Rutgers dedicates Writers House in Camden
Rutgers-Camden on Tuesday dedicated a meticulously restored 19th-century mansion that will become "a 21st-century writing center," in English department chairman Tyler Hoffman's words.
Rutgers-Camden on Tuesday dedicated a meticulously restored 19th-century mansion that will become "a 21st-century writing center," in English department chairman Tyler Hoffman's words.
The former Henry Genet Taylor house at 305 Cooper St. was designed by the Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre Jr. and has been a landmark since it was built in 1885. In 1989, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The three-story, 6,500-square-foot structure had been vacant and deteriorating for more than a decade when the university began a $4.2 million renovation project two years ago.
The Writers House will include classrooms, meeting space, and a design lab for digital writing programs, Hoffman and Rutgers-Camden chancellor Phoebe Haddon said. It will host the annual Writers in Camden series, and student readings and other special events and house the offices of StoryQuarterly, a literary journal published by the master of fine arts program.
The house is expected to begin full operations in 2016. Plans call for eventual construction of a rear addition that would allow the building to accommodate the entire English department.
About 60 people attended Tuesday's festivities, during which speakers invoked Walt Whitman - whose former home is a short walk away - as well as Camden's haiku master, Nick Virgilio. Like Whitman, Virgilio is buried in the city's Harleigh Cemetery. - Kevin Riordan