The newly painted facade of 40-42 Broad Street (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
The Red Bank Register is back.
No, not the newspaper that covered Red Bank top-to-bottom from 1878 to 1991 (although we’d love to have some competition in a good old-fashioned newspaper war).
What has returned are the words “Red Bank Register” atop the facade of the building at 40-42 Broad Street, which long served as the paper’s home.
A recent renovation and black-and-red paint job by the building’s owner restored the paper’s name, which had been inlaid in the brick facade. The words had been painted over and were largely invisible from the ground for decades.
According to a 2011 exhibit of Register photography by the Monmouth County Archives, the building housed the paper’s offices and newsroom from 1897 to 1968.
The facade sure tickles our newsgeek funnybone. You can almost smell the newsroom cigar smoke and hear the editors barking at reporters to get their copy in.
redbankgreen Partyline contributor and Historic Preservation Commission member Anthony Setaro sent us a photo as we were preparing to post this story, and expressed his admiration too.
“The source of many of the stories we share about Old Red Bank,” he said of the Register, whose digital archives, maintained and offered free to the public by the Red Bank Public Library, are an absolute treasure.
“Exciting to see the original brick inlay for the Red Bank Register restored!” Setaro added.
A depiction of the building in a 1902 postcard in the Red Bank Public Library Archives.
Multiple emails, texts, and phone calls to numbers and addresses listed on various public documents seeking comment from the building’s owners on the building’s renovation over the past several months have gone unreturned.
But we did catch up with the building superintendent, Ian Staana (pictured below), who told us of his Indiana Jones-like discovery.
“We did the facade all red, but then I was up there on the lift, and I said, ‘wow, there’s like an imprint that’s formed’” by the brick pattern, building superintendent Ian Staana told redbankgreen. “I thought it said ‘Regis,’ so I looked it up on Google.”
Staana said he persuaded the building’s new owner to let him revive the newspaper name in black.
The building was sold in February 2024 to 40-42 Broad Street Advisors LLC for $3.5 million, according to a deed recorded with Monmouth County.
The current owner is listed as Kim Ardise on a January certification filed with the Red Bank Zoning Department. The previous owners, 40-42 Broad Street LLC, had purchased it in 2015 for $2.5 million. Adam Ardise is listed on documents as the owner of that LLC.
In July, the ground floor tenant, Greene Street consignment shop, closed down, citing the end of its lease and a change of ownership of the building. There’s still a for lease sign in the window of the ground-floor retail space.
The paint job appears to be part of a larger renovation.
Zoning department documents show the owner was approved earlier this year to convert the second floor from an office to an apartment and a smaller office. The third floor contains three apartments, which appear to have been renovated as the work has been underway.
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redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331 or yelling his name loudly as he walks by. Do you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen? Please become a financial supporter if you haven’t already. Click here to set your own level of monthly or annual contribution.
