Audible just opened an office inside an old N.J. church, complete with organ pipes and stained glass
By Karen Yi and Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
An old Newark church has come back to life — and with a new purpose.
Audible on Friday officially opened its new 80,000 square foot office space, dubbed “Innovation Cathedral,” inside the renovated Second Presbyterian Church on James Street.
Twenty-five years after the church shut down and its congregation dissolved, the once-abandoned building now dazzles with stunning stained glass windows — all expertly restored.
There’s a four-lane bowling alley (AudiBowl), conference rooms named after famous Newarkers like Sarah Vaughan and Lilly Martin Spencer, and the old choir loft repurposed as an open work space.
“It was a dead building for 25 years,” Audible’s founder and CEO Don Katz said. In many ways, he said, the historic church is symbolic of the “deprivation and decline in Newark” and its recent resurgence.
Audible is one of the city’s anchor institutions and relocated its headquarters to Newark in 2007. Since then, the digital audiobook seller has grown from 100 employees to more than 1,500.
“The Innovation Cathedral, its history and future as a house filled with meaningful work at the cutting edge of technology and culture is, for me, a metaphor for the way we at Audible have worked really hard to define a core element of our strategic purpose, as a company around the comeback of this great American city,” Katz said.
On Friday, tour guides led groups around the three-floor building that will house 400 employees, mostly in tech.
The first floor is lined with neat rows of modern desks and computers. When the church was first built in 1811, that’s where the congregation sat in pews and prayed. The work area sits beneath the renovated choir loft and what would have been the balcony seats.
Second Presbyterian Church broke off from First Presbyterian Church when its members grew in size. At its peak, the church boasted of 10,000 members, said Manny Antunes, a tour guide with “Have you met Newark?”
Antunes said though old elements of the church look like wood, they are actually plaster painted like wood. The church burned down and had to be rebuilt.
Among the more breathtaking areas of the building is the third-floor library, modeled after the Boston public library.
“We’re essentially floating in the church,” Antunes said, looking around the stained glass windows surrounding the lamp-lit elongated, wooden tables. “We’re the closest to the stained glass that anyone would have been.”
That’s because the third floor didn’t exist before. A viewing bridge gets you a mere few feet from the highest stained glass windows. These windows honor secular figures like Aristotle, Leonardo, Shakespeare and Louis Pasteur.
“This is in theme with Audible’s motto of being an innovation leader and these are all innovation leaders up here,” Antunes said.
Audible, which declined to say how much was spent on renovations, has been working on the space since 2015. As part of the cleaning effort, every piece of stained glass was removed, cleaned and re-installed. All 3,400 organ pipes were also removed during construction and then returned.
The company is leasing the building from Fidelco for 20 years.
Innovation Cathedral is steps away from Audible’s headquarters on 1 Washington Street and in the center of Newark’s downtown.
The building’s cellar is for employees to eat at the cafeteria, which provides free, hot meals every day. (And includes a brick pizza oven designed by the folks involved with Eataly.)
There’s also a bowling alley employees can reserve after hours and a cafe space. A third-flood pantry room has a full view of the top of the organ. The organ’s pipes range from six inches to 16 feet.
Aisha Glover, president and CEO of the Newark Alliance, a nonprofit focused on economic revitalization in the city, said she was thrilled to see Audible be a leader in the city to help close the gap between the corporate community and its local businesses and residents.
“Equity doesn’t happen by accident, this is about being intentional with the work,” she said.
Audible offers its employees a $500 monthly stipend to live in Newark and gives its workers gift cards to eat lunch in the city. The company’s paid high school internship program draws from North Star and Science Park High School.
“We are thrilled to be seeing Audible expand in this way,” Glover said. “I’m excited to be standing in the Innovation Cathedral to see what this sparks.”
