing a buffer between lanes. 1. Interchange overpasses eliminated cross-traffic 1. NJ Turnpike souvenir ashtray 2. NJ Turnpike souvenir charm bracelet 3. NJ Turnpike souvenir pennant Courtesy New Jersey Historical Society, All Rights Reserved 4. NJ Turnpike souvenir salt and pepper shakers 5. NJ Turnpike souvenir postcard Courtesy Gordon Bond
From the Collections of The New Jersey Historical Society, All Rights Reserved
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and traffic lights on the highway. 3.
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The Woodbridge Train Wreck
Cities Service station on the New Jersey Turnpike, Ca. 1952.
Where the Turnpike was built through Woodbridge Township, it crossed beneath the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) North Jersey Coast Line tracks, necessitating a temporary “runaround” track around the construction. Trains were required to travel 25 mph over the temporary track, instead of the normal 65 mph. Due in part to confusion over warning lights, at 5:43 p.m. on February 6, 1951, the PRR express passenger train “The Broker” entered the runaround at between 40 and 65 mph. Hundreds were injured and 85 were killed in NJ’s deadliest railroad accident.
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Ford Assembly Plants Auto Racing Auto racing began almost as soon as there were autos to race. In the 1930s, racers modified stock vehicles to run faster with souped-up engines and stripped-down bodies. During Prohibition, bootleggers used “hot rods” to outrun revenue agents. The term combined the slang of “hot” for illegal and “rod” meaning a motor vehicle. During the postwar period, G.I.s returning with mechanical training began tinkering with hot rods. There were many abandoned military airstrips that were converted into drag race tracks by “rodders.” New Jersey was home to several notable postwar tracks. Thomas and Jennie Nicol built the state’s oldest asphalt one-third mile oval track in Wall Township in 1949. NASCAR’s Convertible Series held a race at the track on July 14, 1956. New Egypt Speedway was built in 1946 as a quarter-mile dirt track before being converted to a paved track during the 1960s and rehabilitated in 1997 by the Grosso family as a one-third mile dirt track. Flemington Speedway started in 1915, but when lights were added in 1955, stock car racing became the weekly Saturday night featured attraction. Vineland Speedway started with a half-mile dirt oval in 1955.
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LEFT: Charlie “Cigarman” Birdsall was among the World War II veterans who raced automobiles at Wall Stadium.
Growth in automobile manufacturing provided employment for many Americans. The Ford Motor Company had an assembly plant in Edison, NJ between 1948 and 2004. Their assembly plant in Edgewater, NJ began operations in 1930 and closed in 1955, replaced by a new plant in Mahwah, NJ. The Mahwah plant was the largest motor vehicle assembly plant in the United States and contributed to the economic development of the town. Even today, local Mahwah sports teams remain named the Thunderbirds in honor of the Ford plant, which closed in 1980. On October 3, 1961, the United Auto Workers union (UAW) declared a strike at Ford plants across the country to win higher wages and better benefits. 120,000 workers at 88 Ford plants in 26 states walked out, including at the Mahwah plant. When the UAW settled with Ford, they were the only facility to vote against the agreement, but they went back to work anyway.
The Wildwoods The Garden State Parkway provided easier access going “down the shore,” helping to grow the tourist economies of seaside resort towns. Perhaps the most unique to emerge in the 1950s were the Doo Wop motels of “the Wildwoods,” comprised of North Wildwood, Wildwood, and Wildwood Crest. It was estimated that the Garden State Parkway brought an additional 349,000 automobiles each season, and Public Service Interstate Transportation Company buses ran every twenty minutes from Philadelphia during the summer. The number of visitors increased nearly every season during the 1950s. Crowds of more than 150,000 on holiday weekends were not uncommon and during the July 4, 1952 holiday, officials counted 50,000 automobiles and estimated crowds numbering 300,000. In order to keep up with the need for accommodations, the resort saw a boom of new motel construction. The attraction of motels over hotels was the casual atmosphere and park-at-the-door convenience. Most new motels were of the “Miami Beach-type,” not more than two stories high. Many were modeled after designs seen in Florida, especially in Miami Beach. Will Morey, one of the first and most prolific motel builders, spent winters in Florida and brought
back design ideas. Between 1956 and 1964, over 200 motels were built on the island.
Doo Wop What made these motels so visually stimulating were their embellishments—superfluous decorations added to the plain concrete block to differentiate one from the next among the hundreds of motels vying for business. Designs incorporated fantastical themes mimicking Pacific Island paradises and the Orient, or the streamlined, angled forms evocative of the atomic and space ages—all accompanied by spectacular neon signs—creating an exciting experience within reach of the working class. The over-the-top style became known as Doo Wop, after the popular musical style coming out of Philadelphia. The Wildwoods attracted a variety of performers to its clubs and bars. Bill Haley and His Comets first performed the seminal “Rock Around the Clock” live at the HofBrau Hotel in 1954 and Chubby Checker introduced his hit “The Twist” at the Rainbow Club in 1960. Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” aired live from the Starlight Ballroom on national television
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Butch Williams holding Gloria Phillis and Cheryl Steele on Chicken Bone Beach, Atlantic City, NJ.
Chicken Bone Beach De facto segregation was a fact of life for many African Americans in the 1950s, including leisure pursuits. An example was a stretch of Atlantic City shoreline known as “Chicken Bone Beach.” Before 1900, blacks and whites in Atlantic City lived side by side and African Americans used the beaches without any restriction. After 1900, however, hotel owners began pushing black beachgoers south of the Million Dollar Pier to appease a growing number of hotel guests from the Jim Crow South. The nickname came from the fried chicken bones cleanup crews buried among picnic debris in the sand. Black entrepreneurs began providing entertainment in the 1940s and 50s, attracting such leading figures such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Louis Jordan, the Mills Brothers, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, the Club Harlem showgirls, Sugar Ray Robinson, and singer Peggy Thomas. Chicken Bone Beach remained segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Singer Sammy Davis, Jr. with an unidentified woman, 1954.
