37th Annual Awards Event
Thursday, May 19, 2011 5:30 -7:30 pm
Honoring
Oheb-Shalom Congregation was organized in 1860 by a dissident group of Bohemian Jews from B'nai Jeshurun. The founder and first rabbi was Rev. Isaac Schwarz. Its Prince Street Synagogue was dedicated on September 14, 1884, and is the oldest extant synagogue building in Essex County. Oheb Shalom Congregation occupied the synagogue from 1884 until 1911, at which time it was sold to Congregation Adas Israel /Mi shnayes. In 1939 Metropolitan Baptist Church bought the building and occupied it from 1940 until 1993. Purchased by the City of Newark, the historic synagogue narrowly escaped demolition and was bought by Greater Newark Conservancy in 1995 to serve as the interior education programming space for its new Urban Environmental Center.
Today Oheb-Shalom Congregation is located at 170 Scotland Road in South Orange. Its former Prince Street Synagogue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is in the process of being restored. Greater Newark Conservancy plans to turn the 15,800 square-foot building into a large lecture hall/community space, environmental classrooms, a demonstration kitchen/laboratory, environmental exhibit galleries and a computer library. To learn more about the Conservancy, please visit their website.
It is NPLC's great pleasure to be awarding the Conservancy the Donald Dust Award for 2011. That evening we will also be honoring NPLC trustee and long time advocate Anthony Schuman with the Charles Cummings Award....
Tony Schuman has taught architecture at NJIT in Newark for over thirty years. During that time he has become increasingly involved in the long, slow but essential and fulfilling project of helping Newark recover its status as a first class city. Beginning with research for Tri-City Citizens Union for Progress in 1979 and continuing to his service today on the boards of the Newark Preservation and Landmarks Committee and Lincoln Park/Coast Cultural District Inc. Tony has maintained an ongoing involvement with Newark’s civic and neighborhood organizations. He has engaged his students at the New Jersey School of Architecture (part of the College of Architecture and Design at NJIT) in community-based projects on a regular basis, working with Gerry Harvey and Crest Community Development Corp.; Carla Lerman and Episcopal Community Development; and Bayé Wilson and Lincoln/Park Coast.
He teaches a course entitled “‘Envisioning Newark”, the only course at NJIT where the topic is Newark. He takes students each week to meet with leaders in Newark’s neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and civic organizations, among them our preservation honoree Robin Dougherty and Greater Newark Conservancy. As an architect Tony participated in the planning department’s “Breaking the Box” housing design exercise that led to zoning changes to regulate the siting and appearance of the three-family “boxes” that proliferated in the first years of this century.
For NPLC Tony organized the awards ceremony last spring that honored historian Stanley Winters with the Charles Cummings award and the Grad Partnership, whose hundred year architecture practice that ended in January 2011 produced many of Newark’s finest structures. Through his efforts the Star Ledger covered both the Grad closing and the death this past January of Prof. Winters.
His most significant contribution to NPLC was the three day celebration of the Newark Eagles, Newark’s championship Negro Leagues baseball team, that he organized in 2007. Tony’s committee brought to Newark four of the six surviving members of the Eagles for a series of events that included a welcome dinner at the Newark Museum, a forum at the New Jersey Historical Society, and a celebration at Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium that featured proclamations from the city, the county, and the US Congress. Tony also oversaw the design and placement of three plaques placed at historic sites associated with the Eagles.
His current effort, the Newark Jazz Heritage Project, continues his commitment to Newark’s social and cultural history by making visible Newark’s role as a mecca for jazz performance. This project will include banners at the sites of over 150 former clubs, theaters and other jazz venues; a blog site; an interactive map that locates the clubs and gives information about who performed there; and public art projects marking significant sites in the city’s jazz history. This project hit a milestone at the end of April with a reception to introduce the project to Newark’s jazz veterans, including Tiny Prince, Billy Phipps, and Leo Johnson. So in presenting the Charles Cummings Award for 2011 to Tony Schuman, we honor not only what he has already done for Newark, but what he is about to do.
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