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EPSTEIN
Bergen County Panorama
BERGEN COUNTY
Panorama
AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES
Written by workers of the Writers 9 Program
of the Work Projects Administration
in the State of New Jersey
Sponsored by
THE BERGEN COUNTY BOARD OF CHOSEN
FREEHOLDERS, HACKENSACK, N. J., 1941
NEW JERSEY STATE LIBRARY
State-wide sponsor of the New Jersey Writers' Project
FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY
John M. Carmody
Administrator
WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
Howard O. Hunter
Commissioner
Florence Kerr
Assistant Commissioner
Robert W. Allan
State Administrator
Copyright 1941 by the Bergen
County Board of Chosen Freeholders.
Printed in U.S.A. by Colby and McCowan
Foreword
This comprehensive and colorful history of Bergen County
has been sponsored by the Bergen County Board of Chosen
Freeholders in order to provide present and future generations
with the story of Bergen from the days of its first settlers to
its present position of prominence.
There have been several histories of Bergen County, some
of them outmoded today, but no other has touched so deeply
at its roots and revivified so successfully its rich traditions and
cherished memories. In the pages that follow are recorded in
detail not merely the birth and growth of our county, but a
true reflection of its people; their trials and tribulations in the
quest to make Bergen County a better place in which to re-
side; their faith in the future and their sound foresight which
has made possible the heritage which belongs to all of us today.
These deeds and these memories must be preserved in order
that Bergen County may be inspired to continue its progress.
From the past has sprung our pattern for the future.
It is the hope of the Board of Freeholders to help keep
these vivid traditions alive through this book. We have placed
copies in all municipal and school libraries and in other places
frequented by the public, so that a bond of kinship with the
past may keep us united and point the way to the future.
VI FOREWORD
The Board is grateful to the Writers' Project of New Jer-
sey for an outstanding panorama and educational effort which
so well preserves those things held dear by all residents of
Bergen County.
BOARD OF CHOSEN FREEHOLDERS
A. THEODORE HOLMES, Director
SAMUEL ALEXANDER JOHN J. DICKERSON
ALEXANDER ALLAN FREDERICK E. KOESTER
CHARLES B. BLEASBY NICHOLAS A. KUIKEN
DONALD G. BUTCHER, Clerk
WALTER G. WINNE, Counsel
ROBERT C. GAMBLE, Public Relations Director
Preface
This volume, one of a series designed by the WPA Writ-
ers' Program to bring to Americans a deeper consciousness of
the forces that have shaped their Nation, is the first county
history written by the New Jersey Writers' Project. The
Project is grateful to the Bergen County Board of Chosen Free-
holders for its co-operation in making such a work possible.
It is not possible to list the many citizens whose assistance
and advice contributed to the preparation of the history of
their community. We are particularly indebted to J. W. Binder,
executive secretary of the Bergen County Chamber of Com-
merce, Donald G. Dutcher, clerk of the Board of Freeholders,
and Robert C. Gamble, its public relations director, who
served as general consultants. Hiram B. Demarest Blauvelt,
trustee of the Demarest Family Association, took an active
interest in the enterprise and gave advice on the History,
Churches and Schools chapters.
Consultants on specific chapters were: History: Dr. Clif-
ford L. Lord, of the Department of History, Columbia Uni-
versity, Francis H. Koehler, president of the Bergen County
Historical Society, and William H. J. Ely, former State Senator;
Public Affairs: Mrs. Edna B. Conklin of the Child Welfare
Department; Agriculture: W. Raymond Stone, County Agri-
VII
VIII PREFACE
cultural Agent; Industry and Commerce: Mrs. May Marsh, social
scientist; Transportation: Glenn S. Reeves, chairman of the
Chamber of Commerce Transportation Division, John L.
O'Toole of the Public Service Corporation and Mrs. Marsh;
Architecture: Aymar Embury II and Ira H. Davey, architects;
National Groups: W. L. Duncan, director of the Bergen Coun-
ty Y.M.C.A.; Churches: Dr. William H. S. Demarest, president
emeritus of New Brunswick Theological Seminary; Schools:
Roy R. Zimmerman, County Superintendent of Schools, and
Helen Ives Schermerhorn, of the Adult Education Program;
The Press: Ross Wynkoop, editor of the Bergen Evening Rec-
ord; Cultural Activities: Rutherford Boyd, artist, Dr. William
Carlos Williams, author, Manuel Komroff, author, and Roger
S. Vreeland, music editor of the Bergen Evening Record.
The librarians of the Johnson Free Public Library, Hack-
ensack, and the Danforth Memorial Library, Paterson, made
space and valuable source material available.
The book was edited by Benjamin Goldenberg and Irving
D. Suss, supervising editors, from drafts written under the
direction of Louis Sapperstein, district supervisor, by Edward J.
Fox, Abe Kirshbaum, Horace C. Graves and Ralph Lawton with
the assistance of Harold A. Fonda, Dorothea Kardel, Alexander
Harvey, Jacob E. Miller, Irving Mates and Frank V. McNerney.
The head pieces were executed by Frederick E. Watson,
of the New Jersey Arts and Crafts Project. Unless otherwise
credited, photographs were taken by Nathaniel Rubel, project
photographer, and by Samuel Epstein, Assistant State Super-
visor, who also designed the book.
VIOLA L. HUTCHINSON
State Supervisory Writers' Project
Contents
FOREWORD *
PREFACE VII
1 COUNTY PORTRAIT 1
2 HISTORY
3 PUBLIC AFFAIRS *
Welfare
4 AGRICULTURE 68
5 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 89
Labor 11*
6 TRANSPORTATION 120
7 ARCHITECTURE 1 5 *
8 NATIONAL AND RACIAL GROUPS 169
9 CHURCHES 181
10 SCHOOLS 196
11 THE PRESS 216
IX
X CONTENTS
12 CULTURAL ACTIVITIES 226
Painting, Sculpture and Crafts 231
The Theatre 243
Music 249
Literature 254
13 COMMUNITY SCENE 265
The Northern Valley 266
The Hackensack Valley 280
The Passaic Valley 288
The Pascack Valley 29 5
The Saddle River Valley 298
The Ramapo Valley 3 04
APPENDICES
Municipal Information 308
Old Houses and Churches 324
Recreational Facilities 332
Chronology 337
Selected Bibliography 342
INDEX 346
ILLUSTRATION SECTIONS
HISTORY following page 20
PUBLIC AFFAIRS 52
AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY 100
OLD HOUSES AND CHURCHES 164
SCHOOLS 212
TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE 276
Bergen County Panorama
/. County Portrait
AT A POINT on U. S. Route 1, one mile west of the George
Washington Bridge, the dramatic gateway to northern New
Jersey, the whole of Bergen County can be viewed across a 20-
mile stretch of rolling hills and valleys.
From the tableland along the summit of the Palisades, 500
feet above the Hudson River, the land slopes sharply to the
broad valley of the Hackensack, rises and descends again across
the Saddle River and Ramapo River valleys and then rolls up
the steep sides of the wooded Ramapo Mountains above the
northwest border. South of these the Passaic River forms the
boundary between Bergen and Passaic counties.
The villages scattered through the woodland along the top
of the Palisades are engulfed by the grandeur of this 1,000,000-
year-old rampart of stone, so hard that it resisted the erosive
forces that created the marshes of central Bergen.
2 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The lowlands, less than 200 feet above sea level, were leveled
by the great glacier which ground down the once higher ridges
and filled the once deeper valleys with rubble. If the rubble
that the glacier deposited in the Hackensack Valley were re-
moved, some geologists say, an arm of water would reach to
the New York State line.
Shielded from the worst of the winter gales by the high
land in the north, with excellent soil and water courses, the
county has the physical basis for a propitious development.
Following the early Dutch and English farmers, who first
saw the advantages of the region, a continuing stream of home-
seekers has flowed into the county. Dependent economically, as
was the farmer, on New York, the new resident now a hurried
commuter fixes the pattern of Bergen 's conservative life.
The commuter has been unwilling to sit quietly indifferent
to the affairs of his newly adopted home. The new community
facilities he demanded were immediately installed; the men and
women he nominated for office, elected. Though tied to the
greatest metropolis in America, the commuter spends hours in
the mazes of local politics like any provincial farmer. He runs
for positions on borough councils and nonsalaried school boards;
temporarily gives up bridge and golf to support his friends in
hotly debated campaigns. Just before election the buses and
trains buzz with the qualifications of rival candidates while the
tragedies of the slow market and the intricacies of the foreign
situation are momentarily forgotten.
The new residents have laid out prosperous towns with
broad, well-shaded streets on land purchased from descendants
of the early Dutch farmers. Landscaped gardens, luxurious
country clubs, poetry readings and lectures at the local women's
clubs, exceptional concert programs, little theatres, art shows,
are all indicative of the commuters' way of life.
Bergen's lodestone has been and still is excellent transportation
facilities. The railroads, the highways, the George "Washington
Bridge and rapid bus service via the Lincoln Tunnel to mid-
town Manhattan have been responsible for periodic bursts of
development: streets and power lines stretched across empty
COUNTY PORTRAIT 3
acres where the green corn grew, and new buildings invaded the
pastures.
Concomitantly there arose along the river banks great in-
dustrial plants manufacturing a variety of products. To man
the assembly lines, the looms and the refining vats came the
Germans, the Italians and the Slavs. These residents of recent
foreign extraction still cling to the culture of their homeland
through the church and social and benefit organizations. On
the newsstands, beside the metropolitan dailies and the local
weeklies, are foreign language papers that find a ready sale. But
as his children appear on school honor rolls and athletic teams,
the new American is joining the P.T.A., riding the volunteer fire
trucks and sharing other responsibilities of the community with
his neighbors.
The commuters and the immigrants outnumber but do not
eclipse the scions of old families whose names still appear on the
rosters of local governments and social organizations. Though
the new blood and new ideas have altered the social complexion
of Bergen, the county has retained its sense of unity. Hacken-
sack, more than a nominal center of government, is the focus
of community interest. The people are genuinely interested in
county-wide politics, and the Freeholders have extended their
traditionally limited function, especially in public welfare.
For the third time since the 1890's Bergen is in the midst
of a building boom. This one, which started in 1935, has at-
tracted national attention. The realtor once again spends his
week ends in the outlying districts, where model homes sprout
magically among the fields and woods, ready to receive new
residents who almost at once adopt Bergen County's sense of its
own worth, a more than passing interest in its traditions and a
complete confidence in its future.
2. History
IN 1609, when Henry Hudson sailed the Half Moon up the
Hudson River, what was later to become Bergen County was
occupied by the Minsi (Munsee) , a subtribe of the Lenni Lenape,
or Delaware, Indians. They had established several large villages
and numerous small settlements throughout the region and
threaded the country from the northern mountains to the sea
coast with well-defined trails leading to their favorite fishing
and hunting grounds. They also did a little farming.
It is estimated that the Lenape numbered about 10,000 in
the State when in 1618 the Dutch East India Company estab-
lished a trading post called Bergen in what is now Hudson
County, New Jersey. The conjecture that Norwegians among
the first settlers named the post after Bergen in Norway is ac-
cepted by some historians; others hold that the settlement was
named after the Dutch village of Bergen-op-Zoom, or that the
HISTORY 5
name was derived from the features of the countryside,
"Bergen" denoting a ridge between two marshlands.
Title to the region, named New Netherland, was claimed
by the East India Company a private enterprise chartered by
the Dutch government by virtue of the discoveries of Henry
Hudson. In 1621 the territory, including what are now New
Jersey, New York and part of Connecticut, was taken over by
the Dutch West India Company, which like its predecessor dis-
played little interest in its American holdings. As interest in
settlement gradually increased the company in 1629 offered the
feudal title of patroon and an extensive grant of land to any
member who would establish 50 settlers.
The patroon system was unsuccessful. Grants were made
to Michael Pauw in 1630 and to Myndert Myndertsen Van der
Horst in 1641, but it was apparent that Dutch colonization
would not be encouraged by the absolute power of the patroons.
Opposite the mouth of Overpeck Creek, on the Indian trail
leading to Pavonia (Michael Pauw's colony), some of Van der
Horst's settlers built a fort and trading depot. And in 1640
Capt. David Pietersen De Vries established Vriesendael near
what is now New Bridge. Two years earlier Oratam, sachem
of the Achensachys, had granted to Sarah Kierstede 2,120 acres
along Overpeck Creek for her services as interpreter in his treaty
negotiations with the Dutch.
To stimulate colonization the company in 1640 offered
200 acres to anyone who would bring with him five men to
till the ground. In 1650 the company placed on the land stock
and implements for which settlers were permitted to pay rent.
At the end of six years the settler was obliged to pay for the
stock. But this effort was interrupted by an Indian uprising
in 1643 which drove out all settlers but a few in Pavonia.
In Bergen a speedy peace was negotiated with Oratam, but
uprisings continued intermittently until 1658, when Gov. Peter
Stuyvesant repurchased an area "on the west side of the North
River from the great Clip . . . above Weehacken (Bergen)."
This is the first Indian deed to mention Bergen by name. Bergen
was granted a charter by the New Netherland Council, and
6 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
settlers were induced to return by relief from "tithes and other
similar burdens" for six years, provided that they settled to-
gether for defense. '
On September 15, 1661, a schout (sheriff) was appointed
to administer justice with the aid of the schepens (judges).
Two years later the schout and three schepens were made an
inferior Court of Justice, empowered to settle "all matters
touching civil affairs, security and peace of the inhabitants of
Bergen."
Negotiations with the Indians were still necessary; in 1662
Oratam and another chief were authorized to arrest anyone sell-
ing "brandy" in the lands still under their jurisdiction. Indeed,
Oratam had once refused to ratify the sale of land on which
Garfield now stands because rum and beer were part of the price.
Even though European settlement was slow during the
sevententh century the Indians disappeared rapidly from the
county. They can be recalled today only through their numer-
ous artifacts and a number of place names. Oratam, who
several times acted as intermediary between warring tribes and
the New Netherland Council, is commemorated on the official
seal of Hackensack.
In 1664 Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan surrendered to a
British fleet commanded by Col. Richard Nicolls, and New
Netherland became a proprietary colony of James, Duke of
York. He handed New Jersey over to John, Lord Berkeley and
Sir George Carteret, who drew up a constitution in England,
February 10, 1665, called "The Concession and Agreement of
the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New
Jersey," which established civil government for "all such as shall
settle or plant there." The document appointed Philip Carteret,
a relative of Sir George, governor and bound the proprietors to
levy taxes only with "the consent of the legislature and not
otherwise."
Despite this and other concessions, proprietary rule, as in
other colonies, threatened to revive in New Jersey the worst
features of the patroon system. Settlers who held land under
Indian deeds confirmed by Nicolls objected to the proprietors*
HISTORY 7
demands for annual rents. Barred from the legislative assembly,
a number of delegates in 1670 formed the basis of an antipro-
prietary party which refused payment of quitrents.
The same year Carteret and the Council issued a charter to
the freeholders of Bergen Township which confirmed the land
rights of the Dutch charter of 1658. The document provided
for the establishment of a court, support of the church and a
free school.
Two years later Bergen took part in a revolutionary as-
sembly held at Elizabethtown which deposed Philip Carteret as
governor and elected James Carteret, son of Sir George, as "pres-
ident." After the short-lived recapture of New York by the
Dutch, 1673-4, the Crown regranted the eastern half of the
province to Sir George Carteret, who returned Philip Carteret to
the governorship.
Colonization in Bergen expanded under English rule in
spite of proprietary impositions. Under the Dutch there had
been only the farmers on the Pavonia plantation and a few
others nearby, who sold their surplus products in New Amster-
dam, and scattered fur traders who engaged in a dwindling
trade with the Indians. After the fall of New Amsterdam
came an influx from villages in New York State and from Eu-
rope Dutch, Flemings, Germans, Scots and English, with the
Dutch still predominant.
One of the first English patentees was Capt. William San-
ford, who in 1668 acquired for himself and Nathaniel Kingsland
a 15,308-acre tract between the Hackensack and Passaic rivers
south of Sanford's Spring (Rutherford) . A little later Samuel
Edsall and Nicholas Varlet purchased from the Indians 1,872
acres of "wasteland and meadow" extending two miles north of
the Town of Bergen, and in 1 669 also two adjoining tracts, one
between the Hudson River and Overpeck Creek and the other
between the Hackensack and Saddle rivers, were patented to
John Berry. Settlers on the Berry and Kingsland patents estab-
lished family lines whose branches still flourish throughout the
region the Kipps, Christiansens, Staggs, Hoppers, Bertholfs,
Albertsens, Romeyns and Vanderhoffs. Elias Boudinot bought
8 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
part of the Kingsland property, and Rutt Van Horn, Nicasie
Kipp and Thomas France purchased land in the Berry patent.
The Zabriskies, Voorheeses, Demarests, Coopers, Van Reipens
and Powlesses settled near present Ridgefield Park at the south-
ern boundary of what as early as 1670 had been called "English
Neighborhood," a region bordering the Palisades as far north
as Englewood.
It was a Frenchman, David des Marest, progenitor of the
Demarest family, who established the first permanent commu-
nity in the present Bergen County. In 1677 des Marest, rebell-
ing against attempts to enforce financial support of the estab-
lished Dutch church in New York, brought his family to his
land along the Hackensack at New Milford. As sympathizers
followed him the community grew to 100. They established the
only Huguenot church in New Jersey.
A number of Poles were attracted to Albert Saboreweski's
(Zabriskie) New Paramus Patent of 2,000 acres, acquired from
the Indians in 1662 and patented to Jacob Zaborowski in 1713;
both the Poles and the Huguenots soon merged with the Dutch.
Along the northeastern border the "Tappan Patent" was settled
in 1681 and patented in 1687 to several families, including the
Harings, Steinmets, De Vrieses, Straatmakers, De Groots and
Blauvelts.
Settlers did not move west of the Saddle River until 1681,
when Jacob Cortelyou, Henrick Smock, Rutgert Joosten and
associates received a grant of 3,525 acres between the Passaic and
Saddle rivers. The Ramapo Valley was settled in 1700, on a
patent of several thousand acres procured 3 1 years previously by
George Willocks and Andrew Johnson.
Although Bergen was designated a "County," or judicial
district, in 1675, it was not until 1683 that the provincial as-
sembly passed an act creating the counties of Bergen, Essex,
Middlesex and Monmouth. The boundaries of Bergen were set
between the Hudson and Hackensack rivers from the New
York province line to Newark Bay, consisting of approximately
60,000 acres. Administrative authority was vested in justices
to whom were delegated extensive powers. Four years later
HISTORY 9
the Board of Freeholders had its origin when the assembly in-
structed residents to elect men to meet with justices of the peace
"for the purpose of levying a special tax for the building of
highways." The Freeholders were given power to raise funds
for building courthouses and jails in 1693 when the county was
divided into Bergen and Hackensack townships.
In 1710 Bergen was enlarged to include New Barbadoes
Township in Essex County, and Hackensack was made the
county seat "because it was a thriving village more centrally
located than any other." Courts were removed there from
Bergen Town (Jersey City) , including the common law courts
established in 1704 by the "Ordinance of Lord Cornbury"
which was the origin of the court system in New Jersey.
Suffrage was extended by Queen Anne in 1714. This
charter confirmed property rights and stipulated that only
owners of 1,000 acres could hold office and that voters had to
be freemen who owned 100 acres. A later amendment provided
that those who had 500 could be officials, and possessors of
50 could vote. Once before property holders had protested
against a money qualification, declaring that "an Assembly may
be packed of strangers and beggars, who will have little regard
to the good of the country . . . and may oppress the landed
men with heavy taxes."
The oldest extant records of the Board of Chosen Free-
holders and Justices are dated May 19, 1715, when the chief
business was providing for a jail and courthouse which was
erected on Hackensack's historic Green the following year. As
the cost of government increased the levying of taxes became
the most important single function of the governing body, but
close attention was paid to the punishment of criminals, the
condition of public buildings, meaning the jail and the court-
house, and providing bounties for wolves, panthers and red
foxes. The chief sources of income were direct taxes on prop-
erty, such as gristmills, sawmills, slaves and boats, on men en-
gaged in certain trades, wheelwrights and blacksmiths, for ex-
ample, and on all single freemen "working for hire."
The Justices, appointed by the Royal governor or his dep-
10 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
uty, enjoyed little popularity and were often at odds with the
elected Freeholders over interpretation of statutes. Occasionally
both Freeholders and Justices were bewildered by acts of the
assembly.
East Jersey, of which Bergen was a part, was bought from
Sir George Carteret's executors in 1683 by William Penn and his
associates. Ownership was surrendered to the Crown in 1702.
In line with Royal policy, Indian deeds, except those held by
proprietors, were nullified, and demands for quitrents were re-
newed. Opposition of the settlers culminated in widespread
riots during the 1740's. The French and Indian wars which
shook the colonies in 1754 stilled demands for a while, but the
issue was fought sporadically until the Revolution swept away
proprietary claims.
In addition to the general misunderstandings between pro-
prietors and settlers, differences arose among Bergen County
inhabitants over the extent and title of grants. A survey was
conducted in 1764 to determine "the several rights, titles and
claims to the common lands of the Township of Bergen and
for making a partition thereof."
In the latter half of the eighteenth century the Board of
Chosen Freeholders and Justices was largely controlled by a
combination of first families. Such names as Demarest, Van
Buskirk, Ackerman, Zabriskie and Westervelt recur frequently
in the minutes. Intermarriage among these ruling families
tended to make the body almost a hereditary institution. The
Demarest family, through its numerous branches and through
intermarriage with the Bantas, Westervelts, De Groots, Ter-
hunes, Ackermans, Van Winkles, Van Der Beeks, Brinkerhoffs
and Zabriskies, was supreme in social, political and religious
matters for more than a century.
Hackensack during the Colonial period became the focus
of a great agricultural section. Red brick homes lined well-kept
streets, shops were plentiful, hospitable taverns and stagecoach
depots attracted traveler, gentleman and farmer. So important
had the town become by 1767 that when the assembly was
voting upon a site for Queen's College (now Rutgers), Hacken-
HISTORY 11
sack and New Brunswick were tied. The governor decided in
favor of New Brunswick.
Revolution and Reconstruction
The influx of the English and other groups had never been
strong enough to disrupt Dutch influence, nor had an attempt
been made to force English culture on the older settlers. Dutch
persecution by the Spaniards in Holland and religious bans suf-
fered by English dissenters gave both groups a love of liberty
which helped forge a common front against England in the
War of Independence.
Following news of the impending break with the mother
country, citizens assembled on the Green in Hackensack on
June 25, 1774, and pledged the county to follow any action the
colony might take in resisting the tax policies of King George
III and the Crown restrictions on trade and manufacturing. As
in the other colonies, a committee of correspondence was elected,
composed of Theunis Dey, Peter Zabriskie, John Demarest,
Cornelius Van Vorst and John Zabriskie Jr., who immediately
passed a resolution protesting British impositions. In 1775 a
company of militia and four companies of Minute Men were
organized at Hackensack. John Fell was made chairman of a
committee of safety and led deputies from Bergen County to
the Provincial Congress.
At the meeting of the Board of Freeholders, July 4, 1775,
the question was considered whether the county committee
"shall have a right in case of emergency to take the County
Arms out of the Court House or not." Minutes bear the grim
notation: "This Board say they have." The last meeting of the
Board under the title "His Majesty's Justices and Freeholders"
took place on May 15, 1776, while members devised means of
payment for "79 Guns Bayonets and Belts and 78 Cartridges
Pouches and Belts 425 Flints and 680 Balls ... at the price
the Congress allow."
Regarded as the gateway of New Jersey, the county ex-
pected the British soon after the redcoats evacuated Boston in
1776. As part of the plan to protect New York harbor, de-
12 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
fense works were constructed at Paulus Hook and at Fort Con-
stitution (Fort Lee), and a series of roads was hastily built to
connect with the interior. Gen. "William Alexander (known as
Lord Stirling) was placed in command of troops rushed to this
vicinity, and Gen. Hugh Mercer, veteran of Culloden and Du-
quesne, was put in charge of the Paulus Hook defense. Lt. Col.
Cornelius Van Vorst, Richard Dey, first major, and John Mar-
tinius Goetschius, second major, were placed in command of a
battalion of foot soldiers organized at Hackensack. The county
also organized a company of light horse militia with Jacobus
Post as one of its majors. Washington often crossed to the
Jersey shore from Harlem and with General Greene, who had
succeeded General Alexander, reconnoitred as far down as Ber-
gen Point.
On July 12, 1776, Admiral Howe swept up the bay in his
flagship, firing upon the Paulus Hook Fort. General Mercer,
soon to be replaced by Colonel Durkie, wrote sadly to his Com-
mander in Chief: "The Militia of Pennsylvania and New Jersey
stationed at Bergen and Paulus Hook have behaved in a scandal-
ous manner, running off from their posts on the first cannon-
ade."
The war swept through Bergen County with the retreat
of Washington from Fort Lee in November 1776. On Novem-
ber 19 Cornwallis with 5,000 troops moved on Fort Lee, where
Washington had taken up quarters. In the face of overwhelm-
ing superiority only retreat was possible for the Americans.
General Greene led the troops to English Neighborhood,
while Washington went to Hackensack. Greene was especially
anxious to take possession of that part of the Neighborhood
which now comprises Leonia to secure passage over New Bridge.
Down King's Road (Grand Avenue) the patriots continued to
Liberty Pole (Englewood), where expected British opposition
failed to appear. Here Washington rejoined his troops and
supervised the crossing of the marshlands to the road over Tea-
neck Hill and up the present road to New Bridge. According
to Judge William M. Seufert, Englewood historian, the Revolu-
tion would have ended in '76 had the British cut directly across
HISTORY 13
the country and met the five or six thousand Americans east of
the Hackensack River instead of marching on the abandoned
Fort Lee.
At Hackensack Washington stopped at the home of Peter
Zabriskie, now the Mansion House, where he is supposed to have
maintained previous headquarters. According to an eyewitness
account of the entrance of American troops into the town:
"They marched two abreast, looked ragged, some without a shoe
to their feet and most of them wrapped in their blankets." An
English officer wrote: "I believe no nation ever saw such a set
of tatterdamalians."
Among this tragic, desperate body, scurrying to escape the
pursuing Cornwallis, was Tom Paine, then aide-de-camp to
General Greene. It is believed that his oft-quoted lines, "These
are the times that try men's souls," which appeared in The
Crisis, were written during this retreat. On November 2 1 regi-
ments marched down Main Street in Hackensack, across the
present railroad to Essex Street, up the Polifly Road toward
Acquackanonk (Passaic) and on to Pennsylvania.
By 1777 nearly all of east Bergen was in control of the
British. The defense of the county was left in the hands of a
few militia regiments, ill-trained and poorly equipped. Tory
refugee camps were established at Bergen Point, where Samuel
Van Buskirk was in command of Paulus Hook. Excerpts from
newspapers of the time indicate that Rebels and Tories were
engaged mostly in minor raids until the war's end.
In 1780 British and Hessian troops descended on Hacken-
sack, en route to attack Pennsylvania troops quartered at Para-
mus. During the raid the courthouse on the Green was burned
and until 1781 the courts were held at Yaughpaugh (Oakland).
Here the Americans were in control of Cannonball Road,
stretching across the Ramapos to Suifern, which was used to
transport arms cast at the Pompton Furnace.
One of the most disastrous raids took place near Tappan in
1778 when British Major General ("No Flint") Grey surprised
an American regiment under Col. George Baylor and massacred
a number of prisoners. The incident aroused the Colonies and
14 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
was recalled to stir feeling against England in the War of 1812.
Troops in the county area suffered from lack of food and
supplies. Washington, encamped near Liberty Pole, advised
Governor Livingston to discharge all but 100 of Colonel Seeley's
militia and to hold back the September class of recruits because
of a scarcity of provisions. Barbadoes and Bergen Neck were
reported stripped of cattle; a number of brigades were without
meat for several days. Having no practical measures to offer,
Governor Livingston humorously suggested that the "rural
ladies" of Bergen give their numerous undergarments to the
poorly clad Continentals, since "the women in that county hav-
ing for more than a century worn the breeches . . . the men
should now . . . make booty of the petticoats."
In September 1780 Brig. Gen. Enoch Poor, with the Ameri-
can Army at Kinderkamack, died of "putrid fever" and was
buried in the cemetery of the Reformed Church in Hackensack.
A statue to his memory stands today on the Green. A military
journal describes in elaborate detail the funeral march "includ-
ing his Excellency, George Washington, and General Lafayette."
In 1824 Lafayette returned to America and revisited Poor's
grave.
To add to the hardships suffered by troops in the winter
of 1780 the weather was intensely cold. Icy blasts cut across
the county. Both the East and North rivers froze over. John
Jacob Lawsing noted in his Dutch Bible that "as many as one
hundred sleighs were driven over from Bergen to New York.
. . . This is the truth and no mistake."
Although no battles of importance were fought on Bergen
soil, at least two commanding officers are remembered for their
deeds. At Arcola Col. Aaron Burr first gained military recog-
nition in September 1777 when he swept down from Suflfern to
Paramus, ordered an immediate attack on the raiding British
after observing alone the enemy positions and captured one
English officer, a sergeant, a corporal and 27 privates. Maj.
Henry Lee, who captured 159 British in a raid on Paulus Hook,
was congratulated by Congress even though he failed to destroy
the post. For the "eclat to the Continental arms" the Congres-
HISTORY 15
sional resolution presented Lee with $15,000 to be distributed
among the soldiers engaged in the attack.
Scarcely one of the county's present municipalities is with-
out a "Washington's Headquarters." Paramus was the site of a
Colonial encampment during most of the war, and Washington
stayed here after the Battle of Monmouth, from July 11 to 15,
1778, and for several days the following December. Sites of
vanished camps, old houses where troops were billeted, commis-
sary ovens hidden in tangled undergrowth, forgotten cemeteries
where soldiers are buried, a tunnel beneath the Hackensack
River connecting the Steuben House with New Bridge are
landmarks of the Revolution. At The Hermitage in Ho-Ho-Kus
(still standing) Aaron Burr courted and won the Widow Pre-
vost. Just across the New York line in Tappan Major Andre,
the British spy, was tried and hanged. Forty-one years later his
body rested at the Blanch House on Old Tappan Road in Bergen
County on its journey back to England for burial.
With peace established the county began the task of recon-
struction. Between Closter and Bergen Point a large area had
been devastated by Tory raids. Bridges had been destroyed, and
the county treasury was flooded with more than $12,000 in de-
valued Continental bills of credit.
In 1790 the population was 12,601, but aside from a few
compact villages, principally Bergen and Hackensack, settle-
ments were scattered. Most of the region was a wilderness
roughly cut with primitive roads and forest trails, and "wolves,
panthers and red foxes" continued to roam the valleys and the
foothills of the Ramapos until well into the nineteenth century.
As in all pioneer sections, families depended on their own
energies for the necessities of life. The wife was usually the
family doctor, nurse and holder of the purse strings. She
ground the grain for the family bread, wove wool and flax into
clothes on crudely fashioned handlooms, kept the house in order,
performed a host of chores and lent a helping hand in the fields
when it was needed.
Dutch language, customs and manners largely prevailed.
Until about 1850 most church services, sternly Calvinistic, were
16 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
conducted in Dutch with only occasional sermons in English.
Old residents in outlying districts spoke "Jersey Dutch," a mix-
ture of Dutch, English and several Indian words, until com-
paratively recent years.
Population grew slowly, reaching 15,156 in 1800, 16,603
in 1810 and 18,178 in 1820. In 1830 the population was
22,414, a figure which was not equaled again until 1860, owing
to loss of territory by the formation of Hudson and Passaic
counties.
Agriculture, predominant since Colonial days and destined
to retain its position until 1900, gave the county its chief im-
portance in the first half of the nineteenth century. Bergen
County produce became famous throughout the East, especially
such crops as potatoes, celery, lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes.
The importance of the produce trade and the prospect of in-
creasing land values hastened internal development. As farmers
demanded better transportation facilities to market their goods,
roads began to penetrate the region. In 1835, besides ordinary
country roads, there were nine turnpikes and three railroads.
Farm produce also came down the Hackensack to Newark and
across the Hudson to New York, the main outlet for crops and
the chief market for the abundant Dutch tulips, gladioli and
geraniums.
As travel increased inns were established along the stage-
coach routes. In 1820 nine hostelries lined one highway alone
the Paramus Road providing travelers on the Goshen Stage
with food, rest and diversion. As gathering places of the yeo-
manry and county officials, the inns played an important part
in the democratizing process which followed the Revolution.
In the low-ceilinged taprooms political leaders met to plan
strategy and select party tickets. Here the Freeholders fre-
quently conducted sessions during which "due allowances for
refreshments" were made.
Industry between 1800 and 1850 was represented chiefly
by water-driven grist- and sawmills along the banks of the
numerous streams, supplemented by several textile factories and
iron forges. Despite the attraction of nearby Paterson, planned
HISTORY 17
as an industrial center by Alexander Hamilton as early as 1791,
manufacturers moved steadily into the county. Other industries
developed from household crafts. Most of the textile works
located on Hohokus Creek at Godwinville (Midland Park),
along the Saddle River, and at Lodi, where a handkerchief fac-
tory and calico print shop was established in 1831.
Hackensack retained its residential and political importance
as the county seat. In 1830 it was described as a "post and
country town," containing "150 dwellings, 1000 inhabitants,
principally Dutch, 3 churches, 1 Dutch Reformed and 2 seceders,
2 academies, 1 boarding school for females, 10 stores, 2 paint
factories, 1 coach maker, 2 tanneries, several hatters, 3 smiths
and 4 or 5 cordwainers." The courthouse was pictured as a
"neat and spacious brick edifice; the offices of the surrogate and
county clerk are of the same material." This was the fifth
courthouse, built in 1819 seven years after its 1796 predecessor
had been destroyed by fire. It was a building typical of the
early homes of law and politics low, rambling and musty. The
one-and-a-half -story structure contained a 40 -cell block where
prisoners served their terms or awaited their public executions
in poorly ventilated and crowded quarters. Protests were being
made at hangings which caused "much drunkenness, rioting
and fighting." To send a man to the gallows cost the county
$120, itemized as follows: "coffin $4., interring the body, $6.,
services of 11 constables, $10., services of the sheriff, $100."
Not until April 30, 1852, did the Freeholders take affirma-
tive action on a poorhouse. Up to this time the few paupers,
much looked down upon by the self-reliant inhabitants, were
either housed in the jail or boarded out for services. The first
appropriation for "supporting the poor" totaled $2,500 and
passed the board May 12, 1852.
Patriotism and Politics
The election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828
let loose a flow of bitter feeling over national issues and marked
the beginning of a period of personal politics. In 1830 Whigs
charged that "Jacobin tactics" had been used in county elec-
18 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
tions and hinted that "hordes of foreign loafers were imported
from New York to stuff ballot boxes." The Democrats retal-
iated with the cry that Whigs had purchased votes with "Tory
money from New York and Newark banks." In succeeding
years the tariff, the United States bank and the Supreme Court
were debated on county platforms as vehemently as if they were
local issues.
Local patriotism developed as part of the concern with
national affairs. Fourth of July celebrations were keenly antici-
pated by citizens in general and by the county militia in par-
ticular, who paraded "resplendent in dazzling uniforms, the joy
of Hackensack's fair and pretty sex." Such occasions lasted
from dawn to sundown, enlivened by oratory, martial music
and spirited drinking.
Political gatherings were described as "glorious turnouts"
with the people "pouring in, preceded by four-horse, two-horse
and one-horse vehicles with a splendid brass band and banners
waving." Pole-raising events were frequently called by partisan
groups to attract the populace away from rival camps. County
politics was untutored, often rancorous, but outspoken.
In 1832 a cholera epidemic for a time quieted political
enmity. In one month 80 persons died of the disease in the
Township of Bergen, or 1 out of every 60 of the population.
"Cholera Morbus" became more dreaded than either political
bogey, "Whig" or "Loco Foco."
Although the Democrats wielded political control, Whigs
waged vigorous campaigns under the label "Friends of Domestic
Industry, Internal Improvements and of Henry Clay." For a
time a partisan newspaper called the Bergen County Whig was
published at North Bergen. The Whig party was never a serious
obstacle to the march of the Democrats, however, and quietly
passed into oblivion after the Republican party was formed in
1854.