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Coca-Cola picnic cooler Private Collection
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New Jerseyans, especially from North Jersey, are known for using the regionalism of “going down the shore” to mean they are heading to the state’s Atlantic Ocean beaches. While the state has long had both native and tourist shore cultures, the combination of the Garden State Parkway and an explosion in automobile ownership in the 1950s meant even working class families could enjoy a summer vacation on the beaches. This well-worn cooler was taken on innumerable trips “down the shore” by the Stroever family throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
1. Guide traffic light sight Many cars in the late 1940s and 1950s had sun visors on the exterior above the windshield. These, along with the windshield and front seat configuration, made it difficult to see a traffic signal when being the first vehicle stopped at an intersection. The sight, which would be stuck to the dash by a magnet, reflects the view of the traffic signal, making it easier to see. Modern vehicles have windshield that curve back more and the driver sits more under it, so the view up to the signal is better. 2. 1951 F-1 Ford pickup gauge panel The first-generation Ford F-Series is a series of pickup trucks and commercial vehicles introduced in late 1947 and Ford’s first post-war truck design. The first generation F-Series would remain in production until1952. 3. Add-on turn signal indicator Turn signals were not a standard feature on automobiles until Buick included them in 1939. They were offered on high-end models after World War II and companies began manufacturing add-on indicators for older and basic Ford, Chevy, and Plymouth cars. By 1958, all passenger cars were mandated to have turn signals as a standard feature. 4. 1957 Chevy Bel Air dashboard clock and speaker bezel The Chevrolet Bel Air was a full-size car produced by Chevrolet between 1950 and 1981. This clock is from the second generation produced between 1955 and 1957. The Bel Air is considered by many to be probably the most iconic vehicle of the 1950s.
Courtesy Vintage Motor Cars of Hunterdon
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Civil Defense The concept of “civil defense” took hold during World War I, with organized civilian activities to guard against saboteurs, to encourage joining the military, facilitate conscription, sell Liberty Bonds, and generally maintain morale at home. The Office of Civilian Defense was established during World War II, responsible for much of the same jobs as before, but with the added duties of watching for possible submarine or aircraft attacks. During the postwar period, other threats emerged as the U.S. and the Soviet Union became rivals in a “Cold War” for world power, along with their respective allies—all with the added new fears of nuclear war. Responsibilities now also included establishing
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evacuation plans and fallout shelters and educating the public on surviving atomic attack. The National Security Resources Board issued a 162-page “Blue Book” in 1950 that outlined the template for civil defense organization for the following 40 years. Congressional funding never met the budgets of the various agencies and programs, but a declassified 1963 U.S. war game analysis estimated that approximately 27 million citizens would have been saved by civil defense education had the Soviets launched a preemptive strike.
Civil Defense Education
Leonard Dreyfuss
Civil Defense included educating the public about preparation for the wide range of potential natural and manmade disasters. However, during the Cold War, the system expanded to include what to do in the event of nuclear attack. Public education included motion picture and printed public service announcements. In the movie “Duck and Cover,” for instance, an animated Bert the Turtle told children in 1952 to do what the title said if they “see the flash.” Pamphlets were also published on how to install a fallout shelter and stock it with supplies. In August 1950, three World War II veterans from Teaneck, NJ announced their Zaro Concrete Company could build a 10-foot by 10-foot bomb shelter for around $1,500. They told the New York Times even if a bomb never fell, the shelters could double as wine cellars.
Advertising executive Leonard Dreyfuss was active in Newark’s home front war efforts during World War II, particularly civil defense, with which he continued involvement during the Cold War. He served on the State Governor’s Civil Defense Advisory Committee during the 1950s. Among the programs Dreyfuss oversaw as State Civil Defense Director were air raid drills. In January 1951, he advised parents to encourage children to see drills in school as good things, like fire drills. The first postwar statewide air raid drill that month had highlighted weaknesses he pledged to fix, including communication breakdowns and a need for more sirens in cities where residents complained they could hardly be heard in some neighborhoods.
Civil Defense Air Raid Warden helmet Courtesy Steve Santucci The symbol on this helmet identifies the wearer as an Air Raid Warden, responsible for providing a range of assistance in the event of an enemy attack by air or conducting air raid drills. During World War II, there was a threat of enemy air attacks. During the Cold War, the potential threat was from Russian bombers and later missiles. State of New Jersey Civil Defense Plan, 1950 Courtesy Mahwah Museum
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Nike In 1945, the U.S. Army and Bell Laboratories developed an anti-aircraft missile system designed to shoot down the new jet aircraft that were being developed by the end of World War II. The program was named “Project Nike,” after the Greek goddess of victory, and was the country’s first surfaceto-air missile. The Nike Ajax was introduced in 1953 and silo batteries installed the following year near cities throughout the country, including 18 in New Jersey to protect New York and Philadelphia. The Nike Hercules replaced them in 1958. The Nike system was disarmed in 1974 as part of the SALT II Treaty, though they were already becoming obsolete compared with new intercontinental ballistic missiles. On May 22, 1958, eight Nike Ajax missiles out of their silos for maintenance exploded in Middletown, NJ, killing six soldiers and four ordnance department workers. The impact caused broken windows and other property damage in the surrounding area. Nike missile model Courtesy Mahwah Museum
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LEFT & ABOVE: “U.S. Army Nike In Defense of the Nation” booklet describing the system for the public. BELOW: The Fort Hancock Nike base.
