Camden New Jersey: Encyclopedia II - Camden New Jersey - History

Camden New Jersey - History

For over 150 years, Camden served as a secondary economic and transportation hub for the Philadelphia area. Originally a suburban town with ferry service to 'the city,' Camden prospered during strong periods of manufacturing demand and faced distress during periods of economic dislocation. [3] Currently, government, education, and healthcare are the three biggest employers in Camden; however, most employees commute to Camden and live in nearby suburbs such as Cherry Hill.

From 1901 through 1929 Camden was headquarters of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and thereafter to its successor RCA Victor, the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records for the first two thirds of the 20th century. RCA Victor contained one of the first commercial recording studios in the United States, where Enrico Caruso, among others, recorded. The RCA plant was also the site where the first color television was manufactured.

Walt Whitman lived his last years in Camden and is buried in Harleigh Cemetery on Haddon Avenue.

Camden is the place where the first drive-in theater opened, invented by Richard Hollingshead, on June 6, 1933.

Camden was once the home of a New York Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard. It was in that shipyard that the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first nuclear-powered submarine, was finished-off after its dedication in Groton, Connecticut in 1954. In 1962 the first commercial nuclear-powered ship, the NS Savannah, was launched in Camden, New Jersey.[4]

On September 6, 1949 mass murderer Howard Unruh went on a killing spree in his Camden neighborhood. Thirteen people died as a result. Unruh remains confined in a state psychiatric facility. In 1996, New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman frisked Sherron Rolax in Camden, which many alleged violated Rolax's civil rights.

By 1969, Camden had been losing jobs and residents for a quarter century due in large part to urban renewal, highway construction, and racial tensions. The worst racial riots occurred when a Puerto Rican motorist was beaten by city police and died in August 1971. Sections of downtown were looted and torched. [5]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki