Echoes of the past at Red Bank Train Station
Artist creates glass panels with vintage scenes for transit stop
BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer

The new artwork that was installed on July 26 at the Red Bank Train Station was overseen by artist J. Kenneth Leap. The art consists of glass panels with transparent historic photographs depicting scenes in the borough.

RED BANK - Recognized for its historical significance, the borough train station now has public art that reflects the history and character of its community.

South Jersey glass artist J. Kenneth Leap has created glass panels depicting images drawn from the Dorn's Photography archives, which hold thousands of historical images of the borough and surrounding areas.

The recently installed panels consist of one large image with several smaller images of the borough, including historical buildings and more contemporary images, along the top of each panel.

According to Mary Eileen Fouratt, executive director of the Monmouth County Arts Council in Red Bank, who was on the selection committee, the artwork is a perfect fit for the borough.

"We were looking for something that reflects the community," she said. "Community representation is critical. Ken Leap's concept works perfectly. He incorporated the history, the people, and the culture of Red Bank."

Fouratt said that Leap connected with Dorn's Classic Photos for the photographic images he used in the art technique known as glass lamination.

Leap said that the technology for this process is only about five years old, and consists of printing a picture on a translucent piece of plastic and laminating it between two sheets of plate glass.

"It's actually safety rated," he said, "like a car windshield."

Leap has done several public art pieces, including glass installations at other train stations. He said last week that the idea for the glass panels for the Red Bank train station came from research he had done about the borough.

"What's unique about this project," he said, "is that Red Bank has developed a way-finding project around town, using different icons on signs to let people know where the waterfront is, where the Arts and Antique district is. I did some research to find images appropriate to each of the six icons Red Bank is already using."

In his research, Leap said, it did not take him long before he was lead to Kathy Dorn Severini, who is the keeper of the Dorn family's archive of historical photographs.

"One of my favorite images is of the clock on Broad Street from about the 1930's," he said. "I found through my research that at one point there was a traffic accident, and the clock was knocked down and demolished, but it had been restored. I think it's a real landmark, and it's interesting to see how things have changed around it."

Leap has also designed public art for both the Edison and Bayonne train stations for NJ Transit.

The cost for the Red Bank project was $30,000, and was part of the NJ Transit budget for the station renovation, which included the construction of the new elevated platforms.

Leap's other accomplishments include creating Christmas ornaments for the White House Christmas trees in 2001 and 2002, as well as a stained glass panel for the Washington National Cathedral.

Fouratt said that like similar train stations along the North Jersey Coast Line, including Matawan and Middletown, Red Bank will now have a visual uniqueness associated with art.

"I love it when you're on a train and you can just glance up out the window and know where you are," she said. "Now, you'll know you're in Red Bank."

Margaret Mass, executive director of the Red Bank Visitors Center who was also involved in the selection of art for the train station, said that if the funds could be found, she would like to see additional panels put up.

"It's so beautiful," she said, "and it's so unique to Red Bank. We would really like to do more."

Leap said that there are a few things he thinks his panels should accomplish.

"I think people using the train station should get a couple of different things from this," he said, "like an insight into the history of the town and a feeling that they could place themselves into the larger historical circle."

"That's what good public art should be," Fouratt said, "fun, thought-provoking, inclusive of the community, and, ideally, interactive."

The Red Bank Train Station is listed on the Historic Sites Inventory in the Historic Preservation Section of the New Jersey Office of Cultural and Environmental Services, as well as on the National Register of Historic Sites.

Local historian and member of Preservation Red Bank, George Bowden, provided a brief summery on the historical significance of the station.

The station was built in 1875, after a group of Monmouth County businessmen secured a charter to run a railroad from South Amboy to Long Beach by way of Red Bank and Matawan.

In June 1875, the New York and Long Branch railroad, the first all-rail line to the Jersey Shore, made its maiden run.

That first run had President Ulysses Grant on board. En route to his summer home, at his stop in the borough, bands, cannons and fireworks greeted him.

The station had just been completed that summer and was designed in Stick Style Victorian architecture by Walter Morton.

The Stick Style skeletal ornamentation is from a 1975 restoration of the building, which roughly resembles the original, although slightly less elaborate, according to information provided by Bowden.

Grant was the first president to visit the borough by way of the station, but he was not the last.

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt, as a presidential candidate, made a stop in the borough at the railroad plaza, speaking to hundreds of people.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was also welcomed by borough residents at the station in August 1939, one week before the start of World War II.

The station even received international recognition when, in April 1939, King George and Queen Elizabeth of England visited and were honored at the station.