Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company Building
A 1957 headquarters that announced Newark was still betting on its downtown.
Mutual Benefit Life Bldg and North Reformed Church on Broad St & Washington Park-Newark. Photographed in 2011; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
Current view · 2011 · Photo: Hudconja · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source
Why this project matters
- Project identity
- Verified
- Kelly connection
- Family source
- Masonry scope
- Strong
Rita’s list
Transcription: Mutual Benefit Life, N.J. — 1957
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-025
1 of two
“Mutual Benefit Life, N.J. — 1957”
The new Mutual Benefit Life headquarters opened at 520 Broad Street in 1957, one of the city's major postwar corporate projects.
This is our clearest early example of the Lever House theme: ordinary city fabric was photographed before demolition so a once-radical Modernist tower could replace it.
What Kelly did here
Family source
Strong
Substantial exterior Alabama-limestone facing on the 520 Broad Street headquarters, with likely interior CMU/block core, shaft and service walls. Do not attribute the limestone setting itself to Kelly without trade proof; specialty stone supply/setting may have been a separate package.
This scope is recorded as strong, not documented. It is a disciplined reading of the building and the trade practice of the period, not a contract-level record of Kelly’s work.
The construction team
- 01Architect
Frank Grad & Sons; Eggers & Higgins (associated/consulting architects)
- 02GC / construction manager
George A. Fuller Co.
What happened to it
Still standing
Sources
4 citedOpen →
- 01
- 02nap.rutgers.edu
collection.php
- 03usmodernist.org
AR 1958 07
- 04jerseyhistory.org
manuscript group 1362 newark new jersey photographs collection 1850s present
- Hudconja · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · 2011-11-15
Mutual Benefit Life Bldg and North Reformed Church on Broad St & Washington Park-Newark. Photographed in 2011; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
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