Interior of an underground atomic fallout shelter on Long Island, New York 1955. Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
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Sputnik 2 dog Laika.
Sputnik 2 On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union surprised the world by launching Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite in Earth’s orbit. The 23-inch silver sphere with antennae transmitted radio beeps until the battery ran out 21 days later, burning up in the atmosphere on January 4, 1958. The launch demonstrated the Soviets’ capability of putting a payload into orbit and heightened Cold War fears they could someday put weapons into space. The feat put pressure on the nascent U.S. space program. A Singer Sewing Machine Company chemist and engineer named George Chaplenko arrived home in Perth Amboy after 11:00 p.m. on November 11, 1957. To unwind, the 33-year-old indulged his short wave radio hobby. He picked up a broadcast from Moscow. He understood Russian, having come to the U.S. from the Ukraine following World War II. He was drafted into the Soviet army but was captured and sent to a Nazi forced labor camp. He suspected the Russian announcement was special and started a tape recorder to translate it easier. What he heard shocked him—not only had the Soviets launched a second Sputnik satellite, but this one had a live dog inside it. Chaplenko called The New York Times, but was dismissed as a crank. It was only later, when sources in London confirmed the Russian announcement, they recognized he had given them a scoop. The Times sent him a check for $25 with their thanks. George Chaplenko in later life, with wife Tanya.
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(Right) Bendix Family Radiation Measurement Kit, C. 1960-1963 Manufactured by the Bendix Corporation of Cincinnati, Ohio during the early 1960s and retailing for around $25, these kits were among the first commercially available radiation detection devices designed for home use. It was marketed during the Cold War years, when families were encouraged to build fallout shelters and prepare for the possibility of nuclear war. The kit’s instruction sheet included a graph of the typical effects of radiation exposure. A dose of 75 roentgens (unit of measurement for the exposure of X-rays and gamma rays) causes vomiting in about 10% of people; a dose of 100 causes hair loss in at least 10%; a dose over 200 is severe enough to require medical care in 9 out of 10 cases; and a dose of 450 roentgens is the median lethal dose (fatal to 50%). Survivors are unlikely when exposure reaches 600 roentgens.
Toys
Postwar economic and manufacturing booms made for a robust toy industry.
The turn of the 20th century is considered a “golden age” of toy manufacturing. The value of play for childhood development was popularly encouraged and rising wages among working class parents created markets for toys produced by new massproduction technologies. While most major toymakers retooled factories to make war materials during the Second World War, increased experimentation sometimes led to new toys in peacetime. Earl L. Warrick was trying to create a new synthetic rubber and created what later became Silly Putty. Richard James’s experiments with springs for the military led to the Slinky. The postwar economic and manufacturing boom, combined with new materials like plastics, led to a robust toy industry. The 1950s saw the
introduction of Legos (1949), Mr. Potato Head (1952), and Barbie (1959). New Jersey was also home to manufacturers and distributors of pranks, novelties, puzzles, and magic tricks. Sam Sorensen of S. S. Adams and Co. sold sneezing powder from his Plainfield apartment in 1904 and patented the “Joy Buzzer” in 1932. He expanded from his Asbury Park factory to a larger facility in Neptune in 1934 and never laid anyone off during the Great Depression. LEFT: Though invented in Pennsylvania, Slinky’s steel wire came from John A. Roebling Sons Co. New Jersey. RIGHT: The “Joy Buzzer” 1932 patent awarded to Sam Sorensen.
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Tin Toys Before the widespread use of plastics after the war, many toys were made from stamped or lithographed tin, adapting existing packaging technologies. Among the tin toymakers was J. Chein & Company, started by Julius Chein, left, in 1903 in New York. Four years later they opened a plant in Harrison, NJ, where the company produced piggy banks, noisemakers, and model horse-drawn carriages. They obtained licenses from such companies as King Features Syndicate and Walt Disney Productions, producing Popeye, Felix the Cat, and Disney character toys. The postwar period saw increased competition for tin toys from Japan and an increased use of plastics. To remain competitive, Chein moved to a less expensive facility in Burlington, NJ. F. W. Woolworth Company became their primary retailer, but once they too moved to selling less-expensive plastic toys in the 1960s, Chein phased out tin products altogether.
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Chein later acquired the Learning Aids Group and its Renwal Plastics division, known for its successful series of anatomical kits that included “The Visible Man,” “Visible Woman,” “Visible Head,” and “Visible Dog” models, as well as scale model vehicle kits.
Dimestore Soldiers Another NJ toymaker that started with metal products was Barclay Manufacturing. Formed by Leon Donze and Michael Levy in 1922, the company was named for Barclay Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. During the 1930s, they relocated to North Bergen, NJ. They are bestknown for hollowcast toy soldiers. They became the largest toy soldier maker in the U.S. during the prewar period. Sold at five-and-dime stores, they became known as “Dimestore Soldier.” In the 1950s, Barclay’s moved to Union City, NJ, and continued making metal toy soldiers despite the trend toward plastic. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, they also made small die-cast cars and trucks, including a car carrier with a folding ramp and four cars. The company ceased production in 1971, unable to compete with cheaper plastic toys. Rodeo Joe, J. Chein & Co. CH2015.27.1. New Jersey State Museum; Gift of James Turk Carousel, J. Chein & Co. Division of Historic Sites and History Services Car carrier with cars, Barclay Manufacturing Division of Historic Sites and History Services DImestore Soldier Minnesota Historical Society via Flickr
Toy Trains The 1950s were the heyday for model train maker Lionel® Corporation, when they sold some $25-million worth of trains per year. Founded in New York in 1900 by Joshua Lionel Cowen and Harry C. Grant as an electrical novelties manufacturer, their first train was intended only as a window display. When more customers asked about buying the train than other products, they began making toy train sets. In 1929, they opened a factory in Hillside, New Jersey, where they produced trains until 1974. Their peak earnings in 1953 reached $35-million, but declined as the decade wore on as preferences grew for spaceand military-themed toys. Another model railroad related company was Mantua Metal Products, which started as a metalworking company founded by John Tyler in 1926 in Woodbury Heights, NJ. In the 1930s they produced die-cast HO scale model trains. Toymaking was suspended during the war to manufacture precision measuring and mapping equipment for the U.S. Army and Navy. After the war, they returned to model railroad accessories and in 1957 rebranded themselves a Tyco (Tyler Company). After a series of mergers, TYCO Industries made a variety of toys and RC vehicles. They were acquired by Mattel in 1997 and ceased production in 2001.
