Chapter 5 - Cultural Resources Report

Chapter 5 - Cultural Resources Report - 1996

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EVALUATION OF SELECTED CULTURAL RESOURCES
AT FORT MONMOUTH, NEW JERSEY:
CONTEXT FOR COLD WAR ERA,
REVISION OF HISTORIC PROPERTIES DOCUMENTATION,
AND SURVEY OF EVANS AREA
AND SECTIONS OF CAMP CHARLES WOOD
by
Mary Beth Reed
Mark Swanson
NEW SOUTH ASSOCIATES
Stone Mountain, Georgia
Subcontractor for Geo-Marine, Inc.
and
Rebecca Procter
Marsha Prior

June 1996

MISCELLANEOUS REPORT OF INVESTIGATIONS
NUMBER 125
Geo-Marine, Inc.
550 East Fifteenth Street
Plano, Texas evans logo

for
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Fort Worth District
819 Taylor Street
Fort Worth, Texas

Evans Area

The inventory of the Evans area provided complete coverage of all buildings, structures, and equipment within the boundaries of the subinstallation (Figures 17 through 20). A total of 147 properties was inventoried (see Table 2), and they include buildings of permanent construction, World War II temporaries, miscellaneous sheds, Quonset Huts, wells, and a sewage treatment plant. While Evans area’s permanent architecture is discussed more fully below, examples of its temporary buildings are shown in Figures 21, 22, and 23. These are simple frame structures, typically rectangular with gable roofs, that were used as office space, laboratories, sheds, and guardhouses. Older, frame temporary buildings still retain their shiplap exterior finish while others have been sided. Temporary buildings also include corrugated metal storage sheds and laboratories, constructed on concrete slabs or with concrete block foundations and covered with gable roofs (Figure 24). Quonset huts or igloos with their distinctive half-barrel shape constructed of corrugated metal are also featured within Evans areas’s architectural inventory (Figure 25).

Ten buildings reported on the 1993 Building Information Schedule (see Table 2) provided by Fort Monmouth were not located and are presumed to be no longer standing (Buildings 9082, 9091, 9124, 9127, 9152, 9156, 9158, 9181, 9308, and 2542a). Fifty-three additional buildings, equipment, and architectural features were identified that were not in the Building Information Schedule. These include 13 DDUs, unnumbered storage sheds, towers/platforms, antennas, a well, a capped reservoir, a hazardous waste building, and a tank turntable (Figure 26; see Figure 25).

As discussed, the Evans area is a remarkably intact World War II installation that was built around an earlier complex of buildings, known as the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company’s Belmar Station. Camp Evans, later the Evans Signal Corps Laboratory, was established in 1941. Research has established that the history of the Evans area is strongly tied to the history of modern communications. The historic events that occurred at the Evans area fall within two chronological periods significant to the development of communications:
the Marconi era and the establishment and development of the Evans Signal Corps Laboratory during World War II through 1960. These periods then constitute two eras of significance for a potential National Register historic district which will be defined below.

Table 2
Building Inventory, Surveyed Areas of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey

The Marconi Era and Associated Buildings

The original facility was constructed by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America for the company’s receiver equipment for commercial transatlantic radio operation with Great Britain. Six permanent radio antennas were constructed on the site to relay signals to its companion transmitting station at New Brunswick, New Jersey, approximately 40 miles away. These antennas or masts are visible on a historic photograph of the Operating Building at Belmar (see Figure 5). In addition to the radio antennas, six buildings were constructed for the Belmar facility which was one of a set of four companion stations built by the J. G. White Engineering Corporation of New York for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. The others were located at the following locations: Chatham and Marion, Massachusetts; Bolinas and Tomales Bay, California; and the Hawaiian Islands. Presumably the same construction was carried out at each location and included steam-electric power stations, wireless masts, and hotel and residence buildings.

The Belmar station’s companion at New Brunswick in Franklin Township and its 200-kilowatt transmitter known as the NFF are no longer standing. Only the residential buildings, now owned privately, are extant and the former site of the transmitting station is now a park dedicated to Guglielmo Marconi. These companion stations were used by the Marconi Company originally for overseas communication with incoming vessels but were taken over in World War I by the Department of the Navy. After the war, they became the property of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The New Brunswick station was used through 1950 by RCA as a transmitting station, but the Belmar facility was sold. It was used subsequently as the headquarters of the New Jersey Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and then briefly by King’s College, a liberal arts institution, prior to its acquisition by the federal government in 1941.