Between 1837 and 1840 Bergen lost considerable territory
through the formation of Passaic and Hudson counties. As
early as 1823 a bill to create the County of Passaic from Bergen
and Essex was defeated. In later years the issue was connected
HISTORY 19
with State and national politics, "Jacksonians and Van Buren-
men" generally being regarded as against the proposal and Whigs
as its supporters. West Jersey political leaders opposed the
measure as an attempt to increase North Jersey representation
in the legislature. Such influence, however, was unable to stem
popular sentiment. In January 1837 a delegation from Ac-
quackanonk and Paterson townships in Essex County proceeded
to Trenton to petition the legislature. On February 7 the
County Act became a reality, and to the two Essex municipali-
ties were annexed the whole town of Pompton and a large part
of the townships of Franklin and Saddle River.
In 1838 the settlement of Powles (Paulus) Hook, on old
Bergen 's southern extremity, was incorporated as Jersey City.
During the next two years a movement, fostered by the argu-
ment of increased population, was started to form Hudson
County. Inhabitants of the upper part of the county were
promised that withdrawal of the lower area would relieve them
"of the support of poor debtors and criminals." Protests against
the partitioning brought large negative votes in both the council
and assembly but did not prevent passage of the bill creating
Hudson County, on February 22, 1840. Twelve years later
what are now North Arlington and Lyndhurst rejoined Bergen.
In the 1844 State Constitutional Convention Bergen
County was represented by Abraham Westervelt and John
Cassedy. The convention swept away property qualifications
for voters, provided for separation of powers among three gov-
ernmental departments and included a formal bill of rights and
a clause permitting amendment.
With the erection of Passaic County Bergen J s population
was reduced to 13,190, and after the formation of Hudson
County to 9,450, a loss of almost 13,000 within a three-year
period. The tide of immigration during succeeding decades, as
poverty and political persecutions in Europe sent waves of Ger-
mans, Poles, Hungarians and Italians to America, affected the
county but slightly. The Dutch and the English, Germans and
Scots who had settled there in earlier years still dominated social
and political life.
History
Mural by Howard McCormick, Leonia High School
SARAH KIERSTEDE ACTS AS INTERPRETER BETWEEN THE DUTCH AND ORATAM
^Mi^S
OLD FRENCH CEMETERY, NEW MILFORD
Rub
OLD RED MILL AT ARCOLA
nan
Courtesy Bergen Evening Recor
9fa
'I'
. - -*_
Vj*"^
*'*%*"
Epstein
REVOLUTIONARY MONUMENT, FORT LEE
- '
CORNVALLiy HEADQUARTERS, PALISADES INTERSTATE PARK
THE HERMITAGE, HOHO-KUS
'
W&-.
Courtesy Hist. Amer. Bldg. Survey
ASTOR TRADING POST, PARK RIDGE
Westervelt's History
CAMPBELL WAMPUM FACTORY, PARK RIDGE
COURTHOUSE AND JAIL
1876 Atlas, courfesy E. L. Greenin
HACKENSACK SAVINGS BANK
1 876 Atlas, courtesy E. L. Greenin
N-ATHi VAI
1876 Atlas, courtesy E. L. Grcenin
VAN WINKLE BLOCK, RUTHERFORD
1876 Atlas, coiirtesy E. L. Grcenin
TYPICAL VICTORIAN HOMESTEAD
wvrt
Mra/ ^ H<?ry Schrakenberg, Fort Lee Post Office, Courtesy FWA
WHEN BERGEN WAS A SUMMER RESORT
ON LOCATION AT FORT LEE
1876 Atlas, courtesy E. L. Greenin
HISTORY 21
The beginnings of modern industry were hardly discernible.
As late as 1858 the Bergen Journal decried the "monotony of
bucolic existence" which had made Hackensack "static for half
a century. . . . Lawyers cannot incite the people to contention
during the six days nor the preacher keep them awake on the
seventh." On the courthouse steps a bundle of corn stalks
served as a door mat. The jail was described as a "damp dun-
geon." The walls of the surrogate's building were "beginning
to crack and crumble." Roads were no better than those in
rural districts. The Green, unfenced, was used as a hitching
ground.
Despite the Journal's account the decade 1850-60 marked a
growing reform movement advocating better educational facili-
ties, civic improvements and social legislation. The tax report
in 1859 showed expenditures of $8,000 for general county pur-
poses, $3,000 for the support of the poorhouse, a road tax of
$8,600 and a military tax of $1,974. Farmers were earning
unprecedented incomes from strawberries that made the region
famous throughout the nation. Factories had sprung up in
several towns. Iron bridges replaced wood over main streams,
and railroads and highways were being improved and extended.
During this decade the social aspects of an agricultural
civilization reached their height in Bergen County. In tavern
taprooms and front parlors, at choir concerts, quilting parties,
apple parings and husking bees people discussed the topics of the
times. There was talk of the pearl rush in the late fifties when
the lowly mussel in the county's brooks and streams yielded gems
which brought as much as $100 and $200 apiece. The news
spread to New York, and the railroad enthusiastically reported
"hundreds of pearlers" boarding trains. Farmers protested that
their fields were being overrun by prospectors laden with nets,
boots and grappling hooks.
Mention of "Black Saturday" recalled the closing of the
Hackensack bank during the nation-wide panic of 1857, when
there developed a "terrible state of excitement" and "angry
people gathered shaking their fists and making awful threats."
But in the outlying districts homes were pictured as "abodes of
22 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
abundance. . . . Hardly once in a mile does the sight of a low,
scabby, poverty-stricken residence present itself. . . . The panic
... is nowhere experienced nor even talked of except as a
matter of curiosity."
The temperance question was always sure to raise a heated
discussion. There were fanatics who insisted that even the Sab-
bath was a "day of blasphemy, drunkenness and riot," with the
young men "reeling from the taverns of the rum seller." Such
jeremiads were disputed by the more rational, who pointed to
large church attendance and strongly supported Sabbath schools
and Bible societies.
Military balls and various activities of the township organ-
izations were the chief social diversions. The most popular en-
tertainment spot was W. J. "Bill" Ramsey's hotel and tavern in
Wyckoff, noted for the "quality of its liquors, food and fine
music . . . that cannot but put the heel and toe in motion."
On national holidays and during election campaigns the differ-
ent military units competed for attention, attired in a gaudy
assortment of trappings which might include nankeen pants,
bullshide boots, white vests, calico shirts, plumed hats and
monkey jackets "brass buttoned and double breasted so as to
face both ways."
Court days at Hackensack were the signal for gatherings
"of all sorts and classes . . . some respectable, whilst others
savor of the rum cask." On corners, at bars and around the
courthouse steps might be heard such phrases as "extend the
Central Railroad ... a bridge across the Hackensack ... a
workhouse for prisoners" and discussion of the abortive attempt
between 1857 and 1860 to carve a new county to be known as
Wales out of the western part of Lodi Township, Saddle River
Township and the northern part of New Barbadoes.
Politically this period was one of strong party ties, with the
Democrats enjoying increased prestige by the election of Rod-
man M. Price of Hohokus to the governorship in 1854. Be-
ginning about 1859 opposition clubs were formed, inspired by
slight Republican gains made in that year. Their slogans were
"free speech, free press, free soil, free men, free lands, free post-
HISTORY 23
office," with their main objective "to break the chain of the
courthouse clique," the Democratic machine. But a sign on a
carpenter's shop in Harrington Township reflected the party
beacon destined to shine for at least another 40 years. It read
"Up with Democracy; down with all isms."
As national elections shaped themselves around the issues
which were to lead to civil war, the county displayed remark-
able proslavery sympathies, probably deriving from its early
position as one of the slave centers of New Jersey. In 1737
slaves had comprised one-fourth of the population, in 1790
one-fifth. Boatloads of Negroes were sometimes sold at Bergen
Point. Treatment of slaves was as cruel as anywhere in the
country. In 1735, for example, the Freeholders ordered that
a slave who had beaten his master and threatened to murder
him be "Burned until he is Dead at Some Convenient place on
the Road between the Court House and Quacksack." Another
slave was burned at the stake in 1767, his guilt resting on the
testimony of the murdered man, whose nose bled when the ac-
cused stroked his face. Numerous petitions against a law to
abolish slavery had been sent to the legislature in 1806. The
census of 1810 had listed 2,180 slaves in the county, and 20
years later there were 2,481 Negroes, of whom 1,895 were freed-
men.
Manumission of slaves, paced by legislative enactments, was
particularly affected by the State act of 1846. Proslavery senti-
ment continued, however, although the number of Bergen
County slaves decreased by 5 percent each ten-year period from
1810 to 1840 and by 80 percent between 1840 and 1850; in the
latter year the census listed only 41 slaves. Often manumission
meant the beginning of life-long apprenticeship. In many of
Bergen's wealthy homes slaves continued their duties after free-
dom had been purchased or granted. Negro freedmen con-
stituted a serious social and economic problem.
Mainly responsible for prevailing opinion was a small but
powerful aristocracy which wielded political control and saw
hope of its continuation only in maintenance of the dominant
Democratic machine. Slavery also was favored by a small group
24 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
of textile manufacturers who thought its abolition would cause
a rise in the price of raw cotton.
In 1846, when the Bergen County Militia enlisted in the
war against Mexico, the slave problem attained a prominent
position on the local political rostrum. While hostilities were in
progress the Hon. John Huyler spoke before a cheering audience
in Hackensack, denouncing the Wilmot Proviso, designed to
prohibit slavery in any lands that might be won from Mexico.
A decade later Huyler was a member of the House of Rep-
resentatives and was furnishing Bergen County postmasters
"plenty of employment in the distribution of proslavery
speeches." In 1856, at the height of the Fremont-Buchanan
campaign, a group of free-soilers canceled a speaking tour in the
county, convinced that "there was not the first chance of mak-
ing proselytes to their cause." In the presidential balloting
Buchanan received a majority of 1,200 over his Republican
opponent.
The 1860 campaign was one of the most turbulent in the
annals of the county. The public was bewildered by Republican
and Democratic conventions, Douglas and Breckenridge rallies,
meetings of the Bell Constitutionalists, Assembly District con-
ventions of both parties and nominating conventions for county
officers.
A local campaign in the midst of a national election fed the
bitterness caused by the Democratic split. In the southern part
of the county Democrats generally were in favor of Brecken-
ridge, while up-county forces supported Douglas. The latter
called a separate convention to nominate county officers when
the former selected James I. Brinkerhoff for sheriff and Cornelius
L. Blauvelt for county clerk.
Amid an emotional frenzy Democrats charged that "to vote
Republican will support Negro equality and white degrada-
tion." Republicans answered that "A. Lincoln is the true De-
mocracy." And Democratic leader "Garry" Ackerson, it was
charged, sat "like a king on his throne in the village of Hacken-
sack . . . making bargains years ahead."
Out of a total of 3,566 votes cast in the election, Brecken-
HISTORY 25
ridge received 2,112 and Lincoln, 1,455. Republicans charged
that ballots had been printed bearing the names of Republican
electors but minus the designation "Electors of President and
Vice-President of the United States," which made them worth-
less.
Exulted the New York Day Book, a Breckenridge paper,
after the election: "In Bergen County . . . the people feel and
think much as they do down in South Carolina." The Paterson
Guardian, quoting the New York paper, observed that the
Democratic majority had dropped from more than 1,200 in
1858 to little more than 600 in 1860 and predicted Republican
victories in the near future. Democratic strength gradually
weakened in the next decade, then maintained its position until
the closing years of the century.
When war was declared Bergen County like much of New
Jersey opposed the Lincoln administration. The Northern sym-
pathizers of the Confederacy were bitterly called Copperheads,
after the poisonous snake. In April 1861 the editor of the
Democratic Bergen Journal visited an army training camp and
returned to write articles supporting the Union. Copperheads
moved on the printing office and threatened to burn the build-
ing to the ground. A deputy United States Marshal was chased
through Hackensack streets, and only the chance appearance of
an armed guard saved him from a severe beating.
When Republicans placed a Liberty Cap on top of a flag-
pole on the Hackensack Green where Union recruiting agents
had raised their tents, Democrats bored the base of the pole full
of holes, filled the cavities with gunpowder and set off the
charge, blowing the cap skyward. The crowd which gathered
caught the flag that had been flying at the mast and tore it to
shreds.
At Schraalenburgh the American Guard, a militia regiment,
expressed sympathy with the Southern cause and had its muskets
seized under a Government order. Leaders of the regiment
were chased to Wyckoff, then to Hackensack where they were
arrested. News that other militia units were disbanding brought
a public demand that an inquiry be conducted into the military
26 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
tax collected over a period of years. One critic accused militia
officials of using the tax for "champagne, political purposes,
drunkenness, debauchery and toryism." The militia vigorously
protested its loyalty to the Union.
Once the war began in earnest the county gradually en-
dorsed the policies of the national administration. Peace groups
opposed to Southern invasion were rebuked as aiming "to assist
Jeff Davis in dismembering and destroying the United States
of America." The Bergen County Patriot, a Union newspaper
formed in 1861, symbolized the new popular spirit. The
Bergen County Democrat, established the same year by John
Huyler, Garry Ackerson and M. M. Knapp, was working against
the tide in its attempt to fuse anti-war groups in the Democratic
party. Patriotic ardor soon engulfed Hackensack; young men
left to join New York regiments and older citizens organized a
home guard "to protect the place against traitors." Finally both
Republicans and Democrats at great mass meetings in Coytes-
ville and Hohokus Township adopted the slogan: "Party politics
must be forgotten to the end that this glorious country remain
one and undivided."
In the legislature, however, Bergen County Senator Daniel
Holsman, formerly speaker of the assembly and elected to the
State senate on an avowed Copperhead platform, continued to
attack Lincoln's policies. At the opening session, January 13,
1863, he introduced resolutions demanding an immediate peace,
criticizing the conduct of the war and advocating New Jersey
resistance to the national government. The next day the legis-
lature met to elect a United States Senator to fill an unexpired
term of less than two months; Holsman's group succeeding in
naming Col. James W. Wall, staunch anti-administration Demo-
crat. Holsman was supported in the assembly by his fellow
Bergen County representatives, John Y. Dater and Thomas
Dunn English, the poet and novelist, who had become prominent
throughout the State as a peace orator during the summer of
1861.
Holsman's frequent clashes with more moderate Demo-
crats and Democratic Governor Joel Parker were underlined at
HISTORY 27
a party caucus on February 11, 1863, when he sought unsuc-
cessfully to have his views incorporated in the party's State
program. Nevertheless, a week later the Joint Commitee of the
Senate on Federal Relations presented a report which represented
a compromise between moderate and Copperhead sentiment.
Later that year his faction claimed credit for a State-wide Demo-
cratic victory. One of the chief rallies for the 1863 elections
had been held at Paramus, where Governor Parker had been
bitterly atacked for not preventing enlistment of New Jersey
men in the Union Army.
Bergen County's first volunteers returned in June 1863,
and the Freeholders appropriated $1,000 for "a suitable recep-
tion." To meet a second call for 618 men the Board offered
$300 as a volunteer bounty and $300 to each drafted citizen.
The draftees could keep the money and join the army or, as
the Federal conscription law allowed, either obtain a substitute
or use the $300 as an exemption fee. The county collector was
authorized to borrow $70,000 to meet bounty requirements. A
total bond issue in five installments of $325,097.11 was listed
in the treasurer's report in May 1864, and in July still another
$300,000 was appropriated to fill the quota.
When news of Appomatox reached the county seat the
Freeholders made a final war resolution thanking "the collector
and the finance committee on behalf of the citizens of the
county for their arduous labors in providing substitutes and
volunteers to fill the quota of said county, thereby doing our
duty to the government and saving such of our friends and
brothers who had no desire to leave their homes and go live a
soldier's life or die a soldier's death."
Wartime needs, the enlistment of farmhands with a result-
ing labor shortage and mounting prices forced wheat up to
$1.50 a bushel, potatoes to $1.60 a bushel and hay to $50 a ton.
A Hackensack newspaper editorialized: "the people are being
robbed to pay fictitious prices to fill the pockets of greedy cap-
italists." Then farm values declined, and agriculture suffered.
The Republicans, of course, were blamed. The Bergen
County Democrat and New Jersey Register bewailed "the four
28 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
years of bloody strife" and the "sirocco of fanaticism" which now
advocated Negro suffrage. Citizens read that the doctrine of
democracy was "A white man's government to be administered
by white men for the benefit of white men and their descendants
forever!"
With Negro suffrage achieved through the 13th, 14th and
15th Amendments to the Constitution, the Republican party in
1877 made a bid for their support by nominating a Negro can-
didate for the Board of Freeholders. No strategy, however, was
able to wrest control from the Democrats at that time. The
Bergen County Democrat declared that county soil was "not
debatable ground." A few county posts were won by the Re-
publicans in 1871 and 1878, but not until the late nineties did
the party become a serious threat to Democratic supremacy.
Railroads and Real Estate
The coming of the railroad in 1835 had foreshadowed
suburban development and industrial expansion. Tracks pene-
trated the county's backwoods, providing transportation for
communities and access to markets for manufacturers. By 1865
the county was flanked by the Rockland branch of the Erie
Railroad on the north, by the Midland Line on the east and by
the main line of the Erie on the south and west. Time tables
appeared on front pages of newspapers. Predictions were being
made that Bergen County would become "the future garden
spot of New Jersey" and the "mecca of thousands of suburban
dwellers." The Erie Railroad's publicity writers advised pro-
spective buyers to
lose no time in selecting your property. . . . Do not fail to provide
for keeping poultry and a cow, nor for the culture of fruit, vegetables
and flowers. . . . Cultivate a kindly, sociable disposition toward your
neighbor, and you will live in your Suburban Home to an honored
and ripe old age, and see your children, and your children's children,
rise up and call you blessed.
First realty operations had started in 1854 at Rutherford
Park (Carlstadt) when a group of German immigrants pur-
chased the 140-acre Berry farm for $16,000; the land was cut
HISTORY 29
into 270 plots and distributed by lot. Within three years streets
were laid out and 30 buildings erected, including several stores,
a tavern and a lager beer brewery. Nearby, at Boiling Springs
(East Rutherford), Floyd W. Thompkins began buying and
selling land in 1858.
As the rails penetrated farther, realtors began cutting up
acreage, selling lots and enticing residents from across the Hud-
son. Crude one-room stations, heated by pot-bellied stoves,
looked hopefully over the fields as little villages began to spread
out around them. Residents whose family lines reached back
for generations saw their farms gradually sliced into streets and
building plots. Gradually the rural culture that had reached
full flower in the 1850-60 decade withered and was replaced by
a new community spirit as towns without official status formed
"improvement associations" and organized to influence legisla-
tion.
A partial list of pioneer developments indicates the extent
of early realty activities. About 1860 J. Wyman Jones began
promoting his 625 acres on the present site of Englewood, and
in 1870 the Ridgefield Land Company began building at Ridge-
field Park. About this time several commuter settlements were
founded between Hackensack and the Palisades. The trend con-
tinued after a short interruption caused by the panic of 1873.
In 1877 G. N. Zingsem opened a realty tract at Fairmount.
The same year William Walter Phelps purchased acreage stretch-
ing from the Hudson to the Hackensack and formed the Pal-
isades Land Company at Closter. Among investors in the de-
velopments were President Ulysses S. Grant, President Ruther-
ford B. Hayes, Presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden and the
brother of President Martin Van Buren.
In 1883 Gilbert D. Bogart and Henry Marsellus bought
property and laid out streets in Garfield. The following year
Henry Lemmerman organized the Hasbrouck Heights Land and
Improvement Company. Hackensack, experiencing continual
growth through these years, made rapid strides through the
Hackensack Realty Company, organized in 1897. At Wyckoflf
Cornelius Vreeland began a realty development about 1898.
30 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Widespread speculation was a natural corollary of the boom.
At Hackensack in 1865 lots sold for $600 and $1,000 as realtors
proclaimed that the county seat was only "31 minutes from New
York via train and ferry." Rural acreage which formerly could
not bring $50 now sold for $200. The value of county real
estate more than doubled in the five years following 1866. As
energetic realtors proclaimed the advantages of the rolling coun-
tryside, New York financiers built huge estates in the valleys
and along the Palisades, described in 1860 as a "dreary and
desolate summit . . . with here and there an old board stuck up
announcing lots for sale." New communities absorbed many
old settlements which became "forgotten towns": Wearimus,
Ryerson's, Boardville, Schraalenburgh, English Neighborhood,
Red Mills, Pamrepaw, Undercliff.
From the late 1840's to the 1870's Undercliff reflected a
unique phase of county life. Lying under the brow of the
Palisades between Fort Lee and Alpine, the town at its peak
had a population of approximately 1,000 living in frame,
shingle-clad cabins in sight of boatyards, wharves and fishing
shacks. The inhabitants were fishermen, sloop builders and
quarry workers whose activities extended beyond Alpine to
Boompes Hook and Sneden's Landing in New York State.
Later the area provided wood fuel for the wealthy in New
York. Timber cutters pitched axe-hewn logs off the Palisades
to waiting schooners. On the river front were as many as 150
sloops at one time, including brick boats from Haverstraw, stone
sloops from Undercliff and market sloops stopping for produce
carted from the interior.
Out of the colorful period of Undercliff 's heyday emerged
the legendary Ramsom Rathbone, learned in woodlore and as
able a two-fisted sailor as was found along the Hudson. Rath-
bone stood over 6' 3", and with a musket "he could clip the
head from a bumblebee perched atop a waving thistle."
Undercliff J s fall echoed in the hammer of its quarries which
tore great gaps in the cliffs for paving stones for New York
streets and rock to build the New Orleans breakwater. Its
demise followed a popular demand to save the Palisades from
HISTORY 31
complete destruction. This was the first in a series of public
activities that finally led to establishment of Palisades Interstate
Park.
As haystacks and barns made way for the new order, the
county found itself plagued with a "tramp problem." At a
special meeting the Freeholders decided that no tramp would be
supported in the county poorhouse or jail except at the expense
of the municipality making the arrest. As a result itinerants
were given Horace Greeley's advice to "go West."
In September 1882 a disastrous flood, described as "the most
remarkable freshet that ever struck this part of the country,"
must have made new residents wonder at the wisdom of leaving
their city homes. Railroad tracks were inundated, halting
schedules for several days. Dams and bridges along Hohokus
Creek were washed away and a number of mills and orchards
damaged. The entire valley between Hohokus and Ridgewood
was under several feet of water. A number of families fled
their homes. The loss was estimated in the thousands.
On July 14, 1895, the Cherry Hill section of Hackensack
was devastated by a tornado which caused three deaths and ap-
proximately $20,000 damage. To the confusion following the
storm was added the problem of handling 25,000 sightseers from
New York and environs who came the next day to view the
wreckage. Looters who tried to carry off everything "from a
wagon tongue to a book" brought out the National Guard to
restore order.
Three years later Company G of the county's National
Guard was asked to meet a more serious emergency in answer to
President McKinley's call for volunteers in the Spanish-Ameri-
can War. Forty-eight members were mustered into service, and
although they did not see action two privates, George C. Page-
Wood and Edward E. Banta, died of typhoid while encamped at
Jacksonville.
Population between 1860 and 1880 increased by 15,000 and
between 1880 and 1890 by 11,000, reaching 47,226 in the latter
year. Many of the newcomers were immigrants from south-
eastern Europe, seeking employment in the mills and factories.
32 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The majority congregated in Carlstadt, Garfield, Fairview, Little
Ferry, Lodi and Maywood. Their descendants comprise most
of the workers in the county's textile mills, dye shops and in-
dustrial plants.
Among the contemporary social changes was the challenge
to the traditional position of women. In the fight for woman
suffrage Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who moved to Tenafly from
New York in 1869, played a leading part. The wife of Henry
B. Stanton, antislavery crusader, she was a proponent of
"Women's Rights" along with Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Horace Gree-
ley, the famous sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin,
and Miss Susan B. Anthony. World renowned because of her
activities, Mrs. Stanton at the age of 65 appeared at the Tenafly
election polls in 1875, acompanied by her friend Susan B.
Anthony. Officials who refused them admittance suffered a
tongue lashing which ended at least in a moral victory for the
suffragette.
Accompanying the building boom, from the late 1860's
to the end of the Gay Nineties, Bergen County attracted numer-
ous summer vacationers to square wooden hotels, graceless and
huge, with yards of fancy grillwork and ornate railings, long
stretches of veranda and mansard roofs.
"What little sense is manifested by rushing to [Saratoga,
Newport or Long Branch]," the Bergen County Democrat
exclaimed on July 17, 1874, "where cannot be realized a particle
of true enjoyment?" But how much more agreeable was the
quiet of the Ridgefield Park Hotel or the Palisades Mountain
House in Englewood or the High wood Hotel at Tenafly! The
region around Paramus and Ridgewood, because of the reputa-
tion of its healthful climate, was frequently recommended to
tuberculars by New York physicians.
The New York and Jersey City families who summered in
Bergen were too few, however, to make the hotel business suc-
cessful. Of all the large hotels only the Rouclere House in
Ridgewood continued well past 1900. Otherwise there was a
strange coincidence of bad business and fires which destroyed
most of the hotels after they had changed hands several times.
HISTORY 33
By the end of the Civil War numerous illegal prize fights
had given Fort Lee a "very bad reputation," the Paterson
Weekly Press lamented, and the town was being invaded by
"hordes of New York ruffians of the lowest degree." During
the 1879 season 300,000 visitors came by ferry, and the pros-
pects for the next year were bright because "Good order has
been maintained and the Sunday laws rigidly enforced." Prize
fights, dog fights and cock fights, merry-go-rounds, dancing
pavilions, shooting galleries "and other features appealing to the
'madding crowd 5 " flourished in an atmosphere of free spending
and freer morals. The magnet was the horse-racing track at
Guttenberg. Bookies had branches in the poolrooms and the
new hotels at Fort Lee, Coytesville and Edgewater and in numer-
ous brilliantly festooned bars.
Some residents of Bergen County did not welcome the
visitors. In 1888 the Fort Lee Law and Order Society raided a
dog fight and arrested nine out of a large crowd of spectators.
One county judge said that he would "make it expensive business
for those who were caught," and in 1893 Judge Van Valen com-
plained to the sheriff of the "persons of ill repute . . . who
pursue their evil and illegal practices to the injury of the citi-
zens of Fort Lee and disgrace our county."
But the gamblers gambled on until the antiracing amend-
ment to the State constitution was adopted in September 1897.
Then, with the principal attraction gone, the "gamblers, thieves
and other vile characters" left for greener pastures.
"Boroughitis"
Until the middle eighties the county was divided into
sprawling townships. In 1885 the "parent" bodies were Hack-
ensack, dating from 1693; New Barbadoes, 1710; Franklin,
1772; Harrington, 1775; Saddle River, 1794; Lodi, 1825; Wash-
ington, 1840; Hohokus, 1849; Union, 1852; Midland, 1871;
Ridgefield, Palisades, Englewood, 1872; Ridgewood, 1876; Orvil,
1885. From these were carved scores of compact municipalities,
as well as additional township units, as rival crossroad hamlets
clamored for governmental recognition and separate municipal
34 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
powers. From Old Hackensack Township alone more than half
the county's municipalities were formed.
Early in 1894 the legislature passed a new borough act
which wiped out former subsidiary school districts and made
each township a separate district. Taxpayers were obliged to
pay, pro rata, existing debts of the old districts besides all future
debts of the township for school purposes. Exempted from this
provision were "boroughs, towns, villages and cities," and conse-
quently 26 boroughs were formed between January 23 and
December 18, 1894. Discontent increased as regions with fac-
tories saw their heavy assessments supporting large townships
and split-ups continued until 1924, when the number of
municipalities reached 70 of these 56 are boroughs, 3 cities,
2 villages and 9 townships.
Population between 1890 and 1900 rose to 78,441, a gain
of 66 percent, the largest increase of any county in the State.
Between the Palisades and Leonia in 1904 title to 1,400 building
lots was transferred to the Hudson Realty Company; the Edge-
water Realty Company in 1905 began construction of 190 two-
story brick dwellings, the largest individual building enterprise
in Bergen up to that time; and at Ridgefield Park 160 homes
were occupied within 60 days of completion. By 1910 popula-
tion rose to 138,002, a gain of 76 percent over 1900. The fol-
lowing listing is indicative of the rapid urban growth of that
decade:
1900 1910
Dumont 643 1,783
Garfield 3,504 10,213
Hackensack 9,443 14,050
Little Ferry 1,240 2,541
Lodi 1,917 4,318
Palisades Park 644 1,411
Rutherford 4,411 7,045
Land values rose spectacularly. In the five-year period
1894-99 alone valuations jumped from $21,778,760 to $42,-
391,770. In 1905 the assessed valuation of land, buildings and
HISTORY 35
personal property was $50,000,000; within two years the figure
was $77,138,927, while in 1911 it had skyrocketed to
$109,634,724.
The New York Tribune in 1900 noted Bergen County's
"advancement and material prosperity," and its county-wide
"progressive spirit." At the same time a Hackensack minister
flayed the ungodly who had turned to golf on Sundays instead
of the church, charging that the links were the "abode of the
Evil One." The Bergen County Democrat reported that "No
longer are the Sabbaths observed as in the days of our grand-
fathers." The new residents were mostly employed in business
houses in New York, while industrial development and better
transportation facilities decreased the farm population by entic-
ing the younger generation of farm families to employment in
the cities.
As new residents kept "coming in droves," imbued with a
"get-ahead own-your-own-home" philosophy, rivalry grew
among boroughs. Weekly sessions of municipal bodies took on
the aspects of New England town meetings as residents watched
the fluctuations of tax rates and projected plans for municipal
buildings, trolley franchises, street and road improvements,
sewerage systems, disposal plants and adequate fire and police
protection. Urbanization was reflected in the passage of numer-
ous ordinances dealing with dog muzzling, traffic regulation,
zoning and similar problems.
There were still regions in the northern part of the county,
however, where miles of woods and open land were broken only
by an occasional farmhouse or country manor. Truck farming
continued to flourish; during the last quarter of the nineteenth
century agriculture had even attained a new burst of glory with
the Hackensack melon, which was eagerly sought by metro-
politan produce dealers.
With urban development came improvements which af-
fected everyday life. Hackensack's Main Street was the first
thoroughfare in the county illuminated by other than kerosene
lamps, following incorporation of the Hackensack Gas Light
Company in 1861. The Englewood Electric Company intro-
36 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
duced electricity in 1888. All of the small, independent utili-
ties formed during the previous generation in the southern half
of the county merged in 1899 into the Gas and Electric Com-
pany of Bergen County, which in 1905 was absorbed by the
Public Service Corporation of New Jersey. The northwestern
section was served with electricity starting in 1893 by the Rock-
land Electric Company of New York. In 1899 the Rockland
Electric Company of New Jersey began sending current to the
county's northeastern region. Later the two companies com-
bined.
Water mains were introduced at Hackensack in 1869 by
the Hackensack Water Company, whose reservoir on Cherry
Hill was fed directly from the Hackensack River. But not
many people abandoned their walls and pumps for the new
system; in 1880 the company had only 40 customers. Seven
years later the pipes had penetrated other towns, and today the
company serves practically all the eastern half of the county
from its reservoirs at Oradell and Woodcliff Lake. Several
municipalities along the Erie Railroad through the west central
section and to the north in the vicinity of Park Ridge have
municipal systems or are supplied by adjoining boroughs. The
Jersey City Water Supply Company serves North Arlington and
Lyndhurst, and the Mahwah Water Company serves Hohokus
Township.
In 1880 telegraph lines reached the county. Two years
later an exchange of the Domestic Telephone Company was set
up in a sewing machine store at 179 Main Street, Hackensack.
The switchboard had a capacity of 2 5 lines and serviced 40 tele-
phones in 1883 when the New York and New Jersey Telephone
Company took over. Today the Hackensack exchange has ap-
proximately 11,000 lines and serves 18,000 telephones. Through-
out the county there are approximately 60,000 subscribers.
The postal system lagged behind other public services.
During the 1860's and 1870's it took as long as a week for mail
from Hackensack to reach destinations within the county. From
a distributing station along the railroad, where it had been
brought by train, mail usually was carried by private carrier to
HISTORY 37
town post-offices which more often than not were conducted
in the back of a general store. Until 1923, when a system con-
necting several key towns was started, intracounty mail was
sent to Hackensack, then to New York to be sorted and back
through Hackensack to its destination.
In 1910 contracts for replacing the almost century-old
courthouse were let in the face of strong opposition, which con-
tinued until after the completion of the new $1,000,000 build-
ing in 1912. The dedication speech of State Senator William M.
Johnson at the laying of the cornerstone on July 5, 1910, hit
at apathy about public affairs. But that the Bergen public was
far from apathetic was soon apparent. Charges that the marble
pillars were fake and that the contract awards were corrupt
resulted in a legislative investigation by Democratic Assembly-
man William M. Himmers into the cost of the courthouse and
county finances in general. Almost at once Himmers' com-
mittee was being probed by the Republicans. A grand jury
later dismissed charges against those involved in the courthouse
scandal.
Within 1 years departments and bureaus were spilling into
rented space. In 1933 the present four-story Administrative
Building, which now contains most of the county offices, was
erected adjoining the courthouse.
The new commuting population was pressing the leisurely
old regime of descendants of first families, who, although they
retained some key positions until the end of the century, were
gradually being submerged. Indications of the new trend in
politics had appeared in 1871 when David Ackerson Pell was
elected the first Republican sheriff in the county's history. Re-
publicans won their first assembly seat with the election of
William Walter Phelps in 1872. Twenty- two years later Wil-
liam M. Johnson and Edmund W. Wakelee became the county's
first Republican State senators.
An unsuccessful legislative attempt to legalize horse racing
and gambling by local option in 1893 had a bearing on the
Democratic decline. Newspapers and preachers bitterly assailed
the bills and agitated for their repeal. Much local antagonism
38 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
was directed at the "Hackensack clique," which owned the
Dundee track, and at Fort Lee poolroom owners who acted as
"bookies." A "citizens' bloc" split the Democratic party in
Hackensack, and in the November 1893 elections the Democrats
suffered losses throughout the State.
In succeeding years the Republican party machine rumbled
across the county with William M. Johnson at the controls and
James W. Mercer as his chief lieutenant. David Ackerson
("Ack") Pell wielded the party whip.
Intraparty strife has marked the Republican regime, dating
from 1904 when James W. Mercer was elected sheriff. Although
the party often split over leadership and the selection of candi-
dates, dissension seldom affected voting strength. As Demo-
cratic power waned in the early 1900's, the party won only
slight majorities on the Board of Freeholders with the exception
of the years 1 9 1 0, 1 9 1 2 and 1 9 1 3 . The Republican rout in 1 9 1
was due primarily to a factional quarrel and to the personal
popularity of Woodrow Wilson, who ran for governor and
carried the county Democratic ticket.
The election of a seven-man Democratic Board of Freehold-
ers highlighted the campaign of 1912. This was the first time
that the men had been chosen by county-wide vote instead of
by the township representative system which heretofore had put
32 men in office. The fight for a smaller board elected at large
began in the late eighties when new residents questioned the
advisability of having the county governed by officials who
owed allegiance only to local constituencies.
After two had been unsuccessful, a third referendum in
1911 approved the small board by a huge majority. But the
legislative act permitting this type of government had not been
read carefully: second class counties were excluded. Despite
the manifest wishes of Bergen voters, the minority could there-
fore dispute the legality of the election.
Anticipating trouble from old board members, who had
announced that their terms did not expire until 1914, the new
members met for their organization session on January 6, 1913,
at 6:30 in the morning. Secretly they crept into the courthouse
HISTORY 39
via the underground tunnel connecting with the jail. A master
key is supposed to have furnished access to the Freeholder cham-
bers. Once inside, the new board posted a 24-hour guard armed
with riot guns that had been purchased by the ousted body. A
heavy chain was stretched inside the council door and special
police were assigned to the corridors with instructions to eject
any objectionable persons.
Placidly the old board had scheduled a meeting for the
same day. With doors barred to them and records impounded,
the members disconsolately gathered in the Third District Court
Room. Here they ruled that they were still legally constituted
and ordered the County Collector, Walter Christie, not to pay
out any money except upon their authorization. The same order
had been issued by the new board. The County Collector an-
nounced that he would pay only salaries prescribed under State
law. From the sanctum of their guarded office the new board
charged the old board with "official brigandage and a piracy on
public office."
A legislative act validated the small board, and proceedings
were instituted to remove the large board from office, but on
March 12 the State Supreme Court ruled that the old board was
legal. The 1912 election was nullified, and all the business
transacted by the small board was declared illegal.
With the tables turned, the Bergen Record reported that
the political axe was being raised and that "the jobs are flying
around like headless chickens." One of the first acts of the re-
instated board was to bring civil action against the small board
for having damaged the door of the Freeholder room.