Dolls
In 1931, the Horsman family expanded their New York toy company into the Horsman Doll Company. They opened a large factory in Trenton, where it would become a premier maker of dolls, employing well-known sculptors and developing a sturdier material for the heads to replace the more fragile bisque. By the 1950s their 800 employees were producing 12,000 dolls a day to meet pre-holiday demand. By the mid-1980s, the company was under new ownership and moved to South Carolina.
Polly doll Horsman Doll Company, Trenton, NJ Private collection While commercial doll companies had introduced “Negro dolls” after 1910, some were created by painting Caucasian dolls brown. Horsman’s Polly dolls had distinctly African American features. During the 1950s, more U.S. manufacturers recognized the African American market for realistic black dolls.
Colorforms® In 1951 New York art students Harry and Patricia Kislevitz began decorating the glossy paint of their bathroom with colorful pieces of plastic used to make pocketbooks. They would stick, but could then be peeled off and repositioned over and over without
Lionel locomotive #646 with tender #2046W, boxcar, tanker, caboose Private collection
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damaging either. When they saw how friends found it fun to reconfigure the shapes to make new murals, they began selling sets intended for artistic adults. Sold through the noted toy store FAO Schwarz, under the name Colorforms®, they soon became popular among children and began featuring licensed cartoon and popular culture themes. Outgrowing their apartment workshop, they opened factories in Ramsey and Englewood, NJ.
Wrist Radio In the late 1940s, cousins Ike Heller and Saul Robbins founded Remco Industries, Inc. in Newark, where they made simple “walkie-talkies.” Later joined by Armand Daddis, they developed sophisticated remote control toys (the company name is from Remote Control). Among their more popular was the Dick Tracy Wrist
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Radio, a working two-way radio consisting of belt-hung transmitter and wrist-worn mic/speaker. It was based on the wrist radio communicator introduced in 1946 to the gadgets of comic book, radio, and movie detective character Dick Tracy. Colorforms; Remco Dick Tracy Wrist Radio with packaging Division of Historic Sites and History Services
Television The concept of television as we know it burst onto the scene in the 1950s, based on primitive experiments conducted in the late 1800s and early 1900s. By the time fullscale commercial television broadcasting began in 1947, there were only some 6,000 T.V. sets in the U.S., but by 1951 the number had shot up to 12 million (65 percent)! By 1955, half of all U.S. homes had a television. No new technology became so ubiquitous so fast in the American home as the first commercially available black and white television sets. Among the best early sets were manufactured in New Jersey, either in Camden by RCA or by the DuMont Television Corporation in Passaic and Paterson.
TV sets made in New Jersey helped change American family entertainment.
Much of early TV entertainment was adapted from radio; others drew on the established vaudeville variety format, while others broadcast live plays. Regularly broadcast situation comedies (sitcoms) also enjoyed great success.
LEFT: 1955 CBS publicity photo for the “The Honeymooners.” RIGHT: 1951 ad DuMont ad for their “Electronic Tuning.”
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Nightly News
WATV
Television news shows began competing with On May 15, 1948, WATV channel 13 signed newspapers as the primary way Americans learned onto the television airwaves from Newark, New Jersey’s about current events. The 1952 presidential election Mosque Theatre (now Symphony Hall) as the first of nominating conventions were the first covered live by three new stations that entered the new media, with the term the New York City area market “anchorman” being first applied that year. The station was owned to Walter Cronkite’s role for by Atlantic Television, a CBS. Increasingly, network news subsidiary of Frank programs began producing V. Bremer’s Bremer their own exclusive content. WATV Newark logo 1948 Broadcasting Corporation, Among the most acclaimed and 1958. which also operated two television news programs was New Jersey radio stations. “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” Filling the time with content was Walter Cronkite interviewing (NBC 1956–70), which won evidently a challenge for the young station. President Harry S. Truman at a Peabody Award in 1958 for One of its early daytime programs, the White House in 1952. “Outstanding Achievement in “Daywatch,” featured a camera focused on News.” Edward R. Murrow transitioned from a successful a teletypewriter as it printed wire service radio news broadcasting career to television in 1951, news stories. Slow periods were filled in when his radio show, “Hear It Now,” was re-christened with cutaways to mechanical toys operating, “See It Now” on the CBS television network (1951–58). backed by a light musical soundtrack. It is perhaps best remembered for its March 9, 1954 WATV was among the first television Debuting in broadcast, “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy,” stations to broadcast a show featuring an 1948, the cartoon show which turned public opinion African-American host. Bill Cook, the “Junior Frolics” against McCarthyism and first black disc jockey in the New York was especially established television news metropolitan market, hosted WATV’s popular. Hosted investigative journalism. “Stairway to Stardom” on Thursday by “Uncle In 1953, he launched nights. It showcased local musical Fred” Sayles, it featured “Person to Person,” (CBS talent, Cook told The Pittsburgh Courier cartoons like 1953–61), interviewing in July 1950, “selected on the basis “Koko the celebrities in their homes of ability and without regard to race, Clown” from his New York studio. color or religion.” Unfortunately, no copies of the show are known to survive. After various transitions, Edward R. Murrow during the “See It Now” program that Channel 13 is known today as New York’s WNET. aired from 1951 to 1958.