In contrast to its companion site at New Brunswick, the Marconi complex at Belmar, now part of the Evans area, is relatively intact. Four buildings, 9001, 9002, 9003, and 9004, are positively identified with the Marconi era and current research suggests that Buildings 9006 and 9007 are also associated with the Marconi era (see Figures 14 and 15). Building 9001, an H-shaped, 2½ story-story brick building constructed as a 45-room hotel for unmarried employees, is used as the Main Administration Building for the Evans area (Figure 27) Building 9001’s three gable roofs are finished with Spanish tile; a one story porch supported by brick piers and covered by a shed roof also completed with Spanish tile wraps around the building’s north, south, and east elevations. This substantial building is utilitarian in style. Two brick bungalows, Buildings 9002 and 9003, were constructed for the Marconi Company’s engineers and are currently used for officers’

Figure 15. Building inventory area, Camp Charles Wood.
Figure 16. (a) Capehart Housing, Building 2471, Camp Charles Wood; (b) Unit Chapel, Building 2275, Camp Charles Wood.
Figure 17. Evans Area Subarea A, showing NRHP-eligible properties.
Figure 18. Evans Area Subarea B.
Figure 19. Evans Area Subarea C, showing NRHP-eligible properties.
Figure 20. Evans Area Subarea D.
Figure 21. (a) Temporary Building 9110 and (b) Semi-permanent Building 9027, Evans Area.
Figure 22. Temporary buildings, sheds, Evans Area: (a) unnumbered shed; (b) Building 9106.
Figure 23. Guard houses, Evans Area: (a) Temporary Building 9153; (b) Semi-permanent Building 9093.
Figure 24. Temporary buildings, Evans Area: (a) Building 9097; (b) Building 9617.
Figure 25. (a) Building 9089; (b) unnumbered Dymaxion Deployment Unit.
Figure 26. Platforms/towers, Evans Area: (a) platform adjacent to Building 9037; (b) platform/viewing tower, testing area.
Figure 27. Building 9001 (a) view to southwest; (b) rear elevation.

housing. The bungalows are rectangular, masonry buildings with hipped roofs finished with Spanish tile (Figure 28). Porches have been glassed in and small shed roof dormers added to each building’s roof line. Building 9004 was the Operation Building for the Belmar Station (Figure 29). This rectangular, brick utilitarian building with a hip roof has a full porch supported by brick piers. Property records indicate that the current composition shingle roof replaced an earlier roof of Spanish tile.

In addition, Buildings 9006 and 9007 are considered to be possibly related to the Marconi era or to RCA’s brief tenure of the property (see Figure 29). Building 9006 is a rectangular, brick building with an asphalt shingle gable roof that was standing when the tract was acquired by the federal government in 1941. Its utilitarian construction is representative of an industrial building, and its construction and materials are consistent with the other known Marconi buildings. It was labeled on an acquisition plat as a laboratory, suggesting that research and development was carried out at the site earlier by the Marconi Company or RCA, or that the federal government’s radar development at Evans preceded its 1941 acquisition of the property. A pre-1941 date of construction is further substantiated by a plan on file at the Directorate of Public Works, Master Planning and Real Estate Branch, which calls for the building to be remodeled in 1941.

Building 9007, a brick gymnasium with a bowed roof and parapet, was also standing at the time of federal acquisition (see Figure 29). Like Building 9006, it was slated to be remodeled in 1941. Labeled as a gym on the 1941 acquisition map, Building 9007 was constructed as a gymnasium for either the Marconi employees or for the students of King’s College. If it was a product of King’s College, it was the only new construction completed by the college. As its brick construction and modest style is compatible with the other Marconi buildings, it is more likely that it dates to the earlier period. Moreover, Buildings 9006 and 9007 are linked geographically in a corner-type setting. This unique siting suggests that they share the same or a similar construction date. Further, a laboratory was probably not constructed by King’s College.

Buildings 9001, 9002, 9003, and 9004, 9006 and 9007, are considered significant for their architecture and their historical association with the Marconi firm. Located on an isolated site on the Shark River, they form an early twentieth-century industrial village. The Marconi buildings are good examples of early twentieth-century industrial architecture that features unembellished, substantial brick masonry construction. They are not cast in any formal style but incorporate Craftsman and Spanish Colonial elements, such as dormers, eave brackets, and Spanish Imperial roof tile, which are appropriate to their date of construction. Concrete is used as the sole architectural accent on window sills, piers, and porch supports. The building complex is still intact and each building has been well preserved with the exception of Building 9004, which is deteriorated. Only the original antennas are missing from the site overall, and a possible portion of one of the Marconi towers stands on Wall Township property adjacent to the Evans area.

In terms of level of significance, the Belmar Station has state and national importance for its role within the development of twentieth-century communications. It was part of a “world encircling wireless chain” conceived and constructed by Marconi to further maritime communication that his invention had made possible. The White Engineering Corporation constructed these stations for American Marconi at only eight locations in the United States, two of which were in New Jersey. The transmitter and operations buildings and towers at Belmar’s companion station at New Brunswick, which was also an industrial village complex, are no longer standing.

As a Marconi operation, the Belmar Station played an important role in the development of maritime communication. It was also the site of the Belmar experiment in which future communication leaders and then Marconi employees, David Sarnoff (later president of RCA) and Edward F. Armstrong (the inventor of FM radio), successfully demonstrated the use of Armstrong’s regenerative circuit in trans-continental radio transmission. During World War I, all of the Marconi stations in America were under the control of the US Navy. The Belmar Station played a significant role in wartime communications, and it was purchased by a consortium of American firms such as General Electric, Westinghouse, and AT&T at the war’s end that later coalesced into the RCA, headed by David Sarnoff.

Figure 28. (a) Building 9002, view to the east; (b) Building 9003, view to the east.
Figure 29. (a) Building 9004, rear elevation; (b) Buildings 9006 (background) and 9007 (foreground).

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