Pictured: the Prudence Townsend Kelsey Memorial Room. Thomas Edison State College will offer free tours of the Room on Nov. 19 from noon to 2 p.m.
On Nov. 19, Thomas Edison State College will offer free tours of the Prudence Townsend Kelsey Memorial Room between noon and 2 p.m.
The Prudence Townsend Kelsey Memorial Room is dedicated to Prudence Townsend Kelsey, the wife of Henry Cooper Kelsey, a banker who served as New Jersey’s secretary of state for 27 years. He initiated the project to memorialize his wife’s death in 1904. The Room was designed by Cass Gilbert, the past president of the American Institute of Architects and designer of the prominent Woolworth Building in New York. He modeled the Kelsey Building after the Palazzo Strozzi, one of the most famous palaces of the Florentine Renaissance.
The lavishly decorated Prudence Townsend Kelsey Memorial Room is a permanent exhibit space for the porcelain and art she collected on her annual trips to Europe with her husband. Henry Cooper Kelsey, who never ceased to mourn his wife’s death, had the room’s collection of clocks stopped at 11:49 p.m., and a number of small calendars permanently turned to Sun., Jan. 3, 1904, the time and date of her death.
Visitors will also have the opportunity to view the College’s Bradshaw Collection housed in Prudence Hall on the first floor of the Kelsey Building. On display are sixty-five (65) original etchings by George A. Bradshaw, given to Thomas Edison State College by Raymond L. Steen in memory of his wife, Mary MacPherson Steen. Originally dedicated during Trenton’s State Street Stroll on Sept. 21, 1986, the collection features scenes of Trenton. Among the etchings are two of the artist’s favorites: “The Water Power” and “The Three Gates,” a proof of which is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The display will also feature a famous N.C. Wyeth painting that depicts George Washington’s visit though Trenton on his way to his 1789 New York presidential inauguration. The painting, which is on loan from Wells Fargo, hangs in the atrium of the College’s main entrance.
The room is on the second floor of the historic Kelsey Building, the College’s headquarters, located at 101 West State Street in downtown Trenton. The tours are free of charge, but registration is required by contacting the Thomas Edison State College Office of Communications at 777-3083 ext. 2065, or ext. 2062. The last tour begins at 1:30 p.m.
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