A Witness to Family History

Her grandfather favored flannel shirts.

An unusual fashion choice for a young businessman in the 1920s, says Jeanne DeMark of Dover, a time when proper attire was the norm, even for factory workers, who wore dress jackets and ties to work.

However, her grandfather, Henry O. Baker, had an unusual business career: He took over management of the family’s Baker Theatre at the age of 19.

The theater was built in 1906 for stage shows and vaudeville by Baker’s father, William H. Baker, who died in 1918 during the flu pandemic.

DeMark says Baker was attending Princeton University when his father died, and he left college to take over the theater with his mother, Carrie Odell Baker.

“The ‘O’ in Henry’s name is for Odell,” says DeMark, a 67-year-old Dover resident. She adds that, while not much is known about her great-grandmother, “She seemed to be a strict mother.”

DeMark is the daughter of Carolyn Baker Bishop, 94, and Wallace Bishop, who served as a  Dover alderman. Her mother is the daughter of Henry O. Baker and Eda Pauline Rarick.

DeMark, who shares a home with her mother, says she was familiar with her grandfather’s career and the family's legacy.

“My grandfather died in 1974 when I was a freshman in high school,” she says.

She says her great-grandfather was the theater impresario in the family, having built the Baker Theatre and the Baker Opera House. William Baker was also a real estate developer, acquiring properties once owned separately by a pair of Dover’s iron giants, Henry McFarlan and John Hurd, she says. The so-called “Baker Tract” ran from near today’s Costco Outlet in Wharton to Route 46 in Dover near Hurd Park. DeMark pushed to gain historic recognition for William Baker’s Lehigh Street home.

“I have a lot of pride knowing what they accomplished,” she says.

DeMark states that while her grandfather managed the theater successfully with his partner, Raymond Woodhull, he also had other business interests. 

The partners sold the theater in 1926 to the Stanley-Fabian Corp. In the meantime, they tore down the Baker in 1924 and completely rebuilt it in six months, making it the largest theater in Morris County and ready for the new medium, film. DeMark is still amazed by the construction feat.

Henry O. Baker left the theater business to start an insurance company in his own name, which still exists today.

DeMark is closely watching the potential sale of the Baker.

“I would like to be involved in that in some way,” she says.

She says the church, Centro Biblico of New Jersey, which has owned the building for seven years, should be acknowledged for the reported $1.5 million in renovations made at the old theater.

“I understand they put a lot of money into it,” she says.

It might not have been a good fit for their congregation, DeMark says, but their work helped preserve the legacy of her family’s showplace, the Baker Theatre. –Michael Daigle