Fairmount Park, Section 2 – Metuchen, New Jersey
Earlier we recounted the development of Fairmount Park and the key people involved in real estate development in Metuchen, New Jersey, in the early 20th century. Then we gave a tour of the neighborhood looking at the Robinvale neighborhood anchored by a depot that Wright Robins had built for $25,000...
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Robins Park – Metuchen, New Jersey
Earlier we wrote about Wright Robins, the train station he built near Grove Avenue and Henry Street, and his role in the development of the Robinvale neighborhood of Metuchen between Grove Avenue, Woodbridge Avenue, and Jonesdale Avenue. Wright Robins owned the primary house south of Woodbridge Avenue. David Trumbull Marshall...
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Uplands – Metuchen, New Jersey
Papers glowingly reported in July 1897 how Mr. and Mrs. Holden Spear “gave a lawn party for the entertainment of their numerous friends. More than 150 guests were present from Metuchen, this city, and other places, and they were charmed with the splendid hospitality extended to them.”, Tragedy befell them...
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Robinvale – Metuchen, New Jersey
Where there are suburban streets and single-family houses today, Metuchen once had a number of sizable estates. While most are long gone their memory lives on in street names and written sources. Uplands was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Holden Spear (Upland Ave and Spear St today), Henry Redfield...
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Fairmount Park – Metuchen, New Jersey
All the way back in November last year I began some work researching a property on McCoy Avenue in Metuchen, Jersey that my wife and I were looking to buy. In the process I found myself drawn into a fascinating exploration of the history of Metuchen, suburbanization in New Jersey,...
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Transformation Strategies Yield Results for Downtown Metuchen
On an unseasonably warm spring day I made the two-hour drive to Vineland to participate in one of three statewide workshops to restart the Main Street New Jersey (MSNJ) program. Sitting in the recently renovated Grant Plaza meeting space on Landis Ave, I was surrounded by around 60 other Main...
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Santa Maria del Fiore – Florence, Italy
The foundation stone for Santa Maria del Fiore was laid in 1296. Work ebbed and flowed. Francesco Talenti took over about 1343 and instituted the basic plan. The nave had a ribbed groin vault resting on the nave arcade, providing an emphasis on width instead of height. By 1436 the...
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Jane Jacobs West Village Walking Tour – New York, New York
Photo of entrance to 555 Hudson Street while holding open Eyes on the Street by Robert Kanigel with a photograph showing the same storefront with Jane Jacobs in the door. We took inspiration from the recent book Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs and set off on a walking...
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Transforming a Neglected Parking Lot – Metuchen, New Jersey
The Metuchen Downtown Alliance created a cool, family-friendly public gathering space in “the worst looking spot in town” with the help of just $2,500 in Edward Jones Placemaking on Main Challenge matching grant funds--and lots of ingenuity and elbow grease. Here’s their story and valuable lessons learned. If I’ve learned no other lesson...
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AARP Livable Communities – Dallas, Texas (2024)
Attending the Livable Communities National Conference in Dallas was a special opportunity. One of the unexpected highlights was an early morning session on the edge of the conference hall. The topic was on resiliency and disaster response. Four key elements needed during such times were: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual....
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Architecture Glossary
The Architecture Glossary contains some of the most popular and commonly used architectural terms, styles, and building types with definitions, synonyms, and illustrations where available. This project utilizes the CM Tooltip Glossary Pro by CreativeMindsSolutions. This plugin for WordPress parses posts for defined glossary terms and adds links to the static...
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Creative Placemaking to Transform a Park in Milwaukee and Build a #BetterMainStreet
This is the story of how a National Endowment for the Arts gathering of national arts leaders in DC that was listened to by leaders of a small town in Appalachia inspired them to connect with leaders in Milwaukee to transform a neglected park. The National Endowment for the Arts...
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How Tactical Urbanism Can Help Build a #BetterMainStreet
So you want to transform your downtown but only have a shoestring budget. Or your volunteers are willing to help out but the last thing they want to do is sit through endless meetings to make ANOTHER plan that will never translate in to results. What is any self-respecting Main...
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Dare to Be Great
The lessons I’ve learned as a downtown manager over the past 15 years could easily fill a book, or probably several. But if I had to distill everything down to a simple message, it would be this: Take risks, and make mistakes. Be open to unexpected surprises along the way....
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How to Transform Your Downtown in 48 Hours
What self-respecting main Street manager would turn down an opportunity to transform a block of their downtown in 48 hours for $1,000 or less? That’s how I met Mike Lydon of Street Plans Collaborative in 2010. He visited me in Oyster Bay, New York, where I was the director of...
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30 Ideas in 30 Days – Better Block Middlesborough
This series of articles was first written to coincide with Better Block Middlesborough in October 2013. It has since been published here in full to show 30 different ideas to help make places better. Managing the Event #1: Think Incrementally #2: Build a Better Block #3: Encourage Public Participation #4:...
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The Architecture, Art, and Culture of Savannah, Georgia
We started our day simply enough at Back in the Day Bakery. This oasis of deliciousness is slightly off the beaten path. It was well worth the drive up to 40th and Bull Street and scrambling a bit to get a parking spot. We had two Muffins, a Biscone, and...
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The Underhill Family and the Making of America
Relatively few families have had a greater influence in forming our American character than that of the Underhills, and still fewer families yet have individuals like Captain John Underhill. Underhill found himself among the first and earliest wave of a trans-Atlantic progression, immigrating to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in...
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A Dream for Mobility – Disintegration of Downtown – Detroit, Michigan
A vision for mobility in Detroit, ca. 1935. Recent proposals for demolition of the State Savings Bank in Detroit, ignited a debate about parking downtown and the impact this has had on the quality of place . Melanie Markowicz, President of Preservation Detroit weighed in with the following op-ed piece in...
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Detroit’s Lost Moonlight Towers are Austin’s Gain
Postcard showing Moonlight Tower (to left) on Woodward Ave. near Adelaide in downtown Detroit. At first this seemed like another interesting postcard of a long-lost Detroit streetscape. Upon closer inspection, however, there was a remarkable feature. Near the left edge is a latticed tower rising through and beyond the upper...
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