The year was 1927 and the future had hardly ever looked brighter for the City of Camden. Times were prosperous, business and industry were booming, and the city was full of recently constructed public buildings, civic improvements, schools, the new Delaware River bridge and its new highway to the suburbs. The stock market crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed were in the unimagined future.
It was in these times that Camden prepare for its 100th anniversary, and in this spirit of optimism that the city fathers under the direction of Mayor Winfield S. Price commissioned the booklet whose text you will find below.
Read more about the first 100 years of Camden and more articles from the Centennial Mirror
South Jersey is noted for its Smoothly Paved Highways and Paving Firm has Supplied Fine Example of Cooperation
Automobiles brought about the modern highways of today and no section of the country has responded to the demand for good roads more completely than has South Jersey.
The long level stretches of smooth surface roads have made Southern New Jersey a Mecca for autoists. Camden is the neck of a traffic bottle through which pass more automobiles than will be found most anywhere.
Daily passage of thousands of motors over the same stretches of highway necessitate substantial construction. It is this feature which has much to do with the fame merited by South Jersey among motorists.
Communities pay for new roads but these do not always stand up under the weight of traffic.
Perhaps no road builder has had more to do with the manner in which Camden and other South Jersey roads have withstood the test of traffic, than has the Union Paving Company of Philadelphia.
There is much glory to be distributed for the excellence of our highways and a considerable share must go to this firm which now has an annual road building program of from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000.
“We consider specifications as something on which to build, not as something under which to skimp.”
An official of Union Paving in this manner explains the secret of success for his firm. Union Paving laid the asphalt and block paving on the Delaware Bridge. More than nine million autos pass over this stretch annually and this includes the largest of heavily loaded trucks and big double-deck buses. This roadway, now in use about two years, shows not the slightest effect of the tremendous amount of traffic its surface has smoothly shed.
Another new roadway on which Union did $1,000,000 worth of work is the Crescent Boulevard, a connecting stretch between the Camden Plaza of the Delaware Bridge and the famed White Horse Pike which carries a few million machines to seashore resorts annually. Then there is the magnificent boulevard running out of Atlantic City to Absecon across a great stretch of meadows. Here is an outstanding monument to substantial road construction which is destined to bring additional fame to its builders. It is an example of asphalt surface on concrete foundation and has demonstrated that this type of road way will stand up under heavy traffic in comparison with the all-concrete type.
Almost 90 per cent of the roads in Burlington County have been built by Union. They include the River Road between Camden and Burlington and main highways from Burlington to Mt. Holly and Camden to Mt. Holly, Pemberton and Brown’s Mills. Almost every community in South Jersey bears testimony to the confidence Union Paving firm has established.
Many of Camden’s streets have been built and surfaced by the firm and many more are now under way. Union has an asphalt plant on the Cooper River in Camden and docks at Gloucester on the Delaware. Its two Philadelphia plants turn out more material than any in the United States. The firm does much work in Florida and Pennsylvania in addition to other states.
Officers of Union are: B. F. Richardson, President; J P. Mack, 2d, Vice-President; Joseph Larkin, Jr., Secretary and Treasurer. These executives are keeping abreast of the times and have up-to-date street and road building equipment on hand for the completion of any size contract.
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