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DuMont Television Cabinet, Model RA-120, c.1953 Courtesy InfoAge Science & History Learning Center Floor lamp, c.1953 Courtesy Whitey Warner
Barbara Barcia checks out the 7-inch television built-in to a stove. Made in 1951 by Western Stove Co., the model was displayed at a Chicago furniture industry trade show to test consumer reactions. It was planned to sell for $500. Barbara wasn’t impressed, telling the LIFE magazine reporter it might be good for cooking lesson shows, but not entertainment. Though not successful, this experiment reflects how much television had become a major part of American home life in the 1950s.
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Drive-In
Drive-in theaters enjoyed popularity with America’s growing love affair with the automobile.
The growing popularity of the automobile in the 1910s and 1920s inspired all kinds of “drive-in” service fads, including a partial drive-in movie theater, the Theatre de Guadalupe, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 1915, and another in Comanche, Texas in 1921. The first commercially practical drivein movie theater, however, was patented by Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. of Camden, New Jersey. It opened in Pennsauken Township on June 6, 1933. The first movie shown there
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was the Adolphe Menjou film “Wife Beware.” Tickets cost 25 cents. The theater’s advertising slogan was “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.” Hollingshead and three investors, created a Park-It Theatres, Inc. and licensed the concept to Loew’s Drive-In Theatres, Inc. in 1937. But they had trouble collecting royalties, and after Loew’s was taken to court, Hollingshead’s patent was ruled invalid in 1950.
LEFT: Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. patented the modern drive-in theater concpet in 1933.
New Jersey Drive-Ins The postwar surge in auto ownership and the attendant “car culture” meant drive-in theaters enjoyed a golden era during the 1950s and 60s. The number in NJ reached a peak of 46 in 1967. Ed Brown of Wall Township even added parking for 25 small airplanes at his 500 car drive-in theater in 1948. Escalating land values and new Brunswick Rt. 1 Drive home entertainment In Theatre showing options in the 1980s “Return of October,” a greatly diminished 1948 comdey starring the business until the Glenn Ford. last extant theater, the Route 35 Drive-In in Hazlet, closed in 1991. The Delsea Drive-In Theatre in Vineland, built in 1949 and closed in 1987, reopened in 2004 and is currently the only operating drive-in theater in New Jersey.
Fly-In Drive-In, Allenwood Atco Drive-In, Atco Super 130 Drive-In, Beverly Dix Drive-In, Bordentown Bridgeton Drive-In, Bridgeton Black Horse Drive-In Twin, Camden Shore Drive-In, Collingwood Park Turnpike Drive-In, East Brunswick Eatontown Drive-In, Eatontown Plainfield Drive-In, Edison Edison Drive-In, Edison Shore Drive-In, Farmingdale Circus Drive-In, Hammonton Starlite Drive-In, Gloucester City Route 35 Drive-In, Hazlet Roosevelt Drive-In, Jersey City Laurelton Motor Vue Theatre, Laurelton Ledgewood Drive-In, Ledgewood Hackensack Drive-In, Little Ferry Livingston Drive-In, Livingston Newark Drive-In, Newark Brunswick Drive-In, North Brunswick
Newton Drive-In, Newton Tacony-Palmyra Drive-In, Palmyra Paramus Drive-In, Paramus Pennsauken Drive-In, Pennsauken Atlantic Drive-In, Pleasantville Wildwood Twin Drive-In, Rio Grande Route 3 Drive-In, Rutherford Amboys Drive-In, Sayreville Somerville Drive-In, Somerville Parkway Drive-In, Thorofare Bay Drive-In, Toms River Tom River Drive-In, Toms River Totowa Drive-In, Totowa Ewing Drive-In, Trenton U.S. 1 Drive-In, Trenton Troy Hills Drive-In, Troy Hills Union Drive-In, Union Route 17 Drive-In, Upper Saddle River Delsea Drive-In, Vineland Woodbridge Drive-In, Woodbridge Trenton Drive-In, Route 130 in Yardville Manahawkin Drive-In, Manahawkin
The Garden State’s 1950s drive-in theaters are listed at right.
Somerville Drive-In Theatre advertisement c.1958; Bellevue Theatre Upper Montclair handbill advertisement, c.1953 Courtesy Gordon Bond
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Rock’n’Roll During the summer of 1951, a country band called The Saddlemen was appearing at Wildwood’s HofBrau Club. Across the street at the Rip Tide, the Treniers, a rhythm-and-blues band, was playing. Between sets or on nights off, it wasn’t uncommon for musicians to check out other bands. So the country crooners strolled across the street from their hotel and were blown away by the other band’s raucous sound. The crooner was Bill Haley, and his hillbilly boogie shared stylistic sensibilities with Milt Trenier’s swinging jive.
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Born on the Jersey Shore.
The cross-pollination led Bill Haley & His Comets to transition away from strict country and western into a new hybrid, resulting in the 1952 recording of “Crazy Man, Crazy,” considered the first fully formed example of the new rock ‘n’ roll musical genre.
LEFT: “Crazy Man, Crazy” album cover. ABOVE: Bill Haley and His Comets, 1956: Rudy Pompilli, Billy Williamson, Al Rex, Bill Haley, Johnny Grande, Ralph Jones, Franny Beecher.
