James Betelle, Where Are You?

I found this wonderful photograph of the Chamber of Commerce Building in the Newark Library’s photo archive. It works on a both large and small scale, from the full breadth of the building down to fine details at street level. After visiting the building recently I was hoping to find a good period photo, and this [...]

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The only private residence Guilbert & Betelle designed (that I know of) was the Franklin Murphy House in Newark, New Jersey. Franklin Murphy had quite a life; born in 1846, he fought in the Civil War as a teenager, seeing action at Gettysburg. He went on to found the Murphy Varnish Company in Newark, and [...]

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James Betelle wrote articles for countless magazines and journals, but as far as I know, only one book; a forward to a 1933 publication by The Carteret Book Club entitled Colonial Dutch Houses in New Jersey. I suspected the book was rare, as it could only be found in by-appointment collections; no open stacks or [...]

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The following excerpts are from Modern American Schoolhouses - Some Recent Examples of Specialized Buildings Guilbert & Betelle, Architects by Rawson W. Haddon in The Architectural Record, September 1914. This lengthy article is a survey of the firm’s work of that period, before the death of Guilbert. The author ruminates on the not-strictly Gothic eclecticism [...]

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I’m used to seeing old photographs of schools when they were new and pristine, set against the barren terrain that is indicative of fresh construction. And as my recent tour of Newark showed, it makes for an interesting contrast with contemporary images, where the landscape is overgrown and the school itself may be in various [...]

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