Now and Then

The other week I was out feature hunting when I came across an elderly gentlemen cleaning the show window of the Newark Family Shoe store on the square. I took a couple frames and then went in to talk with him. 

That's how I met Robert Evans - a man who keep an extensive history worth of news clippings and photos of Newark. He even showed me a photo of himself, taken November 11th, 1971, doing nearly the exact same thing I had just photographed not 5 minutes earlier. 

I wasn't able to find the photo in our archives (a mess) so I took a photo of the photo and we ran the two images below the fold with the following text - 

On Tuesday, Advocate photographer Jason Lenhart was out looking for feature photographs when he stumbled upon Robert Evans cleaning the front display window of Newark Family Shoes. Only after speaking with Evans did he learn that on November 10, 1971, an Advocate photographer photographed Evans doing the same thing.

Evans has worked in the store since 1960, when it was located at 25-27 South Park Place. In 1967 the store relocated to the King Building, currently the Chase Building, at 15 North Third Street. Evans assumed ownership of the shop in 1981 when it moved to its current location at 5 South Third. 

"It's always been shoes." Evans said as he rushed around his shop on Wednesday. Evans estimates his age to be "Oh, somewhere around 50." Jason Lenhart/The Advocate