The Terraces neighborhood is now a blighted three blocks haunted by hookers, drug dealers and the oppressive sound and odor of industry. But it used to be a great place to live.

“It was a beautiful neighborhood 35 or 40 years ago,” said the Rev. Al Stewart, who runs the Camden Rescue Mission on South Broadway, nearby. “It was an ideal neighborhood.”

Until the early 1960s, the area from Woodland Avenue to Fairview Street, between South 6th and South Broadway, was a part of a company town – a ward of the New York Shipbuilding Co. The company swept the streets and generally took care of the neighborhood, Stewart said.

“They were beautiful homes,” said Joseph Balzano, executive director of the South Jersey Port Corp., which took over much of New York Shipbuilding's facilities.

“They had a union hall right there, with restaurants, a couple of bars. You could roll out of bed and walk to work in three minutes.”

Before that, the area may mainly have been meadows, according to Phil Rowan, executive director of the Camden County Improvement Authority.

But Fairview and Woodland streets show up on maps from at least as far back as 1875. Even then, they were a little isolated from other residential areas in South Camden, and industry had already cropped up nearby.

The West Jersey Railroad already ran past it to the east. Below Newton Creek were the Gloucester City Iron Works, Washington Manufacturing Company and some print works.

By 1895, the land belonged to Manufacturers Land Improvement Company, and the Reading Railroad and Atlantic City Railroad trimmed it to the north. Businesses just beyond those train tracks included the Keystone Chemical Company, a woolen mill and a dye works.

Then New York Ship opened in 1900, launching its first ship, MS Dollar, a year later, according to the New York Shipbuilding Co. Historical Site.

Thereafter followed 60 glory years. During World War I, New York Ship became the largest shipyard in the world. This was also when New York Ship began to build homes nearby for its work force.

In World War II, the business and the area around it truly peaked. More than 30,000 people were employed when things were at their busiest – punching in at around 55 time clocks, Balzano said. In just one year, from March 1942 to March 1943, the shipyard delivered new naval construction worth $217 million. After the war, New York Ship built nuclear submarines. But military contracts dried up in the 1960s. The last ship, the USS Guardfish, left the yard in October 1967, and New York Ship went out of business.

It was never the same after that. A new kind of industry came to town. Interstate 676 replaced the West Jersey Railroad, cutting off the Terraces from the rest of Morgan Village. The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority's sewage treatment plant arrived in the area in 1987, the Camden County Trash-to-Steam incinerator in 1989.

Out of an original 112 lots in the Terraces, only about 45 still have houses standing on them. Drug dealers and prostitutes have taken over some of the abandoned houses. Residents are choking from the increased exhaust and factory emissions.

“The best thing,” Balzano said, “is to buy it, move people out and blacktop it.”

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This column was a sidebar to a larger story about the Terraces. If you're interested:

Here's the main bar of the story.

Here's the other sidebar: When you're down, people dump their garbage by your house.

Here's the first column I wrote on this topic.