Legislative action, a State Supreme Court decision and still
another referendum finally legalized the seven -man board, and
in 1915 both Republicans and Democrats had tickets in the
field. In the primaries only 2 out of 7 Democratic candidates
polled enough votes to run in the general election, and both
were submerged in the victorious Republican wave which swept
all candidates but one into office. Republican James W. Mercer
was defeated for the position of county clerk by George Van
Buskirk.
40 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Under the direction of the late State Senator William B.
Mackay, Republican strength was firmly established. In 1917
he supplanted the Democratic standard bearer, Charles O'Con-
nor Hennessy, in the Senate. Since 1920 the G.O.P. has enjoyed
a political monopoly on practically all county elective posts.
Just before the World War the county gained wide notice
as the home of the motion picture industry in America. Pro-
ducing companies began operating in the Fort Lee area about
1907. In 1915 the Fort Lee movie industry reached its zenith,
but after California's climate was discovered by the movie
moguls most of these studios moved.
World War I
Repercussions of the World War sounded with a loud crash
in Bergen County on January 11, 1917, when the munitions
plant of the Agency of Canadian Car and Foundry Company
Ltd. at Kingsland (Lyndhurst) flamed and rocked the area with
explosions that lasted for four hours. At the time an $83,000,-
000 order of shells for the Russian government was being com-
pleted in the huge, sprawling plant which consisted of 38 low
frame buildings on the Hackensack meadows about 7 miles west
of the Hudson River.
The fire started in one of the buildings, spread to eight
carloads of TNT on a railroad siding, then to a warehouse packed
with 55,000 shells and finally to a trainload of ammunition on
the Lackawanna tracks. More than 500,000 shells were con-
sumed in the blaze, and occasional blasts continued in the smold-
ering ruins for several days. Luckily the shells had not been
fitted with detonating fuses and the only casualty was a guard
killed later by a buried shell. Residents in the vicinity gathered
in thousands and watched the spectacle from a safe distance.
Damage was set at $17,000,000. Charges of sabotage were
made as investigations were conducted by the Agency of Cana-
dian Car, the State of New Jersey and the United States and
Russian governments.
In 1922 reimbursement for damages was sought through
the German-American Mixed Claims Commission. A final hear-
HISTORY 41
ing to decide on new evidence ended in June 1939, when As-
sociate Justice Roberts of the United States Supreme Court,
acting as umpire to the Claims Commission, ruled that the
Kingsland explosion was the work of foreign saboteurs. By
this decision damages totaling $55,000,000 are to be paid to
American claimants for this and other sabotage from German
funds and securities held in the United States Treasury.
Still in the ruins of the Kingsland plant are unexploded
shells and an undetermined amount of nitrate cotton, providing
a serious hazard to Lyndhurst residents. In 1939 the Lynd-
hurst Board of Commissioners asked the War Department to
remove the material.
Bergen officials cooperated with the government's program
to "sell the war" to the country after diplomatic relations were
broken with Germany on January 31, 1917. Home Defense
Leagues were formed in numerous towns. Patriotic rallies ad-
dressed by 'Tour Minute Men" were conducted in public schools.
Mass meetings of the citizenry became weekly affairs. Sympto-
matic of the war fever was the order issued by the mayor of
Tenafly instructing taxi drivers to rush their cabs to the town
hall at the sound of the siren. Members of the Home Defense
League of Hackensack were furnished with night sticks and
revolvers. Sheriff J. W. Courter appointed bridge tenders with
police powers to guard against saboteurs.
In May 1917 the Board of Freeholders engaged a food con-
servation expert to instruct housewives and high school girls
in the preparation of "thrift meals." The United States Food
Conservation Department, the Department of Agriculture and
the State Agricultural College opened a campaign to use a sur-
plus potato crop. Vacant lots along city streets were converted
into vegetable patches under the auspices of Garden Home
Clubs, and every patriotic suburbanite had a "war garden" in
his back yard.
The day of the first draft registration, May 23, 1917, was
proclaimed a legal holiday in the county. In Hackensack there
was a monster parade of members of the G.A.R., Spanish-Amer-
ican War veterans, 550 Home Defense Leaguers, auxiliary fire-
42 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
men, the J.O.U.A.M., Boy and Girl Scouts, the Boys' Brigade,
hundreds of school children, three autos of the Hackensack Fire
Department, the Italian Society and a company of Polish rifle-
men. Representatives of the Hackensack Women's Club pre-
sented draft registrants with a red, white and blue emblem at
the various polling places.
When registration figures were compiled on June 14, a total
of 15,983 men was announced tentatively eligible for the first
.draft. Of this number 1,204 were called for service. On June
5, 1918, a second draft called 992 men. The third Bergen
County quota, August 24, 1918, drew an additional 300 men.
The fourth and final draft registration, September 12, 1918,
included all eligible men between the ages of 18 and 45 and
resulted in 25,321 registrants; but before they could be enrolled
the armistice released them.
Four liberty loan drives were conducted from June 15,
1917, to October 1918, with the quotas oversubscribed in each.
The final drive raised $12,534,000, while the quota was $7,256,-
200. The county also subscribed liberally to the Red Cross and
other auxiliary units.
An interesting sidelight on preparedness activities was fur-
nished at the annual convention of the New Jersey Socialist
Party, held in the Congregational Church, Ridgefield, May 30,
1917. With the Rev. R. Wilson presiding, the assemblage
adopted a resolution condemning conscription and requesting
Gov. Walter E. Edge to preserve free speech. A few days later
the Bergen Record reported that special police were "watching
the Ridgefield Socialists," whose "subversive tactics" had aroused
the public. The party was sufficiently strong in the county to
warrant a place on the ballot in the November 1918 election.
Although the Socialist convention asked the county to re-
sist war propaganda, the influence of the party was slight. The
county's position was presented by the Record in an editorial:
"The way to have peace today is to fight for it. Today the
true patriot ready to fight is the true pacifist." The degree of
patriotic fervor was further manifested when high school seniors
offered to enlist provided they were granted their diplomas.
HISTORY 43
High school girls announced their willingness to become Red
Cross nurses.
Early in 1918 a campaign was launched in Hackensack to
ban all German periodicals from newsstands. Despite the pro-
tests of the New York Publishers' Association, the move was
supported by several New York dailies. The New Yorker
Deutsches Journal, which had about 250 readers in Hackensack,
was the chief victim. After the Hackensack Improvement
Commission ruled that it was powerless to prohibit newsstand
sales, Company D of the Home Defense League requested all
newsdealers to refuse to handle the paper and asked the public
to report any dealer who disregarded the request.
While the campaign was exciting the county the Deutscher
Krieger Bund of Hackensack calmly reported the purchase of
$500 worth of Liberty Loan bonds from the People's Trust
and Guaranty Company. This patriotic gesture, however, did
not abate anti-German sentiment. Continued propaganda re-
sulted in a movement to stop the teaching of German in public
high schools.
Seizure by the government in July 1918 of the Heyden
Chemical Works at Garfield, second largest corporation of its
kind then in America, added to the war excitement. The com-
pany held exclusive rights to many German patents in the mak-
ing of sabol, saccharine, sodium salicylate and other phenol
products.
In the winter of 1918 the order to restrict coal consump-
tion put at least 1,000 men out of work. With 22 carloads of
coal stalled on the Erie mainline, Hackensack coal dealers an-
nounced they had less than 100 tons. Criticism over the cur-
tailment was climaxed by a mob attack on the coal cars led by
the mayor of Ramsey. Both the railroad and the Public Service
Corporation shut down transportation facilities, and approxi-
mately 7,000 commuters were stranded in Hackensack. The-
atres, stores and offices closed for five days beginning January
22 and every Monday thereafter until the order was rescinded.
For about a week in February the Public Service suspended
power to Bergen County plants. Protests at the Government's
44 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
policy by Thomas J. McCarter brought the reply from Fuel
Administrator Dan Fellows Platt: "Do you take this war as a
joke or as a life and death struggle?"
Outstanding war-time interest in Bergen County was the
establishment by the United States War Department of Camp
Merritt, named after Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt. The camp
covered 770 acres of a wooded ridge between Cresskill and
Dumont and accommodated between 40,000 and 51,000 men.
Camp facilities included almost 2,000 buildings, 14 miles of
concrete road, a 4-mile railroad spur, 19 miles of water pipes, a
complete trunk sewer system, 65 miles of electric distribution
circuits, more than 1,000 electric light poles and approximately
400 telephones and cost $14,000,000 by the time building opera-
tions were complete. A total of 578,566 men debarked from
the base between November 1917 and November 1918.
Bergen County organizations and private individuals took
an active interest in the camp and provided a full social program
for the soldiers. Dances and games were arranged in the social
building, $10,000 Merritt Hall, the gift of Mrs. Wesley Merritt
in memory of her husband. Church and private social affairs in
the neighborhood were planned for the Camp Merritt men, and
it became a common practice in all the surrounding towns to
invite a soldier or two to Sunday or holiday dinners. Soldiers
on leave from camp swarmed over every trolley car, even though
the Public Service Corporation put on extra service to accom-
modate them.
The influenza epidemic which ravaged the country in the
fall and winter of 1918 took a heavy toll at Camp Merritt. The
camp was under strict quarantine as boatloads of soldiers began
to arrive after the armistice. In all 10,000 cases were reported
and the mortality was discouragingly high, as men who had
escaped machine gun and shrapnel fire abroad came home to
fight a new enemy.
Approximately 500,000 men returned to Camp Merritt
after the war to be mustered out of service. Employment
agencies for veterans were established in several Bergen County
towns. In appreciation of the cordial relations which existed
HISTORY 45
between the enlisted men and citizens of Bergen County the
camp donated 37,000 medals to public school children. The
medals were inscribed: "The boys of Camp Merritt are grateful
to you."
Once called the "City of Men," Camp Merritt today is less
than a ghost town. Buildings were stripped of equipment soon
after the war's end and then sold to be reclaimed, but three
spectacular fires in March, April and June of 1921 destroyed 200
of them. At Dumont, in the center of two ribbons of concrete
highway which traverse the open country, sparsely dotted with
new housing developments, rises the 70-foot granite shaft of the
Camp Merritt Monument in commemoration of the half million
troops who trained here.
Through 1917-18 and the immediate postwar period the
tempo of commuter-suburban life continued at its accustomed
pace. Internal development was reflected in the county road
commission's report of $101,323 for road maintenance and
$225,119 for reconstruction in 1919. The bonded indebtedness
was $4,688,000. Major improvements accounted for $250,000
worth of new bonds for bridge work, $118,000 for roads and
$100,000 for other permanent work. An increase raising the
Freeholders' salaries from $1,500 to $2,500 and the director's
salary from $2,000 to $3,000 was only one item in the mount-
ing cost of government. Despite increased expenditures, Bergen
County's financial condition was second to none in the entire
State at the end of 1921, when all temporary and outstanding
obligations were either liquidated or funded into bonds.
The Modern Tempo
Prohibition, flaming youth, Harding "normalcy" and
suburban revitilization marked the roaring twenties. Bolstered
by the gains made during wartime production, county industry
climbed to a new importance. A "Revive the Building Indus-
try" campaign was undertaken by the Material Men's Credit
Association. Lumber companies bought half-page advertise-
ments urging residents to erect homes. Boroughs projected
additional improvements in roadbuilding, sidewalk paving and
46 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
sewer construction. Hundreds of new ordinances were passed
affecting civic life.
A "Greater Bergen County" became the theme of chambers
of commerce, realtors and public officials. Kiwanis and Rotary,
B.P.O.E., W.C.T.U., the "Y"-for-All these helped weave the
warp of Bergen County culture.
Progress and modernity were the preachments of the day.
"Isn't it about time Hackensack scrapped an antique, the old
hitching post?" inquired the Bergen Evening Record in 1922,
adding, "Several places along the principal streets of the town
still boast hitching posts, and in this age of automobiles!" At
the same time the Record was sponsoring a law to insure safe
driving and to provide severe punishment for convicted drunken
autoists.
Its proximity to the industrial cities of Passaic and Essex
counties made Bergen an occasional battleground of the rival
bootlegging groups during the Volstead Era. Several times de-
serted cornfields and lonely roads yielded ride victims of metro-
politan racketeers. Numerous stills were raided, and in 1922
Prosecutor Archibald Hart asked the Freeholders for $100,000
to suppress the illegal sale of liquor. At the county jail Sheriff
Joseph Kinzley was pressed for space to store confiscated goods.
Street departments in more than one borough were plagued with
home brew "mash" clogging up sewers. Under the Passaic River
at Garfield was discovered a pipe line which pumped bootleg
whiskey to waiting trucks on the Passaic side.
There were other echoes of the national symphony in this
period. Short skirts, bobbed hair, cosmetics and hip flasks and
roadside petting were protested by the county's elders. To
appease critics Hackensack high school girls solemnly passed a
resolution not to smoke, chew gum, wear high-heeled shoes or
use excessive lipstick while attending classes. The Ku Klux Klan
reared its shrouded head, meeting at Junior Order Hall, Hack-
ensack, and burning fiery crosses on scrub-studded hilltops.
In the mid-twenties the prospect of a vehicular tunnel
under the Hudson or a bridge connecting with New York City
was largely responsible for widespread real estate developments.
HISTORY 47
Tunnel legislation was passed over the veto of Gov. George
Silzer, who favored the erection of the George Washington
Bridge. In 1925 an act was passed by the legislature permitting
the Port of New York Authority to build the bridge, which was
begun in September 1927.
To control and direct the threatened invasion of land spec-
ulators the Bergen County Chamber of Commerce was incor-
porated in 1927 by the same group that had been largely
responsible for the promotion of the bridge. Its sevenfold pro-
gram of development includes a $25,000,000 highway system,
electrified rapid transit, aviation facilities, meadows reclamation,
water supply, parks and parkways, preservation of the Palisades,
an official plan covering every municipality and the proper loca-
tion of desirable industries. The Chamber's first president was
Edmund W. Wakelee. J. W. Binder has been its executive
officer since incorporation.
The real estate boom had already started in earnest. Land
valuations jumped $22,000,000 in 1924; in Hackensack alone
valuations rose $6,500,000. New banks were formed. Building
and loan associations were organized. Investments were sunk
in numerous endeavors, chiefly in suburban developments which
raised realty values in many cases 1,000 percent between 1925
and 1929. Municipalities cooperated with developers in launch-
ing improvements on proposed tracts and lavishly assessed costs
against properties improved at the then prevailing market values.
Population increases, while substantial the rate of gain
1920-30 was 73 percent did not come up to expectations dur-
ing the boom. Following the 1929 crash speculative developers
who could not meet improvement assessments lost their holdings,
and municipalities were forced to take over huge properties.
Thus, the jazz age ended in Bergen County. Hackensack
lost a half million dollars in its Garden Suburbs development
alone, planned by Bernarr Macf adden, multimillionaire magazine
publisher and physical culture advocate. Fort Lee, which had
invested more than a million dollars in various improvements,
found no relief in extensive foreclosures and finally had to turn
its financial affairs over to the State. The borough's delinquent
48 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
bonds were refinanced and under the Refunding Plan and
Liquidating Board it has disposed of some of its property to de-
velopers.
The depression was alleviated to some extent by completion
in October 1931 of the George Washington Bridge, which was
preceded by a far-reaching program of highway construction.
This opened the way for increased realty development stimu-
lated by passage of the National Housing Act in 1934. Never-
theless, the county did not escape the hardships of the depression
years. Small homeowners had their mortgages foreclosed. Busi-
nesses failed and unemployment grew. Social needs multiplied.
In 1939 one out of every 12 families still received aid in one
form or another from county welfare agencies.
In the middle of the depressed thirties a record-breaking
residential building program was cited as of national interest and
importance by Thomas E. Colleton, New Jersey Director of the
Federal Housing Administration. Bergen had more than 30
percent of the applications for mortgage insurance made in New
Jersey in 1939 and a greater number of insurance commitments
than any other' county. FHA loans grew from 912, with a
value of $4,541,840, in 1935 to 3,190 and $15,572,400 for the
first nine months of 1939.
Half -page advertisements in Sunday editions of New York,
Newark and Jersey City newspapers, flaring announcements
along highways and a realty trade organ brought thousands of
the white-collar class to inspect the rows of Cape Cod, Colonial
or English "countryside" houses that were built by mass produc-
tion methods and ranged in price from $3,990 to $6,500.
Just as realty operations in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries developed along the railroads, so later com-
munity sites bordered the chief highways. The main area of
development cuts directly across the county's center from the
George Washington Bridge to the eastern boundary of Passaic
County, including the towns of Teaneck, Tenafly, Dumont,
Englewood, Hackensack, River Edge, Westwood, New Milford,
Maywood, Fair Lawn and Waldwick.
Even the newest residents attracted by this latest boom
HISTORY 49
entered into the spirit of the celebration of the tercentenary of
the Hackensack Valley, September 23-October 7, 1939. They
watched the parades and the dedication of the Steuben House at
New Bridge as the home of the Bergen County Historical So-
ciety; danced at the Colonial ball; took the tour of the historic
sites conducted by Francis C. Koehler, chairman of the celebra-
tion and president of the Historical Society; and collected the
souvenir wooden nickels issued by the tercentenary committee.
Koehler 's book, Three Hundred 'Years: A History of the Hack-
ensack. Valley, written for the occasion, was placed in every
school in the county by Hiram B. Demarest Blauvelt. The fol-
lowing December interest in Bergen 's historical traditions was
highlighted by acquisition of the Demarest House at New
Bridge by the Demarest Family Association. The two-room
building has been restored and will house family and county
relics.
The half-century 1890-1940 has seen a most remarkable
development in the county. The population had jumped from
47,226 to 409,646, and the assessed valuations had more than
kept pace, rising from $17,280,572 in 1891 to an average higher
than $438,000,000 by 1938. This rapid growth resulted in
haphazard development which is being reorganized somewhat by
municipal planning committees, coordinated through the County
Planning Board. Factory districts are being set aside for the
increasing number of manufacturing plants which produce a
huge variety of products; engineers are constantly at work to
extend and modernize the county's transportation facilities; and
a more efficient consolidated government is envisaged to replace
today's patchwork administration of public affairs.
. Public Affairs
TRANSITION of Bergen County from a farming area to an
industrial, mercantile and residential section during the past
fifty years has been accompanied by many changes in govern-
ment. Management of county affairs was at first comparatively
simple, reflecting chiefly the desire to protect life and property,
to increase the output of farms and to provide adequate roads
for transporting crops to market and bringing back supplies
from larger centers. Today 70 suburban municipalities present
a far more complex administrative problem, requiring many new
services and departments. This expansion of governmental
function through the Board of Chosen Freeholders has been one
of the principal phases of growth in recent years.
Created in 1683, Bergen County is one of the four original
counties of New Jersey. Its population was 409,646 in the
1940 census. The City of Hackensack is the county seat. The
50
PUBLIC AFFAIRS 51
municipalities of the county include 9 townships, 3 cities, 56
boroughs and 2 villages. Of these, 56 have a form of govern-
ment vested in a mayor and a council of six members; 3, a
municipal manager; 3 have 5 commissioners under the Walsh
Act and 8 townships have committees of 3.
Bergen operates as a second-class county under the laws of
1931. Thus far the county prefers to remain of the second-
class designation, since a first-class county is required to assume
governmental functions which Bergen, a suburban county, does
not need. A movement to raise the population requirement for
first-class counties to 500,000 has therefore obtained support in
Bergen County.
The county is governed by the Board of Chosen Freeholders.
A sheriff, county clerk, surrogate and coroners are elected by
the public. There are numerous appointive boards, commis-
sions and officials.
Counties are subordinate agencies of the State government,
subject to the control and direction of the legislature. Thus,
many judicial and administrative county officials are appointed
by the State or through mandate of State laws. The county is
organized, its boundaries fixed and status set by acts of the legis-
lature.
Formerly the Bergen Board of Freeholders was composed of
representatives from all townships within the county, resulting
by 1912 in a board of 32. Today each of the seven members,
although elected at large, represents and supervises one of seven
"freeholder districts," in as close conformance as possible with
his residence.
The Board of Freeholders represents and manages the
county and holds title to all county property. The seven mem-
bers are elected for three-year overlapping terms. Organization
of the board takes place the second day of January, when the
members choose from among themselves a director who is the
presiding officer of the board. Members receive $4,000 a year.
The Board of Freeholders is the appropriating and tax-
levying authority of the county. It may raise money for im-
provements, for properties acquired, for payment of principal
Public Affairs
'I JiJ 1111
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Epstein
COURTHOUSE, HACKENSACK
LUNCH AT THE CHILDREN'S HOME, HACK ENS ACK
COUNTY ADMINISTRATIVE BUILDING, HACKENSACK
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BERGEN PINES AND ITS THERAPEUTIC POOL
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Epstein
Epstein
OLD PEOPLES HOME, PARAMUS
Kubel
RIDGEWOOD POST OFFICE
MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS AT RAMSEY AND FORT LEE
LIBRARIES AT TEANECK AND BERGENFIELD
ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, PALISADES INTERSTATE PARK
Epstein
CAMP
MERRITT
MONUMENT
Rubel
PUBLIC AFFAIRS 53
and interest, for fulfilling olqjigations imposed by law and as-
sumed through contracts, and for maintaining the county gen-
erally. Executive functions are performed through six stand-
ing committees: Public Works, Public Welfare, Public Safety,
Public Building and Grounds; Public Affairs, Public Health,
County Planning and Legislative; Finance and Appropriations.
These committees are broken down into subdivisions which in-
clude the courts, prosecutors, board of taxation, board of elec-
tions, mosquito commission, county superintendent of schools,
jury commissioners, child welfare board, inheritance tax clerk,
agricultural department, probation department and adjuster.
Statutory appointments by the Board of Freeholders are
county treasurer, counsel, physician, engineer, auditor, clerk of
the board, jail physician and superintendent of county hospitals.
Civil service appointments confirmed by the board include super-
visor of roads, courthouse custodian, superintendent of county
homes, engineer of the central heating plant, chief of traffic
police, superintendent of the county garage, superintendent of
bridges, head keeper of jail, superintendent of weights and meas-
ures and county adjuster. Local appointments by the board are
superintendent of soldiers' burial, law librarian, purchasing
agent, county welfare board, child welfare board, sinking fund
commission, board of managers (county hospital), county plan-
ning board, water supply commission, police pension fund and
mosquito commission. State appointments are the prosecutor,
jury commissioner, superintendent of schools, inheritance tax
clerk, Hackensack Valley sewer commission, board of taxation,
board of elections and agriculture department.
In addition there are minor officers, clerks and other em-
ployees, besides judges and personnel of the courts. In all, the
county government employs more than 900 persons.
Courts
The courts sitting within Bergen County come within four
major categories: Criminal and quasi-criminal, including Police
or Recorder's and Traffic Court, District Criminal Court, Court
of Quarter Sessions, Court of Special Sessions and Court of Oyer
54 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
and Terminer; Civil, comprising Small Cause, District, Common
Pleas and Circuit Courts; Probate, including Surrogate's, Or-
phan's and Prerogative Courts; and Chancery Court. The State
Supreme Court, which sits in Trenton, hears appeals from both
the civil and criminal county courts and also has original juris-
diction in some cases. The highest court in the State is that of
Errors and Appeals. The Juvenile and Domestic Relations
Court, although dealing with criminal matters, functions on the
theory that a person under 16 years of age is incapable of com-
mitting a crime.
All New Jersey judges who are officers of the State, from
the District Court to the Court of Errors and Appeals, are ap-
pointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the
senate. In most other states all or nearly all the judges are
elected. The locally elected Justices of the Peace are now per-
mitted to sit only on motor vehicle cases when a recorder is not
available. Recorders and police judges are appointed by the
municipalities, while the Bergen County Traffic Court is a crea-
tion of the Board of Freeholders.
Bergen County Police
The Bergen County Police Department was organized by
the Board of Freeholders in 1921. Created originally to handle
increasing vehicular traffic, the department today embraces prac-
tically every form of police service, including detective, labora-
tory, identification and photographic work. The Patrol Divi-
sion, in addition to maintaining constant patrol on highways,
investigates auto accidents, administers first aid, makes arrests
for violation of the law, serves as payroll escort, transports
mental patients from Bergen Pines to Greystone Park at Morris
Plains, conducts first-aid classes and lectures before schools and
organizations.
The department has a staff of 39, of whom 18 are patrol-
men. There are 10 patrol cars, 1 detective car, 1 investigator's
car, 8 motorcycles, 1 ambulance and 1 lifesaving boat. All the
cars are equipped with two-way radio systems, and the ambu-
lance has a one-way radio system.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS 55
From January 1 to September 30, 1940, there were 1,875
arrests for motor vehicle violations, 21 other arrests, such as for
larceny, robbery and hit-and-run driving, 289 investigations and
111 suspected and suspicious persons questioned. Other activi-
ties of the county police include recovering lost property, safety
lectures, extinguishing brush fires and investigations for missing
persons.
Revenue and Finance
The great expansion of services for Bergen County and its
residents within the last half-century has built up a complex
network of government that required a budget of more than
$6,000,000 for 1941. Direct taxes collected during 1940
amounted to $5,175,000, including $1,352,519 in school taxes,
$102,688 in soldiers' bonus taxes, $3,364,320 in county taxes,
$55,800 in District Court taxes, $300,000 in hospital taxes and
$28,579 in county taxes on bank stock holdings.
Back in 1890 the County Collector reported receipts as
$150,240 and disbursements as $128,735. For the "ensuing
year" the Freeholders ordered $87,000 raised by taxation for
county purposes, $52,340 for the State school tax and $24,000
for bonds and interest "maturing during the current year."
Among other items was an appropriation of $3,500 for index-
ing records, $2,500 for the Paterson Plank Road and $30,000
for bridges and culverts.
The cost of maintaining county courts in 1890 was
$15,000; the 1940 general court and criminal court taxes, sepa-
rate from district court taxes, was eleven times that much,
or $165,200. To operate the county jail in 1890 the Free-
holders appropriated $6,000, compared with $85,000 in 1940.
It cost only $3,000 to run elections in 1890, while in 1940
$149,000 was appropriated to the county board of elections.
Largest 1941 appropriations were for budget considerations
little dreamed of by the 1890 Freeholders, including Bergen
Pines hospitals, home for indigents, old age pensions and the
State Board of Children's Guardians. Other new factors re-
sponsible for present-day cost of government include the prose-
56 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
cution of criminal cases on a large scale, maintenance of many
civil and criminal tribunals, general welfare, county police, mos-
quito extermination, social work and the filing of legal docu-
ments of all kinds.
Still another large expenditure is the cost of maintaining
the highway department. In 1940 Bergen County had nearly
$50,000,000 invested in 7,038,348 square yards of highway and
road pavement, 470 miles of county-maintained roadways, to-
gether with 14 movable-span bridges, 920 fixed bridges and
culverts, 6,463 catch basins, 1,564 manholes, 213 cross drains,
miles of guard rails and numerous road signs.
With its relatively small bonded indebtedness and strong
financial structure, Bergen County enjoys an enviable position
in the money market and is able to sell its bond issues at
premiums and low interest rates. For the last two years it has
reduced its bonded indebtedness materially by retiring large
blocks of serial bonds at maturity, thereby lowering its bond
debt for 1940 to $8,231,000 the lowest point in recent years
divided between term bonds of $444,000 and serial bonds of
$7,787,000. Payments against outstanding serial bonds during
the past year totaled $932,000, with anticipated payments for
1941 amounting to $951,000. Indebtedness incurred in 1940
consisted of only $282,000 in general obligation bonds. Bergen
County in 1940 had the best financial rating and the lowest per
capita cost of county government in New Jersey.
Planning Board
In one phase of county administration highly centralized
control has been attempted. This is in subdivision planning,
now conducted by the County Planning Board. The unbridled,
speculative operations of subdividers during the twenties
prompted the Board to guard against their recurrence in the
thirties and thereafter. Created under a State law, this board
is an official advisory body charged with the responsibility of
making a Master Plan for the county. In 1938 it issued the
first complete zoning survey, containing a study of 56 munic-
ipalities.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS 57
Typical of the problems caused by realty operations in the
last few decades is that of water supply and sanitation. The
area now served by sanitary sewers within the county is 33,827
acres, or 22 percent of the total area. Existing facilities are
distributed in 39 of the 70 municipalities. Dwelling units con-
nected with sewers number 62,227 or 59 percent of the total.
Lack of proper zoning by municipalities and the hasty pas-
sage of ordinances without regard for any coordinated regional
development have given planning board authorities their best
argument for centralized control. At present 28 towns have
official planning boards; 58, zoning ordinances; 44, private
water supply systems; 19, public water supply systems; 7, no
water systems except artesian wells.
Designed to be part of the Master Plan is a proposal by
the Bergen County Chamber of Commerce to extend park areas
and create new parkways. The county has 475 acres of mu-
nicipal parks.
Reclamation of a meadow area as large as Manhattan, to be
developed for industrial, park and residential purposes, is an
important phase of the Master Plan. An adequate system of
interstate and intrastate rapid transit and the construction of a
metropolitan loop highway are other considerations of the Plan-
ning Board.
Through studies of the county's problems, assimilation of
facts and analysis of surveys, the Planning Board hopes to place
all zoning, development, highway construction and subdivision
plotting upon a co-ordinated basis.
Mosquito Extermination Commission
The Mosquito Extermination Commission conducts a year-
round campaign for the elimination of the insect pest. Attack-
ing this problem from a preventive viewpoint, the commission
seeks to wipe out all potential breeding places of the mosquito
in salt marshes, inland swamps, woodland pools, catch basins and
other accumulations of stagnant water. The Bergen County
commission, created in 1914 under New Jersey's mosquito con-
trol act of 1912, collaborates with similar bodies in 13 other
58 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
counties. The commission's six members, who serve without
compensation, are appointed for terms of three years by the
justice of the Supreme Court in the county.
The commissioners select a superintendent or chief engineer
who trains and directs inspectors and laborers in the control
work, supervised and directed to some extent by the State Ex-
periment Station. Besides inspecting and reporting all possible
breeding places of mosquitoes and arranging for their drainage
or clearance, the commission disseminates information to the
public, whose cooperation it seeks in keeping rain barrels, tubs,
tin cans, cesspools and cisterns free of breeding spots.
Attention of the commission is constantly directed to po-
tential breeding places of various types of mosquitoes and check-
ing on some 8,000 acres of tital marshland, 240 square miles of
uplands and 19,000 catch basins. Up to 1941 the commission
had completed 2,780,000 feet of ditching and 67,000 feet of
diking, installed 20 large tide gates in the salt marshlands, cleaned
out 23,000 swamps and stagnant pools and treated catch basins
with 35,000 gallons of larvicides.
Funds for conducting this work are provided in the county
tax budget. In the 14 counties engaged in mosquito extermina-
tion the yearly expenditure reaches about $250,000; in Bergen
County the cost for 1940 was $32,000, or approximately 8 cents
per capita.
Welfare
Today approximately 25 percent of the Board of Freehold-
ers' annual budget is spent on public welfare, including con-
tributory appropriations for State institutions. Medical care is
provided in a county hospital that has been awarded national
honors, while care for the aged indigent is furnished in a com-
fortable home. Dependent children are provided for in a mod-
ern children's home. Here, too, but separately housed, are
young delinquents who are awaiting disposition of their cases
by the juvenile courts. The county welfare department gives
WELFARE 59
financial assistance to aged persons who have a home but in-
sufficient support.
Supplementing this work of the county government are
several private and quasi-public agencies, including four hos-
pitals with extensive clinics, a visiting nurse service, a tuber-
culosis association and several organizations providing hospital-
ization or medical care for indigent families. During the last
decade Bergen County, like the remainder of the country, has
benefited from the various Federal programs of emergency and
work relief and from the health and assistance grants provided
under the Social Security Act.
Organized public welfare in the county dates back to 1766,
when the New Jersey Medical Society, the first such organization
in the country, was formed with two Bergen County doctors as
leaders in the movement. The Bergen County Medical Society,
established in 1818 and reorganized in 1854, is still a participant
in progressive welfare activities.
In the fall of 1877 Dr. David St. John initiated the move-
ment for establishment of the first hospital in the county at
Hackensack. Simultaneously a group of doctors and laymen
in Englewood began to make plans for a hospital there. On
May 1, 1888, Hackensack Hospital opened its doors, followed a
week later by Englewood Hospital.
Bergen Pines
The Medical Society placed before the Freeholders the in-
formation which led to a referendum in 1914 that obtained
public approval of a county isolation hospital. The first build-
ing, erected immediately on county property in Paramus, was
opened during the 1916 epidemic of poliomyelitis (infantile
paralysis). Shortly before Dr. Joseph R. Morrow had been
appointed medical director and superintendent, a position he
still occupies. When the epidemic subsided the hospital turned
to care of other contagious diseases, mainly scarlet fever and
diphtheria.
During the last quarter-century the institution has under-
gone a continued expansion of plant and facilities. In 1916 the
60 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
garage and employees' dormitory was built. A smallpox epi-
demic in 1920 brought an emergency appropriation for the erec-
tion of a pavilion comprising two wards with 30 beds. The
superintendent's residence was built the same year.
In 1922 the scarlet fever building, with 50 beds, and the
tuberculosis building, accommodating 48, were opened; they
had been begun four years before on the recommendation of the
State Board of Health. In 1924 another tuberculosis pavilion,
with 100 beds, was built. About this time, too, the nurses' home
was erected with accommodations for 50 nurses.
In 1924, also, clinics for diagnosis of tuberculosis were or-
ganized in Hackensack, Englewood, Ridgefield, Garfield and
Lodi. The central clinic at the Pines has facilities for X-rays
and pneumothorax treatments.
During the following five years came the construction of a
disposal plant and underground tunnels to connect every build-
ing, purchase of a 70 -acre farm, installation of a fully equipped
physiotherapy department, enlargement of the X-ray depart-
ment, a two-story addition to the scarlet fever building and a
new unit for smallpox.
A 100-bed building completed in 1931 permits handling
of either tuberculosis or other diseases. The educational and
occupational therapy departments are also housed in this build-
ing. In 1932 the county laboratory was erected at an estimated
cost of $1,600,000. It is maintained at an annual appropria-
tion of approximately $250,000, which sometimes rises to
$280,000.
Largest and most recent unit is the administration building,
dedicated in the spring of 1938. Funds for this building, a
five-story structure costing $560,000, were obtained to a con-
siderable extent by a donation of $300,000 by the Board of
Freeholders in 1936 from a surplus account which had been
built up to sizable proportions, supplemented by a grant of
$190,000 by the Federal Government. The construction of
this building has increased the institution's capacity from 400
to more than 500 beds.
In addition to its official support, Bergen Pines has also bene-
WELFARE 61
fited from the efforts of several private organizations. In Sep-
tember 1922 eight members of the Pioneer Masonic Club of
Hackensack visited the institution and offered to plant pine
trees on the grounds as an aid to health and beauty. A thousand
young trees were planted, and the following spring the Pioneer
Club sponsored its first official pilgrimage. A year later, at the
second pilgrimage, it was suggested that the hospital be called
Bergen Pines. This was approved a short time later by the
Freeholders.
That first pilgrimage in 1923 was the forerunner of similar
endeavors by other organizations, many of which have an an-
nual pilgrimage date. Through these pilgrimages the Pines has
received numerous gifts, notable among which are the following:
by the Masons, the pine trees, an imposing entrance archway, a
master radio set and several drinking fountains; by the Junior
Order of United American Mechanics, a flagpole 80 feet high,
with a bronze base and attractive plaza; by the Knights of
Columbus, a bandstand and outdoor stage; by the Red Men, a
sun hut and benches; by the Lions Club, a solarium. The
Eastern Star, Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs, Degrees of Pocahontas
and other groups have made generous donations.
Probably the outstanding gift is that made in 1939 by the
American Legion, a $15,000 therapeutic pool in a glass-enclosed
structure resembling a greenhouse. It is a unit of the children's
preventorium, which always has 40 to 50 patients 7 to 9 years
old. Vita-glass construction permits penetration of the sun's
rays. The pool and the "iron lungs" now in use at the Pines
are considered the best of their kind available.
Bergen Pines is often referred to as the beauty spot of the
county. The Spanish mission type of architecture, white walls
and red-tiled roofs, used in the construction of the first build-
ing in 1914, has been copied in all of the others. Wide walks
and lawns are bordered and dotted abundantly with pines,
spruces, firs, cedars and hemlocks.
At Christmas time an elaborate illuminated display near
the entrance gate attracts thousands of residents of the county.
The display is constructed entirely by patients in the occupa-
62 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
tional therapy department but financed by private contributions.
Several acres of rich soil provide fresh vegetables of many
varieties. Experimental patches of medicinal plants and herbs
thrive from seeds obtained at Washington. Fresh flowers from
the gardens decorate wards, corridors and offices.