“Rock Around the Clock” The iconic song “Rock Around the Clock” had a curious history. It was first recorded in 1954 by an Italian-American novelty band, Sonny Dae and His Knights. Bill Haley started playing his own version live, but was prevented from recording it due to a personal dispute between the head of Decca Records and one of the song’s composers. Comets’ bass player Marshall Lytle and drummer Dick Richards remembered they first performed the song before a live audience at Phil and Eddie’s Surf Club in Wildwood, NJ. More than any other song, the tremendous success of “Rock Around the Clock” opened the sonic floodgates to make rock ‘n’ roll mainstream to youth culture throughout the world. A 1956 movie of the same name told a highly fictionalized version of how rock and roll was discovered. In addition to Bill Haley and His Comets, it starred disc jockey and rock ‘n’ roll promoter Alan Freed. The movie supported integration by showing white musicians performing in the same venues as black and Hispanic performers.
Les Paul & Mary Ford Les Paul (1915 - 2009) and Mary Ford (1924 1977) were a husband and wife vocalist and guitarist duo that enjoyed popularity between 1939 and 1966. Paul was one of the pioneers of the solid-body
electric guitar and popularized innovative analog recording techniques. His unique playing style continues to influence guitarists today. In 1946 Paul was introduced to Mary Ford (born Iris Colleen Summers) by the cowboy crooner Gene Autry, and they were married on December 31, 1949. Between 1950 and 1954, Les Paul and Mary Ford had 16 top ten hits. The couple moved to Mahwah, New Jersey and, in 1950, hosted a 15-minute NBC radio program, “The Les Paul Show,” recorded from their home with rhythm guitarist Eddie Stapleton. It was adapted as a television program, minus Stapleton and renamed “The Les Paul & Mary Ford Show” (also known as “Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home”). Also recorded at their Mahwah home, it aired from 1954 to 1955, five times a day, five days a week, as five-minute fillers between NBC television’s “I’m Sitting on Top of the World,” programing. Les Paul and Mary Ford, 1953 Courtesy Mahwah Museum Paul and Ford divorced in 1964. Les Paul is the only person to be included in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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New Jersey Rock Musicians Several stars of the 1950s rock ‘n’ roll era were born in New Jersey:
Frankie Valli Newark, 1934
Ricky Nelson Teaneck, 1940 Connie Francis Newark, 1939
The Shirelles Passaic: Shirley Owens 1941, Doris Coley 1941, Addie “Micki” Harris 1940, and Beverly Lee 1941
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Lesley Gore Born NYC but raised in Tenafly, 1946 Various 1950s record album covers Courtesy The Liverakos-Bouhlas Family
New Frontier Historians consider “The Fifties� to have ended with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. As can be seen in this exhibit, events in the 1950s helped to set the stage for the social and political changes that would define the 1960s.
Post magazine, December 14, 1963 Courtesy The Liverakos-Bouhlas Family
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Desegregation The 1950 U.S. Federal Census proved what many had anecdotally suspected—that a disproportionate number of “whites” (people of various European ancestries) were migrating from inner cities towards the suburbs compared to African American and mixed-race citizens. Catalysts ranged from general racial economic disparity and intentional real estate discrimination to a response to school desegregation. “Negro History and a New On May 17, 1954, Birth of Freedom” 10th Annual the U.S. Supreme Court Negro History Celebration ruled unanimously in Brown program, Camden, NJ v. Board of Education that February 19, 1967 racial segregation was Courtesy Special Collections and University Archives, unconstitutional, overturning Rutgers University Libraries the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson African American historian, decision that established author, and journalist Carter “separate but equal.” Godwin Woodson (1875Public school desegregation 1950) and minister and civic leader Jesse E. Moorland contributed to “white flight,” (1863-1940) founded the as parents moved out of Association for the Study of racially diverse urban areas African American Life and for more homogeneous History in Chicago, 1915. suburbs. While segregation In 1926, Woodson and the ASALH launched a “Negro of public schools by law (de History Week.” Local groups jure) was unconstitutional, and municipalities created there remained de facto (by events in February, such as this fact) segregation. Title IV of one in Camden, NJ. President the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Gerald Ford decreed Black History Month a national authorized the U.S. Attorney observance in 1976.
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General to legally enforce school desegregation. Communities sought greater integration by busing students to different schools, meeting with resistance and challenges in federal courts. The New Jersey towns of Englewood, Orange, and Plainfield were among those ordered by the State to address racial imbalances. While most towns awaited direction from the courts before acting, the Township of Teaneck, in Bergen County, took the lead by becoming the first in the nation to voluntarily integrate its public schools in 1964.
Civil Rights Historians tend to bookend the modern Civil Rights movement period between the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968. Added to previous legislative lobbying, litigation, and public education, the 1950s saw an increased use of “direct action”—boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, marches, nonviolent resistance, and civil disobedience. The Regional Council of Negro Leadership was formed in 1952 to boycott Mississippi gas stations for refusing to allow blacks to use restrooms, to expose brutality by the state’s highway patrol, and to encourage use of the black-owned TriState Bank of Nashville. After Claudette Colvin (RIGHT TOP) and Rosa Parks (RIGHT BOTTOM) were arrested for failing to give up their bus seats in Alabama, the Montgomery Women’s Political Council launched a bus boycott in 1955 that brought national attention to their spokesman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Levittown
Historic preservationists hope to save the building in Camden.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Between 1949 and 1951, when King was still a student at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, he boarded at the home of Benjamin Hunt across the Delaware River in Camden, NJ at 753 Walnut Street. Hunt, along with Camden County N.A.A.C.P. branch president Ulysses Wiggins, helped King and another student file a police complaint against Ernest Nichols, a white tavern owner in Maple Shade, NJ. The then-21 year-old King claimed Nichols refused to serve them and their dates in June 1950, even firing a gun in the air to scare them. Nichols countered they had been pressuring him to sell alcohol on a Sunday, in violation of local laws, and Martin Luther King, the altercation escalated. The case was Jr.’s admission photograph for Crozer dropped after three white witnesses Theological Seminary. refused to testify. However, some King historians point to this experience in Maple Shade as a formative event in shaping his future career in the Civil Rights movement. While the building’s significance is debated, some hope to preserve the house in Camden where he had boarded.
