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The Hoboken Historical Museum opened a new exhibit about Washington Street this month. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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The museum is on 13th Street just east of Washington Street. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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The exhibit uses a vast collection of photos, paintings, and artifacts to tell the story of Washington Street. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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A story that was discovered was one about Peter Lee, an African American who inherited a plot on Washington Street. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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Bob Foster and Holly Metz hope that visitors are surprised by the stories just as much as they were when researching them. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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The Hoboken Historical Museum opened a new exhibit about Washington Street this month. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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The museum is on 13th Street just east of Washington Street. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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The exhibit uses a vast collection of photos, paintings, and artifacts to tell the story of Washington Street. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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A story that was discovered was one about Peter Lee, an African American who inherited a plot on Washington Street. Photo by Mark Koosau.
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Bob Foster and Holly Metz hope that visitors are surprised by the stories just as much as they were when researching them. Photo by Mark Koosau.
Step onto Washington Street in Hoboken and you’ll find no shortage on what to see, do, or eat in the city’s most iconic street. From City Hall that’s located near the Hoboken Terminal, to the countless bars and restaurants, and the shops and other places you can go to.
Take a step from the main street onto 13th Street heading east, and you’ll find just one block away a building nestled near Shipyard Park that houses the Hoboken Historical Museum.
Inside is a decorated space with all kinds of artifacts – photos, paintings, collectables, and a massive sanborn map of Washington Street that is stretched out across the exhibit, documenting history of the street that dates back to 1804.
“All these locations have had multiple lives. Different stores go through, they get knocked down, they’re used for different things, so we could only touch upon it,” said Holly Metz, co-curator of the museum. “So we wanted to feature what we have in the collection, and that was what guided us.”
The exhibit, “The Avenue: A History of Washington Street,” opened on August 1, and it looks to use it’s vast collection to teach about the deep history of Hoboken’s landmark street.
The Hoboken Historical Museum is a non-profit organization founded in 1986. Originally starting at City Hall, they relocated to their current location in 2001, which was formerly home to a shipyard company.
The museum rotates exhibits based on a variety of topics. Their previous exhibits include the history of Hudson County using postcards that ran from January 2019 to this Fourth of July, and one from 2015-2016 about Hoboken native Frank Sinatra.
The Washington Street exhibit was the idea of Bob Foster, the director of the museum. They were originally going to do a themed exhibit about bars and saloons, where Washington Street was involved. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic last year.
“Washington Street during COVID was decimated in terms of the business model,” said Foster. “Not that we’re going to change things on Washington Street, but I thought it would be neat to honor Washington Street, and as Washington Street starts to come back, people might get more involved in the history.”
It takes about a month to transform the 2,000 square feet space from one exhibit to another. It takes a week to take down the previous exhibit and clean up, and the other three weeks to put the new exhibit together.
The research for the exhibit started about three months prior. The team involved in the project includes Foster and Metz, who are both married, McKevin Shaughnessy, their exhibit designer, and Rand Hoppe, their collections manager.
The exhibit uses artifacts from their archived collections that have been gathered by them. Covering the entirety Washington Street’s history would be impossible to do as it’s a broad topic, so they used what they had on hand as the main focus. “Generally the lifeblood of a museum is its collection, and that’s where you build from,” said Foster.
The visuals therefore are used to tell the story. On the longest wall in the exhibit is a sanborn map of Washington Street from 1951, lined up with artifacts around the map based on where they’re from. Photographs and decorations from the United Decoration Company are located near the corner of 5th Street on the east side (meaning below the map), and a 1942 menu from Schnackenberg’s Luncheonette is located between 11th and 12th Street on the west side of the map (above the map).
Also on display at the museum is a massive panorama of Washington Street’s west side that was photographed and stitched together by Shaughnessy, and a side-by-side view of the west and east sides can be viewed on a computer tablet. There’s also a 1885 book from the Hoboken Land and Improvement Company that registers property changes, and a traffic light from the street.
A story that surprised them the most and is first on display at the exhibit was about lots that were inherited by Peter Lee, who was African American.
Lee was the son of Sandy Lee, who he and Peter Ten Brook, both free men of color, owned two plots of land on Washington Street. Lee’s wife, Silvia, was enslaved by Colonel John Stevens’ family, which meant that Silvia’s son, Peter, was born into slavery. Peter became a butler for Colonel Stevens’ family and continued even after slavery was abolished.
Peter would inherit the plot from Sandy Lee alongside his brother, George. They and other family members also inherited the plot owned by Ten Brook, until extended family members sold both plots. The plots later became a movie house in 1914 that was then demolished. The place now occupies the location of the current day Havens Savings Bank.
“I knew in doing that research and going through deeds in the county office, about the many iterations of this property,” said Metz. “So I wanted to use what I had learned as an example of how deep you can go with the history of Washington Street.”
What the museum staff hopes is that the stories that they discovered about Washington Street will surprise visitors just as much as it did for them. “You look at this place differently, you pass locations and think ‘this used to be this’,” said Metz. ”To me, it just transforms what I see every day. I’ve been here for a long time, and I think about the town differently.”
The museum is open on Tuesdays to Thursdays from 2 to 7 pm, Fridays from 1 to 5 pm, and Saturdays to Sundays from 12 to 5 pm. Admission is $5; museum members and Stevens students/staff are admitted for free, as are participants in the Families First Discovery Pass and Museums for All programs. Kids also get free admission to the museum.
“The Avenue: A History of Washington Street” will continue through September 12.
"street" - Google News
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Museum exhibit chronicles history of Washington Street - The Hudson Reporter
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