Enjoying a high rank among tuberculosis hospitals, Bergen
Pines has the approval of the American Medical Association,
the American College of Surgeons and the American Hospital
Association. It is also a recognized State depot for vaccines and
sera, serving hospitals and private physicians.
The resident patient population of the Pines is about 350.
This is supplemented by an out-patient department registry of
several hundred. Laboratory facilities made possible more than
27,000 analyses during the past year.
Administrative powers at Bergen Pines are vested in the
Freeholders and a board of managers, of which the superin-
tendent of the hospital is secretary. The hospital staff numbers
25.
Old People 9 s Home
The Old People's Home, across the road from Bergen Pines,
consists of a Colonial-style brick building housing 138 men and
50 women (1940). Of these, 60 are bedridden and require
constant medical and hospital care. Some of the residents help
about the home and its adjacent farm, while others while away
the time playing cards, listening to the radio or merely chatting.
For 14 years county authorities have labored to bring about
this condition of contentment and create a homelike atmosphere.
The home of 20 years ago, with its whitewashed walls, dark
brown woodwork and straight wooden benches, is a thing of the
past. Today the walls are tinted in various hues, and small com-
partments in the wards provide greater privacy. There are
many easy chairs and several radios. A library is supplied by
individuals throughout the county. Church and club groups
from all parts of the county provide concerts, plays, dance
recitals and other programs.
The county psychopathic ward, accommodating nine pa-
WELFARE 63
tients, is housed here but is operated independently and sepa-
rately staffed. The doctor in charge is assisted by two nurses
and two male orderlies. There are seldom more than one or two
patients, since those requiring more than temporary care are
committed to State institutions.
Child Welfare
Equally important as Bergen Pines in the scope of its
activities is the Child Welfare Department, which cares for
children who, because of neglect or delinquency, are committed
by overseers of the poor or the courts or who are removed from
cruel, immoral or unsanitary surroundings under powers con-
ferred upon the department through its membership in the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The Children's Home, at Essex and Green Streets in Hack-
ensack, is a model institution. The three-story brick building,
designed especially for this purpose, provides offices for the de-
partment, quarters for the Juvenile Court, nursery, dormitories,
dining rooms, study rooms and recreation halls. The grounds,
cared for by the boys, are attractively landscaped. The dormi-
tories, for girls on the second floor and for boys on the third,
are brightened by WPA murals. Adjoining sun rooms are used
for games and recreation.
In addition to these are boys' and girls' playgrounds and
a huge room in the basement for indoor recreation and instruc-
tion. The boys receive manual training and the girls are taught
general housework, cooking, sewing and basket weaving. There
are also classes in English, spelling, geography, history and
arithmetic. Some of the more advanced pupils are permitted
to attend public school.
On each dormitory floor are small private rooms for de-
linquent children awaiting disposition of their cases. These
children are not unduly restricted but are given adequate super-
vision in play and study and are examined mentally and phys-
ically. No delinquent children in Bergen County are confined
in jail.
Children placed on probation by the Juvenile Court are
64 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
cared for along modern guidance lines; this service is entirely
apart from the county's adult probation bureau. The agents
in this branch of child welfare have special training in child
psychology. They carefully psychoanalyze each child and, after
studying each case history and mentality, they offer the incen-
tive and assistance best suited to facilitate readjustment.
Children needing medical attention are promptly treated at
Hackensack Hospital or at Bergen Pines. Those suffering from
colds or brief indispositions are isolated. A diet committee gives
special attention to individual food requirements, mainly for the
undernourished, while a pediatrician supervises the infants' diets.
The children assist in serving. After meals the dining room is
converted into a study hall supervised by the house mother.
There are no uniforms, institutional haircuts or other in-
signia of an asylum. The children are encouraged to develop
their own personalities and preferences, even in the selection of
colors in their dress and in the manner of wearing their hair.
The Home cares for about 75 children ranging in age from
infancy to 16.- Discharged children are given a complete change
of clothing, supplied largely by county appropriations but also
occasionally by private contributions.
The Board of Freeholders in 1940 appropriated $64,590 as
the county's share in the support of 610 wards of the State
children who have no parents or legal guardians to support them
and who are therefore cared for by the State Dependent Chil-
dren's Department. The board also contributed $97,356 to-
ward the support of 1,570 additional children throughout the
county; these live at home, but their families are too impover-
ished to give them adequate care, and they are aided by the
State Home Life Department without being classified as wards
of the State. Grants by the State and Federal Government make
up the remainder of the funds used for the support of these
children.
Welfare Board
The County Welfare Board, an adjunct of the State De-
partment of Institutions and Agencies, is composed of five citi-
WELFARE 65
zens (at least two of them must be women), two Freeholders
and the county adjuster. This group controls the welfare de-
partment, which is supervised by the county director of welfare.
It is the function of this department to render financial assist-
ance to citizens of the county over 65 years of age who have no
legally responsible relatives able to support them. If relatives
are able to give some support the board furnishes supplementary
aid. For this purpose the 1941 budget has appropriated $120,-
000 out of a total of $635,000. The State and Federal Govern-
ment supply the remainder for the 2,400 clients.
The care of the blind, a function of the department since
October 1939, is limited to material needs. Occupational activ-
ity or the use of Braille are referred to the State Commission for
the Blind. In 1941 the county appropriated $5,000 for its 35
needy blind persons. The State and Federal Governments sup-
ply the remaining half of the appropriation for carrying on this
work.
Private Agencies
Hackensack Hospital, the largest and oldest in the county,
opened in 1888. This institution, at Essex Street and Hospital
Place, has 275 beds and 125 nurses in training. Every branch
of medicine and surgery is practiced, with clinics for the indigent
in two dozen branches of medical and surgical science. Half of
the cases treated in these clinics are free, while a nominal charge
is made if the patient can afford to pay.
Englewood Hospital, which opened just a week after Hack-
ensack's, serves that part of the county known as the Northern
Valley, with a population of approximately 130,000. During
1940 this 238-bed hospital (sometimes credited with having
254 beds) provided a total of 70,130 patient days. In addition
5,940 persons made 27,956 visits to its clinics. This hospital
maintains a visiting nurse service covering 23 towns. Its Tumor
Conference consists of a group of physicians who examine and
decide on the treatment of patients.
Holy Name Hospital at Teaneck, although under Roman
Catholic management, is nonsectarian. It has a capacity of 225
66 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
beds and treats 4,000 patients a year. A community of Roman
Catholic nuns, many of them trained nurses, is in charge.
Several thousand persons are treated annually in its out-patient
department, which charges only nominal fees; 50 percent are
charity cases, of which a large majority are non-Catholics. In
May 1941 the hospital conducted a drive for $750,000 to add
a 100 -bed wing.
Each of the three hospitals has an auxiliary of approxi-
mately 1,000 women which raises money, prepares bandages,
garments and other necessities and provides other volunteer
services. While each hospital has an ambulance squad there are
several community ambulances operated by town firemen or
policemen, the American Legion or a volunteer corps.
Hasbrouck Heights Hospital was founded in 1928. It
specializes in orthopedic surgery, concentrating on difficult cases
of bone and skin grafting. There are 31 beds.
Visiting nurse services are provided by the Englewood
Hospital Out-Patient Visiting Nurses, Pascack Valley Nursing
Service, Ridgewood Area Nursing Service, Northern Bergen
Visiting Nurse Association and Central Bergen Nursing Service.
Each maintains units in various localities. Each visit by these
nurses is long enough to carry out doctor's instructions and to
teach the family how to follow doctor's orders and care for the
sick. Prenatal nursing care is given and follow-ups continue
until the child is a month old. Instruction in child hygiene is
offered at the same time. Cases may be referred by physicians,
by social agencies or are taken on private calls for help.
As an example of visiting nursing work, the Central Bergen
unit, with a staff of 14, made 19,328 visits during 1939. The
nurses, all of whom are registered, have a background of special
training in public health work. The service is financed by
contributions and by such fees as are collected from patients
who are able to pay. Several insurance companies have con-
tracts under which the nurses provide home care for policy-
holders. The service is managed by a board of directors com-
prised of representatives from each of the 20 municipalities
covered. This board is guided by a medical advisory council.
WELFARE 67
The Bergen County Tuberculosis and Health Association
in Hackensack, financed almost entirely by the sale of Christmas
seals, carries on work against tuberculosis through subsidizing
visiting nurses, through extensive health education in schools
and lectures to adult groups, and through X-ray and analytical
clinics. More than 10,000 visits to tubercular patients are made
annually, more than 1,000 X-rays are taken and arrangements
are made for sanatorium treatment in scores of cases. The asso-
ciation's annual budget is between $25,000 and $30,000.
Notable among the private organizations doing welfare
work are the American Legion, the Elks, the Masons and the
Knights of Columbus. Each of these groups has a welfare
agency, doing extensive work not only among its own members
and their families but in many cases among nonmembers. The
American Legion in Bergen County claims to have the only
central relief committee established by any post of the American
Legion. The Elks do extensive work among crippled children.
4. Agriculture
AGRICULTURE dominated the economic and social life of
Bergen County for 250 of the 300 years that white men have
lived here. Since the 1890's rural acreage has retreated as resi-
dential growth developed; but the county still has highly spe-
cialized farming, chiefly garden vegetables, orchard fruits and
dairy and poultry products, which find a ready market in the
metropolitan area.
The United States census of 1940 noted 779 farms of all
types in the county out of a total of 25,835 in the State. Farms
covered 15,889 acres of Bergen County's total land area of
149,120. This contrasted sharply with the 108,728 acres of
improved and unimproved farm land recorded in 1850. The
total value of farm land and equipment in the 1940 census,
however, was placed at $11,174,062 as compared to $6,517,276
at the middle of the nineteenth century.
68
AGRICULTURE 69
Rising farm land values by 1935 had reached $703.26 an
acre. The average value of a Bergen County farm in 1935 was
placed at $14,344 as against the New Jersey State average of
$8,818. This increase in land value accompanied the sharp
decline in farm acreage in the period between 1925 and 1930,
from 29,693 to 18,858 acres. In 1930, however, the 811 farms
had been valued at $21,659,535, reflecting the influence of land
speculation during the previous decade. The farm population
in 1935 was placed at 3,082, or only about 1 percent of the
total. Of the total acreage under cultivation in 1940, 8,155
acres were operated by full owners, 3,443 by part owners, 724
by managers and 3,567 by tenants. Today annual agricultural
production is valued at more than $1,500,000.
The first Bergen County settlers were almost exclusively
farmers. They had to cope with unfamiliar problems of soil,
climate and plants, while they adapted European practices of
husbandry to new conditions. Meanwhile, they farmed the raw
new country, clearing away forests, rocks and weeds.
For the most part products were consumed chiefly by the
family, but even in the beginning the settlers sought to obtain
some cash revenue to buy necessities that they could not raise.
The original money crop was wheat exported to the West Indies,
then the most prosperous English holding. Other grains raised
were corn, rye and barley.
When the East Jersey Assembly assessed the Colonial coun-
ties, including Bergen, in 1683, the levies were paid in farm
products: winter wheat at four shillings sixpence a bushel, sum-
mer wheat at four shillings, corn at two shillings threepence and
pork at 50 shillings a barrel.
As early as 1700 Bergen County farmers by wagon and
boat were sending parsnips, carrots, beets, endive, radishes and
onions across the Hudson. The Colonial farmer supplying the
New York market thus set a pattern that was to mold the life
of the region.
Cabbage was the first of the specialty crops to reflect the
demands of the city market. Due to an extensive sauerkraut
industry in New York the farmers in what later became Hudson
70 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
County and along Overpeck Creek enjoyed an early cabbage
boom.
Meanwhile, buckwheat grew in popularity. There was
some experimentation with tobacco, soon abandoned, although
individual efforts were recorded until well into the nineteenth
century.
The Dutch farmers also began the cultivation of apples,
pears, peaches and cherries. Of these the apple was the most
important and led to the manufacture of cider, for which the
region became noted. "Watermelons, later to become a famous
product, were also grown.
Farm life was a constant challenge to the endurance of
these early settlers, spread out through the Bergen County
valleys. "Wolves were numerous, and a standing bounty was
set on them. Tools consisted chiefly of a primitive handmade
plow and crude forge. In the home, the women's work included
the preparation of meat, thread and soap. The entire commu-
nity lived from the soil. Social life centered around the Dutch
Reformed Church and was determined by the rigorous tradition
of Calvinism, unaffected by the sprinklings of English and
French.
By the time of the Revolution the region was a rich forag-
ing ground for the British and American armies. The develop-
ment of produce growing, accompanied by a large increase in
the number of cattle, horses, fowl, swine and sheep, gave the
Bergen County farmer a growing income which he was loath
to sacrifice to feed the impecunious continental army. Fear
for the loss of profits from the metropolitan market has been
cited as the reason for some farmers' indifference to the war.
Foraging parties from both sides scoured the countryside
during the war. One speculation has it that during the week
of November 21-28, 1776, the British were so impressed by the
opportunity for replenishing their larder that they loitered long
enough in their pursuit of Washington from Fort Lee to permit
the American Commander in Chief to save his army. "Every
farmhouse and barn in the Bergen area was looted by the in-
vader," according to one chronicler.
AGRICULTURE 71
After the war Bergen County returned to the normal cul-
tivation of what was becoming a garden spot of the New York
area. In 1786 the part that later became Hudson County was
selected by Louis XVI of France as the site of an experimental
botanical garden. Andrew Michaux, commissioned as royal
botanist for the enterprise, toured the states and finally selected
land near New Durham. Being an alien, he was granted spe-
cial permission to hold "not more than 200 acres" by the State
legislature.
On March 3, 1786, work on the orchard and gardens was
started, and Michaux proceeded to use his authority to import
from France any plant not found in America. Collapse of the
Bourbon dynasty brought an early end to the "Frenchman's
Gardens." The project endured long enough, however, to in-
troduce into America the Lombardy poplar, its seed passing
throughout the entire country to become a familiar native tree.
About this time cultivation of flax reached its highest de-
velopment in the region around New York. In 1790 the section
near present Bogota was the site of extensive experimentation
with this plant, but the rise of American cotton manufacturing
discouraged the cultivation of other fibrous plants.
Growing interest in the natural sciences was reflected by
organized inquiry into agricultural practices. Bergen County
residents were active in the New York Society for the Promotion
of Agricultural Arts and Manufacturing. During the first
decade of the nineteenth century county farmers adopted new
methods for increasing yield, including rotation of crops and
the use of lime, manure and marl.
This development spurred crop specialization, as access to
New York emphasized the advantages of raising for the market
rather than for the home alone. Moreover, other cities were
growing up within a short distance; at Paterson, part of which
then lay in Bergen County, was one of the Nation's earliest in-
dustrial centers, with factory workers to be fed.
Speaking of the northern New Jersey region, Morse's
American Universal Geography in 1819 noted the "great num-
ber of cattle" raised and the great attention "paid to the cultiva-
72 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
tion of fruits and vegetables." Mentioned specifically are wheat,
rye, maize, buckwheat, potatoes, oats and barley, and that "the
finest apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, strawberries and
melons are carried to market."
Development of agriculture continued during the "Era of
Good Feeling" with numerous innovations, among them the
horse-drawn plow to replace the hand implement. In 1824 one
of Bergen County's earliest newspapers was called the Hac ken-
sack Star and Farmer. During the one year of its existence the
paper catered to agrarian interests, paying scant attention to
local news. Owners of stray heifers advertised their losses, and
vendors of plows and other implements used its columns to
solicit sales.
Gordon's Gazetteer of 1834 described 108,766 of the
county's 267,500 acres as "unimproved." The book noted 1,262
householders, 84 gristmills, 12 cider distilleries, 4,025 horses and
mules and 10,188 "neat cattle" over three years of age. "New
York is much indebted to the Dutch gardeners for her supplies
of flowers and vegetables," according to the Gazetteer.
Farmers, although they still consumed much of their prod-
uct in the home, were benefiting greatly from the increased
urban populations accompanying industrial development. Dur-
ing the 1830's they agitated for bridges to facilitate transporta-
tion. Minutes of the Board of Freeholders abound with motions
authorizing such construction. Even earlier private corporations
were building the improved roads that distinguished the "turn-
pike era."
Gristmills also had their heyday in the 1 830's. A character-
istic scene of the times was the farmer's wagon loaded with grain
waiting its turn at Bogert's Mill at Harrington Park, Van
Buskirk's Mill at New Milford and numerous others.
By 1840, according to Clayton and Nelson's History of
Bergen and Passaic Counties, Franklin Township in the north-
western corner of the county had emerged as the principal dairy
section of the region. The value of such products was estimated
at $19,800, a cash figure which loomed large in the economy of
that period. The same township also sold $15,547 of orchard
AGRICULTURE 73
fruits, while 24,003 bushels of oats, 18,750 of rye and 18,652
of corn were raised. Hackensack Township's cash income of
$11,726 for garden vegetables sent to New York was said to be
double that of any other township in the county. Saddle River
Township also was described as "very productive." One im-
portant source of income was apples. If market conditions were
favorable the crop might bring $50 to $100 for the season to
a grower.
Between 1840 and 1850 farmers became increasingly pro-
fessional, as is evidenced by the widespread introduction of new
implements and fertilizers. The organization in May 1849 of
the Bergen County Mutual Fire Insurance Company was a recog-
nition of the large financial stakes held by the farming com-
munity. The first officers were farmers, and the purpose of the
enterprise was to furnish cheap and safe insurance to growers.
At about the turn of the century decrease in farming activities
and losses from fires caused the fall of the company.
In 1850, when the United States Census first gave agri-
cultural statistics by counties, there were 1,128 farms of all
types with 493 employees and 80,494 improved acres. Valua-
tion of farm products was $1,012,165. Livestock included 6,968
head of cattle, 2,465 horses, mules and asses, 1,711 sheep and
4,886 swine. The value of animals slaughtered was placed at
$84,081.
Garden produce was valued at $88,691 and orchard fruits
at $46,528. Among the principal crops were Irish and sweet
potatoes, 166,368 bushels; rye and oats, 134,431; Indian corn,
150,709; buckwheat, 48,724; wheat, 9,350; and hay, 16,582
tons. There were also produced 328,779 pounds of butter and
cheese, 6,648 pounds of beeswax and honey, 4,418 pounds of
wool, 232 pounds of maple sugar and 290 pounds of tobacco.
At this time Bergen County was dominated by farm fam-
ilies whose ownership of land in many places had lasted for
nearly two centuries. Branches of the same families were scat-
tered through the rural townships and gave to the area a homo-
geneity which emphasized its provincial character.
Organization of the Bergen County Agricultural Society
74 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
in December 1858 indicated the farmers' realization of their
special interests. Every incorporator bore a Colonial family
name; Henry H. Voorhis was the chairman and Stephen S.
Berdan, secretary. Signers of the charter were Daniel Van
Winkle, Enoch Brinkerhoff, Andrew Demarest, Thomas H.
Herring and Thomas Voorhis.
Strenuous dawn to dusk labor was the design for living on
the farms, which ranged from 60 to 500 acres. The farmer
began his day at 5 o'clock to feed the cattle, followed by break*
fast at 6. At 7 o'clock work was resumed in the field, con-
tinuing from 10 to 12 hours, largely with the plow, scythe and
harrow, the principal tools about the middle of the century.
The day ended with the farmhouse chores.
Besides the main building on the average farm, various out-
buildings included a large utility barn, cow barn, corn crib and
pig sty. Small huts might be occupied by from one to 25 farm
hands. Male hands were paid from $1 to $1.50 and board a
day, while women usually received $ 1 .
Increasingly, farmers of the area specialized in garden vege-
tables for cities of the metropolitan area in preference to the
single crop system in the South and West. While many of the
smaller farms raised vegetables and grains only for home con-
sumption, they derived cash revenue from such items as butter,
eggs and hay. Hogs and lambs were fattened for the market.
On a good-sized farm livestock might include from 4 to 8
horses, several mules, from 10 to 50 cows and a herd of pigs.
From the larger farms as many as three wagonloads of
vegetables were dispatched nightly except Saturday and Sunday
for sale in the New York market at the foot of West 14th
Street. Hundreds of wagons congregated at the open market
space, displaying their produce to buyers from hotels and re-
tail merchants, the chief customers before the days of commis-
sion men. Originally the farmers were permitted to remain in
the market all day but later had to leave by 9 A.M. Stocks
unsold by that hour were hauled back or "sold for a song."
In the decade before the Civil War improvements were
general throughout the country, and farmers of the region
AGRICULTURE 75
participated profitably in new techniques. Such innovations as
subsoil plowing and underdrainage coupled with far greater use
of artificial fertilizers enormously increased output and brought
unprecedented prosperity. Indicative of the greater scientific
interest were the several reaper improvement patents obtained
by Thomas Schnebly of Hackensack between 1855 and 1857.
Probably the most brilliant chapter in Bergen County agri-
culture was the rise of strawberry growing, bringing national
fame to the region and, in the words of the Bergen Journal,
making Bergen "the greatest strawberry county in the coun-
try." The spread of this crop provided hundreds of farmers
with a source of cash income that made the period fabulous.
First developed for the New York market about 1800,
Bergen strawberry patches spread from the Hackensack area
throughout New Jersey; some of the best known of the earlier
species were developed here, among them the Hauboy and the
Scotch runner. Development by Andrew Hooper of Pascack
in 1840 of a special crate to accommodate 200 baskets was a
factor in the boom.
By the 1850's the center of strawberry growing had shifted
to the section around Allendale and Ramsey, from whose Erie
depots from four to eight carloads were dispatched nightly.
But the most characteristic features of the strawberry trade were
the farm wagons that rumbled over the country roads by the
hundreds on their way to the markets of New York, Paterson
and Newark.
Reporting on the strawberry crop in July 1856, the Tri-
Weekly Guardian of Paterson estimated that some Bergen
County farmers were clearing $2,000 on strawberry fields for
the year and stated further that $500 on a patch was considered
a "small grab." The paper observed that the soil and tempera-
ture of Bergen and Passaic counties seemed particularly adapted
to the growth and that the region had become "one large straw-
berry patch." It predicted that "Paterson, situated as it is in
the centre of the district, will always be the Strawberry City of
the World." The Guardian reported in July 1857: "It is prob-
able that the gross receipts in the counties of Bergen and Passaic
76 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
this season for strawberries alone have amounted to a quarter
of a million dollars."
In 1858 the Bergen Journal stated that 170 wagons con-
taining over 221,000 baskets of strawberries passed through a
gate on the Bergen Turnpike during a single night. During the
last week of June 1,100 wagons with 1,500,000 baskets passed
through one turnpike gate.
Farmers in the strawberry area usually planted from one to
five acres and paid pickers one cent a basket, getting from two
to five cents. Pickers, sellers and commission agents formed a
milling, excited clique in northwestern Bergen County, filling
hotels and taverns and spreading money freely.
Today almost no strawberries are produced. Among causes
for the decline were competition from New York State and
South Jersey, change of interest to vegetable gardening, un-
certainty of crops and difficulty in obtaining pickers.
About 1855 attempts were made in several parts of the
State to raise sweet sorghum for sugar. Although machinery
was devised to strip and shred the stalks, the cost proved pro-
hibitive. Nevertheless, small areas of cane were cultivated in
Bergen County for several years, although not as extensively as
in the southern part of the State. The experiments led the
legislature as late as 1881 to establish a bounty of $1 a ton for
sorghum cane ground and used in the New Jersey manufacture
of sugar, and one cent for each pound so produced. Cultivation
of sugar ended when, after five years, the subsidy was with-
drawn.
The census of 1860 showed that the value of Bergen County
farms had almost doubled during the decade to $11,834,825,
plus $340,845 for machinery and implements, while the value
of garden produce had more than tripled to $295,540. The
staple grains showed a slight increase, while Irish potatoes
reached a production of 229,902 bushels. There were 5,129
milch cows, 3,402 horses, 1,322 working oxen, 5,753 swine and
829 sheep. The value of livestock was set at $733,846 and of
animals slaughtered at $108,795.
Newspapers of the time abounded with items proclaiming
AGRICULTURE 77
the agricultural wonders of Bergen County. One farmer
visited the Tri-Weekly Guardian of Paterson in September 1856
and left a branch containing nine large ripe pears, "all perfect
and touching each other." Another grower displayed a pear
weighing one pound. The same paper reported a celery with
edible stalks "about three feet in length." Justice Ackerman
of Hackensack showed the editor seven pumpkins all raised from
two seeds, "the aggregate of which was 565 pounds." The
largest weighed "109 pounds and had a girth of six feet two
inches." From a single barrel of sets Mr. Rennie of Lodi had
raised 37 barrels of potatoes, some 10 inches long and 9 inches
around.
In December 1860 the newspaper reported "the largest
turnips raised in New Jersey" growing at Paramus. Several
were three feet in diameter, weighing eleven pounds and a
quarter. The "largest grape vine in the United States" was
reported at Godwinville. The paper maintained that "the fruit-
fulness of Paramus Valley is perhaps not exceeded in any dis-
trict of the United States." It noted that farmers "spare neither
time nor expense in introducing the most improved articles of
husbandry, such as mowing and reaping machines, potato dig-
gers, corn cutters, apple peelers, turnip toppers, corn shellers, etc.
The result is Old Bergen defies the rest of the world to excel
them in tilling the soil." In his book of recollections, Floating
Chips, John J. Haring writes of the ample existence led by the
rural inhabitants of the region.
The Civil War brought spectacular prosperity as high prices
and widening markets were accompanied by some of the
county's most productive seasons. Bergen County farmers in
1864 participated in the State- wide movement to establish a
College of Agriculture at Rutgers. In May 1866 the Board of
Freeholders appointed the first pupil for instruction in "agri-
culture and mechanics."
During the early 1860's Ridgewood was the home of
Andrew S. Fuller (1828-96), who wrote numerous books on
fruit culture and whose experimental farm was said to include
the most complete collection of small fruits in the United States.
78 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Fuller's Small Fruit Culturist, published in 1867, was long the
authority in its field and was translated into several languages.
Other works of his are The Strawberry Culturist (1860), The
Grape Culturist (1865), Forest Tree Culturist (1866), Prac-
tical Forestry (1884) and Nut Culturist (1896). The writer
was agricultural editor of the New York Sun for 26 years.
In the census of 1870 new trends were indicated. Acreage
of improved land dropped to 69,082 from 86,703 in 1860 as
suburbanization increased. Correspondingly, the value of exist-
ing farms reflected the heightened price levels, totaling $19,-
143,150 against a little more than $12,000,000. The value of
all farm production was set at $1,405,968, indicating the en-
hanced value of fresh vegetables. Livestock had increased in
value from $733,846 to $842,598.
The Bergen Democrat noted on January 16, 1874, the
formation of "a scientific debating society" at Montvale. Illus-
trating the purpose of the group was one of the first discussions:
"Does it take more fencing to enclose an acre of ground, the
size of which is the length being twice the size of the breadth
than it would if exactly square?" The following year John J.
Zabriskie of Hohokus sold the patent rights to a manure press
for $30,000.
The growth of grains, extensive since Colonial times, had
declined, and garden vegetables were definitely the staple crops
of the region. The last quarter of the ninetenth century saw
the sensational rise of the famous "Hackensack melon," which
had been modestly grown since before the Revolution. There
was great rivalry among growers to have their melons first at
the metropolitan markets. Commissioners eagerly awaited the
arrival of Bergen County melons, and the individual farmer
took advantage of the demand by raising from 100 to 1,000
barrels a season. Melons were highly profitable until the early
twentieth century, when blight and wilt attacked the fruit.
Another important crop of this period was the potato.
The years 1875 and 1876 are remembered because of the havoc
wrought by the Colorado potato bug.
Growing population almost as much as agricultural pre-
AGRICULTURE 79
eminence led to organization of the Bergen County Agricultural
Association, whose purpose was to hold an annual fair at Ho-Ho-
Kus, site of a race track antedating the Civil War. Previous
similar attempts had not been very successful financially. Agri-
cultural fairs of this period tended to place undue emphasis on
horse racing, gambling and similar features. The Bergen Demo-
crat in April 1865 had noted the resolution adopted by the
Newark Methodist Episcopal Conference that fairs "are im-
moral and corrupting in their tendencies." The editor had re-
marked: "There is a great deal of truth in the above resolution."
But in June 1879 "men of capital" interested themselves
in the fair site, calling themselves first the "Hohokus Valley
Gentlemen's Driving Asosciation." As the Bergen County Agri-
cultural Association, the group sponsored its first fair during
October of the same year. The result was said to be "far be-
yond the most sanguine expectations." Among the winners
was the actor, Joe Jefferson, then living at Saddle River, whose
ponies were awarded a first prize. Exhibited also were "fine
Durham bulls," blood mares, swine, Southdown sheep and other
stock. There were premiums for cut flowers, fruits, squashes,
canned fruit and vegetables. It was noted that thousands of
people from Paterson attended. The Saddle River Brass Band
"blossomed out during the three days of the fair in a most re-
markable manner."
In spite of this auspicious start the venture was unprofit-
able, and once more trotting races became the principal attrac-
tion. In 1885 the New Jersey Agricultural Association re-
vived the exhibits, but the only assets of the enterprise were the
races. The North Jersey Agricultural and Driving Association
took over in 1895. The Ho-Ho-Kus Driving Club assumed
control in 1914 and sublet the grounds to the Bergen County
Fair Association, but again the disinterest of farmers kept the
enterprise from succeeding. An attempt in 1928 to reintroduce
trotting races failed, and the automobile races held for a time
in the 1930's were discontinued after a fatal accident in 1934.
Although remaining predominantly rural, the county was
beginning to change in character as new residents flocked in,
80 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
causing a rise in land value. This trend had been obvious as
early as 1868, when the Pater son Press reported settlers from
up-state New York paying as high as $500 an acre for property
that before the Civil War could have been bought at $50.
During the 1870's and 1880's the boom was felt largely in the
area lying just back of the Palisades. Then, in the summer of
1890, hundreds of acres lying principally near Hackensack were
cut up into building lots.
Nevertheless, farmers and their affairs still played a prom-
inent part in community life. Such groups as the "Union So-
ciety for the Detection of Horse Thieves and Other Felons"
were active. It was worthy of newspaper notice in November
1887 that "Ex-Senator Dater of Ramsey has sold his matched
team of bays. It is rumored that the price obtained was about
$1,400." That same year Sheriff "Ike" Hopper retired to his
Fair Lawn farm, from which he made occasional sorties into the
political arena as the "melon candidate." In the same com-
munity Albert A. Bogert was not only plowing his farm but
also "quietly plowing his way into the Sheriff's chair." In No-
vember 1888 James Shuart of Ramsey celebrated the election
of President Benjamin Harrison by roasting an ox and provid-
ing 400 loaves of bread and plenty of ale for 1,500 guests.
An enterprise which atracted considerable interest was the
"chicken factory" begun at Allendale in 1884. The Weekly
Press of March 6 reports that "there is some prejudice against
f;he 'use of incubators.' One man says 'he will not eat any of
them unnatural chickens.' '
News of the time concerned the luck of farmers with their
sweet corn, potatoes, apples and melons. Writing of one farmer
in Saddle River Township, the Bergen County Democrat, prin-
cipal paper of the agricultural society, noted that "John Strehl
. . . has sold 760 barrels of melons and 170,000 corn. His lima
bean crop turned him in $220. All told his sales have footed
$4,000 with 1,500 bushels of potatoes to hear from. . . . This
is a good showing on 80 acres."
About 1890 there was considerable expansion of fruit grow-
ing, particularly in the region about Woodcliff Lake. A phase
AGRICULTURE 81
of this period was the commercial development by B. G. Pratt
of Hackensack of Scalecide as a means of controlling scale. The
product is still being manufactured.
An unusual feature in the late nineties was the extensive
harvesting from the meadowlands near Little Ferry of salt marsh
hay, gathered as far back as the Colonial period; in 1820 a com-
pany had been founded to exploit the meadows. Now farmers
throughout the Hackensack Valley as well as tavern keepers
relied on this source for hay to bed their horses and to prevent
ice from melting too rapidly during the summer. The hay crop
was cut in September after the farms had completed their own
harvest. After being mowed the hay was put out to dry, then
stored until used. The industry declined when the automobile
and modern ice storage were introduced.
Most of the garden vegetables, still the staple crop, were
sold in the Gansevoort Market, popularly known as "Goose
Market," and in the Commission Market on Dey Street, New
York City. Farmers also brought their produce to the Old
Newark Market near the present Pennsylvania Railroad Station
in Newark, while those in the Paterson area sold their crops in
the Washington Island Market.
Most intimately associated with the journey of the Hack-
ensack Valley farmer to the New York market was the climb
up Dan Kelly's hill on the Bergen Turnpike in Fairview. At
the foot of the hill was Dan Kelly's hotel and tavern, where
hundreds of produce wagons gathered on Friday and Saturday
nights to receive refreshment for man and beast before begin-
ning the long climb up the hill; sometimes they were aided by
two horses from the stone quarries nearby.
Toll rates were five cents for wagons, four cents for horse
riders, three cents to drive cows through, one cent for sheep
or geese. The hill road was often impassable during the winter
because of its icy condition. Then farmers traveled by way of
the Plank Road and over the Schutzen Park Hill. The trip
required from 3 1 /2 to 6 hours from most Bergen County farms.
A toll gate existed on the Bergen Turnpike in Fairview at the
Ridgefield Borough line until 1915.
82 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Bergen County farmers of this period relied to a consider-
able extent on the advice of the "Jersey Weather Prophet,"
Andrew Jackson De Voe. Among his predictions were the
blizzard of 1888 and the Cherry Hill cyclone that struck Hack-
ensack in 1896. His forecasts were a regular feature in several
New Jersey papers. Cotton growers in the South wrote to him
for advice; and for a time he was employed by the Chattanooga
Medicine Company to work on its farmers' almanac. The "Pro-
fessor's" readings were based upon the formation of storms in
areas of moon shadows, but sometimes adverse winds would blow
the storms away from the area and upset his calculation.
The modern history of Bergen County agriculture may be
said to begin with the formation of the Bergen County Board of
Agriculture in 1895 for the purpose of encouraging experiments
that would benefit both the farmers and the county. On Janu-
ary 28, 1906, the first Farmers' Institute was held in conjunc-
tion with the State Board of Agriculture at Bogert's Hall, River
Edge. Annual and semiannual institutes became regular fea-
tures.
By 1900 the 1,716 farms embraced 46,776 improved acres,
a reduction of more than 33 percent since 1860. Farm lands
and improvements were valued at $8,243,180, while buildings
were estimated at $4,838,960 and implements and machinery at
$524,380. The value of products had not changed greatly and
was placed at $1,665,810. The value of livestock was set at
$682,267, but the value of animals sold had dropped sharply,
totaling $29,997 for live animals and $21,671 for stock slaught-
ered on the farm.
As suburban growth ate up farm acreage, dairying and
poultry raising became increasingly profitable because of the
nearby cities. There were 3,653 dairy cows, 756 calves, 3,707
horses and 2,698 swine in 1900. The value of all dairy products
was $319,222, including 2,082,330 gallons of milk and 193,484
pounds of butter. Poultry was valued at $43,270, including
95,612 chickens, and 632,870 dozen eggs were produced.
In the county 4,519 acres were being used to grow vege-
tables for the New York market. Orchard products had grown
AGRICULTURE 83
in value to $98,517; apples were most important with 232,587
bushels. But Bergen grew only 437,000 quarts of strawberries
of New Jersey's 13,274,120. Flowers were becoming important,
however, with sales of $224,519.
Meanwhile, suburban development was a topic of observa-
tion for the metropolitan press as evidenced by the comment of
the New 'York Tribune on October 9, 1905:
Alas! the days of the Bergen County farmer are numbered. Land
that is worth from $1,000 to $5,000 per acre is too valuable to be
devoted to the raising of corn and cabbage. New Yorkers need homes
need a place to sleep o'nights. Their children need air, green grass
and room to play.
Between 1906 and 1910 assessed valuation increased by $41,-
945,040.
The turn of the century had brought the Grange to Bergen
County. In quick succession there were formed Bergen Grange
at Paramus; Ramsey Grange at Ramsey; Lincoln Grange at
Westwood; Pascack Grange at Woodcliff Lake; Fair Lawn
Grange at Fair Lawn; North Arlington Grange at North
Arlington; and Saddle River Grange at Saddle River. The units
were interested in market conditions for members, engaged in
co-operative buying for a time and built halls that were centers
of social life until the World War. In recent times the Grange
has continued to practice its ideals, "Co-operation, Education
and Sociability," in the face of declining membership.
