Sandy Peace-Gibson was three years old when her family became one of the first tenants to move into the Kuzuri-Kijiji housing projects in East Orange. It was 1973, and the design of these garden homes at 19 Freeway Drive was more than a safe place to rest her head. It was a new approach to affordable housing that saw how crime, in the previous decades, proliferated within high-rise towers.
Kuzuri-Kijiji, means “beautiful village” in Swahili, and that’s what it was for Peace-Gibson, who had her own bedroom – as did her mother and sister – and a neighborhood of children with whom she forged lifelong bonds. The fact that it was designed by Edward Bowser, an East Orange native who was one of the state’s first Black architects, gave residents a sense of pride.
“It was an amazing place to grow up,” said Peace-Gibson, who still keeps in touch with some of the childhood friends she made there. “Neighbors were like family.”
Today, Kuzuri-Kijiji is cordoned off with a security fence. The blight is visible through the chain links. A broken basketball hoop droops over a cratered asphalt court. Last year, a fire broke out at one of the buildings.
Peace-Gibson said her family moved out in the 1980s, when they moved into a home nearby. Others remained living there until about a decade ago. Since 2004, the owner is listed as Maple Equities, LLC. The Four Oranges couldn’t reach the LLC’s registered agent, Gershon Alexander, about their future plans for the property despite several attempts. There is no way to tell what the future holds for this landmark.
Architect Frank Gerard Godlewski, who will be featured in an upcoming PBS documentary on Bowser, believes that the continued demolition of his surviving designs is a loss not just for local history.
“This is important architectural history that I believe must find its place in American history,” said Godlewski, in a presentation he gave about Bowser to Princeton School of Architecture.
Born in East Orange, Bowser went on to have an accomplished career, though he remains unsung in the architecture world. In 1949, after graduating from the prestigious Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s architecture school, he began a fellowship with famed French architect Le Corbusier — one of the few Americans to gain such a rare honor. Godlewski recently unearthed a collection of Bowser’s correspondences with LeCorbusier that he is hoping to publish someday.
When Bowser returned to American soil three years later, the state would not allow him to test for his architectural license on account of his skin color. “So he took the national exam and got the top grade in the country,” Godlewski said. “After that, New Jersey relented and he established his own practice.”
Bowser is remembered for designing local landmarks like the Medical Arts Building at East Orange General Hospital, along with high-end private residences in South Orange, Montclair, Nutley, as well as Godlewski’s home in Essex Fells. The Kuzuri-Kijiji might be the greatest embodiment of what Bowser stood for, marrying both his stylish take on modernism with his belief in equity.
Witnessing the Civil Rights movement combust into uprisings in the 1960s – Bowser was emotionally invested in the riots happening in Newark – inspired him to become a champion of affordable housing. The $6.7 million housing projects at 19 Freeway Drive, which was built without a tax abatement, is perhaps his best example of his architectural activism. In 1973, when 60 families moved in, the homes were truly affordable. Tenants paid as little as $190 for a one‐bedroom apartment and up to $314 for a three bedroom, according to the New York Times.
Craig Wright, whose family moved into Kuzuri-Kijiji in the 1970s, was one of the last tenants to live there before it was shuttered around a decade ago. Having seen the development throughout its entire existence, he believes it lost its way when the co-op arrangement, which allowed tenants to become part owners, was disbanded and state bought the property, which had the unintended result of exchanging long-term residents for transient ones.
“It has a lot of history but it definitely started to go downhill,” Wright said.
There is another important landmark related to Bowser – his childhood home at 37 Oak Street. But it has no landmark designation. Unfortunately, the home Bowser designed at 41 Oak Street, which served as his studio, was demolished. East Orange still remains one of the few municipalities in Essex County without a preservation commission with the ability to designated landmarks and protect them from demolition.
However, there has been a resurgence in Bowser’s legacy in light of last year’s naming of a senior center at 90 Halsted Street after his family. His late brother, Robert Bowser, would eventually become a four-term mayor.
Darryl Jeffries, whose late father Jesse Jeffries managed the Kuzuri-Kijiji when it opened in the 1970s, believes it should become a national landmark. He would like to see “decent affordable housing” return to the property so that the dream of Bowser – and other Black professionals who worked on the development – can live on.
“Coming out of the tumultuous 1960s, Kuzuri-Kijiji is the template for what we see in public housing today – low-rise housing,” said Jeffries, a member of the Historical Society of East Orange. “This was the culmination of a great movement.”
Watch Frank Godlewski’s guest lecture on Edward Bowser at Princeton University’s School of Architecture.
