ECS begins vital fundraising drive

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Oh the stories it could tell.

The Ethical Culture Society building on Prospect Street in Maplewood has lived through 128 years of history, having been built as a hospital in 1895.

It served for a time as a sanitorium for tuberculosis patients and it has served as a base for a prison reform society, a draft counseling center, two different churches and the National Organization for Women.

There was also a woman who secretly lived in the building.
The Essex County society was launched in 1945, as The New Jersey Society for Ethical Culture. Within 6 months a Sunday School was organized, with parents as volunteer teachers. For the first 10 years there were a succession of meeting places in the Newark area until in 1954 the society purchased the building at 516 Prospect.
It is currently in need of renovation and repairs with an estimated cost of around $100,000. An online art auction has been organized and it is the first public chapter in a campaign to raise that money, according to the society.

The Raise the Roof/Celebrate Art Online Art Auction is scheduled to run from April 22 to April 29 with a preview period from April 15 to April 22.

The art can be viewed at AirAuctioneer.com/Art4Ethical. All funds raised through this Online Art Auction, will go to support The ECSEC Capital Campaign.

Artists from New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania have committed to donate artworks. The society is hoping to draw bidders and buyers from an even wider area.

Built as a hospital in 1895 by Dr. Mefford Runyon, the building served the community in that capacity until 1932, when Irvington General Hospital opened. For part of that time, it was a sanitorium treating tuberculosis patients. The building itself was expanded in 1922.

There are currently two apartments in the building. The one on the top floor is occupied by Elaine Durbach, Marshall Norstein and their son. Norstein is the building manager.

A unique feature of that living space is the concrete floor. During its life as a hospital, the third floor was the operating room.

“It’s the only house I’ve ever seen with concrete on the third floor,” Norstein said.
The largest room in the building is the meeting room, which has space for about 50 people. On the same floor are two sitting rooms with comfortable chairs and couches.

On the second floor is another sitting room, the Sunday School room and the offices of the Community Coalition on Race.
A board of directors runs the society. In the past the organization has had a leader but they don’t currently have one.

“We have an ongoing debate about whether we want a leader,” Durbach said. “It’s very much a community of individualists. There are people who belong to religious groups and there are atheists. It’s very loosey goosey.”

These days, the building is the meeting place for various Alcoholic Anonymous groups, a chamber music group, an Adult School course and a CSA organic food drop off. The building is often rented out for events ranging from weddings to memorials to birthday parties.

“More than 200 people a week come through here,” Norstein said. “There’s so much that happens in this building on a regular basis.”

The Essex County society is part of a larger movement known as the American Ethical Union. It was founded in 1876 by Dr. Felix Adler as a non-sectarian way to work together for a more humanitarian world and personal growth. The AEU was instrumental in launching Planned Parenthood, the NAACP, Visiting Nurses, New York Settlement House, the first Kindergarten, Fieldston School, and National Ethical Service at the U.N., according to the society.

Ethical Culture takes as its guiding principle “our highest human ideal is to act so as to elicit the best in others and thus in ourselves.” Though officially defined as a religion, it leaves beliefs about the supernatural to the individual conscience.

The local society meets every Sunday from September through June at 11 a.m. for a lecture or panel discussion, usually followed by a coffee hour. The topics revolve around ethical aspects of peace and justice, environmental stewardship, and culture. Recent talks have been on notable women, advances in genetics research, electric cars, and the various forms of love.

This Sunday, March 26, artist and art educator Cathleen McCoy Bristol will speak about the diversity of human beauty and culture.

The society’s activism is spearheaded by its Social Action Committee, and it has a Family Education group that engages children in age-appropriate programs to promote understanding and environmental protection.

“To be able to have a discussion in civil and cordial terms is very much our role,” Durbach said.
Durbach said she became interested in the society after she moved to Maplewood. She joined and they moved into the building about 20 years ago with Norstein taking on the role of building manager.

“At the time, there was a woman secretly living in the building,” Durbach said. “She was a hoarder and was hiding behind things she had gathered in a second floor room.”

They were able to convince the woman to come out and they found her a place to live in the South Orange home of a member of the society.
The society’s only staff is a part time secretary and Norstein, the building manager.
To rent the facility for a party, it costs $275 and that would cover about 4 hours of party time plus an hour before to set up and an hour after to clean up.
“Our feeling is that the building itself,
as a community center, is an eloquent action of our principals,” Durbach said.
For more information, call the office at 973-763-1905, or visit www.EssexEthical.org.