The census of 1910 disclosed that the number of farms
had declined to 1,221 from 1,716 in 1900. The value of farm
products, however, had dropped only about 12 percent to a
total of $1,455,620.
When the State legislature created the Agricultural Ex-
tension Service a meeting of delegates from the Granges, held
on August 6, 1913, passed a resolution in favor of a county
farm demonstrator. Louis F. Merrill was appointed on April
9, 1914. Demonstrations in pruning, spraying, insect control
methods, use of fertilizers and culling of poultry were given to
audiences of farmers. When America entered the World War
84 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
in 1917 the question of food conservation became paramount,
and farmers performed notable work with the co-operation of
Carolyn F. Wetzel, the county's first home demonstration agent.
In October 1918, upon the death of Merrill, W. Raymond Stone
was named farm demonstrator.
By 1920 the number of farms had dropped to 1,012. The
land area in farms, improved and unimproved, was just half of
what it had been in 1900, or 37,108 acres to 75,760. Never-
theless, the value of all crops had increased to $1,880,365, be-
cause of high prices.
Succeeding years brought new problems as growers in dis-
tant states were able to compete through improved transporta-
tion. On the other hand, growing urbanization brought home
markets to the very fields of the Bergen County farmers, who
now specialized intensively. A system of accredited roadside
markets was organized by Mr. Stone, in his dual role as county
agricultural agent and chairman of the agricultural committee
of the Bergen County Chamber of Commerce. The innovation
enabled the bona fide farmer to meet the competition of huck-
sters who falsely claimed to have grown the produce they sold.
The use of newspaper articles and circular letters was in-
augurated by the county agent for giving information. An
egg-laying contest was organized, and courses were given for
beekeepers, poultrymen and garden farmers. The Bergen
County Federation of Garden Clubs was formed in 1922 with
the co-operation of the county agent.
Demonstration work in home economics was developed by
Mrs. Elizabeth M. Berdan, who was named in 1924, and Mrs.
Grace Koster Chase, appointed in 1926. Instruction in dress-
making, home management, child guidance and family budgets
is a valuable part of the service rendered by the county home
demonstration agents.
The impact of the depression resulted in even more inten-
sive methods of production and marketing. Taxes were going
up, competition was keen. Vegetable growers resorted to the
use of overhead irrigation, scientific soil fertilization and con-
trol of plant insects and diseases, which aided in growing three
AGRICULTURE 85
and occasionally four crops annually. The aim was a high
quality and a high yield at low unit cost. The growth of the
demonstration program led to the appointment of Roy C. Bos-
solt as Stone's assistant in 1936.
Even suburban development has brought new duties to the
farm agent. Gardening, lawn making and landscape questions
are presented for solution. During 1938 more than 7,500 in-
dividual farm and garden problems were submitted to the
county agent. Under the encouragement of Mrs. Grace Koster
Chase, home demonstration agent, the 4-H youth movement
has spread and now comprises 23 clubs with about 300 members.
In 1939 the Bergen County Extension Service in Agricul-
ture and Home Economics celebrated its 25th anniversary, em-
phasizing its role as an integrating force in family life in addi-
tion to its purely agricultural functions. Co-operation with
agricultural, religious, educational, civic, fraternal and welfare
agencies was cited, and the goal of "enriching family life and
elevating the standard of living" was proclaimed. Farmhouses
today are, in general, equipped with all modern facilities, such
as running water and electricity. The automobile and radio
have ended forever the farmers' isolation.
In 1939 organizations with memberships exceeding 19,000
participated in the program of the county demonstration agent.
These include the Bergen County Board of Agriculture, Bergen
County 4-H clubs, Bergen County Agricultural Advisory Coun-
cil, Bergen County Granges, Federated Women's Clubs of
Bergen County, Bergen County Parent-Teacher Association,
Bergen County Poultry Association, North Bergen County Co-
operative Association, North Bergen County Fruit Growers
Association, Bergen County Vegetable Growers, Bergen County
Florist Association, Bergen County Gardeners Association, Fed-
eration of Garden Clubs of Bergen County, North Jersey Metro-
politan Nurserymen's Association, Bergen County Agricultural
Conservation Association, Rockland-Bergen Beekeepers Associa-
tion and Bergen County Chamber of Commerce, as well as the
Board of Freeholders and the State farm groups.
In 1939 the Bergen County Planning Board reported from
86 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
5 to 6 percent of the county's total acreage under cultivation.
Paramus led, with 1,255 of its 6,528 acres devoted to agricul-
ture. Other farming areas listed were Hohokus Township with
639 acres out of 16,450, Upper Saddle River with 524 out of
3,140 and Fair Lawn with 438 out of 3,390. River Edge had
the largest percentage, 25.5, although building activities heralded
a sharp reduction. New Milford was second with a percentage
of 24.1. The planning board reported no agricultural lands for
Bogota, Cliffside Park, Cresskill, Edgewater, Englewood Cliffs,
Fairview, Fort Lee, Garfield, Lyndhurst, Ridgefield Park and
Rutherford.
Existing farms are scattered mostly over the northern and
western parts of the county. Here fruits, vegetables, poultry
and dairy products are produced. In the southern portion
market gardening predominates. A total of 1,956,408 gallons
of milk was produced in 1939 and 8,612 pounds of butter.
Dairy products were valued at $483,156 in the 1930 census.
The average herd numbers 18 to 20 cows, with a few herds
having 100 or more. The census of 1940 reported 2,428 cattle
and calves over three months old, 252 horses and colts and
1,058 swine. Three hundred and seventy-one farms, many of
them specialized for poultry raising, produced 287,678 chickens
and 976,104 dozen eggs. Leghorns, Wyandottes, Rhode Island
Reds and White Rocks predominated.
Fruit growing is limited almost entirely to the northern
and western area. Apples and peaches are the main crops. Other
crops include berries, cherries, pears and grapes.
Since 1920 the value of vegetables grown has declined
drastically, but important crops are still raised, principally sweet
corn, spinach, tomatoes, cabbages, lettuce and celery. The size
of most truck farms varies from 12 to 40 acres, and near the
cities from 8 to 10 acres.
Bergen County ranks about 20th in the United States in
land devoted to celery, with somewhat more than 300 acres.
The main centers of production are Paramus, where a number
of growers plant about 200 acres; Allendale, where the Apert
farm has 75 acres, and Moonachie. The vegetable is grown in
AGRICULTURE 87
black muck areas which until about 40 years ago were regarded
as wasteland. Two crops are usually produced each season;
sometimes spinach is grown between the rows. Much of the
celery is a green type that is bleached by boards, specially made
paper or banking the muck around the stalks; it must be thor-
oughly washed before being sold. Since the industry depends
heavily on a proper water supply the growing areas, mainly flat,
have extensive systems of ditches for irrigation and drainage.
Although most crops are grown from seed, a large number
of greenhouses and cold frame plants are used. An increasing
number of growers have overhead irrigation connected to prin-
cipal water systems. Manure is still used by some farmers, but
a majority depend on commercial fertilizers containing nitrogen,
phosphoric acid and potash. Rotation of crops is of course com-
mon, and from three to four crops may be produced on the
same ground during a season. Tractors are employed in seed
bed preparation, and cultivation is ordinarily carried on by
small tractors or by hand on the intensively operated market
garden farms.
Bergen County growers sell their fruits and vegetables in
several ways. A few consign their products to a city commis-
sion agent who sells it for the best price available and charges a
fixed percentage; others sell direct to buyers who drive their
trucks up to the farm; many farmers bring their commodities
to markets operated by co-operative associations, particularly the
Paterson Market Growers' Cooperative Association, where the
farmer negotiates directly with the buyer, who is often the
consumer; some farmers sell direct to retail stores, while road-
side stands maintained by the growers cater to transients and
nearby residents.
Situated in the center of the metropolitan area, the county
has found roadside selling profitable. A survey of 23 stands
made in 1930 revealed that they had 2,800 regular customers
and served a total of 22,000 transients. The average size of
farms furnishing stands with crops is 42 acres, most of them
owned by the stand operators. August and September are the
busiest months.
88 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Bergen County is the New Jersey leader in plant nurseries,
with 93 in operation. There are several unusual farms known
beyond the confines of the region. The greenhouses of the
Bobbink and Atkins Nursery at East Rutherford raise three-
quarters of the azaleas grown in the United States; Tricker's in
Saddle River Borough has a national reputation for water lilies
and other aquatic plants; Beuerlein in Washington Township is
one of the largest producers of carnations in the country; the
Spring Lake Poultry Farm at Wyckoff , equipped with the most
modern ultraviolet incubator equipment, hatches more than
50,000 chickens and turkeys each year; in Wyckoff also is
Henkel's Piggery, which annually produces thousands of pigs
for slaughtering; the New Jersey Mink Farm at Fair Lawn is
the largest producer of the fur-bearing animal in the East; and
the Ramapo Water Gardens in Mahwah and Willi's Water
Gardens in Rochelle Park hatch tropical fish that have a nation-
wide sale.
r
5. Industry and Commerce
BERGEN COUNTY'S industrial and commercial expansion,
which has paralleled its rapid suburban development, is the di-
rect result of its advantageous position in the metropolitan area :
From a region of farms with water- driven gristmills and saw-
mills and scattered general stores it has developed a volume of
business and industry that in 1935 gave it fifth place among
New Jersey counties. Ranking 45th among United States
counties in the number of manufacturing establishments, it
showed an increase in employment and production over 1929
as early as 1935. Of the 52,657 persons engaged in manufac-
turing, trade and commerce in 1937, 46,303 were employees
who received $55,974,000 in wages.
In addition to textiles, which lead the field, the county's
highly diversified industrial program includes assembly of motor
vehicles, production of aluminum, paper, cardboard, rubber
89
90 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
goods, ink, surgical instruments, chemicals, roofing materials,
tar, airplane accessories, machinery, sugar and other food stuffs,
many of which are exported. Supplementing these is a net-
work of retail stores, wholesale agencies, service establishments
and financial institutions.
Colonial farmers ground grain into flour with hand im-
plements, chiefly the pestle and mortar and the hand mill, two
rough-surfaced circular stones between which the grain was
placed. A stout peg in the edge of the upper stone served as a
handle which often required the strength of two persons to
turn.
The presence of numerous streams, which could supply the
necessary power for grist- and sawmills, led to the first step
away from purely home industries. Until the first decade of
the twentieth century the lazy paddle of a mill wheel was a
familiar sound in rural river areas. Most of these sawmills
operated until well into the nineteenth century, when they were
gradually replaced by a variety of textile mills.
The best remembered of the water-driven grist- and saw-
mills in the county was the old Red Mill of "King Jacob"
Zabriskie on the Saddle River in what is now the Arcola section
of Paramus. Believed to have been constructed about 1745, it
lent its name to the entire neighborhood, known for many years
as Red Mills. The structure passed through many hands and
about midway in the nineteenth century was converted into a
woolen mill. It was torn down in 1905, and today the site is
marked by a dilapidated water tower and wheel. One of the
mills to survive longest was the Bogert Mill, torn down in 1920
to make room for the Oradell Reservoir. The present Mac-
Kenzie Mill at Franklin Lakes, built about 150 years ago, is be-
lieved to be the oldest still operating. In addition to flour and
lumber it also produces cider.
Many other mills were working by the time of the Revolu-
tion. Among the largest were the Zabriskie gristmill at the
junction of the Passaic and Saddle rivers in Garfield, the Post
Mill on Indian Brook, also in Garfield, and the Bogert Mill in
Westwood. At Lodi stood the grist- and sawmill of Henry
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 91
Hopper and Abraham Zabriskie, while at New Milford was a
large sawmill which became successively a tannery, a bleachery,
a button factory, a woolen mill and finally, in 1830, a gristmill
operated by Jacob Van Buskirk. Other mills were at Oradell,
Hackensack, Little Ferry, Bogota, Saddle River, Midland Park,
River Edge and Harrington Park.
Accidental discovery about 1719 of a vein of copper on the
estate of Arent Schuyler in what is now North Arlington led
to the first venture into heavy industry. The English ban on
American manufacturing was then in effect, and the crude ore
was sent to Holland and England to be made into finished prod-
ucts. In 1755 the first steam engine imported into the country
was set up to pump water out of the mine. The smelter and
metal refinery erected across the river in Belleville in 1789 were
fed from the vein of copper until it gave out about 1810. Sev-
eral subsequent attempts to resume operations ended in failure.
In 1899 the Arlington Copper Company, capitalized at $2,500,-
000, was organized, but four years later its plant was dis-
mantled without having produced a pound of copper.
On the Palisades at Fort Lee the greenish color of the trap-
rock seemed to indicate the presence of gold. The early settlers,
hopefully expectant, found only pyrites and green carbonate
of copper.
There were numerous brownstone quarries throughout the
area to supply stone for the homes of settlers. Quarry sites were
frequently changed in order to stay as close as possible to points
of settlement.
Wampum, frequently used as a medium of exchange not
only with the Indians but among the settlers themselves, was
responsible for the establishment in 1775 of a wampum factory
at what is now Park Ridge. From John Campbell, who set up
the factory in an abandoned mill, the business descended through
four generations of the family. Early success necessitated the
building of more suitable quarters in a building nearby, pop-
ularly called "The Mint."
Under John and Abraham Campbell, the founder's sons, the
business prospered. Shells from South American and West In-
92 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
dian beaches were converted into strings of beads, pieces of pipe
and ornaments to be used as money in trading with the Indians
of the West. Whenever a new shipment of shells arrived, the
Campbells gave a clam feast to which all the neighbors were
invited.
Improved techniques instituted under the third generation
of Campbells resulted in greater and more attractive output;
"moons," "pipes" and strings of beads, sold by the Campbells
to fur traders following the Indian migration to the West, helped
to lay the foundation for the great Astor fortune.
For many years the factory exceeded in production and dis-
tribution any industry in the county. In the late 1870's busi-
ness dwindled, and in 1889 the factory was shut down. All
trace of the old plant has disappeared; the machine for boring
shells, invented by James Campbell more than a hundred years
ago, has been presented to the Bergen County Historical Society.
Efforts of the new Americans to achieve economic as well
as political independence was typified by the establishment in
1787 of a cotton mill at Waldwick by John Rosencrantz, a
pioneer in textile manufacturing. The mill operated success-
fully for more than a century.
The industrial expansion which swept the country early in
the nineteenth century, although by no means challenging the
agricultural status of the county, brought an influx of manu-
facturing enterprises. Among these was the wool -car ding mill
of Cornelius Wortendyke, established in 1812 at what is now
Midland Park. Progenitor of a family that was to make manu-
facturing history in Bergen County, Wortendyke had settled
in Franklin Township in 1796 and immediately begun experi-
menting with the manufacture of woolens in his farm home.
He named the community Newton, later changed to Worten-
dyke. In 1832 his son Abraham converted the mill into a
cotton factory.
In 1826 Rutan and Bensen moved their cotton-spinning
plant from Paterson to the old John Post gristmill in Garfield.
Three years later they returned to Paterson. The Post mill then
enjoyed another brief tenure as a gristmill, and in 1831 fur-
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 93
nished feed for the horses and mules used in construction of the
Paterson and Hudson River Railroad. About 1829 Van Winkle
and Park began the manufacture of cotton yarns and warps at
the Stone Mill in Midland Park, built several years previously
by Abraham Van Riper.
This period saw the opening of the pottery-baking shop of
George W. Wolfskeil at Liberty Pole (Englewood), where
kitchen utensils were made; a gunpowder mill on the Ramapo
River and an applejack distillery in the upper Saddle River
section.
Jersey City, part of the county until 1840, attracted in-
dustries at an early date because of its ideal situation along the
Hudson River. In the 1820's factories began manufacturing
glass, porcelain ware and tobacco products. Largest was the
glass plant known as the Jersey Company, which in 1829 already
employed 100 workers.
New Jersey was one of the leading iron producing centers
until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century, and Bergen
County had several forges manufacturing iron wares from ores
mined in the Ramapo Mountains. Not all were successful.
Among the largest was the Clinton "Works in Pompton Town-
ship, then part of Bergen. Advertised for sale in the Paterson
Intelligencer of May 20, 1829, the property was described thus:
On the premises are a Forge and 2 fires, where are made about
100 tons of iron annually; Saw mill and Smith shop; and houses suffi-
cient for manager and workmen, all built since 1825. The works are
situated on a never failing stream, with 200 feet fall, and 6 distinct
falls within one quarter of a mile, where the same water can be used
one from the other. The water power is sufficient to drive 100,000
spindles, for manufacturing cotton and wool, or can be applied to any
kind manufactory.
Manufacturing increased during the 1830's, particularly in
textiles. In 1831 James Rennie, an enterprising Scot, moved
his handkerchief plant to a mill in Lodi leased from Henry
Hopper. The building was destroyed by fire in 1833 and Rennie
failed. His brother Robert, foreman of the plant, then erected
new mills and imported Scottish and English craftsmen to print
94 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
calicoes. The venture proved highly successful, and Rennie's
annual payroll was said to approximate $50,000. He maintained
a company store where employees traded and received liberal
credit during hard times. He also established a men's club for
his workers and provided a billiard room and a circulating
library. The firm later became the Lodi Manufacturing Com-
pany, in which Rennie retained the controlling interest.
In March 1832 the Dundee Manufacturing Company was
incorporated with the aim of establishing an industrial center
at Garfield. Considerable property was bought, including river
frontage for the erection of docks. But the plan never ma-
terialized, and two years later the company moved to the other
side of the river.
A survey of business and industry in Gordon's Gazetteer
of 1834 lists
75 merchants, 7 fisheries, 84 run of stones for grinding grain, 16 cotton
factories, 5 woolen factories, 10 carding machines, 4 furnaces and 16
forges, 93 saw mills, 3 paper mills, 4 fulling mills, 127 tan vats, 13
distilleries, 1 flint glass, and 1 china manufactory, both extensive; 1
printing, dyeing" and bleaching establishment.
Several new enterprises appeared later, among them a paper
mill established at Waldwick in 1837 by John White and a fac-
tory for making light carriages and sleighs started at Hacken-
sack the following year by W. H. Berry. Both remained in
business for more than half a century.
The production of lumber had led to an active shipping
trade on the Hackensack. Docks were built at River Edge,
which had an extensive logging camp. Piraguas, a Spanish type
of dugout canoe, were the first commercial craft to ply the
rivers. These were later replaced by small schooners known as
"windjammers." Sails were made at River Edge by William
Blair. After the 1830's the "windjammers" gave way to steam-
boats.
Retail trade was based on general stores, with perhaps an
occasional trip to the larger establishments in Newark and
New York. Most prominent was the Old Trading Post on Pas-
cack Road at Mill Brook Bridge, Park Ridge, built in 1765 by
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 95
Col. Cornelius Eckerson, who also ran a distillery. Much of the
store's income came from the wampum produced by the Camp-
bell factory, which it sold to Indian traders for cash. Since
John Jacob Astor and his agents frequently bought wampum
here, the store also became known as Astor's Trading Post.
Dan Van Winkle's general store in Station Square, Ruther-
ford, said to be the first in South Bergen, was operated by Van
Winkle in the 1860's. Others were those of John H. Stevens,
Closter; Ed Earle, Hackensack; Samuel De Groot, Ridgefield;
and C. D. Shor, Leonia. In 1939 there were three general stores
with total annual sales of $64,000.
With the exception of the Washington Bank, established in
1825 at the Mansion House, Hackensack, and closed in 1833,
there were no banks operating in the present confines of the
county until after 1850. Banking, like industry, displayed an
early preference for the section that is now Hudson County.
The first bank was established at Powles Hook, now Jersey City,
in November 1804. It was a branch of the Newark Banking
and Insurance Company, New Jersey's first bank, and was
known as the Jersey Bank. When a tax of one-half of one per-
cent was levied on its capital in 1810 the branch closed.
On February 6, 1818, another bank was established on the
site of the former one. This lasted until 1826, when three heavy
runs forced it to suspend. Meanwhile, at Hoboken the New
Jersey Manufacturing and Banking Company had been estab-
lished in 1823 and the Weehawk Banking Company a year later.
It was the latter that moved to Hackensack as the Washington
Bank.
The Panic of 1837 took a heavy toll of industry. News-
papers of the time are replete with notices of mills offered for
sale. In addition, the formation of Passaic County in 1837 and
Hudson in 1840 reduced Bergen County's population and in-
dustry. Figures for 1840 appearing in Barber and Howe's His-
torical Collections of New Jersey reveal a sharp decline in manu-
facturing. The county now was credited with but 53 saw-
mills, 41 gristmills and 6 cotton factories. There were also 5
paper mills and one printing and dyeing establishment. Franklin
96 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
and Lodi townships were the leading industrial centers, while
New Barbadoes (Hackensack and adjacent territory) was im-
portant commercially, since "six vessels are constantly plying
between here and New York; a considerable lumber trade is
carried on and large quantities of pine wood for steamboats are
brought from Virginia."
About 1840 William A. Packer of Saddle River erected a
sawmill and installed machinery for making baskets to pack
the abundant crops of fruits and berries. The business pros-
pered, and before long Packer was the nation's leading manu-
facturer of baskets. Others soon entered the field, chief among
them Martin Smith, one of Packer's employees, who started a
factory near the Packer plant during the 1850's. Smith soon
quit. After more than 40 years of successful operation, during
which Saddle River was the basketmaking center of the United
States, Packer changed to the manufacture of farm implements.
During the mid-nineteenth century textile manufacturing,
dyeing and bleaching mills began to spring up. In 1850 a large
cotton bleachery was established at Carlton Hill, East Ruther-
ford. It soon closed and remained idle until it was purchased
in 1885 by William MacKenzie. Under his management the
plant, known as the Standard Bleachery, became one of the
largest of its kind in the country, employing at capacity about
1,000 persons. In 1853 George Graham bought the old Red
Mill on Saddle River, spinning carpet yarn and manufacturing
blankets. During the Civil War he did a large business in army
blankets. At nearby Ridgewood, in 1853, George Morrow and
Son began the successful manufacture of woolen goods, while
J. J. Zabriskie started a cotton mill which six years later was
destroyed by fire. Textile plants also appeared in Lodi, Gar-
field and Midland Park.
The nation-wide depression of 1857 left Ber gen's larger
enterprises comparatively unscathed. Two years before, the
enterprising Robert Rennie, who later was instrumental in hav-
ing a railroad spur built to connect Lodi with the New Jersey
Midland Railroad, had erected the Lodi Chemical Works, one of
the largest of its kind in the United States. This plant weathered
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 97
the financial storm, as did his calico print factory, which was
rebuilt and extended. The print works failed during the finan-
cial crisis of 1873, however, and two years later Rennie sold his
interest for $350,000 to Burns and Smith, who resumed the
business of bleaching and dyeing. Rennie meanwhile continued
to operate his chemical works successfully.
The Pater son Daily Guardian of December 4, 1857, report-
ing on the mill of C. A. Wortendyke at Godwinville, said "there
has been no slack time here and all hands have been constantly
employed. . . . Mr. Wortendyke has not taken advantage of
the hard times to decrease the wages of his hands." The account
continues:
No ladies' parlor presents a cleaner appearance or more cheerful
company. The light, ventilation and convenience of everything is
perfect. As much regard is paid to every delicate attention as would
be bestowed in a young ladies' boarding school.
That the mill prospered through lean years was due in
large measure to the inventive genius of Cornelius A. Worten-
dyke, who had taken charge at the death of his father, Abraham,
in 1857. The continuous lampwick which he had patented in
1852 found a ready market, and orders kept flowing it. The
Weekly Press called the invention "almost as important as the
discovery of kerosene."
The survival of Demarest's woolen mill at Saddle River
typified the simplicity of industrial organization. According
to the Daily Guardian of January 29, 1858, the mill kept going
by having "the operatives work some days and then peddle till
they sold the yarn they had made."
Smaller industrial enterprises were scattered through the
county. At Schraalenburgh stood the sawmill and chair factory
of Tunis R. Cooper, giving employment to about 20 persons.
At Hackensack were about eight small carriage-making firms
and the iron foundry of the Hunton family, makers of stove
castings. New Milford had the large gristmill of Jacob Van
Buskirk, and nearby were the Van Riper cotton mill and the
Voorhis grist- and sawmill.
Union Township, comprising the extreme southern portion
98 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
of Bergen County between the Passaic and Hackensack rivers,
was the center of a flourishing shipbuilding business, with at
least five yards active: those of Stephen Kingsland, Henry and
Abraham Brown, Cornelius and C. C. Joralemon, John Mere-
miah and Frederick Yereance.
Newly formed banking ventures, however, met with severe
reverses. The Bergen County Bank, first banking attempt since
the demise of the "Washington Bank in 1833, was organized in
Hackensack in 1855. Two years later it was forced to close.
Threats from outraged depositors, gathered about the premises,
were met with the announcement on the following day that if
"all persons to whom the bank owes a cent, either depositors or
others will hold their bills for a short time, they will be re-
deemed by the treasurer, on the Bank, without loss."
When the State Security Bank was established in Hacken-
sack in 1858 the Pater son Daily Guardian of April 29 sarcastic-
ally termed it "another shin plaster concern," deploring the fact
that banks were permitted to start with very little capital. A
year later the Security Bank went the way of its predecessors,
and for more than a decade Bergen residents who still had some
confidence in banks were once more forced to do business in
New York, Jersey City or Newark.
The Civil War brought a measure of prosperity to the tex-
tile mills, but it was during the subsequent nation-wide expan-
sion that the county experienced a noticeable increase of mis-
cellaneous industries. Outstanding was the Fortenbach Watch
Case Manufacturing Company, established at Carls tadt in 1866
by John B. Fortenbach and his sons, Jacob and Joseph, who dur-
ing the war had produced bayonet tips. At one time the plant
employed about 400 artisans who turned out 800 silver watch
cases a day. In 1881 it was moved to Long Island.
Considerable excitement was created in 1865 with the an-
nouncement that oil had been discovered in the Ramapo Valley.
A company was immediately formed and drilling got under
way. The drillers failed to strike oil, but instead came across
a vein of bituminous coal. The project was abandoned, however,
but a nickel mine was worked for some time,
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 99
Another project that failed to materialize was the attempt
in 1866 to erect extensive abattoirs at Bergen Flats. That the
move proved extremely unpopular is evidenced by the Weekly
Press of April 26, 1866, which in an article captioned "Hold
your noses" predicted that "the people of Jersey City and Bergen
will have something to say about this." They probably did, for
the venture was never begun.
In 1867 the Gebhard Fritsch Wax Bleachery was estab-
lished at Carls tad t. It was purchased in 1890 by Higbee Smith
and Seth Nichols, who expanded the business considerably.
Today the Smith and Nichols plant occupies almost an entire
block and specializes in ceremonial and religious candles and
various beeswax and paraffin products.
New and varied industries continued to invade the county.
The year 1870 brought Thoma's jewelry factory at Hackensack,
the bobbin factory of the Van Riper Manufacturing Company
at Park Ridge and the nickel works of Hopkins and Dickinson
at Darlington. The jewelry firm, operated by Ernest and Philip
Thoma, had come from New York and for many years did a
nation-wide business. The bobbin mill, which employed about
40 hands, was destroyed by fire in 1875; while the nickel works,
employing about 200, later moved to Newark.
In 1871 Hackensack had six brick yards whose 150 em-
ployees produced 9,500,000 bricks yearly. A cement well-pipe
factory and a "steam ice creamery" were established there in the
same year. The Weekly Press of June 8 reported that Rennie's
print and chemical works at Lodi were going full blast; its 500
workers produced annually over 500 miles of printed goods for
a total wage of $120,000. Early in 1872 the New York Water
Proof Paper Company opened a plant at Lodi, while in the same
year a lime kiln was started at Park Ridge.
Even at this early date there was talk of reclaiming the
Hackensack meadows. The Weekly Press of May 15, 1873,
wrote:
The Erie Railroad Company owns 600 acres of meadowland west of
the Bergen Tunnel, the title of which has been transmitted to them
by Jay Gould. On this tract they intend to build workshops and to
Agriculture and Industry
Kubel
MacKENZIE MILL, FRANKLIN LAKES, 150 YEARS OLD
Epstein
ONE OF THE COUNTY'S MODERN DAIRY FARMS
II III
Epstein
BERGEN'S FARMERS HAVE SERVED NEW YORK FOR 250 YEARS
Epstein
Epstein
ONE OF THE LARGEST CARNATION PRODUCERS IN THE COUNTRY
Kubel
A NURSERY SPECIALIZING IN AQUATIC PLANTS
MEHRHOF BRICKYARDS, LITTLE FERRY
1876 Atlas, courtesy E. L. Greenin
WORTENDYKE TEXTILE MILL, MIDLAND PARK
1876 Atlas, courtesy E. L. Greenin
Ullliil]
">iaL-.3 A,.
L'*-' ', ' *7M
Courtesy Hills Bros. Coffee Co.
HILLS BROTHERS COFFEE PLANT, EDGEWATER
INDUSTRIES LINE THE HUDSON AT EDGEWATER
Epstein
H
n
' x*-5
PACKAGING SUGAR
A FORD ON THE LINE
i
/
Courtesy National Sugar Refining Co.
Epstein
Epstein
BREWSTER CEMENT PLANT, BOGOTA
1AKING STAINED GLASS
AMB STUDIOS, TENAFLY
Rubel
ECLIPSE AVIATION PLANT, BENDIX
Fairchild, courtesy Eclipse Aviation
FAIR LAWN DIVISION, WRIGHT AERONAUTICAL WORKS
Courtesy Wright Aeronautical Corp.
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 101
reclaim by degrees the marshy section from the tunnel to the Hacken-
sack river. The Pullman Palace Car Company, it is rumored, are about
to purchase 250 lots west of the hill in Jersey City for a car factory.
Nothing came of these reports nor of many others.
The foundation of Garfield's industrial career was laid in
1873, when a nation-wide panic was temporarily interrupting
industrial progress, by the Fritsch brothers, who started the
manufacture of oils and perfumes. The business was later ac-
quired and greatly extended by the Heyden Chemical Company.
A factory for making refrigerator cars enjoyed a brief
tenure at Rochelle Park starting in 1874, while a year later the
Wortendyke mill at Midland Park was enlarged and a silk mill
added. At the same time the Hopkins and Dickinson Manufac-
turing Company of Darlington, flushed with success, erected a
larger foundry, added a lock factory and was reported "con-
templating a reading room and literary society."
Hackensack gave some promise of rivaling Paterson as a
silk center when in 1878 Givernaud Brothers started silk weav-
ing with a few hand looms. The following year they erected a
large brick building and installed over 200 looms, giving em-
ployment to about 200. The mill was subsequently enlarged
and improved and in 1910 purchased by Schwartzenbach and
Huber.
Lyndhurst was the site of an ambitious manufacturing
venture in 1880 when William H. Travers of New York ac-
quired 240 acres of land for an industrial community. He
erected a factory and leased it to McKee and Harrison, makers
of baby carriages and velocipedes. The plant, with some 100
workers, operated for several years.
At Rutherford in 1880 John J. Dupuy began the manu-
facture of sporting goods. The venture proved successful and
at its height employed almost 100 persons. In one season some
365,000 dozen baseballs were produced. The business closed
during the depression of 1893.
Brickmaking was by now a major industry, with operations
shifted from Hackensack to Little Ferry, which had extensive
beds of clay. As early as 1870 a clay bank was operated there
102 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
by De Peyster Stagg, who sold clay to potteries for $1 a ton.
Two years later the first brickyard was established on the Hack-
ensack River there by Shower and Cole, who found the venture
unprofitable and sold out to John Thume. He, in turn, was
succeeded by the three Mehrhof brothers, under whose owner-
ship the business grew rapidly.
By 1880 the extensive Mehrhof pits, kilns and yards were
turning out more than 100,000 clay bricks a day. Three other
large brickyards belonging to Smults, Handfield and Gardner
were also active. For many years schooners were employed to
transport the brick and potter's clay to New York and other
Eastern cities, and the Mehrhof firm owned one of the fastest
river schooners in the country. The schooners were later re-
placed by barges. Horse-drawn vehicles were used for over-
land transportation.
Increased demand for the fine bricks produced at Little
Ferry resulted in constant enlargement and improvement of
plants. In 1895 the combined output of the four large yards
reached 100,000,000 bricks annually, making Little Ferry the
second largest producer in the United States. Great barges
loaded with brick, floating down the Hackensack River at flood
tide, were a common sight. Brickmaking flourished until well
after the turn of the century.
Banking, meanwhile, had taken another temporary lease on
life. At Hackensack the Bergen County Savings Bank was
chartered in 1870 and began operations in 1872 in conjunction
with the Bank of Bergen County, which started with a capital
of $60,000, later increased to $100,000. Earlier, on October
23, 1871, the First National Bank of Hackensack was formed
with a capital of $100,000. Its officers were also responsible for
the establishment of the Hackensack Savings Bank on April
4, 1873.
For a while all went well, but in 1880 all four banks were
wiped out; their suspension was attributed to a real estate boom
that had begun in 1875. For at least the combined Bergen
County Savings Bank and the Bank of Bergen County, how-
ever, the real cause probably was the defalcation of cashier John
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 103
J. Berry, who, it was charged, manipulated the accounts of both
banks and squandered $70,000. At the closing of the bank a
lynching at the hands of irate depositors was narrowly averted
when police whisked Berry out of the back door of his home and
transferred him to the safety of the county jail. Berry subse-
quently pleaded guilty to embezzlement and served a five-year
term in State prison. Little loss was sustained by the smallest
depositors of the Bergen County Bank, for William Walter
Phelps, then Ambassador to Germany, personally paid all de-
posits of $50 or less.
Once more Bergen County had no banking facilities, and
though there was frequent talk during the next few years of
starting another venture, nothing was done.
The county, largely agricultural up to 1880, was just be-
ginning to awaken to its industrial potentialities. Thanks to
the Saddle River, Lodi Township had far outdistanced the rest
of the county in manufacturing interests. The largest enter-
prises were the chemical works of Robert Rennie and the dyeing
and bleaching plant of Burns and Smith. About half of Carl-
stadt's population was employed in local factories making watch
cases, shoes, cabinets and candles, while at Little Ferry hundreds
were at work in the brickyards.
New Barbadoes (Hackensack) at this time was described
as "a place of pleasant homes and beautiful abodes" which was
just "beginning to bestir itself in industrial and manufacturing
pursuits." Foremost were Thoma's jewelry factory and the
silk mill of Givernaud Brothers. Saddle River Township had
the cardigan jacket factory of Oblenis and Bogert.
In addition to the Wortendyke textile mills, Franklin
Township contained the type case factory of Albert D. Bogert
on the Ramapo River and railroad shops at Wortendyke. Here
also was made much of the famous Jersey cider and "applejack."
At Closter in Harrington Township stood the folding-chair
firm of Collignon Brothers and a shade factory, while a horse-
collar company was opened in 1880. Park Ridge in Washington
Township had the bobbin plant of Albert A. Wortendyke. In
Palisade Township were the Demarest woolen mills at Cresskill
104 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
and the pepsin factory of Dr. J. J. Haring at Tenafly. A large
silk mill was operating at Englewood.
Ridgewood Township contained the woolen mills of G.
Morrow and Son, the turkish towel factory of Thomas Holt and
the Peerless Manufacturing Company, makers of soft rubber
goods. At River Edge in Midland Township stood the lumber
yard of P. V. B. Demarest, while the saw- and gristmill of
William Veldran was operating at Oradell. Ramsey in Hohokus
Township had the carriage factories of Harrison Bull and M. B.
Deyoe. In Waldwick was John White's paper mill. On Hoho-
kus Brook were the cotton mills of C. A. and J. B. Wortendyke.
The township also contained a rubber works and numerous grist-
and sawmills.
Ridgefield Township, including what is now the industrial
borough of Edgewater, was already showing signs of manufac-
turing growth. There were the U. S. Dye Works and Allen's
flour mill at Leonia; the Phoenix Steam Sawing Mill and Huyler
and Rutan's Coal and Lumber Yard, largest in the county, at
Bogota; a chemical works at Edgewater, and a quarrying enter-
prise at Fort Lee.
August Semmindinger's photographic laboratories in Fort
Lee were experimenting with an enterprise which soon was to
revolutionize the habits of the country. At Leonia the manu-
facture of microscopic and telegraphic lenses was being carried
on by Mr. Wales, who, according to one historian, "was devoutly
reverencing the great Master-Mechanic of the Universe in the
minutest calculations of microscopic power in revealing many
of the minified and unseen wonders which seem beyond the
limits of human inspiration."
