Concert Hall in South Amboy??
We just came off another highly successful open house and some of our visitors had some really interesting questions for us. One of our members, Claire, stumped me with a question regarding a Music Hall located on Broadway. As a child, she remembers walking down Broadway near Second Street and seeing a Music Hall sign on a building. We all know memories from childhood don't necessarily come with a date or many details....so off in search for some details I went!
I started my search with my trusted Sanborn Map Collection. Thank goodness for Princeton Library for providing so many of these maps digitally. Isn't technology a great thing? In the case of South Amboy the years that are available online are 1886, 1891, 1896, 1901, 1908 and 1919. If you haven't spent anytime browsing through them, it is certainly worth a look.
I started with the beginning and went through each year. What I found was interesting, but didn't necessarily give me the answers I needed because nothing said 'Music Hall'.
Here is the first image I pulled from the 1886 Sanborn Map. This shows that there is a Gentlemen's Hall/Lodge on the corner of Broadway and 2nd. The pink color indicates that this is a brick building.
(http://gisserver.princeton.edu:81/navigatorMapViewer.htm?map=16578)
This is the image I pulled from the 1919 Sanborn Map. This shows potential additions to the brick structure and it is a shut down clothing factory, Eisner's. Eisner was known specifically for uniform production and was a leader of production during WWI. South Amboy was just one of his factory locations. (http://gisserver.princeton.edu:81/navigatorMapViewer.htm?map=16620)
By comparing these two maps, you can see how the area developed and changed. My search wasn't over though, because I still had not found any indication that the building served as a music hall. Off to the online Citizen I went. The Sadie Pope Dowdell Public Library has a great resource online. They received a grant a few years ago and they were able to digitize the old newspaper. What a great tool this has been for the Historical Society! Using Claire's estimation of when she thinks she saw the sign, I started searching in the 50s and 60s. I really came up with nothing. No mention af ANY music halls in South Amboy. I also searched early City Directories online and performing arts listings for the early 20th Century. Still, I came up empty.
Sometimes, you just have to take a break and walk away from something and hope to come back to it with fresh eyes...so that is what I did. I needed to start my preparation for the upcoming Commemoration Plaque Ceremony on the First Airmail Flight in 1912 between Perth Amboy and South Amboy. I contacted the Library and requested to see any information that they may have on the airmail flight from the archives. They graciously pulled so much information for me. I felt like a kid in a candy store! As I sat in the library reading about the first airmail flight, I came across a pamphlet that was made for the 1962 50th anniversary celebration of the airmail flight. Inside this pamphlet, it went through the history of the South Amboy Post Office and all of its previous locations. Bam...there is was...not a Music Hall, but a Concert Hall!
The first local post office was in the Cooperative Grocery Store in Concert Hall at the corner of Second and Broadway in 1844!
It continues to mention that this was also the location of the Eisner Uniform Company! I hit the jackpot. Knowing it was a Concert Hall, not a Music Hall, allowed me to alter my search in local papers and archives. I even found a recent piece in the South Amboy Sayreville Times from the October and November issues (2006).
This last image was from the November 18, 2006 issue of the Times (which I located on the library website).
My next task...sharing this information with Claire who will be so excited, and heading to the City Hall parking lot where this photo was taken in 2006. I hope it is still there!
Lesson here, don't ever give up looking for answers. Sometimes they are where we least expect them!
