Straight & Narrow  

Project Overview

For more than 60 years, Straight & Narrow has been a cornerstone of behavioral health and recovery services in Paterson, New Jersey, serving thousands of individuals and families each year through a comprehensive continuum of care. Founded in 1954 and now operated by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Paterson, the organization is widely recognized as the oldest community-based residential substance abuse treatment provider in the United States.

In August 2019, a devastating 5-alarm fire destroyed Straight & Narrow’s primary facility, displacing critical programs and forcing the organization to operate out of temporary, fragmented locations throughout the city. In the immediate aftermath, Straight & Narrow’s executive leadership made a public commitment not simply to replace what was lost, but to significantly expand the footprint of the facility and design it as a purpose-built environment that could better support recovery, dignity and long-term operational resilience.

The new two-story, 54,000-square-foot rehabilitation center represents the culmination of nearly six years of perseverance through insurance challenges, funding gaps, a global pandemic and a complex public approval process. Located on the original site and adjacent to other Straight & Narrow buildings, the project completes a long-envisioned urban treatment campus, consolidating programs that had previously been dispersed across Paterson and restoring critical efficiencies to daily operations.

Designed to support multiple levels of care simultaneously, the building accommodates men’s and women’s clinical and outpatient programs, detox services, administrative offices and a self-contained 50-bed halfway house providing structured transitional housing for individuals reentering the community following incarceration. A key design driver included the need to maintain required separation between distinct program populations while allowing the facility to function as a cohesive whole, an architectural challenge addressed through careful planning, circulation and zoning.

At the heart of the building is a large multipurpose “Great Hall,” designed to flex between dining, counseling and community uses, reinforcing the social and communal aspects of recovery. Supporting both on-site residents and Straight & Narrow’s broader network of programs, a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen is capable of producing up to 3,000 meals per day, making food service a central operational and logistical function of the facility.

More than a replacement building, the new Straight & Narrow Rehabilitation Center stands as a symbol of resilience and reinvestment, transforming loss into opportunity and creating a space intentionally designed to support healing, stability and second chances for generations to come.

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