Industrial production between 1880 and 1890 increased by
more than 28 percent. Among the ventures begun in this
decade were the Hall Fishing Tackle Company at Garfield, Frank
O. Mittag's plant for the manufacture of carbon papers and
inked ribbons at Park Ridge, the silk mill of Post and Hengevelt
at Midland Park, Paul Richter's window shade factory at Tena-
fly, later producer of fabrics for upholstering and wall cover-
ings, and the plant of Anton Molinari for the manufacture of
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 105
surgical instruments at Wood-Ridge. Also established were the
steam carpet-cleaning works of George B. Holman and the steam
planing mill of Charles R. Soley, both at Rutherford; and the
Elterich Art Tile Stove Company, later the Maywood Art Tile
Company, at Maywood. In 1890 an English firm, the E. C.
Company, began operations in Oakland of a powder works
covering 120 acres. Later known as the American E. C. and
Schultz Powder Company, it flourished for 20 years in the man-
ufacture of white gunpowder for sporting purposes. The plant
twice weathered disastrous explosions.
The county's industrial progress was somewhat impeded
by the demise during this period of some of its oldest enter-
prises. In January 1883 the huge print works of Burns and
Smith at Lodi was destroyed by fire. When the chemical works
there met a similar fate several months later, the loss was viewed
as "a death blow to the prosperity of the village." In 1885 the
Wortendyke Silk Mill, consistently pointed to as a model fac-
tory, was forced by unfavorable market conditions to suspend.
Only three years previously the Wortendykes had instituted a
much-discussed innovation when they furnished each weaver
with a stool "upon which to sit whenever so inclined."
In the last decade of the century rapid suburban develop-
ment and population growth were accompanied by an influx of
diversified industries and a successful revival of banking. In
1891 John A. Post established a silk-throwing mill at Waldwick,
and three years later the Wilkens brothers opened a factory at
Oakland for the processing of hair for brushes and upholstery,
Bogota got its start as a paper manufacturing center in 1895
when the Bogota Paper Company was founded by Rogers and
Company. That same year Charles Link started at Wood-Ridge
a factory where sheepskins were chemically treated. In 1897
the American Pegamoid Company began the manufacture of
paper materials and paper substitutes at a plant near Waldwick,
while in the following year the Crazin Manufacturing Company
acquired the former Fortenbach mill at Carlstadt and produced
japanned cloth, hatters' glaze and other specialties. At about
the same time the Brookdale Bleachery commenced operations at
106 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Waldwick, and Krone Brothers began turning out educational
books and school stationery at Hackensack, where, shortly after-
wards, the large William Campbell Wall Paper Company located.
The county also had three sulphur factories.
In 1899, according to census reports, there were 478 in-
dustrial establishments, 5,275 workers whose wages totaled
$2,276,233 and a yearly output valued at $10,258,432.
After more than eight bankless years, the Hackensack Bank
was chartered in July 1889 with David A. Pell as president. A
year later a group of Englewood men founded the Citizens Na-
tional Bank of Englewood, the oldest in the county today. In
May 1895 the Rutherford National Bank, and in June 1899
the First National Bank of Ridgewood were established. The
Hackensack Trust Company, first in the county, was founded
in December 1899 by a group of prominent citizens headed by
William M. Johnson.
In July 1901 the Hackensack Bank joined the National
system; it was later consolidated with the Hackensack Trust
Company. When the Palisades Trust and Guaranty Company
was established at Englewood in June 1902, bank deposits in
Bergen County institutions totaled almost $2,500,000.
The first decade of the twentieth century saw the county
steadily advancing in industry and population. Advantages
offered by the Hudson, Hackensack and Passaic rivers, trunk line
railroad service and a spreading network of modern highways
attracted manufacturer, worker and commuter. Among the
ventures begun in the years immediately following the turn of
the century were the brush factory of Philip Le Brocq at Ridge-
field Park, the American Cigar Box Company at Hillsdale, Gus-
tav Klinge's Rochelle Park Velvet Company, the rat trap factory
of C. M. Olmstead at Teterboro (Bendix), the dyeing plant of
Barret, Palmer and Heal at Englewood, the American Brake
Shoe and Foundry Company at Mahwah and the Lowe Paper
Company at Ridgefield.
By 1910, 11,441 persons were employed in manufacturing.
Garfield was the leading industrial center with 2 5 establishments,
2,530 employees receiving wages which totaled $1,080,245 an-
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 107
nually and a yearly production valued at $8,893,710. Worsted
goods, paper and wood pulp were its chief products. The
Hackensack area led in the production of silk goods and con-
tained a total of 46 plants, with 738 wage earners receiving
$360,170 and products valued at $1,977,966.
A steady industrial growth in the decade 1910-20, particu-
larly in silk dyeing and in the manufacture of worsted goods,
attracted less attention to the county than the sensational activi-
ties of the young motion picture industry. Ideal for the filming
of oudoor action scenes and easily accessible by ferry from New
York where most of the early studios were situated, the Palisades
at Fort Lee proved a popular locale. In 1907 Edwin S. Porter,
producer of The Great Train Robbery, first story picture ever
made, filmed a movie entitled Rescued from an Eagle's Nest,
using the rugged Palisades for his background shots. Playing
the insignificant part of a mountaineer in this picture was David
Wark Griffith, later one of the greatest figures in motion pic-
tures.
In 1908 Griffith, in his first effort as a director, filmed a
one-reeler called The Adventures of Dolly. Long shots were
filmed in and around Fort Lee; close-ups were made in New
York studios. In the same year Michael Sinnott, better known
as Mack Sennett, made his first big picture, The Curtain Pole,
at Fort Lee. In April 1909, according to schedule books of the
old Biograph Company, Mary Pickford made her screen debut
at Fort Lee in The Violin Maker of Cremona. Several weeks
later Fort Lee was used for the exterior scenes of A Lonely
Villa. During this period several studios were producing west-
ern thrillers in the vicinity, and the sight of flannel-shirted
"cowboys" and synthetic "Indians" crossing the Fort Lee ferry
to the "Wilds of Jersey" carrying dinner pails was common.
Foremost was the Kalem Company, which produced a series of
westerns at Coytesville and Englewood Cliffs with Alice Joyce
as the woman star.
The first permanent studio at Fort Lee was erected in 1910
by the Eclair Film Company, of which Jules E. Brulatour was
manager. One of its first great successes was Camille, starring
108 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Sarah Bernhardt. Shortly afterward the Bison Life Motion
Pictures Company established the Triangle Studios, where the
famous Mack Sennett, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Ben Turpin
comedies were produced. Samuel Goldwyn, William Fox and
Carl Laemmle were among other pioneers who opened studios at
Fort Lee and its environs. Ridgefield Park was the site of the
Lincoln Studios, which produced the famous series of Abraham
Lincoln pictures with Benjamin Chapin in the title role.
Though Biograph had no studio at Fort Lee, it made exten-
sive use of the Palisades and the surrounding area for outdoor
scenes. It also maintained a laboratory at Fort Lee for process-
ing film.
For several years Fort Lee enjoyed prosperity as the center
of the industry. Studios gave employment to hundreds of resi-
dents as prop men, technicians and extras. Local livery stables
enjoyed a flourishing trade, furnishing "mustangs" and fre-
quently supplying doubles for riding stunts. The large-scale
influx of actors, directors and others connected with pictures
had a welcome effect on business. Among those familiar to
residents were such stars as Mary Pickford, Alice Brady, Clara
Kimball Young, Ethel Barrymore, Rudolph Valentino, Lon
Chancy, Charlie Chaplin and Monte Blue. Cella's Hotel was a
favorite rendezvous for performers and was used as quarters for
rehearsal, make-up and occasionally as setting for a scene.
In 1915, when the industry at Fort Lee reached its height,
Carl Laemmle opened new and more spacious Universal Studios.
At the same time the Eclair Studio was acquired by William Fox,
who presented, among others, Evelyn Nesbit and Theda Bara.
After leaving Eclair, Jules Brulatour built the Peerless Studios,
which were used for a time by the Selznick Company. He later
sold the studios to the World Film Company of William Brady,
who produced many pictures here starring his wife, Grace
George, and his daughter, Alice Brady. Brulatour's next ven-
ture was construction of the Paragon Studios, which he leased
to Famous Players-Lasky.
Fort Lee could not withstand the rival attraction of Cali-
fornia, which offered perpetual warmth and sunshine. The in-
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 109
dustry declined sharply during the World War, although several
studios continued to operate after the war. The last important
picture filmed there was released in 1923 and featured Richard
Barthelmess and Ina Claire. During the 1930's Fort Lee, with
few reminders of its past glories except ruins of old studios, a
film warehouse and a film printing and processing plant, has
been the location for several "B" pictures and some foreign lan-
guage and religious productions.
In addition to spurring industry, the World War period
also provided residents of the Kingsland section of Lyndhurst
with some uneasy moments. When the Canadian Car and
Foundry Company began erection in 1915 of a plant to make
and store munitions for the Russian Government, residents pro-
tested. The company replied to the satisfaction of authorities
that "there will be nothing dangerous about the plant. Muni-
tion parts will be stored there, nothing in the explosive line."
In January 1917, amid strong hints of sabotage, fire and ex-
plosions lasting several hours converted Kingsland into a ver-
itable battlefield, destroying the huge plant and driving terror-
stricken people from their homes. A guard was later killed by
a buried shell. The company attempted to rebuild the plant
but was halted by injunction proceedings. The property was
subsequently acquired by the Netro Chemical Company, which
for a while manufactured picric acid for use in hand grenades.
When the government in 1918 took over plants owned by
aliens, several in Bergen County were included, among them the
large Garfield Worsted Mills, the Forstmann and Huffman
plant and the Heyden Chemical Works at Garfield, second larg-
est of its kind in the United States.
Industrial gains made during the war were consolidated and
augmented in the years following. A new industry appeared in
1919 when the Wittemann and Lewis Aircraft Company erected
factories at Teterboro (Bendix). Four years later the enter-
prise was purchased by Anthony Fokker, leading Dutch air-
plane designer, who developed and expanded the factory and
the 800-acre airport.
Census figures for 1920 listed 493 manufacturing estab-
110 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
lishments, 22,262 employees who received $26,081,256 annually
in wages, and a yearly output valued at $233,188,728. Gar-
field's 56 industrial firms, including several large worsted mills,
gave employment to 5,025 persons who were paid $5,313,000.
Edgewater's dozen large industries devoted to sugar refining,
corn products, chemicals, tar roofing and oils employed thou-
sands more. Over 2,000 worked at the United Piece Dye Works
at Lodi, while Bogota was already established as a paper-manu-
facturing center with four large firms. Other large plants in-
cluded the National Silk Dyeing Company in East Paterson; the
Scharg Brothers silk mill in Carlstadt; Becton, Dickinson and
Company, makers of surgical instruments, and Fuchs and Land,
manufacturers of lithographing supplies, at East Rutherford;
the Schwartzenbach and Huber silk mill and the Campbell Wall
Paper Company at Hackensack; the Bellman Brook Bleachery
at Fair view; the United Cork Company and Henry J. Wost-
brock's factory for the manufacture of silk embroidery flannels
at Midland Park.
Particularly atractive to industrialists was the Edgewater
water front, and bidding for property was lively. When the
Ford Motor Company in 1929 announced plans for the erec-
tion of a huge assembly plant there, the Bergen Evening Record
of May 15 termed the move "one of the most important in
dus trial expansions the county has known."
Industrial employment in the peak year 1929 was 23,775
in 406 establishments, while annual wages were $32,766,520
and the value of manufactured products $209,174,243. Though
the ensuing economic depression brought a sharp decline in man-
ufacturing, Bergen experienced swift recovery. Figures for
1933 show a decrease in employment to 21,561 in 313 industrial
firms, $21,227,170 in wages and products valued at $143,422,-
575. Two years later, however, Bergen County surpassed 1929
in both employment and production, although wages were
lower. Employment had risen to 28,329 in 499 plants with
wages of $29,113,152 and the value of products placed at $223, -
235,345. The Biennial Census of Manufactures of 1937 shows
a slight decline in wage earners with 27,182 in 496 establish-
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 111
ments, but records substantial increases in annual wages and
value of products with $31,961,223 and $264,043,489 respec-
tively.
Figures for wholesale distribution show an even more de-
cided upward trend. In 1929 Bergen County had 57 wholesale
establishments with 454 employees, $14,668,269 net sales and a
payroll of$902,511. By 1939 the number of establishments had
risen to 138 with 1,202 employees, $46,550,000 in sales and a
payroll of $2,332,000.
Retail distribution, however, has registered gains only in
number of stores and employment. Figures for 1929 show
4,628 stores, 8,215 employees, $139,990,000 in sales and a pay-
roll of $13,782,000. In 1939 there were 5,541 stores, 11,102
employees, $129,158,000 in sales and a payroll of $12,888,000.
Hackensack led with 611 stores and $27,684,000 in sales, fol-
lowed by Englewood with 309 and $11,206,000 respectively;
Ridgewood, 158 and $6,550,000; Rutherford, 173 and $6,354,-
000; Teaneck, 202 and $6,233,000; and Garfield, 455 and
$5,558,000.
In 1939 there were, among these, 2,075 food stores having
annual sales of $45,809,000. Leading the county were Garfield
with 235 stores and $2,058,000 in sales; Hackensack with 176
and $8,028,000; Teaneck, 77 and $3,489,000; Englewood, 99
and $2,832,000; and Ridgewood, 50 and $2,122,000.
Recently there has been an influx of supermarkets, estab-
lished in an effort to bring distribution costs down to parallel
lower raw material prices. The first in Bergen County was
established in Hackensack in 1935 by Harry C. Harper. It
was sold six months later to Frank Packard and Louis Bamberger,
who enlarged and improved it. Today the Packard-Bamberger
supermarket is claimed to be the largest in the East.
Other supermarkets, both chain and independent, followed,
and the number is still growing. The majority are clustered
in Hackensack and are widely patronized. Contributing to their
success is the fact that the county is composed of many small
towns with few large food stores. Added to this is the multi-
tude of good roads and the large number of car owners. It is
112 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
generally believed, however, that the Hackensack field is be-
coming overcrowded.
The 1,771 service establishments, such as garages, funeral
parlors and barber, beauty, tailor and shoe repair shops, had
receipts of $8,203,000 in 1939.
Since the turn of the century banking in Bergen County
has matched strides with suburban development. There were
but five banks in the entire county in 1903 when the Peoples
Bank, later the Peoples National Bank, was founded at Hacken-
sack by a group headed by William A. Linn. In 1916 its officers
launched the Alliance Trust and Guaranty Company, and two
years later both banks were consolidated into the Peoples Trust
and Guaranty Company, currently the largest banking institu-
tion in the county. Today, under the title of Peoples Trust
Company of Bergen County, it operates as separate offices the
Westwood Trust Company, the Bank of Hasbrouck Heights, the
Teaneck National Bank, the First National Bank in Lodi and
the State Bank of Hackensack. Including these, the county
today has 42 banking institutions with deposits aggregating over
$124,000,000". Of the 20 additional banks chartered since 1906,
a number were merged while others failed to survive the depres-
sion. Most of these appeared during the prosperous twenties,
and seven, the largest number in any one year, were chartered
in 1921. The seven new banks organized since the 1929 crash
are all in operation.
In spite of curtailment during the last decade the textile
industry and its allied branches leads the county's varied in-
dustries, according to 1938 statistics of the State Department of
Labor. Most of the firms are concentrated around the Passaic
River at Garfield, Lodi and East Paterson. Other important
Garfield products are waxed paper, packaging and printing ma-
chinery, chemicals, folding paper cartons, electrical implements
and clothing.
Edgewater, at the foot of the towering Palisades, a sleepy
fishing village known as Undercliff 50 years ago, today has
many of the county's leading industrial plants, including units
of the Ford Motor Company, the Aluminum Company of Amer-
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 113
ica, the National Sugar Refining Company, the Archer Daniels
Midland Company, which operates the world's largest linseed
oil factories, and the Corn Products Refining Company. Other
plants clustered along the Hudson River produce coal tar, chem-
ical and petroleum products and coffee.
Every spring for six or seven weeks the shad-fishing indus-
try gives employment to about 100 persons. Shad poles and
nets are spread in the Hudson River from the George Washing-
ton Bridge to Hudson County, and daily hauls are prepared and
shipped to market. During the 1939 season Hitler was indi-
rectly responsible for saving the industry. When a large part
of the United States fleet anchored in the Hudson for the New
York World's Fair, fishermen could not set their nets. The
international complications accompanying invasion of Czecho-
slovakia brought orders for the ships to sail to the Pacific as a
precaution, and fishing could go on. The 1940 season was the
best for many years; the reason, experts said, was the late thaw.
The Bendix Aviation Corporation at Bendix, formerly
Teterboro, employs more than 3,300 men with the number
increasing steadily in the huge brick and glass factory known
as the Pioneer Eclipse Aviation Division of Bendix. Airplane
accessories fabricated include engine starters, generators, radio
dynamotors, instrument vacuum pumps, mechanical de-icers,
synchroscopes, hydraulic pumps and numerous other parts. The
plant of Air Associates Inc., costing $500,000, began operations
in Bendix in October 1940. Rapid expansion of aviation
brought the Wright Aeronautical Corporation to the county
in 1940, when it established a crankshaft division at Fair Lawn.
East Rutherford is the center of a host of diversified in-
dustries. Largest is Becton, Dickinson and Company, makers
of thermometers and hypodermic syringes and needles. The
Flintkote Company is world renowned for its asphalt roofing
and shingles; it has a branch in Ridgefield Park. Other East
Rutherford industries are the bleaching and printing of cotton
goods, dyeing and finishing of silk, printing ink and machinery,
brassieres and corsets, ladies' apparel, buttons, chemicals, sun-
glasses, bottle caps and electrical specialties.
114 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Outstanding among Carlstadt's industries is the Columbia
Protektosite Company, makers of sunglasses and goggles. Other
products manufactured here include silk, chemicals, ladies' wear,
candles, sweaters, surgical dressings and artists' brushes.
The seat of the paper board industry for which the county
is famous is at Bogota, with three large plants. There are also
two plants at Ridgefield and one at Ridgefield Park, where Otto
Conrad, who with six or seven employees produces annually
almost 500,000 reeds for musical instruments, is said to have
the largest business of its kind in the country.
Hackensack's largest plants produce slippers, brassieres and
neckwear. Little Ferry has the Hackensack Brick Company.
Midland Park contains the Garden State Hosiery Company.
Large bleacheries are at Fairview, Englewood and Ho-Ho-Kus.
The Lyndhurst factory of the Leslie Company produces
pressure-reducing valves, pump governors, horns and engine
specialties. The company has a monopoly of United States Navy
business and has furnished whistles for steamships, railroads
and factories all over the world. At Kingsland in Lyndhurst
the D. L. and W. Railroad has a large repair shop for locomo-
tives and passenger cars.
Other important industrial plants in Bergen County are:
Consolidated Film Industries, Fort Lee, printing and developing
of motion pictures; American Brake Shoe and Foundry Com-
pany, Mahwah; Maywood and Citro Chemical Works, May-
wood; Vogue Needlecraft Company, Waldwick, cotton and
linen novelties; and Mittag and Volger, Park Ridge, carbon
paper, inks and typewriter supplies. Approximately 3 5 printing
firms employ more than 200 printers and allied tradesmen.
Promotion of business and industry is centered in the
Bergen County Chamber of Commerce. Founded in 1927, it
has for its objective the "permanent prosperity and intelligent
development of the whole area." One of its chief aims is the
industrial development and reclamation of the Hackensack
meadows. Arrival of the Bendix Corporation has stimulated in-
terest in the meadowland area, and the Chamber is conducting
an intensive promotion campaign to bring selected industries
LABOR 115
into this area. The establishment of industrial and trade schools
is another of the projects included in the organization's aims to
facilitate industrial progress by a constant supply of skilled
workers. Some 14 municipalities are now represented in the
body, which is aiming for 100 percent municipal membership.
The county has a Bergen County Chapter, American In-
stitute of Banking, and a Bergen County Bankers Association.
Labor
Until recently large masses of workers were comparatively
unknown in Bergen County. Experience in labor organization
was gained chiefly with small craft unions or as the backwash
of disputes in surrounding industrial centers. With the con-
centration of large industries, however, industrial unionism
appeared, spurred in recent years by Federal labor legislation.
Today Bergen County has a growing variety of craft and in-
dustrial unions, A. F. of L., C. I. O. and independent.
In the early days the small, scattered factories afforded little
opportunity or need for labor organization. Grievances, if any,
were a matter for direct settlement between employer and
worker.
Uninterrupted industrial harmony prevailed during the
long life of the Lodi Print Works of Robert Rennie and the
Wortendyke textile mills at Midland Park, pioneer manufactur-
ing enterprises. Both of these firms were reputedly generous
in treatment of their employees.
The first protracted labor disputes of record occurred dur-
ing construction of the Bergen Tunnel, begun in 1856 and com-
pleted several years later. Work was several times halted by
the several hundred workers, who were dissatisfied with the
dollar a day rate and the irregularities in payment.
A hint of a labor dispute is contained in the Weekly Press
of July 29, 1875, in which George Van Riper, proprietor of a
bobbin factory at Park Ridge, advertises for women workers
because "he can't get the men to do anything." During the
116 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
same period employees of the N. J. and N. Y. Railroad, unpaid
for months, staged several walkouts.
Although many large industries were operating during the
last two decades of the nineteenth century, railroads were the
center of most labor disputes. Particularly beset by difficulties
was the construction work of the Bergen County short cut of
the Erie Railroad. Chief grievance of the workers was the
uncertain periods between payments. On one occasion, in De-
cember 1880, about 400 German, Italian and Swedish workers
threatened to tear up the main line rails and burn the super-
intendent's house if their pay, long overdue, was not forth-
coming. They were promptly paid.
Always a vexing problem, child labor was sharply reduced
by the enactment of compulsory school attendance laws.
The first signs of effective and permanent labor organiza-
tion occurred in 1891 when Hackensack building trade workers
banded together in an effort to regulate working hours and
wages. With Bergen County then in the throes of a home-
building boom, contractors were quick to accede to their de-
mands, chief -of which was the nine-hour day. On February 3,
1891, the first union charter in Bergen County was issued by the
American Federation of Labor to Hackensack Local 265, a car-
penters union. This local later purchased the building on Bergen
Street, Hackensack, now known as Carpenters Hall, which is
the general meeting place of all building trades unions. Follow-
ing this example, carpenters in nine other communities also
formed unions. A Carpenters and Joiners District Council,
chartered by the A. F. of L. in 1915, coordinates their activities.
In the 1890's the Garfield Clothing Company was threat-
ened with a serious labor uprising. The firm acquired 75 homes
and attracted New York craftsmen by offers of free transporta-
tion and steady employment, but it closed after a brief period
of activity, leaving the workers destitute. Unable to gain satis-
faction from the company, they surrounded the home of the
manager and kept him a virtual prisoner. "The mob," wrote
the Weekly Press of January 10, 1895, "was formidably armed
and one man carried a rope," It was not until numerous arrests
LABOR 117
were made that the workers relinquished the struggle for redress.
Periodic industrial disputes followed, some as offshoots of
difficulties in neighboring centers, others as spontaneous walk-
outs without benefit of organization. As early as 1894 an "In-
dustrial Army of North Hudson County strikers and sym-
pathizers" marched into Hackensack in an unsuccesful attempt
to shut down the large Givernaud Silk Mill. In 1902 most of
the workers walked out in sympathy with the Paterson silk
strikers, while in December 1909 all 350 employees struck
against the weekly wage of $4 to $5. The deadlock lasted sev-
eral months, when the plant was bought by Schwartzenbach and
Huber.
Lodi in 1902 was the scene of a bitter five- week strike of
dye house employees. Trouble again flared up in September
1905 when some 1,300 dye workers left their jobs, demanding
an increase of 50 cents per 5 5 -hour week. A compromise was
effected after two weeks of idleness. In 1904 a brief building
trades stoppage was provoked in Hackensack by the decision
of the Master Builders Association to institute an open shop.
The year 1912 witnessed strikes at the Campbell Wall Paper
factory in Hackensack, the railroad yards of the New York,
Susquehanna and Western at Edgewater and the Forstmann and
Huffman plant at Garfield.
Subsequent labor disputes included the trolley strike in
1919, the walkout of Garfield woolen workers the same year and
the milk drivers' strike in Hackensack in 1921. Most serious
was the prolonged textile strike of 1926 which closed the woolen
plants of Garfield and the dye houses of Lodi, leaving thousands
idle. An outgrowth of the Passaic textile strike led by Albert
Weisbord, it lasted many months and left deep scars on the en-
tire industry. In the course of the shutdown the Garfield City
Council went on record "approving the demands of the strikers
to their employers and recommending financial and moral aid
to the strike fund by the citizens." The Paterson silk and dye
strikes of 1933 which gave birth to the present Dyers Union
also involved Bergen.
During the past decade unionization in Bergen County
118 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
has been greatly accelerated, particularly in the Edgewater in-
dustrial zone. Largely responsible was the keen rivalry between
the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the American Fed-
eration of Labor, both of which have greatly increased their
membership. Stimulus was also provided by the enactment of
Federal legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery Act
and the National Labor Relations Act, and today almost all
of the large plants are organized.
The Bergen County Central Labor Union Council of the,
A. F. of L., organized early in 1940, estimates the total A. F. of
L. membership in the county at about 35,000. The Building
and Construction Trades Council, A. F. of L., has more than
3 5 units, representing laborers, carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers,
sheet metal workers, ironworkers, asbestos workers, tile layers,
painters, electricians and others. The Hod Carriers and Labor-
ers, the Bricklayers and Masons, and the Painters and Decorators
have county bodies. Workers are also organized in A. F. of L.
unions of plumbers and steamfitters; bridge, structural and orna-
mental iron workers; sheet metal workers; lathers; teamsters;
bus drivers; theatrical stage employees; paper, pulp and sulphite
workers; meat cutters; and pressmen. There are also locals of
the typographical union, but the plant of the Bergen Evening
Record is an open shop.
The main strength of the C. I. O. in Bergen County lies in
textile and clothing plants. The Federation of Dyers, Finishers,
Printers and Bleachers of the Textile Workers, Local 1232,
draws a large percentage of its 4,000 members from the United
Piece Dye Works in Lodi.
Two locals of the International Ladies Garment Workers
Union, which recently withdrew from the C. I. O., with head-
quarters in Passaic, serve Bergen County. Practically all ladies'
garment plants in Garfield, Lodi and Hackensack have a closed
shop.
Local 198 of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, C. I. O.,
also maintains headquarters in Passaic but derives a large part
of its 4,000 membership from Bergen County. The recently
formed United Neckwear Workers Union, affiliated with the
LABOR 119
Amalgamated Clothing Workers, claims many of Hackensack's
tie workers.
Another new union is the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers Union of the C. I. O. Its membership of
more than 300 in the county is spread over several electrical
manufacturing establishments.
The Eastern Bergen County Labor Industrial Council was
formed early in 1939 to include unions in the industries at Edge-
water, both C. I. O. and A. F. of L. C. I. O. locals at the Na-
tional Sugar Refining Company, Spencer-Kellogg Linseed Oil
Company, Archer Daniels Midland Linseed Oil Company and
Spotless Cleaners, and A. F. of L. locals at Lever Brothers and the
Barrett Company were represented.
6. Transportation
SINCE earliest settlement days the principal trend of travel in
Bergen County has been toward New York City. Just as the
colonists were dependent upon traffic ties with Manhattan to
market farm produce and obtain manufactured goods, so now
suburban dwellers rely upon ferries, roads, buses and railways
to provide access to their sources of income. "The position of
Bergen County in the metropolitan region," reported the Bergen
County Planning Board in January 1939 "is such that passenger
transportation becomes perhaps the most important considera-
tion in its development." And this has always been so.
As they did almost everywhere else, the water routes to
the interior provided the first paths of settlement in Bergen.
The Dutch grants bordered New York harbor, and later advances
followed Overpeck Creek and the Hackensack, Passaic and
Saddle rivers, which were natural ties between New Amsterdam
120
TRANSPORTATION 121
and the inland areas. With gradual diffusion of the population,
crude roads were cut from river settlements and landings
through the back country to the inland farms.
Colonial travelers in the early days of Bergen used chiefly
primitive dugouts or Indian bark canoes, but the proximity of
New Amsterdam to the Pavonia plantations created a demand
for a more efficient and regular means of travel. In 1661, there-
fore, William Jansen sought permission to establish a ferry at
Communipaw (Jersey City). Jansen 's monopoly, granted by
the New Netherland Council, lasted until a year later when
Bergen officials authorized Pavonia inhabitants to "ferry them-
selves over whenever they pleased."
After the English took New Netherland in 1664 the Com-
munipaw Ferry was reauthorized with Pieter Hetfelsen as the
operator. Rates were established by Governor Carteret fot
transporting passengers, corn, beer, horses, swine and sheep, but
there was no provision for vehicles. Charges, payable in wam-
pum by law, were 12 cents (six stivers of wampum) for pas-
sengers and ranged as high as $1.60 for a horse or ox. For night
passage or trips in foul weather rates were higher and depended
upon the shrewdness of the traveler, who had to bargain with
the ferryman. The ferry was commanded to be available at all
times but particularly upon three designated days of the week,
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or any other three days upon
which the regular users of the ferry should agree.
Increased trade with Manhattan and the spread of settle-
ment led to the establishment of other Colonial ferries. Samuel
Bayard opened the Weehawken Ferry in 1700, and there were
periodic attempts, none of which succeeded for long, to run a
ferry to Horsimus (Hoboken). In 1733 Archibald Kennedy
received Royal permission to establish a Pavonia ferry. The
Paulus Hook Ferry, established in 1764, became an important
link in the three-day route between New York and Philadelphia.
A decade later the Hoboken Ferry was established to connect the
farm areas of Communipaw and Bergen Point with the Corpora-
tion Pier at the Bear Market, New York. Also used by Bergen
County traders and travelers during the Colonial and Revolu-
122 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
tionary periods was Bull's Ferry at the upper end of present
Hudson County.
Meanwhile several towns along the Hackensack were pros-
pering as shipping points. The early Dutch settlers recognized
that the interior of the county could be exploited profitably
and set up the first rudimentary trade connections with New
York by way of the river. By 1750 the importance of the
Hackensack as a commercial stream was exceeded in New Jersey
only by the Raritan. Sloops, piraguas and flatboats sailed as far
north as New Milford, where Jacob and Henry Van Buskirk
operated a gristmill.
Farm produce, lumber, grain, hemp, pork, beef, butter, flax
seed and iron from the northern forges were shipped to Newark,
Perth Amboy or New York. Larger boats carried Bergen
County products as far north as Albany and as far south as
Virginia. On return trips the Hackensack ships carried rum,
molasses, sugar, pitch, tar, turpentine, wines, salt and occasion-
ally household luxuries.
One of the most active river ports was River Edge, where
Captain Stephen Lozier kept a general store and bought and sold
cord wood which was shipped to coastal cities and the South,
The northern point of the navigable channel, River Edge was
a natural shipping center. It has been said, and the story appears
credible, that at one time two large sloops were launched from
the River Edge "shipyard." The Hudson River also had ship-
ping points, one of which, and probably first in importance, was
the landing under the Palisades at Fort Lee Road. Established
in 1658 by the Burdette family, it was one of the first trading
posts on the New Jersey bank. The farmers in the western part
of the county generally used the landing at Acquackanonk
(later Passaic), founded in 1692.
The Hackensack, however, was the chief commercial rivet
of the county. All through the eighteenth and until the late
nineteenth century the Board of Freeholders granted permission
to build docks and wharves to accommodate the increasingly
numerous "Hackensack Windjammers."
Most of the Hackensack boats were commonly called
TRANSPORTATION 123
"windjammers" from the custom of "jamming" on all possible
sail to make speedy voyages. Trade was brisk and competition
among the river men was keen. Two of the best-known schoon-
ers of the 1830's were the Charity and the A. C. Zabriskie.
Another early boat to ply Hackensack waters was the Kate
Lawrence, owned by the Van Buskirks who owned the mill at
New Milford and captained by Joe Whitehead. Later it was
commanded by a Negro known as Captain "Bob." The Kate
Lawrence sank when it ran into an ice floe.
Among other Hackensack schooners were the Stewart,
which carried coal and lumber and was captained by Dick
Hawkey, "one of the most fearless men on the river"; the
Jasper, owned by the Demarests of Old Bridge; the Henry
Brown, owned by Christopher Cole; the Onward, owned by
Barney Cole, and the Two Sisters, commanded by Capt. Henry
Berry.
Ruts, Roads and Stagecoaches
Although Bergen made provisions for highway maintenance
early in its history, the road system developed slowly. The
Hackensack River, providing a natural entry into the fertile
Hackensack Valley where the first settlers lived, satisfied most
transportation needs; high cost of materials, the scarcity of labor
and capital in Colonial times and the densely wooded terrain
were additional deterrents.
The first dirt roads were probably paths originally trod by
moccasined feet to fishing haunts on river shores and widened
by later use. They ran from inland settlements to the ferries
and river landings or sometimes between two important com-
munities, like that between Communipaw and Hackensack.
By the "Concession and Agreement" of the Proprietors in
1665, John Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret granted
"convenient proportions of land for highways and for streets,
not exceeding one hundred foot in breadth in cities, towns and
villages, &c." Some routes, like the Hackensack-Communipaw
road, which by 1679 was referred to as a "fine broad wagon-
road," were widened and beaten flat by heavy use.
124 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Finally the General Assembly, in 1683, created actual road
boards for the counties of East Jersey, Bergen, Essex, Middlesex
and Monmouth. The new agencies were empowered "to view
and lay out the respective highways, bridges, passages, landings,
and ferries" within their jurisdictional boundaries and were
instructed to record a summary of their work. Members of
the Bergen County road board were Capt. John Berry, Lawrence
Andries (Van Boskirk), Enoch Michelsen (Vreeland), Hans
Dederick, Michael Smith, Henrick Van Ostrum and Clause Jan-
son Vansarmarant. When vacancies occurred on the board new
appointments were made by the General Assembly.
The law establishing the Bergen County road board decreed
that all highways, bridges and ferries were county property.
Road construction, maintenance and repair were chargeable to
every "person, town or township to whom or where they are
most serviceable.*' An act passed in 1686 authorized inhabitants
of each town to choose four or five tax assessors or commission-
ers with "power to make such rates and taxes, as well as for
making and maintaining all highways, bridges, landings and
ferry's, which are or hereafter shall be laid out, by the Com-
missioners for that end appointed, as also for defraying all other
publick charges within their respective limits." The tax levies
were subject to approval by the Justices of the Peace at their
Quarter Sessions. From these two acts emerged the present
board system of county government, successively called the
Board of Justices and Freeholders and the Board of Chosen
Freeholders.
In 1704, two years after New Jersey became a Royal
Colony, Commissioners of Highways were appointed by the
Grand Jury in each "county, precinct, district or township"
to lay out necessary cross roads and byroads. The first public
road in Bergen County under the new enactment was the Polifly
Road, laid out in March 1707, which connected Hackensack
with Rutherford. Associated with Colonial and Revolutionary
incidents, this highway was known also as the King's Highway
and as Military Road.
Road administration was more carefully executed under
TRANSPORTATION 1 2 5
Governor Hunter in 1716 when an act was passed which pro-
vided for a four-man board of Surveyors of Highways, two of
whom were selected by the Justices of Peace and two chosen by
town inhabitants annually. Provision was made also for a body
of six Surveyors to map routes between towns upon public
request or application. Road maintenance was placed under two
overseers with powers to command citizens to make repairs upon
penalty of a fine. The first important work of the new ad-
ministration was a road between English Neighborhood (Ridge-
field) and the "Whehocken Ferry" in June 1718. This road-
way later became part of the Bergen Turnpike (see below) .
Change in the county's highway system occurred in 1760
when Overseers and Surveyors were elected by direct vote of
the people. The duties of office were minutely described in an
act of the assembly and penalties were drawn for misconduct
of office. Each overseer was required to inspect his district every
three months and command town dwellers to make needed re-
pairs. An act in 1764 made inspection obligatory every two
months. Until the nineteenth century the provisions of the
Colonial road acts furnished legal interpretation for road con-
struction, and labor continued to be supplied by citizens who
were called out for that purpose. No general system of raising
road taxes to be expended "by hire" in construction work was
effected until after 1850.
The early roads were of the most rudimentary type: during
spring thaws they were muddy morasses; in summer, heavy with
dust; and winter snows made them impassable except by sleigh
and not always then. Traveling was hard and complicated by
the danger of attack by wild animals. There are numerous
entries in minutes of the Freeholders' meetings of money appro-
priated "to defray the cost of killing wolves, panthers, wild-
cats, etc." The great ease with which travelers lost their way
on the winding roads and paths prompted the Board of Justices
and Freeholders to make a further appropriation in 1769 for
"Posts and painted marks directing the several roads at the sev-
eral places in the said county as the persons chosen by the Jus-
tices and Freeholders shall think necessary."
