For the past four years, Newark developers have been trying to breathe new life into a landmark building in a troubled neighborhood.
This month, a plan to convert the Hotel Rivera at 169 Clinton Avenue into a homeless shelter with transitional housing on the upper floors finally received approval. The use of the building, though controversial to some members of the public who attended the hearing, is not altogether out of line with its past use as the one-time headquarters for Father Divine’s missionary work.
Built in 1922, the Hotel Riviera began as a luxury hotel, and that chapter of its history is evident in its ornate facade, which will be restored. Today, the building is better known among Newarkers for its association with Father Divine, an eccentric though beloved preacher who bought the hotel in 1949 and renamed it Divine Hotel Riviera.
What has upset some local residents is that some of the building’s signage will be removed, erasing, they claim, Father Divine’s association with it.
Father Divine moved his ministry, previously at 126 Howard Street, into the hotel. He bought the hotel for $500,000 and paid cash, using bills his followers had brought from Philadelphia in suitcases. It is also notable that Father Divine desegregated the hotel and did the same with other hotels in major cities, including the Divine Lorraine Hotel in Philadelphia.
Father Divine made a name for himself during the Great Depression and in wartime years for taking in members of his flock without expecting tithes and feasting them with roasted lamb in times of shortage. His irreverent-at-the-time takes on integrated race relations drew the ire of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Never one to shrink from scandal, at age 71, he married a 21-year-old white woman. Today, he is remembered for some of his oddball quotes in newspapers, including one about his second wife, claiming she was the reincarnation of his first wife, a black woman named Mother Divine.
“We are trying desperately to overcome a feeling that there is a barrier there,” he told the Evening Courier about his interracial marriage on the day of his nuptials, which was a characteristically lavish feast.
Residents at last week’s Planning Board hearing were concerned about how a walk-in shelter could function alongside a rental building and whether the shelter, with its mental health and drug use of the people it serves, would become a burden on the neighborhood.
Luis Ulero, director of the Office of Homeless Services, said the approach is “innovative,” but he believes it could become a model for getting people off the streets, into social services and treatment, and on a path to stable housing. The shelter has psychiatric nurses who can prescribe medication and seeks to partner with substance abuse agencies, he said. “As they transition and stabilize themselves, they will have access to the affordable housing units — again, that’s what makes this so unique,” Ulero said. “We’re seeing that as a community hub.”
The previous developer’s application came before the Planning Board in 2022 and received considerable opposition from community groups over the number of units proposed — at 99, residents claimed the developer was overcrowding the building. Residents also claimed that the developer had unceremoniously evicted them and that they held a rally around that time. The building was sold a few months later.
This month’s application was markedly different in spirit from the last one — there were fewer apartment units this time, with 69. Both proposals were geared toward affordable housing. But what made the difference in this case appears to be a partnership with the city’s Office of Homeless Services to provide wraparound services on the first floor.
Although Father Divine didn’t run a shelter in the building, the missionary work he did there was in his spirit. With the removal of the signage that bears his name, Kalenah Witcher, Planning Board Chair, requested that the owner memorialize Father Divine in some way that “harkens back to the history.”
“That would be a wonderful attribution to the historical work that came out of that building and that possibly you would be replicating without even being conscious of it,” Witcher said.
