By Sunayana Prabhu
RED BANK – The Woman’s Club of Red Bank held a presentation this week to showcase 16 historical photographs of Red Bank, a town as vibrant decades ago as it is today.
The restored photographs dating from the late 1800s and early 1900s were donated to the club by Dorn’s Photography, a now-closed family-owned establishment in Red Bank since the 1930s.
“A massive part of their collection is in Monmouth University,” said Kate Rafferty, a member of the Woman’s Club who was instrumental – along with the club’s vice president Jill Merriman – in sourcing the story behind each historic picture.
“We have about 30-plus pictures, but for this exhibit, we restored 16 of them,” she said. The restoration was done by Lenny Gabrielle who owns Old Photos Repaired in Middletown. The framing was done by Frame Tech based in Fords.
Merriman presented the 16 photographs to nearly a dozen attendees Tuesday night and narrated the story behind each one.
“We were a little detective between the Yellow Pages and articles in the books,” said Merriman who, along with Rafferty, scoured through old articles, books and archive materials from the Red Bank Public Library to find the exact locations in Red Bank where the photographs were taken.
“Attempts to identify objects and subjects and time periods was made possible with the help from Red Bank Library reference librarian and historian Barbara Pickell,” said Merriman.
The Woman’s Club has had a long history of supporting the
mission of literacy and community service and in recent years it has
added house preservation to its mission statement.
Among some photographs were the Red Bank train station in the 1890s; the early Red Bank trolley circa 1912 on Broad Street with Front Street in the background; a 1940s high school marching band coming down Broad Street; the League of Women Voters asking people to vote on Broad Street from the mid-1900s; Reade’s Strand movie theater showing “Mom and Dad” starring Elliot Forbes, with men and women seen exiting the theater separately circa 1940s.
A mini grant of $500 from Monmouth Arts made it possible for the Woman’s Club to restore and frame the photographs. Monmouth Arts is an independent nonprofit art advocacy organization that provides programs and services that support the practice, presence, and influence of the arts and of artists throughout Monmouth County.
The Woman’s Club has had a long history of supporting the mission of literacy and community service and in recent years it has added house preservation to its mission statement. The club itself is 101 years old and headquartered in a 150-year-old house built by Sen. Anthony Reckless, the state senate president in 1863. The early form of the club was known as the Red Bank Coterie from 1896 to 1912. “That’s how far back we go,” Merriman said. “The club became the Woman’s Club of Red Bank in 1913.”
The photo collection is open to the public and will be displayed indefinitely at the Woman’s Club building at 164 Broad St.
The article originally appeared in the December 15 – 21, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
