Green Camp had been built up as a mythology. Though Cooper sold it off in the 1970s, working against tuition brought us together with alumni who had been there first hand. They told us all the stories. Green Camp wove seamlessly into the philosophy of our school: a modest set-up activated by a community working together. They told us about the bus that would deliver them into the woods, where they could escape the concrete and brick of the city. They told us how ideas and collaborations spurred on the lawn or by the river. They told us how Green Camp was as important as the school itself to their education. ↘ They told us how Green Camp united students from all three schools. Green Camp provided an intersection for arts and sciences. People came to Green Camp and discovered interdisciplinary opportunities. → After all, Green Camp started as a place engineers could practice surveying. Then they started letting artists go to Green Camp to be inspired by the scenery. Everybody came together at Green Camp. ↘ Actually Green Camp started back with Peter Cooper in the 1850s. Cooper purchased an estate ↘ Green Camp was 1000 acres of woods to explore. They told us about reaching epiphanies only when entirely separated from the city grid. Something about Green Camp unlocked solutions. → If we had never sold Green Camp, we'd be okay. (repeat the exact slide somewhere else, and let's play with that.
Green Camp had been built up as a mythology. Though Cooper sold it off in the 1970s, working against tuition brought us together with alumni who had been there first hand. They spoke about it so romantically, giving us a false nostalgia—a yearning for a past with which we had no connection. After all, Cooper Union had been selling off properties to cover its deficits for decades. Green Camp was just another casualty, something that could bear to be erased from the institution.
But Green Camp turned out to be different. Green Camp wasn't erased from the institutional memory. People fought to preserve that.
Initially, they fought to preserve Green Camp the actual. Students resisted Green Camp's sale, and they prevented it for two years—apparently. No one really talks about that.
Green Camp would appear spontaneously in conversations about Cooper's cornucopia of problems. Someone says something reductive: they have a solution to any issue. "If only we cut the president's salary, we would be fine!" Someone else nullifies the solution with context for a larger issue, then they reductively offer a solution to larger context. "It's not just this president. George Campbell's retirement package topped Top 5 lists. We need to trim down the whole administration!" Then it repeats. "It's not just cutting spending, it's bringing in sustainable revenue. Why are we always making one-time sales?"
Then someone mentions Green Camp.
Green Camp became a premonition of the soon-to-be new Cooper Union. It was a destroyed utopia. Green Camp was something good turned in for money. We felt that once Green Camp had been lost, it could only exist in a youthful idealism. Yes, obviously a Green Camp would be great, but pragmatically it just can't work. The poetics are nice, but the fact of the matter is Green Camps cost money—money we don't have. This is the problem with this generation: they think they deserve all these privileges. Green Camps are a privilege, not a right.
And that's when it became apparent that no one talked about present-day Green Camp. Maybe Green Camp still exists somewhere, out there. Maybe for another institution. If we can find Green Camp still exists, maybe our other idealisms won't be so far-fetched. If we can find Green Camp, maybe I will feel grounded.
So we began a search for Green Camp inside of Cooper Union. Green Camp the actual may have been lost—forfeited—but traces of it still existed inside the institution. Alumni made books about it. We found a silent film in the library film archives.
Somehow the images were shocking. I wanted to think Green Camp was real, but somewhere deep down I must have convinced myself Green Camp was impossible. But here it was! This was Green Camp recorded on film! This record proved me simultaneously right and wrong! What ambivalence!
Another film advertised Cooper in the 1950s. It boasted of Green Camp: it was a selling point! Tennis! Soccer! Basketball! Landscape surveying! Painting! All this and more!
But they were, after all, archives. These documents proved Green Camp exist_ed_, but not that it currently exist_s_. We tried to find ourselves in the films, but we couldn't do it seamlessly. And then it dawned on us: maybe Green Camp needed a new document. Maybe we had to seek out Green Camp the actual in existence—the place.
No one seemed to know what Green Camp was presently. No one could say what happened to Green Camp after it was sold. The institutional memory simply stopped after 1973. If for no other reason, we wanted to find Green Camp for closure. We were so used to finding another container, a larger trouble, a bigger boss. Happy ending or not, we needed an end to something.
We used the archived material and the stories we heard to find Green Camp. We knew it was in the Ramapo Mountains in New Jersey, in a town called Ringwood. Green Camp was likely some green colored space on a map, we thought. I don't suppose we ever considered it could have been torn down for condos or a Wal-Mart.
And so our search began with green spaces on a map.
Starting with Ringwood, we searched the landscapes for things we knew were a part of Green Camp.
There was a bridge and a dam alumni had built as a gift to space.
And then we found this.
Tennis! Soccer! Basketball! This must be the place!
Our shock and excitement from the archives turned to suspicions. Connecting all of this felt like a conspiracy theory: perhaps we were looking for something that was not there. ↑ Maybe I don't like this paragraph. Seems unrelated to what I was thinking about then.
With a physical location, we prepared for Green Camp—to meet this space in person. First we tried to brainstorm projects we could do there, but we only ended up with anxiety. How could we prepare for this space? We don't know anything about its current state. But that was the point! How do we actually connect with this space? Can we be engaged here? What place does this trace from the past have in the present?
We drove to the spot.
And we wandered around the mountain roads until we finally found Park Road—just as it was getting dark. At one lane, we had to roll down the hilly road slowly, our excitement peaking as we thought we'd finally reached Green Camp.
After the last hill, the road stopped. There was a building like we'd seen in the archives, green spaces like we'd seen on a map, but all behind a "Do Not Enter".
We weren't simply going to give up, we parked the car back a ways and walked up. We saw the tennis courts! The basketball courts! In the windows! Bunks! Kids in bunks! This is the exact spot!
We headed back to the entrance to knock on the door, or get information, or something—anything to interact with the space.
The Green Residential Community Home is a part of the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission. It houses at maximum of 28 male juvenile offenders between the ages of 14 and 17. Through a contract with the Playwright's Theater of New Jersey, residents are instructed in the writing and performance of one-act plays. Performances take place at the Playwright's Theater in Madison, New Jersey.