The building at 72 Bridge Avenue slated for demolition to make way for part a 20-unit condominium project. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
It’s all worth taking a good long gander at. Because any day now, much of it will likely be gone.
Construction is slated to begin soon on a 20-unit condominium project spread across the five properties.
In the meantime, Anthony Setaro, an amateur historian who owns a home adjacent to the parcel, has set out to document the stories still told by the views from the sidewalk.
“These properties are all slated for demolition any minute now, really,” he told redbankgreen on a frigid stroll down the block in January. “So we have to document it now, or it’s gone. Or it at least won’t look the way that it has for the last 100 years.”
Under the handle Setaro House, Setaro has spent years producing short videos, including 3D animated recreations of old Red Bank, with a particular focus on the early-mid 20th-century Italian-American community where his roots lie. He’s also working on a book about it all.
Spurred by the imminent condo construction, he recently turned his focus specifically to the parcel bordered by Bridge and Oakland.
In a series of short social media videos shot in collaboration with the local history channel Ghosts on the Coast, Setaro shows where “Tommy Banana” sold fruit to workers heading home from the Eisner Uniform factory.
He stops by the building at 64 Bridge Avenue, which once housed a social club where crime family leader Vito Genovese was known to frequent. And he visits the bench behind St. Anthony’s church bearing the name of his rum-running uncle, Dominic Setaro.
“We’re in the throes of it – Red Bank life,” he says in one video, standing outside the former social club, now home to a walk-in health clinic.
The four-story condo project was spearheaded by developer Warren Diamond and later sold to builder Honey Meerzon, who is now moving forward with the build. It is a small part of a larger transformation planned for the area.
Separately, Denholtz, NJ Transit’s designated developer for the train station redevelopment zone, is preparing to submit for Planning Board approval a site plan for up to 400 apartments on parking lots and other properties around the station.
The 40-unit building hits closer to home for Setaro. It’s slated to rise across Oakland Street from a two-family home owned by members of Setaro’s family since the 1880’s. Setaro and his cousin purchased it from their great-grand aunt in 2020.
Plans call for the demolition of two Victorian-style homes at 128 and 132 Oakland Street, as well as the former homes of Mi Lupita’s Kitchen restaurant and 90 Degree Gallery, both of which have moved to new locations.
Some of the buildings in Setaro’s recent videos will remain, including the former club at 64 Bridge and the prominent balconied building at 82 Bridge Avenue.
Plans call for the new development to wrap around that building, much in the way the West Side Lofts architects needed to work around the former Danny’s Steakhouse building farther north on Bridge Avenue.
For Setaro, documenting the five-property tract before it’s cleared is an admittedly disheartening backup plan.
Setaro said he would have preferred seeing more of the buildings saved, perhaps through the kind of adaptive reuse on display at the 120-year old Anderson Building a half block away at 200 Monmouth Street.
“They’re actually knocking down Victorian homes on a residential street,” he said. “I had given them tons of suggestions to make it blend in and they didn’t go that route. There are a lot of things that they could do to honor some of the history in this area and they’re not.”
A rendering of the building approved by the Red Bank Planning Board for 72-78 Bridge Avenue.
The plan for 20 units was scaled down from a previous 37-unit proposal, which was rejected by the zoning board. The reduction in size brought the project largely into conformity with existing zoning laws.
Setaro also sits on the Red Bank Historic Preservation Commission, which had no jurisdiction over the buildings, because they are not in either of the town’s two historic districts. None of the buildings has state or federal landmark status.
Anthony Setaro, standing in front of buildings on Bridge Avenue slated for demolition. (Photo by Brian Donohue)
That doesn’t mean there’s no ghosts around.
“There was Citarella’s, there was all these kinds of markets, and the factory at some point had like 4,000 people working there,” he says standing on Tommy Banana’s old corner. “So this was like, the hub.”
Setaro has been working the last four years on a series of digitally animated videos that recreate scenes from a century ago.”My hope was always that we could film on this block, but that will not be able to happen.”
The photos and videos he’s shooting now, he said, are “all we can do to preserve it.”
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331.
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