Castle Point Radio, better known as WCPR, is the official radio station of Stevens Institute of Technology. While it may not broadcast to the general public, this community enables students to create their own space in the music world, providing listeners with a place to listen to niche music or learn obscure facts about the hosts or the artists. What isn’t well known about this club, however, is that it might hold the title for the largest privately-owned record collection in New Jersey.
Starting in 1961, WCPR has been home to many music geeks and collectors across many generations. While many know them for hosting events around campus and providing an outlet for students interested in broadcasting, marketing, and recording, their record library often goes unnoticed. What likely started as a hobby in the ‘60s and ‘70s quickly grew into a tradition, until the club built the collection featured today—now housing around 10,000 records.
The exact number of records, stored in a CubeSmart across Hoboken, is hard to determine due to its vast size. The task was made more difficult after a Sustainability, Activism, Volunteering, and Engineering (SAVE) event co-opted many of the vinyls to be used as canvases for painting. According to Daniel Korzen, the historian and former general manager for WCPR, these records were not carefully checked before being distributed. Due to such a large portion of the records being from the ‘70s, an unknown number of rare or limited edition records may have been lost.
The sorting and storage of this collection is already difficult due to its sheer size, and the location does not make this task any easier. Although the record collection is a major property of WCPR, they aren’t allowed to store the collection on campus for multiple reasons, including the many relocations of the club and strict safety regulations in place at Stevens.
In the spring of 1989, WCPR relocated to a newly built studio in the basement of Jacobus Hall. It was here where the club reached its grandest stature, with multiple rooms and an entire record library. The creation of this library also led to the creation of a new role in the club: a record librarian. This person would oversee the storage, usage, and sorting of the records that the club owned. In December of 2018, the demolition of Jacobus to make room for the UCC Towers relocated WCPR to the third floor of the Martha Bayard Stevens building—a space which is still its home today. While moving all of the studio’s equipment, the record collection was placed in a CubeSmart storage unit in Hoboken. This was also meant to be temporary, but the lack of sprinklers in Martha Bayard and the storage of vinyls in cardboard boxes has rendered the collection unable to return to campus for now. The station has also temporarily dismissed the role of record librarian, which will likely not return until a permanent and sortable home for the records is reinstated.
Although the current situation of this collection leaves much to be desired, a mass of roughly 10,000 records is still a remarkable feat. As there is no evidence of any larger privately owned collection in New Jersey, it can be inferred that Castle Point Radio currently has one of, if not the largest, record collection in the state of New Jersey.
