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Public Service Railway Company, Newton Avenue Car Shops, Bounded by Tenth, Mount Ephraim, Border & Newton Avenue, Camden, Camden County, NJ
Summary
Significance: The Newton Avenue Car Shops have been found significant as among the last structural remains associated with the history of trolley transportation in the City of Camden. By the close of the 19th century, trolleys constituted a major form of transportation in Camden. Their development was tied to the emergence of the city as a major industrial center and to the generally poor condition of city streets and of the privately-run turnpike roads between Camden and its suburbs. Camden's trolley system, initially developed by local firms beginning in the early 1870s, became in 1907 the nucleus of the Southern Division of the Public Service Railway Company, which developed the Newton Avenue Car Shops as the division's headquarters for repair, maintenance and operations. Subsequent expansion and contraction of the facility, and conversion of the system to buses by 1935, left the core of the Newton Avenue facility largely intact, although alterations have been made to accommodate the repair requirements of a bus fleet. The Newton Avenue facility remains today the administrative headquarters of the bus system operated by New Jersey Transit Bus Operations, Inc. in Southern New Jersey.
Survey number: HAER NJ-65
Building/structure dates: 19h1 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 19t1
Streetcars or trolley or tram were once the chief mode of public transit in hundreds of cities and towns. From the 1820s to the 1880s urban transit in many cities began with horse-drawn omnibus lines. Horsecar lines ran wagons along rails set in a city so the rolling resistance of the vehicle is lowered and the speed increased. North America's first streetcar lines opened in 1832 from downtown New York City to Harlem by the New York and Harlem Railroad, in 1834 in New Orleans, and in 1849 in Toronto along the Williams Omnibus Bus Line. In many cities, mule-drawn or horse-drawn streetcars drawn by a single animal were known as "bobtail streetcars". By the mid-1880s, there were 415 street railway companies in the U.S. operating over 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of track and carrying 188 million passengers per year using animal-drawn cars. In the 1860s, streetcar operators started switched from animals to steam engines or cable power. San Francisco's cable car system continues to operate to this day. After 1893 electricity-powered cars dominate. Los Angeles built the largest electric tramway system in the world, which grew to over 1600 km of track. The rapid growth of streetcar systems led to the widespread ability of people to live outside of a city and commute into it for work on a daily basis. By 1895 almost 900 electric street railways and nearly 11,000 miles (18,000 km) of track had been built in the United States. The Great Depression of the 1930s led to the closure of many streetcar lines in North America. By the 1960s most North American streetcar lines were closed.
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