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The city of Camden is the county seat of Camden County, New Jersey. It is located across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 77,344.[6][8] The 2010 population represents a decline of 2,560 (3.2%) from the 79,904 residents enumerated during the 2000 Census, with Camden ranking as the 12th largest municipality in the state in 2010 after having been ranked 10th in 2000.[7]

Camden was originally incorporated as a city on February 13, 1828, from portions of the now-defunct Newton Township, while the area was still part of Gloucester County. On March 13, 1844, Camden became part of the newly formed Camden County.[14]

Although once a thriving center for manufacturing and industry, Camden is perhaps best known for its struggles with urban dysfunction. Three Camden mayors have been jailed for corruption, the most recent being Milton Milan in 2000.[15] Since 2005 the school system and police department have been operated by the State of New Jersey; the takeover will expire in 2012. In 2008, Camden had the highest crime rate in the U.S. with 2,333 violent crimes per 100,000 people while the national average was 455 per 100,000.[16] Camden public schools spend $17,000 per student per year and two thirds of the students graduate. Two out of every five residents are below the national poverty line.[17]

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Preserving the past

Newburgh's preservation history can be traced all the way back to 1850 when Washington's Headquarters was designated a state historic site, the first in the country. Newburgh's Historical Society was founded in 1884. It purchased the David Crawford House, its museum, in 1958, saving it from being demolished to make way for a parking lot for a funeral home.

The Dutch Reformed Church, a National Historic Landmark.
The city's modern preservation efforts began when the Dutch Reformed Church, a Greek Revival structure designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, was slated for demolition as part of urban renewal after the congregation left the decaying building in 1967. The movement to stop it led to the development of a historic district, now the second largest in New York State. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places three years later, and in 2001 became the city's second National Historic Landmark after Washington's Headquarters.

The city was designated a Preserve America community in 2005 and it also signed an agreement with the State Office of Historic Preservation as a Certified Local Government community. Its East End Historic District, recognized by the National Register of Historic Places as that and the Montgomery-Grand-Liberty Streets Historic District, has the most contributing properties of any historic district in the state.

While the city's historic architecture, featuring historic designs by Calvert Vaux, Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmstead, has attracted a stable core of preservation-minded community activists willing to spend the time and money renovating houses, much work remains to be done. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the city government warehouses a large stock of in rem properties within its Historic District that have fallen into disrepair as a result of its inability to secure them. Despite progress from the early 1990s, poverty remains a major (and visible) problem. The 2000 census found that two of the city's five census tracts are among the poorest in the entire state. In 2004 the state declared it one of the state's five most "stressed" cities, based on a mix of statistics like families headed by single mothers, abandoned buildings, unemployment, residents under the poverty line and adults without a high school diploma. [4] Local citizens and city officials blame the county's Department of Social Services for making problems worse by using the city as a dumping ground for its poorest clients. County officials respond that they are only sending people where housing costs are the cheapest.