Kingston Historical Society: Illustrated Talk on the Lincoln Highway

Celebrate the centennial of the Lincoln Highway, America’s first coast-to-coast road.  Join the Kingston Historical Society for an illustrated talk on the Lincoln Highway by Barry Pavelec  at the Kingston firehouse on Heathcote Road just off Route 27 – the Lincoln Highway. 

A longtime Kingston resident, Pavelec has researched and written about the Lincoln Highway.  He will talk about its history and its passage through Kingston from its designation until its fame--but not its utility--had faded. 

The talk is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. 

For Barry Pavelec's family, the Lincoln Highway has been something of a "Main Street" for as long as the named route has been around (from 1913), and for decades earlier when it was just an important New Jersey byway.  In New Brunswick going back to 1849, his family lived, worked or played near or on the route through several generations. 

Barry has worked for McGraw-Hill and Dow Jones, and was the Marketing Director of the Advertising Research Foundation.  He co-founded the Princeton advertising agency Gillespie & Pavelec, and was founder and CEO of Princeton's Center for Sports Sponsorship, where he was instrumental in generating $2 million in sponsorship support for USA teams for the 1984 Los Angeles and Sarajevo Olympics.

He has written extensively on New Jersey history in magazine articles and in The Jersey Game, a 1992 book on the State's role as the birthplace of baseball.  He was also the author of a 1993 article about the Lincoln Highway – “The Man Who Invented the American Highway” – in the Port Authority magazine Omnibus, of which he was then editor.

RELATED EXHIBIT:

Additional information on the Lincoln Highway in general as well as period photographs of Kingston can be found in a small exhibit in the Kingston Lock-tender’s House, where the Society maintains its headquarters, until September.  The Lock-tender’s House, on the D&R Canal Towpath at Old Route 27 (the Lincoln Highway), is open Saturdays, Sundays and major holidays from April through October.