126 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Road building in Bergen meant bridge building, too. In
1761, when the Board of Justices and Freeholders first ordered
raising 400 for "bridge support," there were 22 spans in the
county. Nearly all of these early bridges were crudely built
and designed only for pedestrians and travelers on horseback; a
few were specially constructed to support the weight of the
iron ore shipments from the Ramapo and Pompton areas. Draw-
bridges had to be built over the larger streams, to provide a
right-of-way for the river traffic.
Each sprawling township, by this time, had one or two main
highways, several of them destined to become the chief county
thoroughfares. Along the Passaic was Slaughterdam Road, later
called the River Road. Its original name, an old story says, was
the result of a bloody encounter with Indians. Following the
Hackensack north from the county seat was Kinderkamack
Road, which is still known by the same name. Boiling Spring
Road, built on an Indian trail, is now Union Avenue in Ruther-
ford and East Rutherford.
The Valley Road ran north along the Ramapo foothills
from Pompton to Suffern, while along the top of the mountains
to the west was the famous Corduroy Road, so called because
logs laid side by side to cover swampy sections gave it the ap-
pearance of that ridged cloth. The Corduroy Road, today
traversable only as a footpath, once bore the load of the heavy
iron chains forged at Ringwood and other Ramapo foundries
which were stretched across the Hudson to block the British
fleet. Through the middle of the county, along Saddle River,
ran the Paramus Road, one of the earliest, which connected
Hoboken with New York State and was used as the route of
the Goshen Stage.
The advent of the stagecoach hastened road and bridge
improvements. About 1768 Andrew Van Buskirk began oper-
ating a stage wagon from New Bridge, above Hackensack, to
Powles Hook. The trip was made twice a week at a fare of
two shillings sixpence. The vehicle, called a "Flying Machine,"
was roughly fashioned, heavily built and used four or six horses.
Stage wagons certainly did not depend on comfort to at-
TRANSPORTATION 127
tract customers, but they became popular nevertheless. A canvas
top stretched over hoops which were fastened to the sides of
the wagon kept out the hot sun or rain or snow, but since there
were no springs every stone in the road jolted the passengers,
who sat on hard wooden benches without backs. The hubs of
the huge, rough wheels were lubricated by smelly wads of soft
tar, kept in a bucket hanging from the back of the wagon.
In 1775 the southern terminal of Van Buskirk's route was
changed to Hoboken, and Jeredine Elsworth inaugurated a "new
caravan" between New Bridge and Powles Hook. His horses
were "very quiet," Elsworth advertised, but before travelers
had much time to test the truth of his statement the service
was interrupted by the Revolution.
Once the war was ended a new group gained control of
transportation facilities. Men like Adam Boyd, the tavern
keeper and politician who ran the Hackensack-Hoboken stage,
owned roads and bridges. They owed not a little to the State
legislature, which made possible, if it did not encourage, such
private ownership of utilities by chartering companies and grant-
ing exclusive privileges.
The State undertook to build a road from the Hudson to
Trenton in 1790 with bridges across the Hackensack and Passaic
rivers. Funds were raised by lotteries, and a five-man com-
mission with wide discretion was appointed to manage the un-
dertaking. A minor panic in 1792 forced a halt, and a year
later the uncompleted enterprise was sold to a group of 37 sub-
scribers who paid $200 a share. Headed by Samuel Ogden, the
new owners incorporated as "The Proprietors of the Bridges
over the Rivers Passaic and Hackensack" and claimed the mo-
nopoly on building any spans over the two streams a privilege
granted the State Commission originally.
In 1794 Col. John Stevens, owner of the Hoboken Ferry,
successfully lobbied for authorization to build a road east of
the Hackensack to Hoboken. Ogden's group completed two
wooden bridges, one over the Passaic at Newark, the other a
980-foot span over the Hackensack. This completed the old
Plank Road from Newark to Powles Hook which had been
128 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
established by the assembly in 1765. The Travelers Directory
at this time described it as an artificial road, about three miles
in length, "made on logs laid across the road close together with
three or four layers, and covered with the sods and earth dug
up on each side; over this is laid gravel." Carriage riders com-
plained of constant jolting over the thin covering.
The Powles Hook-Newark artery proved a successful ven-
ture. The ferry road suffered a loss of patronage. Subscribers
received more than 10 percent dividend payments. Travelers
complained, however, that the high tolls were "pressing like an
intolerable burden upon the public.'* Attempts to build bridges
to extend Stevens' road to the Hoboken ferries were defeated
by the bridge proprietors, who invoked their monopoly rights.
The Post Office Act of 1794 increased the number of post
roads in the county. Stagecoach lines generally were given the
mail contracts on condition that the cost of the service did not
exceed government revenue from the mail carried. Powles
Hook, where several stages had their eastern terminus on routes
leading from Trenton, Newark, Paterson, Philadelphia, New
York State, Morristown and Pennsylvania, became one of the
most important transportation centers in New Jersey. Hack-
ensack, the largest city north of Newark and the seat of county
politics, was another leading stage depot.
New oval-shaped coaches with leather-covered seats, springs,
paneled doors and a varnish finish, which were replacing the un-
gainly stage wagon on the main routes, provided a stimulus to
travel. Another new vehicle was the two-wheeled, leather-
topped sulky, which resembled the older chaise. There were
also carriages and coaches. The Conestoga wagon, later called
the "prairie schooner," proved extremely popular among Bergen
County farmers because of its many uses. It was responsible
for the traffic dictum "keep to the right," since Conestoga team-
sters directed their horses from the left and were able to view
the road better from the right-hand side; other drivers followed
the deep ruts made by the heavy wagons instead of riding across
them. In 1813 the New Jersey legislature ordered all wheeled
traffic on roads and turnpikes to keep to the right.
TRANSPORTATION 129
Many of the older roads were in poor condition, and though
a start had been made the great work of webbing the county
with highways had not gone much beyond the preliminary stage
by 1800. Stagecoaches averaged only four miles an hour, and
in the northern part of the county roads were so bad that most
travel was on horseback. Then came the "Turnpike Era,"
ushered in by the farmers' need for better and cheaper trans-
portation, an increasing population, general county development
and the function of Bergen County as one of the important
gateways to the West.
This was a period of speculation. Stirred by the earlier
success of the Hackensack and Passaic bridge company in Bergen
County, New York investors with potential profits in view put
a great deal of money into Bergen ventures. Licensing of high-
way corporations in New Jersey did not come until 1801, several
years after New York, Pennsylvania and many New England
States had instituted that practice. On November 30, 1802,
the Bergen Turnpike Company was granted a charter, the first
in the county. The corporation immediately began the task of
laying a road from Hackensack to Hoboken. Its route ran from
the site of the present county administration building to lower
Main Street, Hackensack, through Little Ferry, Ridgefield Park,
Ridgefield and Fairview and then through what is now Hudson
County to the Hoboken Ferry.
Tolls on the Bergen Pike were collected at the Hackensack
entrance, the Little Ferry bridge, Overpeck Creek in Ridgefield,
Wolf's Creek near Fairview and at other points along the line.
Rate for one horse and wagon, carriage, cart or sleigh was 5
cents a gate; for two-horse vehicles, 10 cents. One horse or
mule with rider was charged 4 cents, which was also the price
for an additional horse or mule, while the rate for a cow or bull
was 2 cents. There were cut rates for long trips. Two-horse
vehicles could travel two gates for 18 cents instead of 20, three
or four gates for 25 cents; carriages or wagons drawn by one
horse paid only 1 5 cents for four gates. The gates were a little
over one mile apart.
Due to the liberal favors allowed toll companies by the
130 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
State legislature, the Bergen Turnpike remained a private thor-
oughfare until the early part of the twentieth century. Farm-
ers, angered at the added expense for marketing their goods,
finally persuaded the Board of Freeholders to take over the road
and make it a toll-free county highway.
Numerous concessions were granted the pike companies
when they were first established, the accepted view being that
the corporations bore a financial risk for the public good.
Monopolies were guaranteed, competition forbidden, and the
companies enjoyed privileges of eminent domain but were re-
quired to respect the rights of property owners. These in turn
were cautioned not to take advantage of the corporations.
Although the law implied that turnpikes be constructed of
crushed stone flanked by earthen shoulders, the companies were
not required to guarantee that type of surface. The Bergen
Pike was built originally of wooden planks. Other turnpikes
were for the most part earth and gravel. "We do not recollect
to have seen in any direction five continuous miles of road paved
with stone," T. F. Gordon recorded in his Gazetteer of 1834.
The building of bridges became more complex as traffic
increased. In the 1830's wooden structures began to be re-
placed by bridges "built of stone and arched." Later, iron was
used, particularly in drawbridges over the Hackensack. Ade-
quate spans over county streams lagged behind actual road
building, and the Freeholders were increasingly concerned with
the problem until the twentieth century.
Meanwhile, turnpike construction in Bergen County kept
pace with the general development of privately owned roads in
New Jersey. A highway between Powles Hook and Hackensack
was completed in 1804; the Franklin Turnpike, connecting New
York State and Ho-Ho-Kus, was built in 1806; in 1815 an
extension of the Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike leading to Sussex
County reached Hackensack; in 1825 the Paterson-New Pros-
pect (Ho-Ho-Kus) Turnpike was finished; in the same year the
Paterson-New Antrim Turnpike, which ran through Saddle
River and Franklin Township, was put in use; and in 1828 the
Hackensack and Fort Lee Turnpike was constructed. Addi-
TRANSPORTATION 1 3 1
tional turnpikes, built about this time but lost to Bergen County
with the formation of Passaic County, were the Ringwood-
Long Pond Road and the Newark-Pompton Turnpike.
Steam on River and Rail
Roads were being built feverishly while two other trans-
portation aids were developing, steamboats and the railroads.
Experiments in America to apply the principle of James Watt's
invention to sailing were being made before the Revolution, but
not until Col. John Stevens, Hoboken ferry owner and presi-
dent of the Bergen Turnpike Company, launched the Little
Juliana in 1804 did steamboat travel seem at all close.
While Stevens was striving to perfect a new model, Robert
Fulton assured the commercial success of steamboat travel when
he sailed the Clermont from New York to Albany in 1807 and
won a steamboat monopoly on the Hudson. For 20 years the
monopoly was in force, but the decision in the famous Gibbons
vs. Ogden case finally broke it. Rivalry between ferry com-
panies was then expressed in two ways: by actual hostility among
the crews of competing lines and by appointing the boats ex-
travagantly for luxury and comfort. New ferry companies
were being formed, too. On April 12, 1832, "the books for
receiving subscriptions for the capital stock of the Fort Lee and
New York Steam Boat Company" were opened to investors,
"agreeable to the conditions of the charter, at the house of
Robert Ennet, at Fort Lee." Shares cost $5 each.
Not until after the Civil War did steam take the place of
sail in the trading ships that plied the inland waterways. Even
then sails did not disappear completely. They were used for
years on longer voyages, especially by boats engaged in the
"Carolina trade" carrying from the South lumber and shingles
for splitting and trimming in Bergen County sawmills. Later
the brick schooners, resembling present-day barges but equipped
with a center sail, dominated the river. The Mehrhof brick
yards at Little Ferry operated the largest fleet of these vessels
under the command of Capt. "Joe" Kinzley, who retired in
1915.
132 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The first steamer to churn Hackensack waters was the
Thomas Swan, which was placed in service just before the Civil
War, but it was immediately taken out of service when it was
found to draw too much water for the shallow channel. The
Hackensack, 175 tons, built at Belleville, was launched more
successfully. The ship was 110 feet long and had a 2 3 -foot
beam. Owned by Judge Huyler, of Civil War fame, John R. T.
Banta and John S. Lozier, the Hackensack was captained by
Henry Lozier. Originally the vessel was used in the coal and
lumber trade between Philadelphia, Albany and Hackensack
River ports; later, it carried sutlers' supplies from Philadelphia,
New York and Washington to City Point, Virginia.
Barge-pulling tugs gradually supplanted the larger steam-
ers. The last Hackensack steamboat was the tug Wesley Stoney,
which towed scows and sailing packets up and down the river
for many years. Rebuilt and rechristened the Elsie K, the vessel
sank with her captain in 1915.
The use of steam for land transportation was also due to
the ingenuity and persistence of Colonel Stevens. The public
was slow to respond to his pioneer work even after the success-
ful run of his locomotive in 1824 the first in the country
over the circular track on his estate in Hoboken.
The first railway run in Bergen was drawn by horses. It
was the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad, chartered by the
legislature in 1831 and capitalized at $250,000.
Great enthusiasm attended the construction of the line.
The Paterson Courier, June 12, 1832, announced:
The Paterson and Hudson River Railroad is now formed from
the town of Paterson to the village of Acquackanonk, a distance of
four and three quarter miles, and is now in actual and successful opera-
tion between these places. The company have placed upon the rail-
road three splendid and elegant cars, each of which will accommodate
thirty passengers and have supplied themselves with fleet and gentle
horses and careful drivers.
In 1834 rails were pushed across the Hackensack meadows
as far as Bergen Hill to form a junction with the New Jersey
Railroad, which ran south from Jersey City toward New Bruns-
TRANSPORTATION 133
wick. The following year the directors made two important
announcements: steam locomotives were being used instead of
horses, and the company had obtained the right to run its trains
over the rails of the New Jersey Railroad to the ferry.
The first steam locomotive to run on the tracks of the
Paterson and Hudson River line, an English-built engine called
the MacNeil, chugged through the southwestern part of Bergen
County in 1835. Horse-drawn cars continued in use until the
end of the year when the Whistler, a steam locomotive built in
Lowell, Mass., replaced them. The early trains, which made
their main stop in Bergen County at the Boiling Springs (Ruth-
erford) station, ran on wooden rails faced with strips of iron
and laid upon cross ties. The passengers who rode these trains,
which were advertised as models of comfort, choked from the
wood smoke billowing back from the engine, kept both hands
vainly busy brushing sparks from their clothing and sometimes
got out and pushed to help the locomotive on the upgrades. The
single-track system was an ever-present hazard and caused
numerous wrecks.
After completion of the Paterson and Hudson River Rail-
road, plans were promulgated for an extension of the line
through the Rarnapo region, though this area was sparsely pop-
ulated. The potential advantage of such a route was appreciated
by a group of canny Paterson promoters who carefully watched
the progress of the New York and Erie line leading west from
Hudson River in New York State toward the Great Lakes. In
March 1841 the legislature chartered the Paterson-Ramapo Rail-
road to connect with the Piermont line at Suflfern. Despite pro-
tests of Erie officials, construction was completed in 1847. The
run through Paterson to the ferries on the lower Hudson was
shorter and less expensive than the route to Piermont and thence
by ferry to New York.
Because of the importance of the Paterson-Ramapo road,
it did not remain in independent hands long. In 1851 the New
York and Erie reached Lake Erie, and the next year the company
leased both the Paterson-Ramapo and the Paterson-Hudson
River lines, completing a direct route to New York harbor.
134 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Western freight traffic and increasing local business caused
the Erie to plan its own terminal in Jersey City in 1856. Two
laws passed by the legislature that year permitted the Erie to
acquire a new right-of-way to Hudson River and commissioned
the Long Dock Company to construct the railway and to hold
ferry privileges. The site of the Erie terminus was Horsimus
Cove, a mile north of the Jersey City depot, where an Erie
director had purchased 200 acres of land. The new route neces-
sitated blasting a tunnel through 4,000 feet of solid rock under
Bergen Hill, a project which Bergen County newspaper accounts
rightly called an "immense undertaking."
One thousand men worked on the slow, costly job, which
was interrupted by strikes, the panic of 1857 and engineering
difficulties. It was completed January 28, 1861, not by the Erie
line, which went bankrupt in 1859, but by the Morris and Essex
Railroad, which had obtained the trackage rights.
Then throughout the county the iron tracks moved with
the slow persistence of rivulets of lava, cutting through farms,
leveling paths through flowered fields and scarring the main
streets of the towns. It was a time of unprecedented transporta-
tion development that left Bergen County permanently changed.
The rapid connections within the county not only aided the
farmers who depended upon the New York market, but eventu-
ally broke down the agricultural tracts into city blocks to ac-
commodate the influx of suburbanites.
The railroad interests gained vast political control in New
Jersey during the era of railroad construction. It was a time
of power politics when corporate finances were able to direct
legislative enactments and secure long-term monopoly rights.
Rivalry was keen among competing roads, and in the late sixties,
when extensive plans were laid for rail extension in Bergen
County, companies interested in tracking this region deluged the
legislature with demands for special privileges and concessions.
Early in March 1867 the "Pater son Weekly Press reported:
During the last month there had been about fifteen "lobbies" from
Bergen County attending the session of the Legislature and looking
after the interests of the different railroad projects. . . . There is no
TRANSPORTATION 1 3 5
doubt that [the railroads] would all be paying investments, for if
there is not enough business done to make them pay now they will
help build up the sections they traverse so that in a few years the line
of each road will be dotted with a series of villages and they will have
all the business they can transact.
Within a few years the prophecy was fulfilled.
In 1859 the Northern Railroad of New Jersey, chartered
in 1854, had built its road on the west slope of the Palisades
from the northern part of the county to the Erie terminal at
Jersey City. The principal backers of the road were John Van
Brunt and Thomas W. Demarest of Englewood, who envisioned
the project as part of a great suburban development between
the Palisades and the Hackensack River. The line ran through
Tappan, Tenafly, Englewood, New Durham and other com-
munities. Nearby towns were connected with the depots by
stagecoaches. Later extended to Piermont, New York, the rail-
road was leased to the Erie on a long-term basis in 1869.
The Northern Railroad of New Jersey was not the only
rail enterprise which lost its identity to the hungry larger roads.
Another was leased to the New York Central system in 1886,
and the Erie absorbed two other local lines in 1898. One of the
lines linked with the Erie was the Hackensack and New York
Railroad, incorporated in 1856 and launched in 1869. Opened
from Jersey City to Hillsdale in 1870, this road was instrumental
in opening the Pascack Valley for realty development and was
a boon to farmers in the region. Property owners along the
route realized a handsome profit through the sale of land for
the right-of-way. In 1867 Godfrey N. Zingsem received $100,-
000 for half interest in 200 acres on Cherry Hill. He was given
335^2 shares of stock in part payment ($25,000) and was
elected director of the road. When the Erie gained control
in 1898 the name was changed to New Jersey and New York
Railroad.
In that same year the Erie also took over the New York,
Susquehanna and Western Railroad. This company was a com-
bination of the New Jersey Midland Railroad, incorporated in
136 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
1866, and the New York and Oswego Midland Railroad. In
March 1872 Bergen County residents, who had subscribed $100,-
000 to have the New Jersey route pass through Hackensack,
watched the first passenger train run over the line between
Paterson and Hackensack. A grand excursion to Ellenville,
New York, a year later marked the occasion of the first through
train over the two lines. Not until 1880 did the New Jersey
and the New York and Oswego roads combine to become at first
the Midland Railroad of New Jersey and then, in 1881, the
New York, Susquehanna and Western.
The Midland in 1880 had built a spur from Lodi east to a
junction with the Hackensack and New York Railroad to re-
place the abandoned Lodi Railroad, which had been built by
Robert Rennie in 1869 to service his Lodi mills.
The Ridgefield Park Railroad, seven years after it was
chartered, joined the Jersey City and Albany Railroad in 1873.
In 1881 it became the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Rail-
road and five years later was leased to the New York Central
System.
The last railroad to be built in the county was the Bergen
County Short Cut of the Erie, which opened for travel in 1881.
It branches off from the main line at Glen Rock and joins it
again at Rutherford; this branch line was designed to relieve
freight traffic on the main line and also served as a loop for
fast express trains.
Along the iron rails settlements were founded and com-
munities prospered as thousands of new residents poured in from
metropolitan centers. So important was the railroad in the lives
of inhabitants that newspapers featured gossip columns devoted
to happenings along the different lines and regularly reprinted
long articles from the national railroad periodicals.
Highways, Trolleys and Buses
The ease and speed of railroad travel after the Civil War
contrasted with the crude wagon roads. Cross-county high-
ways and township roads still lacked proper administration in
the sixties and seventies, and there was virtually no cooperation
TRANSPORTATION 137
between adjoining counties in the matter of connecting roads.
The Pater son Weekly Press in 1869 charged that it was "impos-
sible to find a really good three mile stretch in either [Passaic
or Bergen counties]. Poor roads are very exhaustive on horse-
flesh." Since road improvements meant higher taxes, the public
remained cautious in supporting measures to alleviate the poor
travel conditions while at the same time they criticized the lack
of proper facilities.
As the railroads became increasingly popular the turnpikes
rapidly lost favor and revenue, and as a consequence several of
the turnpike companies were soon bankrupt. The roads were
uncared for, and some, like the Hackensack-Fort Lee pike, were
sold under the sheriff's hammer.
Although main roads were often hazardous, main streets
were kept in some semblance of repair. It was not unusual to
see the young bloods, deprived of adequate highways in the
county, racing their horses through the center of town. It was
just as if the Belmont Park track were set down on the Green
at Hackensack without benefit of guard rails. In 1871 the
New Jersey Citizen felt compelled to urge reckless drivers to
have a gentlemanly regard for the feelings and comforts of
others.
Young men should be aware that Main Street is not a race course
for the trial of their respective steeds, especially on Sunday. Last
Sunday evening three couples of young sports, in three different
buggies, came tearing down through Main Street. The result we do
not know, but we do know that they not only raised a suffocating
dust but their rivalry reflected discreditably upon themselves.
Until the final quarter of the nineteenth century Bergen
County roads were built only when the Common Pleas Court
approved a petition by inhabitants of a district immediately
concerned. These local roads were administered in the various
townships by overseers elected by the people.
Although the Freeholders had little jurisdiction over roads,
they continued to be extremely active in bridge building. En-
tire meetings were taken up with bridge problems, and appro-
priations for construction and maintenance were frequent. In
138 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
1871 the Bergen County Freeholders entered into a lively con-
troversy with the Passaic County Freeholders over the type of
bridge to be built across the Passaic River. Numerous resolu-
tions were passed, and the Bergen members of the joint com-
mittee refused to pay their part of the costs until the bridge
was completed according to their specifications.
Not until the 1880's did the movement for county-owned
highways begin. This spelled the final ruin of the turnpikes
which had weathered the railroad competition. A law passed
March 12, 1878, provided that any company owning a turnpike
crossing a bridge which remained out of repair four months
would lose its franchise. The Freeholders were empowered to
purchase the turnpikes and bridges for public use. A year later
a law placed maintenance of such roads upon the county and
specified that convicts in the county workhouse should be em-
ployed on the roads. The act was subsequently amended several
times, but the provisions for county responsibility remained.
This transition period was marked by fierce jurisdictional
disputes between county and townships over maintenance of
the new public highways. Chief controversy raged over the
Paterson Plank Road, which was purchased by the counties of
Bergen, Hudson and Passaic in September 1878 and converted
into a public highway. The county held that maintenance was
the responsibility of the townships of Lodi and Union, through
which the road passed. The townships thought otherwise, and
the ensuing struggle was the subject of long-continuing legisla-
tive and court action. At a special meeting in November 1889
the Board of Freeholders voted to improve the road at a cost
of $5,000. In the same month the Passaic Daily News asserted
that "Bergen County is noted for its miserable, wretched and
dangerous roads." The county was described as being "at least
50 years behind its sister counties in the matter of public roads."
The issue of county roads was carried into many elections.
Some vigorously objected to appropriations for road construc-
tion; others argued that municipal control of roads resulted in
numerous dead-end streets since local bodies were interested only
in their own borders. The county, they pointed out, was in a
TRANSPORTATION 139
logical position to provide "through" roads. Later the fight
was carried to Trenton, where the legislature passed a bill requir-
ing a three-fourths popular majority for the building of county
roads.
On December 2, 1889, county responsibility was definitely
established when the Freeholders, in compliance with the Pub-
lic Road Act of March 18, resolved that "this board hereby
assumes full and exclusive control of the public roads or parts
thereof in the county of Bergen." This was the signal for the
start of a bitter "road warfare" between the eastern and western
sections of the county over preference in road repair.
When the Freeholders voted to establish a county road in
western Bergen from the New York line to Passaic County, it
met a storm of protest from easterners who objected "to having
a county road established outside of their bailiwick to be built
partly at their expense." On another occasion, according to the
Weekly Press of November 12, 1891, feeling ran high among
western residents "because all the improvements . . . are al-
lotted to the eastern part." The battle almost resulted in the
actual division of the county.
The county was one of the last to avail itself of State Aid
funds for road building as provided for in the law of 1891.
Communities built along the railroad viewed the tracks as their
link with the outside world. Some impetus for the building of
smooth roads was provided by the cycling rage of the eighties
and nineties, but perhaps a more potent political factor during
this period was the slogan: "Get the farmer out of the mud."
There began to be large expenditures by county and local bodies
for the improvement of bridges and roads, and on November
29, 1894, the Weekly Press already talked of "Bergen's new era
of good roads."
An adaptation of the old horse-drawn railroad the electric
trolley car came to Bergen County in the 1 890's. Its introduc-
tion met considerable obstacles, and it was several years before
it was an accepted mode of travel. Chief objections came from
the municipalities, which often withheld franchises.
In 1893 the Palisades Railroad, a trolley company, laid its
140 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
tracks through Fort Lee and Coytesville from a Hudson County
terminal. The following year the Bergen County Traction
Company was incorporated and built a line from the Edgewater
Ferry to Palisades Park and through Leonia to Englewood.
Meanwhile, the Bergen Turnpike Company was balked in its
attempt to introduce a trolley line to Hackensack. Company
workmen laying tracks were arrested by local authorities, who
maintained that 50 percent of the property owners had to con-
sent and that plans for the line had to be approved before con-
struction could begin.
Municipalities regarded the coming of the trolley with
mixed feelings. Some strongly resented the intrusion of un-
sightly tracks and clanging trolleys in their peaceful communi-
ties; others welcomed it as a progressive step in facilitating trans-
portation. Most agreed that its coming was inevitable, and all
strove to outdo each other in gaining concessions from the trac-
tion companies in exchange for franchises.
Often the municipality's terms were considered too harsh
by the traction companies and the plan was temporarily aban-
doned. At other times communities adamantly blocking the
path of trolley lines gained notable concessions. Rutherford in
1896 forced the trolley company to pay nine-tenths instead of
seven-eighths of the cost of widening the street to 60 feet and
grading and macadamizing; to furnish a $10,000 bond; to guar-
antee a five-cent fare for three miles each side of the town; and
to pay a percentage of gross earnings to the community after
1901. A large audience, attending the meeting at which the
concessions were exacted, "vociferously applauded whenever a
point against the railway company was made," the Weekly Press
reported. The franchise disputes limited the spread of the
trolley for several years, and newspapers of the time are replete
with accounts of conflicts which broke beyond the bounds of
argumentative meetings and verbal attack.
A common objection voiced by opponents of the trolley
was that it led to an increase in saloons due to the popularity of
"trolley parties." The fear that "thousands of toughs will over-
run the town every Sunday" led to a prolonged fight in Hacken-
TRANSPORTATION 141
sack over the trolley. The issue was bitterly debated at fre-
quent public meetings. But even after the people were willing
to accept the trolley, the numerous concessions demanded by
authorities precluded the establishment of a line. Inability to
obtain a satisfactory franchise from Hackensack caused the fail-
ure in 1899 of the Union Traction Company, which had been
formed in 1894 and was already operating a line between North
Arlington and Carlstadt. Later, as the Newark and Hacken-
sack Traction Company, it completed its line.
The governing bodies were not alone in opposing the trac-
tion companies. While trolley wires were being strung in Hack-
ensack, property owners, determined to keep poles away from
their corner, threatened linemen that "if necessary they will use
a shot gun to do so." On another occasion a group of "experi-
enced and well equipped men" were systematically stealing the
wires despite all efforts to apprehend them.
Early in 1899 the Bergen County Traction Company com-
pleted its route from Fort Lee to Bogota, and on March 1 "the
loud clanging of a trolley gong was heard across the Hacken-
sack meadows and through the woods between Leonia and
Bogota" for the first time. "The new line," continued the
Weekly Press of March 2, "will bring the eastern and western
sections of the county into closer communication." In 1900
the company was merged with the Ridgefield and Teaneck
Railway Company to become the New Jersey and Hudson River
Railway and Ferry Company.
Many companies were formed during this period and many
failed, mostly because of franchise difficulties. Consolidations
were also frequent, the largest being the nine-company merger
effected in November 1899. The new organization, which in-
cluded several Bergen County concerns, was known as the Jersey
City, Hoboken and Paterson Street Railway Company. Its
biggest coup was acquiring the old Bergen Turnpike, which ran
between Hackensack and Hoboken, from the Bergen Turnpike
Company. Construction of a trolley line on the old road bed
began immediately.
Rivalry between trolley companies to service Hackensack
142 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
was keen, and the Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson Street
Railway came in a poor second. First to reach the coveted
goal was the New Jersey and Hudson River Railway and Ferry
Company, which in June 1900 sent its first trolley car across
the Hackensack River bridge on its way from Edgewater. "The
car was decorated gaily," said the Weekly Press, "and the officials
of the villages along the line were on it. They were met by
President Clarendon and the Hackensack officials and several
county officers. All rode back to Leonia, where dinner was
served." When the line was extended through Hackensack,
running east and west, the Bergen Evening Record of November
9, 1901, greeted the first cars with the hopefully prognostic
headline: "Bells clang through town today and will do so from
now on to eternity." The route was later extended to Paterson.
This created the Hudson River line, which was important in
Bergen County for many years in fact, until the present bus
line took over in 1938.
In 1902 the Hudson River Traction Company was incor-
porated and a year later purchased the Newark and Hackensack
Traction Company, in receivership since early the same year.
Two years later the former was leased by the New Jersey and
Hudson River Railway and Ferry Company, whose 48 miles of
street railway and 5 5 cars were taken over by the Public Service
Railway Company in 1911.
Meanwhile, the Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson Street
Railway Company had completed its Bergen Turnpike line link-
ing Ridgefield, Fairview and Little Ferry and was rushing to-
ward Hackensack. This route was hailed on August 16, 1901,
as opening a promising territory in the heart of Bergen County.
When the company's first trolley entered Hackensack from the
south in 1903, the Record of April 3 reported that "it was
crowded with boys and men; a free ride was given everybody
who jumped aboard. People ran from stores and houses to see
the car go by. All are wild with delight." Several months
later the line was absorbed by the Public Service Corporation
of New Jersey, which in 1908 turned over all its traction hold-
ings to Public Service Railway, an operating company.
TRANSPORTATION 143
Consolidation of the trolley systems was followed by rapid
growth and expansion. Among the many branches and exten-
sions was the line connecting Lodi, Garfield and Passaic with
Hackensack, opened in 1904.
Two years later Bergen County learned of a new type of
transportation the bus. Terming it an "experiment," a Hack-
ensack newspaper of July 19, 1906, commented: "The inaugura-
tion of an automobile bus line between Paterson and Ridgewood
marks an important event. It inaugurates a new means of com-
munication, and if we mistake not, it is one of the first of the
kind in the state." Another newspaper, describing the reception
accorded the Union Transit Company's "two large and hand-
some Mack automobile omnibuses," wrote: "All along the route
people were out in their store doors and on stoops waving and
cheering as the big cars with their passengers sped by. . . . The
auto buses are destined to become very popular. They are roomy
and comfortable riding and are in charge of experienced chauf-
feurs."
With the increasing importance of the automobile and the
commuter, road construction rapidly became a primary concern
of the county. Until 1910 the county had built but 34 miles
of roads with State aid and had only 3.8 miles of county road-
way. About this time the Board of Freeholders began to aug-
ment the county road system with huge appropriations for con-
struction and maintenance.
The last vestiges of the toll system disappeared in November
1915 when the Freeholders, heeding decades of agitation on the
part of residents, acquired the Bergen Turnpike from the Public
Service and converted into a county road the stretch running
from Main Street, Hackensack, through Little Ferry, Ridgefield
Park, Ridgefield and Fairview. The road was later considerably
improved and is now a State highway.
The county and the State expended large sums to meet the
needs of growing vehicular traffic. On many occasions Bergen 's
share of State aid funds exceeded that of any other county. So
swift was the rate of road development that by 1920 the county
system totaled 179 miles and Bergen was called "the mecca for
144 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
pleasure seekers in the field of motoring." The following dec-
ade there was an even greater road-building program, with the
county and State pumping millions of dollars into the work.
The Modern System
In April 1921, after considerable study and legislative activ-
ity, the Port of New York Authority was created by New Jersey
and New York for the purpose of studying the complex prob-
lems of transportation in the metropolitan area and planning
and co-ordinating port development. The system of bridges
and tunnels fostered by the Port Authority has, according to
the Bergen Evening Record, "opened Bergen to the World,'* but
the Bergen County Planning Board still claims that the barrier
of the river "is the greatest handicap in the development of the
county."
The Port of New York Authority has jurisdiction over all
phases of Port development. It is self-supporting and pays bond
interest and amortization and administration and maintenance
expenses out of operating revenues. It has the right to issue its
own bonds, tax free, for such public improvements as it might
undertake at the direction of New Jersey and New York. There
are six commissioners from each of the two states assisted by a
staff of engineers, technicians, statisticians, lawyers, financiers
and public relations men.
Bridging the Hudson was an early hope. In 1834 New
York and New Jersey passed resolutions naming a commission
to investigate the possibility of constructing a bridge across the
river, but the project was not heard of again until 1863, when
New Jersey permitted the incorporation of the New York and
New Jersey Bridge Commission to build a span, preferably at
Fort Lee. The measure, however, was not approved by New
York State.
As the suburban growth of Bergen County became more
pronounced, the desirability of bridging the Hudson attracted
the interest of many citizens throughout the area. A pioneer
exponent of the project was Weller H. Noyes of Tenafly, later a
vehicular tunnel commissioner. In the late eighties and nineties
TRANSPORTATION 145
real estate was sold on "a certainty of the greatest traffic bridge
in the world across the Hudson."
Soon after the turn of the century the discussion as to
where a bridge should be built was complicated by the arguments
of a vociferous new group which favored not building a bridge
at all, but a tunnel under the river. This idea was not new;
many years before the same John Stevens who had furthered
steamships and the steam locomotive had drawn plans for a
vehicular tunnel under the Hudson. Borings and soundings
for a foundation were taken along the Hudson River shore by
the Interstate Bridge and Tunnel Commission with the aid of
frequent contributions from the Bergen County Freeholders.
In October 1908 the Commission was reported to be "most
favorably impressed" by a 117th Street to Cliffside Park bridge
site. Several months later it was said to favor a bridge from
Columbus Circle to West New York, and then opinion shifted
in favor of a 179th Street site. The annual report of the Com-
mission in January 1911 announced a preference for the 57th
Street-West New York structure. Meanwhile, a savant of the
New Jersey Academy of Science had solemnly warned on Octo-
ber 8, 1910, that a Hudson River bridge was "impossible." He
recommended a tunnel that would cost considerably less. Pro-
ponents of the bridge bickered among themselves and came out
finally in favor of the 179th Street-Fort Lee span, but the pro-
ject remained dormant for more than a decade.
In the interim the tunnel project had been successfully
revived. In February 1918 Gustave Lindenthal, noted engineer,
prophetically told the Eastern Bergen County Improvement As-
sociation that the building of a tunnel would inevitably lead to
construction of a bridge. The enterprise soon gained official
approval, and early in the following year New York and New
Jersey each appropriated $1,000,000 to begin work on the Hol-
land Tunnel. Ground was broken on October 12, 1920, and
the twin tubes were completed seven years later.
The same period witnessed short-lived booms for several
other river crossing projects. Among the proposals was a tunnel
from 125th Street to Leonia, a Weehawken-Manhattan span and
146 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
a pontoon bridge between Yonkers and Alpine. All had their
supporters, and promotion meetings were frequent. After gain-
ing considerable backing, the pontoon bridge plan, designed by
Lindenthal, was abandoned because of inability to secure the
necessary ships from the government.
The Harlem-Bergen County Tunnel, backed by $90,000
worth of private capital, also gained widespread support. Lead-
ers in the move were J. W. Binder and John Borg, publisher of
the Bergen Evening Record, who conducted several meetings
to further the enterprise. In 1923, after New Jersey approval
had been won, the project was turned down by New York au-
thorities. The plan was then discarded and attention was once
again turned to the bridge enterprise.
