The architect

Zayda was not a professional architect. In other words, he was no Frank Lloyd Wright. Not even close. Zayda was an immigrant from the Pale with a profound Jewish education, gleaned from learning and life, but no secular education at all. He spoke not a word of English, which he could not read or write. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t very smart. He was! It was merely that when he arrived on these American shores, he was already the father of five very young and very poor children, still living in Poland with their mother, Rifka. His focus was not on English conjugations but on finding ways to feed those kids, import them to New Jersey, and rejoice when their soon-to-be youngest brother arrived, a Yankee all the way, born in the USA. My father, Yisrael, known as Sam, was the third of those kids, sharing his birthday with his fraternal twin, Itka, called Edith.

Now let me remind you that I wasn’t yet a family member when all these arrivals — the ships, the kids, and the baby — were taking place, so my knowledge is surmised, but it is truth-based. And I was certainly a devoted granddaughter, who, in Zayda’s later years, was always willing to play gin rummy with him. He was a diehard card player, always looking for someone who would happily put down her homework to show how she honored her esteemed grandfather. It was symbiotic. I didn’t enjoy the homework and he clearly enjoyed the card game, which he always initiated and usually won.

So I’m not totally clear on how he got started in business, and sadly, there’s no one around to ask. I only know that he was successful and able to make his family comfortable in the New World in New Jersey. At the end of his life he could have said that all the trials and travail were worth the effort, and in spite of it all he never missed a Shabbat or chag in shul. Kol hakavod to Zayda!

Once he had an adequate financial footing, he bought two lots on Aldine Street, a meandering long street in Newark’s Weequahic neighborhood. One was #52, on the corner of St. James Place. It became a large four-family house. The other was four houses in from Forest Place, a strangely named little street bereft of any forest or trees. That was number #83-85, also a four-family, albeit smaller by far than the one at #52. I grew up at #83-85. Feel free to do what Zayda would never have been able to do: look up the pictures of the houses on Google.

The plans Zayda used were ubiquitous in Newark, where until this very day I can recognize a property from my hometown as being different from any place else in the world. That’s especially true of the homes built in the late 1920s, which tended to be faux Tudor. The operative word was faux. They were not any more Tudor than you or me, but they featured all those pointy gabled rooflines to make you think you were living in Olde England. You weren’t. Those roofs were a mere facade, like a movie set, but Zayda apparently liked them and went with the flow.

The two Aldine Street houses were thus very similar, even to their choice of dark green paint combined with red brick. Zayda was the builder, hence he decided the colors and the motif. Ride down Aldine Street today, and you will find both of them still cousins, but one has been repainted to reflect a new owner’s taste. Different from Zayda’s.

But architect or not, many pieces of the houses he built had his imprint. Take the front doors. Whatever influence made Zayda install very heavy doors (and I mean VERY; they were hard for a little kid to open), like something in a castle somewhere along the Loire in rural France perhaps. Those solid doors led into a somewhat grand entrance with polished brass mailboxes, matching banisters on the four steps, lovely real ceramic tile floors in a mosaic pattern, and a certain feeling of elegance unexpected in a typical multifamily Newark city dwelling. Then you saw securely locked glass-paned doors, which you entered by unlocking or being buzzed in. Upscale for sure, just the way I imagine Zayda pictured it before he created it. I don’t think any of the other residences on our block had this almost surreal entrance, which removed you from the somewhat pedestrian street into high society! It was —dare I say it? — classy!

Once the entrance was behind you, you were in a front hallway with the doors to the four apartments, two upstairs and two down. This was all well carpeted and plush and quiet. As a little kid I used to imagine that I was a princess when I entered that space. Years later, Kay Thompson must have had similar thoughts when she created Eloise at the Plaza Hotel. I wasn’t quite at the Plaza, but my house was pretty elegant, or so I thought.

All this was just to enter the place. Zayda clearly loved to fiddle with his design. It could have been much plainer and simpler. He obviously didn’t want that kind of look.

The apartments themselves were typical Newark railroad flats, meaning very little space was used for hallways. One room led into another, but there was one fundamental design mistake. Upon entering the unit straight into the living room, again with no entrance vestibule, there was a room to the left, which faced the front. What was Zayda thinking? It could have been a formal dining room but, if so, it was poorly placed, too far from the kitchen. The living room and that other room, the supposed dining room, could have been reversed, but it is not typical to enter into a dining room. The entry room is usually a room with couches, creating a warm and inviting feeling for family and guests. The real problem was the room next to it. In actuality, all four of the apartments used that room for the primary bedroom. It would have worked better if it had a substantial separating wall and a door, but it had neither. It was very open, with no privacy at all. This was a feature that was less than forward-thinking of Zayda. Of course other railroad flats from different builders often shared that design flaw.

I’ve enjoyed welcoming you into my childhood home and I am now sitting comfortably, at least in my imagination, on the deep green sofa in the living room. I’m admiring the stained glass window that many years later would feature, directly beneath it, the latest iteration in home decor, the television set. We joined the Milton Berle generation, every Tuesday at 8 p.m.

In a future post I’ll get into the kitchen. Let me merely say that kitchens have come a long way in the past 70 years!

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of eight. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com

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