Postwar housing shortages were met with planned communities of quickly built, assemblyline houses. Abraham Levitt was the chief developer of these homes. By 1948 Levitt & Sons Real Estate Development Company were mass-producing 30 houses a day. The 27-step construction process allowed each house to sell for as little as $8,000. Thanks to the G.I. Bill and federal housing subsidies, the cost for many buyers was as low as $400. The first of these “Levittowns,” finished in New York State in 1951, was followed by six more: Pennsylvania (1958), New Jersey (1958), Puerto Rico (1963), and two in Maryland (1964 and 1970). New Jersey’s Levittown was built on land bought from Burlington County’s Willingboro Township. To critics, “Levittown” became a pejorative term for homogeneity and blandness, but also racial exclusivity. Sales agreements stipulated houses be rented or sold only to the “Caucasian race.” Despite a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court decision against such discrimination, the policy was still in place in 1958, when William R. James, an African American army officer at nearby Fort Dix attempted to buy a home in Levittown, New Jersey. Since the developer received mortgage insurance from the Federal Housing Administration, it was in violation of state antidiscrimination laws. James filed suit and the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling in James’ favor. As a consequence, Levitt developed an integration program. Rev. W.R. James, Sr. speaking at a Black History Month event in 2007. He died August 2, 2016 at age 96. In 2001, Willingboro Township renamed the school in Pennypacker Park to W.R. James, Sr. Elementary School in his honor.
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Women’s Rights As already described, following the early1900s women’s suffrage movements and expanded gender roles during the Second World War, by the 1950s women resisted being pushed back into their traditional place. As many as 50 percent of mothers remained in the postwar workforce. The robust feminism of the 1960s was a consequence of this realignment.
LGBT Rights Non-heterosexuals were generally discriminated against through laws dealing with perceived mental and moral disorders. In 1950, President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Uniform Code of Military Justice which forbade sodomy, including between persons of the same sex. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an Executive Order that included “sexual perversion” among security risks used to keep homosexuals from federal employment. Between 1953 and 1956, the “lavender scare”—an offshoot of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist “red scare”—targeted homosexuals within the State Department, accusing them of being subject to blackmail and having communist sympathies. Such laws reflected the social discrimination faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, forcing many to be circumspect about their private lives. Nevertheless, discreet bars and clubs emerged that would become centers of local activism. Murphy’s Tavern in Newark, a thriving gay scene in the 1950s, was a target of the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) spies who tried to shut them down. They were participants in a landmark 1967 New Jersey Supreme Court decision overturning a 1934 law preventing liquor licenses being issued to such establishments. Murphy’s Tavern can be seen on the left of this c.1961 photo of Mulberry Street in Newark.
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Vietnam War Popular perception of the Vietnam War is as a major part of 1960s history. But U.S. funding and military advisers backing French military involvement began in 1950.
Post Industrial The mid-century marked a high point for U.S. manufacturing, bolstered by the needs of World War II and postwar demand. Between the mid-1950s and 2010, total manufacturing shrank from being near 30 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) to just over 10 percent. Financial services, insurance, and real estate, however, grew from just over 10 percent GDP to over 20 percent in the same period. This process of deindustrialization has continued to change communities throughout post industrial New Jersey and elsewhere in the U.S.
Space Program The success of the 1960s American space program, culminating with the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, began with postwar rocket experiments and Cold War competition. The first U.S. manned space flight program, Project Mercury, ran from 1958 through 1963. Among the first American astronauts selected by NASA in 1959—known as the “Mercury Seven”—was Walter “Wally” Schirra, Jr. (1923-2007), who was born in Hackensack and grew up in Oradell, New Jersey. He flew on Mercury-Atlas 8 (1962), Gemini 6A (1965), and Apollo 7 (1968).
President Dwight D. Eisenhower greets President of South Vietnam in 1957.
President Kennedy giving a news conference on Vietnam, March 23, 1961.
Walter “Wally” Schirra, Jr. Gemini 6A (1965)
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Monograph Image Credits
Crouse-Hinds Co. traffic signal, Model TH4001 3886-G, Type M Courtesy the Collection of Todd Dubay The Crouse-Hinds Company of Syracuse, New York, began production of the Type M traffic signal in 1959. This example was installed in Newark, NJ until around 1980, when City replaced them with the present yellow body signals.
