A Hole in Our City
By Albert B. Kelly
There is a big hole in our
city and it can’t be filled. Those were my thoughts after hoping no one was
hurt and being heartbroken for Cosmo. I had planned a business lunch meeting
there for that day; “A hole in our community that can’t be filled”, playing in
my head- thinking about the Hillcrest and the fire that wiped away 234 years of
history.
They can haul away charred
debris and clear the remains, they can back fill the foundation and tamp it so
that it’s level- one can even construct a new building on the corner of
Franklin Street and Broad Street, but what we can’t do is fill the hole left by
the fire.
Like a missing front
tooth, a gap in our collective smile, the landscape along Broad has been
altered permanently. It’s more than just a missing building or the loss of a
business- in its way, the loss of the Hillcrest is the loss of something that
connected us to a distant past.
As many know, the original
building was erected in 1782 by Henry Hann. Located across from the County
Courthouse, its clientele were mostly those attending to their business at the
court and travelers making the long journey from Trenton to Cape May along the
main stagecoach route.
If I read the history
correctly, Daniel Marshall took it over somewhere about 1790. Known alternately
as the Franklin Tavern and the Hillcrest Hotel, we recall it fondly as the
Coach Room. In some ways it’s hard wrap yourself around the history, because
it’s hard to imagine back to the late 1700’s.
But when you consider the
generations that passed through the place, it gives you pause. Like all such
historic locations, it stood as a witness not only to local history, but to the
bigger story of the nation’s history.
If you’re willing to
imagine it, you can almost hear the generations discussing, debating- maybe
even arguing about the issues of their respective times; independence, war,
change.. Perhaps the workers building part of the jail in the 1790’s refreshed
themselves at the Tavern.
Maybe a local writer or
two from “The Argus and New Jersey Sentinel” stopped there before heading on to
other taverns looking for a scoop or a little local gossip. Who can say if Sherriff
George Burgin stopped at the tavern at some point on the day he carried out an
execution in 1799? Patrons were likely discussing it.
I can easily imagine men
such as Fithian, Bacon, Glaspey, Shepperd, Mulford, Woodruff, and Nichols;
incorporated Bridgeton’s first Mayor and Council in 1865 gathering amongst
themselves at the Hillcrest to discuss the communities’ future and what they
planned to do about it.
Maybe it was here at the
Hillcrest, on that April weekend that one or the other of them had a meal and pondered
what they would say “for the record” to their community still reeling from news
of the assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theater.
Surely the Hillcrest, and
later the Coach Room, was the main gathering spot for lawyers, judges, and litigants
over many decades- the place where the real business got conducted. Maybe it
was here, at tables and on stools, that people’s fates were decided, even before
the afternoon session reconvened.
In more recent days, the place
was witness to events many of us remember- like the June 1979 standoff between
law enforcement and inmates who had taken over part of the County jail. On that
day, if memory serves, the Hillcrest was a staging point and command post.
The day ended when two
inmates were killed trying escape using hostages as shields. After a day like
that, the Hillcrest might be the place where more than a few went to throw back
a drink or three to steady frayed nerves, dial down the stress, and toast
another day survived.
Most days at the corner of
Broad and Franklin were not that dramatic; it was always about the people who
gathered there and the folks that served them. It was there at that corner that
deals got made, where relationships began and maybe a few ended; where sorrows
were forgotten and good fortune celebrated.
So there’s a hole in our
city today because the Hillcrest Tavern and all that it witnessed- all the
memories made within its walls- no longer sits at the corner of Broad and
Franklin and we’re a lesser community because of it.