Susan Leviton's Memories of East Camden

In the summer of 2009 Susan Leviton, who with her parents Herb and Lillian Leviton and sister Mindy Leviton lived at 2552 Baird Boulevard from 1953 through 1968 sent a series of e-mails about East Camden.

Yes, Camden was indeed beautiful. We bought our home at 2552 Baird Boulevard from Henry Schriebstein and his wife in 1953. My parents, Herbert and Lillian Leviton, my sister Mindy and I lived at 2552 Baird Boulevard from 1953 to the fall of 1968.

My memory of our block – and what made it The Boulevard – was the gorgeous green swath down the middle that was lined with a double row of majestic elm trees, all removed in the 60’s because of Dutch Elm Disease. The curb side of the street was lined with maples.

Our next door neighbors (2550) were the Hillmans, who had an apartment above their home and the Nancy Briggs Dance Studio below them and around the corner (Grand Avenue). On the other side (2554) Gert Lorey was joined by her brother-in-law Jules Clayman, his wife Leah, and their son Henry, after Gert’s husband passed away. The Tweedy’s sold their house (2556) to a man named Mr. Heaton [John H. Heaton –PMC] in the mid 50’s.

Behind our block of Baird Boulevard was “The Lot” as we called it, an empty triangular space that was formed where Baird, Eutaw, and Grand backed up. For several summers in the late 50’s, the city ran a day-camp program, built around swings and a corrugated metal-roofed open-sided shelter with a picnic table inside. The first year, our neighbor Lucille Leonard was one of the two counselors, and it was a great thrill to watch her and her co-counselor haul the trunk of art supplies and games out of her basement every morning to drag to The Lot. The space was hardly beautiful, with more dust than vegetation, and when it rained, we had to hold tight to our shoes because it became a sucking swamp of ochre clay mud!

The alley behind our homes and between the houses and the free-standing garages was called Amelia Terrace. What a hoot! It was an alley. It had such a sweet name! Early each spring, an old man (in my memory he was always old) would come walking down the alley with a load of wood on his shoulder hawking, “Clothes Props! Get yer Clothes Props!” It was a sing-song chant that was as much part of spring as the robins. The housewives would check the status of our old wooden props and buy new ones as needed. NOBODY had a clothes dryer! The Clayman’s next door still had a wringer washer in the basement!

Kotlikoff’s was the only authorized place to get the awful gym suits we were required to wear in junior high and high school. While most of the girls had the store provide machine embroidery of their names, my mother insisted on sewing my name by hand. There was only one other girl whose mom did the same for her. Small comfort.

The walk up to Kotlikoff’s on Federal Street was also a regular pilgrimage for a Mothers’ Day gift. Sweet memories of good clothing and extremely patient assistance.

Ruttenberg’s, I believe that was the name. It was a large hardware store in East Camden on a lot around 27th and Federal [Ruttenberg Hardware at 2636 Federal –PMC]. It burned to the ground one evening around 1959. Shelves of paint and other flammables made the fire quite spectacular and terrifying. After the debris was removed, the lot remained empty for years, but there were areas where you could still walk on green and white linoleum tiles that remained.

We were just a twig on the much larger Jaspan family tree. Camdenite Mamie Lieberman and her husband (Lou?) were Jaspan cousins on my father’s side. Mamie started the first ‘cancellation shoe store’ in the country, I think, in their home, during WWII. The business grew to support all of their children’s families and eventually occupied a store on Route 70 across from what became Loehmann’s. Mamie’s house was near the bridge, and when we were kids we would occasionally go there for shoes. The ENTIRE house was full of shoes – they were even stacked in the bathroom!

Anyway, my father’s family came from Lithuania early in the century, settled in Camden and welcomed many new immigrants for whom my dad’s oldest sister Gussie would cook since my grandmother died when Dad was three, leaving 5 girls and a little boy. My grandfather, Morris, dealt in cattle, I was told.

Herb Leviton, my dad, began working at about age 14 and for many years managed a luncheonette across from RCA Victor. It was owned by one of his pals, Bobby Brest. Dad had a gift for music, although he never had the advantage of learning to play an instrument. He delighted in meeting the recording stars who would stop in between sessions at RCA. He sometimes rummaged among the rejects tossed out ‘the back door’ when a recording session went badly. Sadly, his most precious relics were stolen, but I remember seeing and hearing RCA records that were cut on one side and stamped with a pattern on the flip side, never to be marketed. There was one of Bing Crosby forgetting the words and adlibbing almost an entire side. And another with Crosby’s voice cracking towards the end, an expletive, and then no more. Amazing.

Empire Glass Works was my father’s business once he returned from service during the war. He had a shop at 1112 Mount Ephraim Avenue, between Kaighn Avenue and Sycamore Street where he installed auto glass and made custom glass tabletops. It was a rented space. In the 1970s he moved across the street to 1135 Mount Ephraim Avenue, which he had purchased.

Cramer School, in the mid-50’s was both an elementary and junior high school. There was no auditorium, so when we had a school-wide assembly, the kindergarten and first grade children carried our little wooden chairs into the gym and sat “three bottoms in two chairs.”

The principal, Mr. Showalter followed us to Davis Junior High [the Henry H. Davis School] when Cramer became just an elementary school again. He had a gruff voice, but was really a sweetie, and in the spring he went door-to-door selling light bulbs for the Lion’s Club!

In the mid 60’s, Mad Magazine ran a visual parody of the song ‘America the Beautiful’, and a shot of Admiral Wilson Boulevard looking east, featuring the Admiral Bar and Liquor Store, Oasis Motel, go-go dancing and the sign to Baird Boulevard was the image that illustrated ‘the fruited plains.’

I’d love to see what people remember of Marlton Avenue in East Camden, also. Kiddieland [321 Marlton Avenue] was a children’s clothing store… I’ll think of the family that ran it. Of course, Famous Delicatessen [278 Marlton Avenue]; who could forget that family?! Sisters Fagie (Lou), gum-chewing Rosie in her fishnet stockings at the cash register, and ____? (the chattering redhead at the bread counter). Son Jerry who sliced the lox and corned beef thin and picked the perfect well-done pickle from the barrel. Moishe Ostroff the butcher [280 Marlton Avenue], and the pharmacist whose name I can’t recall who would bottle 10 cents worth of Coke Syrup for stomach trouble [Marlton Drug Company at 280 Marlton Avenue]. We had a family-owned 5 & 10 that became Binkley’s, a dressmaker, the J & L luncheonette at the corner [J&L Shoppe at 300–302 Marlton Avenue], which served as what we’d now call a convenience store (“Run up and get me a half gallon of milk and a pack of Winston’s, Susie.”), and in the mid-60’s Pizza King Tarantini [349 Marlton Avenue] opened farther up the block, and Camden became the home of the Panzarotti! That block of Marlton Avenue also had a fine bakery across the street from Famous [Marlton Bakery at 329 Marlton Avenue]. Children were always given a cookie.

To be continued!