BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer

GLORIA STRAVELLI Kathy Dorn Severini scans a glass plate as she sorts through Dorn’s historical archive. Below, an architect’s rendering of the condominium development proposed for the Dorn’s site on Wallace Street. Although development plans loom, it’s still business as usual at Dorn’s Photography Unlimited in Red Bank.

“We’re still here, nothing has changed,” explained Kathy Dorn Severini, who manages the day-to-day operation of the photo business founded by her late father, Daniel W. Dorn, in 1937.

“We’re still doing everything we were doing: portraits, business and passport photos, reproducing, maintaining the Dorn’s Classic photo collection, black-and-white custom printing, custom framing.”

Next door, Dorn’s blueprint/laser reproduction department is in operation.

Severini isn’t sure when Dorn’s will officially close. Until it does, the photo studio is keeping the same hours, Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., while the reproduction department’s work goes on Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“We’re open at least until June,” explained Severini, alluding to the fact that the Dorn’s complex on Wallace Street is under contract to be purchased by a group of local investors with plans to develop the property.

During this final phase of Dorn’s operation, Severini said she is trying to get the word out to customers that there is still time to do business with Dorn’s.

In particular, she is trying to alert customers who have had a portrait shot within the past 15 years that they can purchase the negatives. Interested individuals should call (732) 747-9350.

Severini and staff are overseeing the final months of the family-run photo business customers have known for almost seven decades.

For locals, it is yet another in a succession of long-standing Red Bank businesses to fade away and along with it, decades of relationships with generations of customers accustomed to dealing with family members.

At one point in the 1960s, Severini noted, she, her father and brother, Daniel W. Dorn Jr., and cousin Jimmy Dorn were all working in the business at the same time.

At that time, all the offshoots of Dorn Sr.’s photo business were housed under the same roof.

But in 1969, Dorn’s photography business split, with the retail camera store remaining at 15 Wallace St. while the commercial photography business moved into a converted garage at the rear of the property under the name Dorn’s Photography Unlimited. The photo studio thrived there as did the commercial printing operation next door.

The elder Dorn, who died in February, ran the retail photo shop, while his son, who joined his father’s business in 1962, gradually assumed more responsibility for the retail shop and photo studio, Severini explained.

“Dan kept it going through the transition,” she said. “Everybody thinks there’s nothing to keeping a business going, but he kept it going at the same level Dad did.

“The business was still going strong in the ’70s and ’80s,” she added, “and Dad was still here mentoring.”

But Dorn Sr. was starting to phase out of the daily pace of the business and retired in 1972. Dorn Jr. stepped back from day-to-day involvement when Dorn’s Photo Shop was sold to longtime Dorn’s employee Bill Matlack in 1999.

Severini took a hiatus when her daughter was born in 1983, then returned in 1989. After her brother stepped back five years ago, she took on the role of manager/photographer.

“My job, as far as I saw it, was to make sure the customer was happy. That’s the way my dad brought me up,” she said. ”I’ve been working in the business and watching over the business, making sure the customer is happy, because that’s what’s kept it going.

“When you have a business, you’ve got to be there, got to be truthful and have that personal relationship with people, and you’re just not getting that anymore.

“You can talk about the digital era and shopping on the Interment, it has its purpose, but it’s very important you don’t lose that one-on-one with the customer.”

Looking to the future, Severini is mulling options before embarking on a new course.

While she’s not sure where it will be located, she is certain she will have a new business offering many of the services Dorn’s has provided, like portrait photography, and she plans to teach photography.

Perhaps her most important role will be as keeper of Dorn’s Classic Collection, an archival collection of historical photos and glass plates, some dating back as far as 1890.

Also part of the collection are photographs of Monmouth County scenes beginning with her father’s work in the 1940s.

“He and the photographers who worked for him shot newsreels, events, scenic shots, sports, buildings, churches and people,” she said.

The collection also includes the aerial photos shot by her father and brother from the 1940s through 2000.

Some 3,000 historical photos have already been printed and organized into binders available for browsing at the front of the studio, she added.

“The collection probably consists of, easily, more than 10,000 images,” said Severini, who is continuing to sort photos and glass plates into categories.

“Right now I’m putting glass plates into categories by subject. I’ve been at it for years,” she said. “I’m looking at negatives and making sure they end up in modern format.

“I just love looking at them because they’re beautiful; and there are so many familiar faces, including my father. I love them and I want them to be out there.”

Within the month, she expects to begin making digital copies of the images; she will also, with the help of family, undertake a comprehensive computer management of the entire collection.

The mission most dear to her is ensuring that the photos are preserved and made available to the public.

“I will partner with historical societies, chambers of commerce, municipalities in the county, the county library system, college libraries, to make them available to the public while also making them available to scholars,” she said.

In honor of the family patriarch, Severini plans to name the collection the Daniel W. Dorn Historical Collection of Vintage Photographs.

“The beauty of it is,” she said, “that Dad hung onto the negatives. There’s a perfect continuum from the glass to the film. Now it’s going to the next level, the digital.

“It really paralleled his life.”

Future development

Plans for the Dorn’s property at 15-25 Wallace St., between Broad and Monument streets, call for demolition of the existing buildings on the site.

In their place, River Development, Red Bank, is seeking approval from the borough Planning Board to construct a 50-foot-tall, four-story mixed-use building that will have business offices at street level and a total of 37 apartments on the second, third and fourth levels. A two-level parking garage at grade and basement levels will provide a total of 111 parking spaces.

According to the Red Bank Planning and Development Office, the mixed use is permitted in the central commercial — or CCD-2 — zone, but the project needs major site plan approval from the Red Bank Planning Board.

Wallace Street Condominiums will have 5,900 square feet of office space, and almost 69,000 square feet of residential space. There will be 13 apartments on each of the second and third levels and 11 on the fourth level.

The application proposes two levels of parking with a total of 111 spaces, more than the number of parking spaces required by borough ordinance.

According to the borough tax assessor’s office, the Dorn’s property currently owned by Dubouchet Holding Co., Little Silver, is assessed at $ 1.1 million.

Under review by borough engineers, the proposal by River Development had not been assigned a hearing date as of Tuesday.