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Front cover - Gordon Bond Inside front cover - Gordon Bond 2 - Gordon Bond 3 - Getty Images 4 - Top left courtesy Gordon Bond Designs; bottom right FDR Library Photo Collection, NPx 64-269 5 - Both courtesy Gordon Bond Designs 6 - Top courtesy Gordon Bond Designs; bottom www.blacksouthernbelle.com 7 - Both and schematics courtesy Gordon Bond Designs 8 - Top courtesy Gordon Bond Designs; bottom left www.foodtimeline.org 9 - Left Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 10 - Top right courtesy Gordon Bond Designs; left and bottom Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 11 - Left www.shorpy.com; right Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 12 - Supermarket images courtesy Barbara Krasner; ShopRite logo www.en.wikipedia.org; diner Cornelius Low House Staff 13 - Top and bottom left Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx; top and bottom right Courtesy Elaine Swingle and Family 14 - Left top Paul Lowry, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic; bottom www.whitemanna.com; right Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 15 - All courtesy Gordon Bond Designs 16 - Garden State Parkway logo www.kisspng.com; New Jersey Turnpike logo www.commons.wikimedia.org; postcard courtesy Gordon Bond Designs; all else Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 17 - Left www.shorpy.com; right courtesy Gordon Bond Designs 18 - Top and bottom left courtesy Patti Birdsall Gamble / Garden State Legacy; right Ford plant images courtesy Cathy Moran Hajo, Ph.D. 19 - All courtesy Stephanie M. Hoagland 20 - Both John W. Mosley Photograph Collection, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA 21 - Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 22 - Left www.imdb.com; top right www.civildefensearchives.org; bottom right www.hyperorg.com 23 - Bottom left and right Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx; top courtesy the Leonard Dreyfuss Papers, Courtesy of the Archives & Special Collections Center, Seton Hall University 24 - Left, right top and bottom courtesy the National Park Service; Nike model Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 25 - Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
26 - Left top www.spaceanswers.com; left bottom courtesy Alan P. and Bonnie Witzgall; right top Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx; right bottom, left to right www.civildefensearchives.org, invaluable.com, Mahwah Museum Society Civil Defense with 27 - Left Roebling Center; right www.patents.google.com 28 - Left top Newark Evening News, July 19, 1939, Newark Public Library, via www.antiquetoys.com; left bottom, center, right bottom Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 29 - Left www.aboutmodeltrains.info; top and bottom Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 30 - All Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 31 - Top Alamay; left www.wikipedia.com, CBS Television; David Sarnoff Library, courtesy Alexander B. Magoun 32 - Left top Quelle: AP; left bottom John Springer Collection/ CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images; right top www.logos. wikia.com; right bottom Michael J. Hayde www.betterlivingtv. blogspot.com 33 - Left Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx; right courtesy Gordon Bond 34 - Left Google Patents 35 - Left www.cinematreasures.org; right Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 36 - Left www.americanbluesscene.com; right www.fanpop.com 37 - Left www.teachrock.org; right top TV Guide photo via www. en.wikipedia.org; right bottom Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 38 - Vali Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images; Francis www. conniefrancis.com; Nelson www.simple.wikipedia.org; The Shirelles www.bbc.co.uk; Gore www.wbur.org; records covers Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx 39 - Left Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx; right Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News, Public Domain 40 - Left Ken Braswell of ShoreGrafx; right top The Visibility Project; right bottom www.biography.com 41 - Left top John Ziomek/Camden Courier-Post via AP.com; left bottom www.ExplorePAHistory.com; right top https:// philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/levittowns/; right bottom Calkin Archives, http://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com 42 - Left top The National Museum of American History; left bottom Newark Public Library; right top www.aclu.org; right Gordon Bond 43 - Top Department of Defense, Department of the Air Force; middle Abbie Rowe, National Park Service - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston; bottom NASA 44 - Cornelius Low House Staff Inside back cover - Gordon Bond Back cover - Gordon Bond
Exhibit Credits Guest Curator & Graphic Designer Gordon Bond
Assistant Designer Alycia Rihacek
Text Editors Linda Barth Christine Retz
Middlesex County Division of Historic Sites and History Services would like to thank the following lenders for their contributions to the exhibit: New Jersey Historical Society Janet Aspinwall New Jersey State Museum Gordon Bond North Brunswick Historical Society The Brod Family, Hamilton Twp. NJ Family Collection of Margaret Elsie Bruss Special Collections and University Archives, Collection of Todd Dubay Rutgers University Libraries Steve Santucci Keith and Sharon Helsby Diane Semmling Stephanie M. Hoagland Dave Smela and the Hub Kings Hoboken Historical Museum Michael C. Hritz Gražina and Darius Strolia InfoAge Science & History Learning Center Guy and Lillie Suabedissen James Sullivan, Del Music Company New Jersey Room, Jersey City Free Public Library Nancy Turner Family of John “Jack” Lindeman Liverakos-Bouhlas Family Vintage Auto Museum of New Jersey Vintage Motor Car of Hunterdon Mahwah Museum Society Whitey Warner Michelle Menditto Marc Morgan Ronald G. Rios, Freeholder Director
Division of Historic Sites and History Services Mark Nonestied
Douglas Aumack
Matthew Stroh
Division Head
Resource Interpretive Specialist
History Program Coordinator
Senior Curator
Director of Restoration and Site Management
Strategic Growth Coordinator
Katie Zavoski Ken Helsby
Assistant Curator for Facilities and Museum Education
Michael Boylan Cindy Flynn
Historic Site Liaison and Community Outreach
Mitchell Kevett Ethan Reiss
Museum Assistant
Elias Attal Intern
World Book Encyclopedias, c.1956 Courtesy Janet Aspinwall
Funded By Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders, New Jersey Historical Commission, a Division of the Department of State
Typewriter and case
Courtesy Middlesex County Freeholder Director Ronald G. Rios
Rotary telephone
Courtesy Marc Morgan
Fountain pens and ink Private Collection
Desk, Matching chair
Courtesy Guy & Lillie Suabenissen
Board of Chosen Freeholders Ronald G. Rios Freeholder Director Kenneth Armwood Freeholder Deputy Director Charles Kenny Leslie Koppel Shanti Narra Charles E. Tomaro Claribel A. Azcona-Barber John A. Pulomena County Administrator
Division of Historic Sites and History Services 1050 River Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854 732.745.3030 TTY: 732.745.3888 history@co.middlesex.nj.us www.middlesexcountynj.gov