Newark's 1st Precinct Building Reimagined by Community and Students
On behalf of Newark’s Mayor Ras J. Baraka, Junius Williams, the city’s historian and chair of the Museum Advisory Committee (MAC), with a team of students from NJIT, is leading the effort to transform the 1st Precinct police building, an historic symbol of oppression, into a community museum and a home for the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery. In his book Unfinished Agenda, Williams states that, “Too few of us from the Black Power generation and the movements to take power in cities through the election of black elected officials have told our story. Hence there is very little understanding of the agenda for change we outlined for black people and America in the 1960s and early 1970s. We wanted self-determination, an end to racism, and economic security.”
In a recent official launch meeting with design students and faculty on the vision for the adaptive reuse of the building, Williams said, “It was the beginning of a culture of non-violence. You can see the spirit in which the Mayor’s idea for the museum was born. He comes from a family that understands the importance of non-violence, has been a part of it, and his election reflects the fact that the people do love him because he is Newark and that’s what we want this to be.” Newark’s 1st Precinct building (formerly the 4th Precinct) is now situated at the inflection point between its infamous centrality to the 1967 rebellion and a new future.
On the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, as community members in the United States grapple with long standing racial injustices that have impacted many different groups, there is a specific and sharply focused attention on historic, structural racism against the black, brown and low socio-economic communities. Architects, who design everything from open public spaces to jails, have turned an equally sharp focus on their role and responsibility in addressing racial inequities, and how the design of the built environment can reinforce or dissemble injustice.
As one of the only cities nationwide that did not erupt during the Black Lives Matter protests for George Floyd, Newark is charting a path for other cities dealing with years of inequity, and this integration of history, the arts, and community-public safety services provides a blueprint for how to do it.
“It took leadership,” Roger Smith said. “One of the reasons this didn’t explode as it did in other cities, is because the mayor, city officials, community leaders and Newark citizens came together to collectively protest against racial injustice. Now, in the wake of George Floyd’s death a year ago, and the deaths of too many others before and since, this new institution has the potential to become a model for strengthening communities through the preservation of collective memory and the practice of restorative justice.”
The participation of architecture students from Hillier College in the adaptive re-use and redesign of this building all started with a conversation with Christopher Watson, Newark city planner and Hillier College doctorate candidate (abd), who asked Smith, adjunct professor at Hillier College and design director at Gensler, if he would lead a design studio to propose plans for the building and its new purpose.
The plan for the site, as defined by representatives of the community in the many listening sessions organized by Wilhelmina Holder of Newark Trust for Education, and Yolanda Stokes, of the BRICK Academy, is to integrate several important social and cultural functions into the new space. The bold vision of this project is to preserve the historical narratives of the community and recognize the shared trauma experienced by so many, to honor the deep cultural roots of the residents of Newark and celebrate the accomplishments of its many artists, to heal through creative self-expression, and to house the violence prevention, trauma resolution and restorative justice programs. As student Gerard Losurdo stated, “It is about making sure there is space for all these things to happen. It is going to have to be evolving and changing as the community wants to use it for different purposes, and the building will house all of those things.”
“Students have been both inspired and energized by having the opportunity to engage with the community and the City of Newark on such a visionary project. It will transform the 1st Precinct police building, a symbol of racial injustice during the 1967 Newark Rebellion, into an important new Newark institution that preserves the collective memory of the community while also serving as a place for understanding and healing,” said Smith.
Daniela Liberato, one of the students in the design studio, agreed, “When the studio options came out the Floyd protests were fully underway. My group compared the historical events that happened in the sixties in Newark and today and we saw a pattern. The pattern is repeating itself, and if nothing is done and there is no change, it’s going to continue to repeat itself. That is why this kind of project is important.”
Housing the museum and the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery together under one roof is aligned with other forward thinking community-police relations initiatives that Baraka has led: from the restorative justice partnership between the Newark public schools and the police department aimed at disrupting the school to prison pipeline, collaborative training with community and police on trauma, to support for justice system reform and alternative sentencing. In June of 2020, Baraka established the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery with the support of the Newark Police Division (NPD) using a 5% allocation of NPD budget.
The Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery is tasked with managing all City of Newark anti-violence policy initiatives and programs. Those initiatives will include the use of data to guide the City’s investments in violence prevention, assuring targeted approaches to violence prevention in City government and the community at large. All community safety and anti-violence programs will find a home together in a newly redesigned police precinct building.
The design studio began in January. Students began the semester with historical investigations and a series of urban mapping studies designed to reveal the complex layering of social, economic and cultural conditions that led to the Newark Rebellion.
Research revealed several things, “We looked at how the physical space of the Central Ward was impacted by social and political factors, it is separated from downtown, and the data shows that there is a high concentration of lower income and high unemployment in the ward. To create a visualization of inequity and injustice we defined inequity as limited access to basic needs such as food, education or transportation, and injustice as unwanted relocation as a result of housing and redlining policies,” said Jihye Son ’21.
In preparation for the design work, students visited the site at the corner of 17th and Livingston, and attended several community listening sessions, organized by Williams, Holder and Stokes. Their challenge was to translate the community vision into the redesign of the building. When visiting the site city planner Watson quoted Chicago city planner Daniel Burnham and inspired the students to “make no small plans, and to pay particular attention to the opportunity of possible conversion and allocation of the parking space towards spaces that support healing and an entrance experience.”
“The challenge to the students was to incorporate the ideas, aspirations and vision of the community into individual student design proposals,” said Smith. One of the listening sessions was specifically for teens and college age students. Noah Balla ‘21 attended that session and shared that “a lot of kids liked the aspect of technologies incorporated into it, using their phones, QR codes, making podcasts, uploading and sharing files, and the idea of flex spaces for performing. It is a small footprint so there is only so much you can have physically in the space. It also creates a personal experience.”
“Joining the listening sessions made me feel that the people of Newark were welcoming me to be a part of the community because they kept sharing stories of what happened,” said Jose Merino, an architecture student participating in the studio. “It was very sentimental for me, I feel like Newark is my second home.”
Teaching socially and historically relevant adaptive reuse projects derived through a process of community engagement is a model for design education today. “This project is focusing on something that is a real issue in the country right now, and as the semester progressed it has been really cool to interact with the community this project is going to be for and to know that some of the ideas we have contributed will have a positive impact on the residents of Newark,” said Tess Dalton, another student in the design studio.
Smith pointed out that it was an opportunity to get involved in this project in a way that was aspirational. “Through research and community engagement students begin to understand the incredibly rich history of Newark but also the trauma associated with that history. It revealed longstanding structural injustices as well the promise of inclusive design to both represent the aspirations of the community and inspire hope for the future.”
Watson adds, “Mayor Baraka continues to inspire us all to be bold in our interpretation of space and work towards a new architecture language that promotes equity in our communities. This project is just one such example of that narrative.”