In the fall of 1924 the bridge issue was dramatically high-
lighted when the late William B. Mackay, State senator from
Bergen County and a vigorous proponent of the tunnel bill,
made it the chief issue of his campaign. In December of the
same year further impetus was provided with the formation of
the Mackay Hudson River Bridge Association, later merged with
the Interstate ' Hudson River Bridge Association which had an
equally active counterpart in New York. Also prominent in
the campaign was the Real Estate Board of the Palisades. Bergen
County leaders in the bridge drive in addition to Mackay in-
cluded Frederick A. Tetor, J. W. Binder, Carl W. Wright, John
Borg, Matt C. Ely, Edward A. White, Douglas G. Thomas and
Lewis A. Hird.
In 1926, following preliminary surveys by the Port Author-
ity, both States approved construction of a $60,000,000 single-
span suspension bridge between Fort Lee and 178th Street, under
plans drawn by Port Authority Engineer O. H. Ammann. Con-
gress likewise granted approval. New York appropriated
$5,000,000, and New Jersey $4,500,000 as "cushion" loans and
the Port Authority was authorized to issue bonds for the re-
mainder. The States' advances have since been repaid. The
bridge bonds ($20,000,000 worth issued in 1926 and $30,000,-
000 worth in 1929 and now included in the General and Re-
funding bond issue of the Port Authority) were to be amortized
TRANSPORTATION 147
out of the bridge tolls. Work on the bridge was started in
May 1927, and on September 21, 1927, ground was broken at
Fort Lee amid appropriate ceremonies.
The opening of the George Washington Memorial Bridge
in October 1931 was hailed by Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt of
New York as "an event of enduring significance with tremen-
dous mutual advantages to the peoples of the two States." Gov.
Morgan F. Larson of New Jersey called the joining of the two
States typical of the American spirit, "surmounting all barriers,
either natural or artificial, which would tend to prevent free
intercourse of the residents of both States."
The four huge cables, each 47 inches in diameter, curve
broadly downward almost to the bridge deck from the tops of
the 630-foot towers. From the concrete roadway 250 feet above
the water the towers do not appear to be twice the height of
the Palisades at this point; but from a distance the soaring steel
is seen in its true perspective and in a delicate beauty which
proximity to the mass destroys.
An intricate network of municipal, county and State high-
ways converges at the bridge through three main arteries: State
Highway 4 from Paterson; State Highway 1, the north-south
route along the Palisades from New York State to Newark; and
State Highway 6, which runs west from Fort Lee into Passaic
County. A maze of overpasses, underpasses and cloverleaf in-
tersections forces the unacquainted motorist to keep a sharp eye
on the direction signs.
While the bridge was still unfinished the ever mounting
traffic problem led the two States to scan the possibility of an-
other Hudson River crossing. In 1930 the Holland Tunnel
Commissions and the Port Authority were merged, and author-
ization was later given the enlarged Authority to plan and con-
struct a tunnel crossing from Weehawken in Hudson County
to 38th Street, Manhattan. Work was started on May 17, 1934,
and on December 22, 1937, the north tube of the Lincoln Tun-
nel was opened to traffic.
A vital traffic artery from Bergen, Hudson, Passaic and
Essex counties, the tunnel affords access to the important mid-
148 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
town area of Manhattan. In design it is similar to the Holland
Tunnel, consisting of two tubes running parallel under the river,
though only one is in use (1940). The New Jersey Plaza is
situated in Weehawken in the valley between King's Bluff, a
ridge of the Palisades, and the main Palisades. Two State high-
ways have been planned to provide convenient approaches to the
tunnel. State Highway S-3 will cross the Hackensack meadows
from Rutherford, while State Highway 10 will traverse the
northern end of Essex County from Livingston.
There is a record of constant extension of the county road
system. From 179 miles in 1920 the county road mileage in-
creased to 342 in 1930 and 470 in 1939. In 1940 county high-
ways and appurtenances, which include 6,463 catch basins, 213
cross drains, 920 fixed bridges, 14 drawbridges, many miles of
guard rails and several thousand direction and caution signs,
represented a total investment of almost $50,000,000.
The total length of State, county and municipal streets and
highways in the county is 2,087 miles (July 1939), of which
1,539 miles are municipal streets and roads and 78 miles are
State highways. Municipal streets are being absorbed into the
county road system, and their total mileage is therefore decreas-
ing. In 1939 alone the county system acquired 30 municipal
roads.
An extensive network of State arteries crisscrosses Bergen.
State Route 1 (US 9W, US 1 ) runs north and south along the
Palisades from the New York line to its convergence with Routes
4 and 6 near the George Washington Bridge and continues
southward into Hudson County. State Highways 4, 5 and 6
with their county extensions provide three parallel routes from
the Paterson arch through mid-Bergen to the Washington Bridge.
Route 2 extends north and south through central Bergen from
New York State to Hudson County. Route 3 and nearly com-
pleted Route S-3 enter the county together from Secaucus, the
former connecting with the Paterson Plank Road and the latter
with Route 2. Route S-4-B, now in construction (1941), will
branch off from Route 4 at Fair Lawn and traverse Glen Rock,
Wyckoff, Franklin Lakes and Oakland on its way to Green-
TRANSPORTATION 149
wood Lake. The ultimate State highway system in Bergen
County, based on the comprehensive program adopted in 1927,
will comprise more than 100 miles of modern roads, with plazas,
overpasses and underpasses, cloverleafs and traffic circles.
Of the many county roads the much-improved Paterson
Plank Road is the most heavily traveled. It is a direct route
from points in Passaic County through southwestern Bergen
County to Hoboken. Teaneck Road, running north and south
and crossing State Highways 1, 6 and 4, becomes the Schraalen-
burgh Road north of Route 4 and extends northward through
Bergenfield, Dumont and intervening points to the State line
at Northvale. Kinderkamack Road, west of Teaneck Road and
running parallel to it, begins at Hackensack and traverses River
Edge, Oradell, Emerson and Westwood, continuing northward
to the State line at Montvale.
In northwestern Bergen County, the heavily trafficked, im-
proved Franklin Lakes Road and Wyckoflf Road, both running
east and west, and Ramapo Valley Road, a north and south
highway, wind through farming and scenic sections and provide
through arteries for the many side roads which join them.
Ramapo Valley Road joins State Highway 2 near the State line
in Hohokus Township; the others meet continuing highways
to span the county.
The Bergen County Road Department, under the jurisdic-
tion of the Board of Freeholders and directed by a Chairman of
Public Works and County Supervisor of Roads, is charged with
maintenance of the growing road system.
The County Planning Board observes that the county roads,
although distributed fairly evenly over the entire county, "are
largely streets and farm roads taken over for county use rather
than an adequately conceived county system." The need is felt
for "a pattern of routes better adapted to county travel."
Traffic studies conducted by the Planning Board show that
in the lower half of the county, which is much more densely
traveled than the upper half, the chief directional flow is east-
west, while in the north traffic moves mainly north and south.
The southern half of Bergen accommodates a large porportion of
150 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
out-of -county traffic and most of the buses and trucks; the
upper part serves, to a great extent, traffic with origin and des-
tination within the county. The bulk of commercial traffic
north of Route 4 is carried by Route 2. Most cars crossing
Ber gen's borders come from within the county (39.5 percent)
or from Passaic County (23.2 percent). From Essex come 8.5
percent; Hudson, 11.7 percent; other New Jersey counties, 4.5
percent; and from other states, 12.6 percent.
Surveys made at the seven main outlets the Washington
Bridge in the east, Routes 1 and 2 in the north and in the
south and Routes 4 and 6 in the west reveal that in an aver-
age day of 16 hours a total of 168,456 vehicles enter the county.
Of these, 86 percent are passenger cars, 11 percent trucks and
3 percent, buses. Private cars carry 80 percent of the 361,093
passengers entering the county on an average day; 20 percent
come by bus. The county's greatest single concentration of
traffic is at the bridge, which carries approximately 50,900 per-
sons on an average day. Many of these, of course, board the
buses at the bridge plaza.
These transportation studies chart the course for future
highway development in the county. More north-south high-
ways and east-west roads above Route 4 are the chief require-
ments, the surveys have shown. They have also pointed to
needed improvements in existing thoroughfares.
Travel by bus has eliminated the trolley, which for a quar-
ter of a century was the chief integrating force among the
various municipalities. The last trolley car between Paterson
and Edgewater, the most tenacious line in the county, rattled
over the rails on August 5, 1938, and the bells which were to
clang "to eternity" were stilled by the honk of the Klaxon.
Hackensack, the center of the web of bus lines that en-
compasses the county, commissioned the WPA to build the
first municipally owned bus terminal in the United States. Com-
pleted in 1938, the depot accommodates close to 1,000 buses
daily. The Public Service and independent companies use the
terminal and the Main and Mercer Street crossing to dispatch
buses in all directions, linking the county seat with the remotest
TRANSPORTATION 1 5 1
sections of Bergen as well as with New York, Newark, Jersey
City, Paterson, Passaic and Hudson River bridge and tunnel
crossings. Paterson is the center for several other bus routes
servicing communities in the western part of the county. Bus
lines originating in or passing through Bergen move in five main
directions: to the George Washington Bridge, Hudson County,
Newark, Paterson and Passaic.
Though commuting by railroad has steadily declined since
1924, seven lines serve Bergen, four of them running generally
north and south and three, east and west. These are equitably
distributed throughout the county with tracks not more than
one -half mile from 60 percent of the population. The County
Planning Board observes that "the railroad is still the major
factor in the development of new land" and is "largely re-
sponsible for the distribution of population."
One estimate, based on counts of trans-Hudson traffic made
in 1934 by the Regional Plan Association, placed the number of
daily rail travelers from Bergen County to New York at 22,1 50,
or an average of about 325 commuters for each of the county's
68 railroad stations. This represents about 60 percent of com-
muters, a substantial drop from 1924 when 75 percent of the
daily travelers took the train.
Express train commuting time to New York, including a
1 5 -minute ferry or tube ride, varies from 25 minutes in the zone
near Hudson County to 75 minutes in the extreme northwest
corner of the county. Travelers from the Northern Valley com-
munities as far north as the State line figure on a 5 5 -minute trip.
Local trains take anywhere from 30 to more than 90 minutes for
the same distances. Sixty-trip commutation rates vary from
$5.50 near Hudson County to $14 in the northwest. All the
railroads meet the ferries or "Tubes" to Manhattan at their
terminals in Hudson County.
Despite the shorter time needed for crossing the river by
bridge or tunnel, ferries, the least expensive of the three ways,
are still extensively used. Three lines have terminals in Bergen
County: the Alpine Ferry to Yonkers in the north; the Dyck-
man Street Ferry between Englewood Cliffs and northern Man-
152 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
hattan; and the much traveled Public Service 125th Street
Ferry, which docks at Edgewater. Most of the ferry patronage,
however, goes to Hudson County, where rail commuters make
connections for New York. At Weehawken is the ferry for the
New York Central's West Shore line; Lackawanna passengers
take the ferry or the Hudson and Manhattan "Tubes" at Ho-
boken, or the ferry from Weehawken; the Erie has ferry lines
in Jersey City and also connects with "the Tubes" there.
It is possible that more direct and hence quicker service
might have stemmed the constant decrease in railroad patronage,
which has led to curtailment of train service. The recognition
of this factor led the New York, Susquehanna and Western
Railroad to build a new station, Susquehanna Transfer, directly
beneath the highway approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. Trains
stop here during commuting hours for passengers to catch the
bus to midtown Manhattan, eight minutes away.
Other lines have not made this effort. When the Northern
Railroad of New Jersey and the New Jersey and New York
Railroad, both at one time heavily traveled, cut their schedules
drastically in September 1939, just a month after the Susque-
hanna had completed its new transfer, the Bergen Evening
Record, perceiving a trend, commented: "The Bergen lines are
about ready to give up the ghost."
The accuracy of this prophecy became increasingly appar-
ent. The Erie repudiated its 9 9 -year lease of the 8 2 -year-old
Northern Railroad of New Jersey, and the Northern was sched-
uled for complete abandonment on April 30, 1940. An exten-
sion of life was pumped into the old road largely through the
protests of the Northern Railroad Communities Association,
which felt that depriving the Northern Valley of a railroad
would result in heavy property depreciation. Protest meetings
were frequent, and various proposals were made to save the
railways. A meeting of Cresskill citizens in April 1940, for
example, voted "to support the Northern Railroad of New Jersey
if service is continued, provided railroad officials will justify that
support by offering different type commutation tickets and fares
in line with present day conditions." At present the Northern
TRANSPORTATION 153
has only three trains daily in each direction and none Sundays.
Similar efforts are being made to save the New Jersey and
New York line, which in March 1940 reached a new low of five
trains daily eastbound and six westbound, with no trains on
Sundays. In granting permission to the Erie to curtail service,
the State Board of Public Utilities Commissioners declared: "It
is entirely clear from a survey and analysis of the transportation
revenues created solely by patronage that the public has over a
course of years gradually failed to avail itself of the railroad
transportation facilities with the consequent recurring loss in
revenue."
The public did not fail to act, however, when it looked as
though it would be without train service. The Board of Free-
holders, commuters' groups and other organizations undertook
action to solve the rapid transit problem. In March 1940 one
of these groups, the North Jersey Rapid Transit Committee,
called for the formation of a transit authority that would work
independently or co-operate with the Port of New York Author-
ity in a program to tie Bergen and other New Jersey counties
more closely to New York City. This plan was seen "as the
only means of saving the area's bankrupt railroads and at the
same time averting the slow economic death of the entire re-
gion."
Shortly afterward the Board of Freeholders petitioned the
State Legislature for creation of a district transit authority "to
solve the transportation problem and to have authority to make
a survey of the needs of Bergen County in respect to railroad
transportation." The resolution pointed out that "a great num-
ber of residents of Bergen County have been and are being put
to serious inconvenience through the reduction in train service
and through threat of further reductions and even abandon-
ment of service" and that "consideration should be given to
the problem of connecting Bergen County with mid-Manhattan
by train service."
Action followed in the State legislature on April 8, 1940,
when Assemblyman Walter J. Freund of Bergen County intro-
duced a bill to establish a joint legislative commission on North
154 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Jersey suburban transit problems. The bill has passed both
houses of the legislature and requires similar action in New York
State. It envisions the construction of an electric railroad link-
ing North Jersey and southern Rockland County with midtown
Manhattan.
Other plans have also been considered by the North Jersey
Transit Commission, the Port of New York Authority and the
Regional Plan Association. One envisions a subway line parallel-
ing Route 4 from the George Washington Bridge to Paterson
with wide loops encircling south and central Bergen. Another
proposes a subway from Paterson which would cross the bridge
and use the tracks of New York's 8th Avenue line. It has also
been suggested that the West Shore Railroad run across the
bridge, connecting with the New York Central tracks in Man-
hattan.
The County Planning Board in conjunction with the WPA
is conducting extensive research for the purpose of formulating
a master plan for future rapid transit development. Preliminary
results indicate the need for improved rail and bus connections
with New York City, a more regular network of highways
adapted to through traffic, better accommodations for bus pas-
sengers using the George Washington Bridge, wider pavements
in some areas, increased use of the parkway and freeway types
of routes and a ban on parking along main highways.
7. Architecture
THE impress of the early Dutch settlers is nowhere more ap-
parent in Bergen County than in the development of its archi-
tecture. Although homes, public buildings and factories reflect
the several trends that have affected American architecture, the
influence of the Dutch Colonial style is predominant. There is
hardly a community in the county that does not have one or
several old Dutch houses. Many of the simple sandstone
churches built by the Colonial farmers still thrust their spires
above the trees of modern suburban villages or stand imper-
turbably overlooking traffic-filled highways.
Architects of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies turned their backs on the simple lines of this character-
istic local form, but recently it has had a vigorous revival. Rows
of brick-faced, stone or frame reproductions of the old Colonial
houses line the streets of new suburban developments; and many
155
156 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
of the old houses, left to decay for decades or renovated out of
all recognition by later generations, have been restored and
adapted to modern use.
As indigenous to this region as are its skyscrapers to New
York City, the Dutch Colonial style which developed in south-
ern New York and northern New Jersey is, according to Thomas
Jefferson Wertenbaker's Founding of American Civilization) at-
tributable to Flemings who immigrated with the Dutch. The fa-
miliar low lines of the roof, curving out in projecting eaves over
the front and rear walls, was a device used by the natives of
the Flanders plains to protect the perishable walls of their farm-
houses, of clay mixed with lime and straw, from the driving
rains. Slave labor enabled the Colonial farmers to make use of
the native sandstone for the walls of their one-story homes; but
the original sweeping lines of the roof, the deep overhang and
the recessed windows were retained.
At first stones were cut with little regard for size or shape
and laid in random bond. Later, oblong blocks, 8 inches high
and from 6 inches to 2 l /z feet in length, were laid in mortar
made from "mud or clay strengthened by straw or hogs' hair."
Pointing-up was done with lime mortar, leaving conspicuous
white joints. Finished cut stone sometimes was used for the
front facade and corner quoins, while the remainder of the walls
was filled in with coursed rubble, as in the Demarest House at
River Edge. Generally, however, the stonework was cut in
regular coursed bond, as in bricklaying.
The living rooms of the earliest homes were all on the first
floor, and the attic under the gambrel was used as storage space
for the winter's food supply and for looms and spinning wheels.
The steep, narrow stairway had a door at the bottom to keep
the heat in the living room.
The walls were roughly plastered and the great adze-hewn
beams were left uncovered. Windows, set almost flush with the
outside of the thick stone walls, had deep sills within. In the
Frederick Haring House, Old Tappan, the original ceiling beams,
unmarred by paint and weathered to a silver gray, can still be
seen.
ARCHITECTURE 157
Gradually the cottage, reshaped by local conditions, attained
a distinct, individual form. As a farmer prospered and his fam-
ily increased in size, Wertenbaker points out, "the little cottage
of his father or grandfather no longer seemed adequate to his
needs. So he replaced it by, or more often added to it, a some-
what pretentious residence of perhaps forty-five feet by thirty,
with low gambrel roof . . . usually without dormers." Exam-
ples of the Colonial farmhouse successively enlarged may be seen
in various parts of the county, particularly on the Tenafly and
Polifly roads and along the Saddle River.
The Dutch Colonial gambrel roof, which received varied
treatment during the eighteenth century from New England to
Virginia, assumed in Bergen County a distinctive and sym-
metrical design. Its sweeping ridge line, with deep overhanging
eaves at front and rear, close-cropped gable ends, with the
upper roof pitch much shortened and flattened and the lower
one lengthened and curved, produced an aesthetic effect that
defies duplication today.
As the style developed the overhang was sometimes extended
to allow for a porch or piazza supported by columns which
stretched across the front of the house or else flanked the front
door. A small stoop before the front door had a bench on either
side where the farmer might sit and smoke his evening pipe.
The cellar was entered through outside stairs, with a door set
aslant in a bulkhead, invariably under a front window. The
Vanderbilt House, River Vale, still has two of these doors, as
does the Samuel Demarest House, which stands adjacent to the
Huguenot Cemetery, New Milford. The majority of the houses
faced south regardless of the direction of the road, so as to re-
ceive the winter sun, while the eaves afforded daylong shade
during the summer.
The Zabriskie-Steuben House, New Bridge, is often cited as
the most notable surviving triumph of local Colonial style. The
great roof, unbroken by dormers, sweeps gracefully down from
the ridge to a deep overhang, supported by nine columns. The
double front doors and the many-paned windows break the line
of the long facade with pleasing symmetry. Set at the curve of
158 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
the road leading across narrow New Bridge over the quiet Hack-
ensack River, the house rests peacefully against a background
of open country, little changed since John and Peter Zabriskie
carved their initials and the date 1751 in the stone plaque in the
western wall. The house, confiscated from the Tory Zabriskies,
was offered to General von Steuben as a reward for his services
in the Revolution. It is now the headquarters of the Bergen
County Historical Society. Restoration of the interior, carried
out with the aid of WPA labor, has revived the beauty of the
paneling, a monument to the craftsmanship of the Colonial
builders.
Originally, Dutch Colonial front doors were purely utili-
tarian and were built in two sections so that the upper half could
be opened on a fine day, while the closed lower half kept out
the barnyard stock. Early doorways had a panel with six or
eight small glass panes above the door. Later, a rising sun fan-
light was introduced. Early houses had two front doors, each
opening into a large room with a smaller room behind. The
Samuel Demarest House at New Milford is an unaltered example
of this type, as are the Steuben House, New Bridge; the Fred-
erick Haring House, Old Tappan Road and Pearl River Road,
Old Tappan; and the Naugle-Aureyonson House, Hickory Lane,
Closter, built in 1736.
Next in general use was the house with the front door to-
ward the side, opening into a wide hall with a stairway at the
back. The Terhune House, 450 River Road, Hackensack, and
the Peter Westervelt House on Grand Avenue, just south of
Route 4, Englewood, show this treatment.
Although early Colonial houses were equipped with heavy
batten doors hung with wrought-iron hinges and fastened inside
with wooden bars or belts of iron, the deeply religious and often
superstitious settlers believed that added protection was neces-
sary against witches and evil spirits. On the doors they made
awl scratches which later developed into various symbols (dia-
mond patterns, signs of the cross, worn horseshoes, etc.) carved
against the paneled surface of the wood. These "witch doors"
may be found in other parts of New Jersey and in New Eng-
ARCHITECTURE 159
land; Bergen County's best example is the Scott House, Saddle
River Borough.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century as sawmills
developed in the region the pioneers found clapboard "the cheap-
est and most convenient covering for their outer walls." The
increased use of wood in construction also produced the "car-
penter architect." Two pioneer families who turned from farm-
ing to building were the Ogdens and Cranes, from whose mills
beams and planks were occasionally sent to London.
Although these Colonial builders were in close contact with
English architects, it was not until 1720 that the English con-
quest of 1664 exerted any marked influence over the local arch-
itectural style. As the residents became more prosperous they
began to adopt some of the features of the Georgian style, al-
ready prevalent in New England. This resulted in houses com-
bining amplitude, dignity and an increase of decorative detail
with the simple lines of the original style.
The Georgian style introduced changes in the interior plan,
exemplified in the Vreeland House, Leonia, the De Groot House,
Ridgefield, and the Demarest House, Closter. The front door,
flanked by decorative glass panels and a rising sun fanlight,
opens into a square hall, the back wall of which is broken into
three openings. The central one leads to a narrow hall which
runs to a rear door. A cabinet staircase rises from one of the
side openings, and the other is occupied by a huge closet. Four
rooms of equal proportions, with a chimney in each, are reached
from the front and rear halls. From the dining room a door
leads into the kitchen wing. In the Demarest House, Closter,
there is still a spy window in the kitchen door, permitting the
mistress to keep a watchful eye on the household slaves. The
doors of the front rooms have decorative fanlights, to furnish
light in the hall while doors were kept closed to keep in the
warmth. Throughout the house doors and moldings are intri-
cately carved. There is a lavish but tasteful use of carved detail
in the mantel board and side panels of the wide fireplaces. The
mantels of the De Groot and Vreeland houses are considered the
best of this period.
160 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Windows, save in the very earliest houses, had lintels of
stone, rectangular or trapezoidal. A good example of these may
be found in the Cornelius Wortendyke House, Goffle Road,
Midland Park, which also has the original windows with 12
panes in the upper and 8 in the lower sash.
The gable ends of the Dutch Colonial house, frequently
shingled or covered with board, were a challenge to the decora-
tive instinct. Small quatralunar windows were placed just
under the roof at either side of the chimney. Where there were
two chimneys it was customary to use a single half-moon win-
dow, set with rising-sun paneling of glass.
In the larger, later houses, the central half -moon was sup-
plemented by two oriel windows, set with delicately leaded glass,
as in the Jacob Zabriskie House, Paramus Road, Paramus, and
in the west facade of the Vreeland House, Leonia. The Hold-
rum- Wanamaker House, Montvale, built in 1778, is a fine early
example of this window treatment, with the original glass still
in place, although the house as a whole is in poor condition.
The practical Dutch, dependent for their subsistence on
the yield of their farms, built their barns and outbuildings with
the same care as they used in constructing their dwellings. They
immediately abandoned the practice, common in northern Eu-
rope even today, of placing the barn and house under one roof;
but in general the barns, according to Wertenbaker, were "al-
most as Dutch as though they had been built in Holland."
The roof descends in a steep slope to rest on the beams of
the low side, not much higher than a man's head. Additional
support is furnished by 10- to 12 -foot hewn posts connected
by great cross beams. Large doors in the center of each gable
end permit direct passage through the barn. On either side
are small doors leading to the stalls, with the hay loft above.
Many of the old barns, built of stone or wood, continued in use
long after the houses had been demolished. The Wortendyke
Barn still standing at Park Ridge had a thatched roof as recently
as 1916. This has since been replaced by shingles, but most of
the original heavy beams, held together with wooden pegs, are
still in place. The floor is of boards 12 or 14 inches wide.
ARCHITECTURE 161
As in the case of their homes, the Dutch settlers built their
first churches to conform with tradition. Disciples of the
Reformation, they remembered Calvin's warning against "seek-
ing the church of God in the beauty of buildings." The first
Church on the Green in Hackensack, the mother of all Bergen
County churches, built about 1696, was octagonal, the belfry
rising from the center of the eight-sided roof. William Day
and John Stagg are credited with the design and Epke (Egbert)
Banta was charged with the construction. Stones bearing their
initials were contributed by the members for the walls.
Austerity marked the interior, with the pulpit rather than
the altar the most conspicuous feature. Male members sat on
benches around the walls; the women provided their own chairs.
The present edifice, the result of remodelings in 1792, 1847 and
1869, shows the effect of later influences. According to Wer-
tenbaker the style employed in the old Dutch Reformed churches
is traceable to the English influence. The graceful steeples ris-
ing above the gable, the high windows, the simple front doors
and the gentle proportions of the entire structure differ little
from the churches in New England. The Schraalenburgh
Church at Dumont, the Old South Church at Bergenfield, the
Paramus and Ridgefield churches, all dating from the early
eighteenth century, are Dutch only in their denominational
background.
After the break with European traditions following the
Revolution, newly acquired wealth permitted residents to adopt
architectural forms reflecting the amplitude of the new era.
There was also a growing tendency to follow the French inspira-
tion, which formed an ideal setting for the pompous neoclassic
that came after the French Revolution.
Architects Ithiel Town, his pupil, Martin Thompson, and
Alexander Jackson Davis were disciples of the Greek tradition
in architecture. Thompson designed homes for the owners of
the many cotton factories established at the time. These were
"mansions" built on generous lines, with big chimneys, many
fireplaces, immense windows and front doors flanked by columns
which sometimes reached to the second story.
162 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The Victorian period ushered in an era of bad taste. The
simple lines of the Dutch Colonial and the stateliness of the
neoclassic structures were swept aside and often obliterated in
a flood of turrets, mansard roofs, ornamented gables, porches,
grillwork and elaborate fenestration. Designers of the period
made up for lack of inspiration by an excessive use of extraneous
decorative detail both inside and out. Brick, which was cheap
at the time, was laid in a variety of patterns with an eye as much
to its aesthetic effect as to its function.
The old Dutch houses did not completely escape the in-
genuity of the Victorian designers. Several of these stand today,
their facades decked out in ornamental porches, their sloping
roofs cut by peaked dormers or replaced by slate mansard roofs.
The Englewood Club on Palisade Avenue, Englewood, survives
as one of the less ornate examples of this period. The substantial
two-story and attic structure was once the home of the Homans
family. The ceilings are not so high nor the mantels so elaborate
as those typical of the period; but its spaciousness and solidity
bespeak the expansiveness and love of comfort that marked the
era.
With the rapid increase in suburban development in the
last quarter of the nineteenth and the first decade of the
twentieth century there was a tendency to abandon the over-
ornamental Victorian style in favor of simpler, less expensive
but equally artless houses which sprang up in the wake of the
railroads that almost overnight were converting farms into vil-
lages. However, here and there commuters of higher than aver-
age income were building great houses in an infinite variety of
styles. The monotony of rows of boxlike houses in some of the
more modest suburbs was in sharp contrast to the Italian villas,
Elizabethan manors, French chateaux and elaborate adaptations
of early American designed by noted architects in such towns
as Englewood, Ridgewood and elsewhere throughout the county.
As the need of improvement in the design of small houses
became apparent, architects began to take note of the old
Colonial style and to adapt it to modern use. Aymar Embury
II, a native of Englewood, who has designed many fine Engle-
ARCHITECTURE 163
wood homes, the Knickerbocker Country Club, the Triborough,
Henry Hudson, Marine Parkway, Whitestone and Niagara Falls
Bridges and the Lincoln Tunnel approaches, was a pioneer in
the movement. Mr. Embury says:
It so happened that the first houses I built were small houses,
which perhaps were not particularly good, but were at least an advance
on the other houses of that time so that my earliest work received
recognition out of all proportions to its merits. I do think that I was
somewhat responsible for popularizing the Dutch Colonial type. Very
few other architects had ever noticed it.
As characteristic of twentieth century trends as was the old
Dutch Colonial architecture of the early days of the county are
the recent housing developments of garden-type apartments and
multiple-unit dwellings. Many of these have achieved homo-
geneity while avoiding monotony by a happy choice of build-
ing materials and an adaptation of designs based on those orig-
inated by the early settlers. Planning Boards and Boards of
Adjustment, by laying down building restrictions and zoning
laws in many of the towns, have made it possible for architects
to avoid the ugly results of past errors. These housing groups
are most prominent in Teaneck, Englewood, Tenafly, Leonia
and Radburn.
Radburn, the "Town for the Motor Age," opened in the
summer of 1929, has attracted national interest as a planned
community. Henry Wright, a pioneer in modern housing,
Clarence Stein and a number of fellow architects have designed
a community on a stretch of farmland south of Ridgewood for
people of moderate income. The town is laid out in "super
blocks" around a central core of park land, approximately a
mile in circumference. Homes, built in the strip of land sur-
rounding the park, have two entrances, one on a foot path
which leads into the park, the other on a dead-end street run-
ning from the motor highway surrounding the block. Foot-
paths which underpass the motor roads have achieved for the
community the conveniences of the motor age while minimiz-
ing its dangers. The development also includes a large apart-
ment house, store building, swimming pools and tennis courts.
Old Houses and Churches
pstein
ubel
.V
t.:jH,,
/'/
wiH
SAMUEL DEMAREST HOUSE, NEW MILFORD
DAVID DEMAREST JR. HOUSE, NEW MILFORD
STEUBEN HOUSE, BERGEN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, RIVER EDGE
Epstein
MANSION HOUSE, HACKENSACK
Epstein
'list. Amer. Bldg. Survey
VAN HORN-BRANFORD HOUSE, WYCKOFF
list. Amer. Bldg. Survey
ZABRISKIE-CHRISTIE HOUSE, DUMONT
x<
5.i^
v*
PETRUS-BENJAMIN WESTERVELT HOUSE, CRESSKILL
Epstein
VREELAND HOUSE, LEONIA
Epstein
I
DOORWAY AND
FIREPLACE IN THE
VREELAND HOUSE
Epstein
i
HALLWAY AND
FIREPLACE IN
THE DEGROOT
HOUSE, RIDGE-
FIELD
Epstein
Epstein
CHURCH-ON-THE-GREEN, HACKENSACK
REFORMED CHURCH
OF PARAMUS,
RIDGEWOOD
Rubel
ENGLISH NEIGHB(
HOOD CHURCH,
RIDGEFIELD
Kubel
ARCHITECTURE 165
Church architecture still manifests the influence of the
Gothic style which came in with the Victorian age. Most of the
old Dutch churches remodeled during the middle of the nine-
teenth century bear the marks of the contemporary style in the
pointed arches of window and door frames.
Christ Church (Protestant Episcopal), Hackensack, begun
in 1863, is an outstanding example of mid- Victorian Gothic.
Alterations to the front and the spireless tower added in 1893,
the enlargement of the choir and sanctuary and the adjacent
guild house and rectory have all been carried out in conformity
with the original design.
Gothic on a far more ambitious scale is the ample stone
bulk of the Second Reformed Church at Union and Ward
streets, Hackensack, designed in 1907 by Edward Pearce Casey,
who won first prize in the Grand Monument Competition, and
Arthur Durant Sneden, who, although a native of Rockland
County, New York, has long been identified with local archi-
tecture.
Although the term Gothic is technically and historically
accurate as applied to the Church of the Holy Trinity (Roman
Catholic) at Pangborn Place and Maple Avenue, Hackensack,
erected 1927, its architect, Raphael Hume, considers "French
Romanesque" more appropriate. The building suggests Spanish
influences and was derived from the cathedral at Salamanca.
Eight Corinthian columns rest on the short flight of wide steps,
beyond which the great central doors open to high-pitched ceil-
ings. Externally there is a departure from the pointed Gothic
window of tradition.
In Englewood Hume designed the priory of the Carmelite
order in a Gothic of which the mood is middle English, varied
at windows and buttresses by more modern touches. The style
of this architect asserts itself likewise in the treatment of St.
Cecilia's Roman Catholic Church, Demarest Avenue, Engle-
wood, visible for miles down the valley. Despite its size and
massive construction the delicacy of the stone carvings about the
rose windows and on the columns of the entrance porch lighten
the whole successfully,
166 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, Grand Avenue,
Englewood, is an imposing structure of light and dark sandstone
erected in 1899. Its memorial stained-glass windows are un-
usually fine.
Public buildings in the county run the gamut from Gothic
to reproductions of Georgian Colonial. The Johnson Library,
Hackensack, an Elizabethan Gothic structure of rock-faced
Belleville stone, features a clock tower reminiscent of a sixteenth
century castle. The interior is finished in Flemish oak with
beamed ceilings and leaded casement windows.
Dominating the public buildings of the county is the Bergen
County Courthouse, constructed in 1912. The neoclassic struc-
ture, designed by James Reilly Gordon, is considered "one of
the most successful buildings in the State." Situated on lower
Main Street across the Green from the historic Church on the
Green and the Mansion House (1751), the building is ap-
proached from a broad terrace flanked by statuary. The strength
of the entrance portico with columns in antis is emphasized by
the fine proportions of the two recessed wings. The massive
dome, illuminated at night, is an outstanding feature of the
landscape. A band of sculptured figures around the exterior
of the dome records the trials and triumphs of the families who
built the church nearby and the march of progress that began
with the erection of the first dwelling with a gambrel roof. Ad-
joining the Courthouse on the east is the five-story county jail,
combining modern lines with medieval battlements.
Rapid growth of the county necessitated the erection in
1933 of the Bergen County Administrative Building to house
county agencies and administrative offices. The neoclassic style
of the four-story Arkansas marble structure, designed by Tilton,
Schwanewede and Githens, conforms happily with the dignity
of the Courthouse.
The County Medical Center, composed of Bergen Pines and
the Bergen County Hospital, is made up of ten Spanish-style
buildings of stucco, roofed with red tile and connected by un-
derground tunnels. The architect, Cornelius V. R. Bogert, also
designed the Old People's Home nearby. This edifice is a gra-
ARCHITECTURE 167
cious Colonial brick building with a south facade enhanced by
two-story columns, hospitable white doors and wide porch.
Return to early American styles is exemplified in the
Y. M. C. A., Main Street, Hackensack. Designed by Louis E.
Jallade, the red brick slate-roofed building has an impressive
entrance with white columns two stories high forming a broad
porch. The doorway has leaded glass fanlights and the tradi-
tional carved pineapple, symbol of hospitality.
Another successful adaptation of the Colonial style to mod-
ern public buildings is the Teaneck Town Hall. The brick
structure has a four-column white portico extending to the
second story and is surmounted by a cupola.
The progressive spirit characteristic of the county is appar-
ent in the rapid advances that have been made in the past decade
in school and industrial architecture. Outstanding among the
many modern school buildings, in the county and in the State,
is the beautiful Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood,
built in 1931-32 and designed by Lawrence Licht. The build-
ing, set in a 37-acre park, is in English Tudor style. The prin-
ciple feature of the asymmetrical design is a 120-foot tower,
topped with stone tracery, planned to hold a carillon. The
building, which houses 3,000 students, is the first unit of a much
larger plan, which will include additional shops, study halls, a
1,500-seat auditorium and a branch of the public library. De-
signers of high and elementary schools in Teaneck, Ridgewood,
Tenafly, Fort Lee, Glen Rock and other towns have made a
conspicuous success of adapting modern educational needs to
harmonious design.
Factory buildings which have appeared in the last decade
contrast sharply with the murky red brick structures of old.
Today's streamlined structures, with a liberal use of glass and
simple vertical design, sacrifice nothing in aesthetic effect to
their functional purpose. The tendency is to construct one-
or two-story plants which permit extension as needed without
loss of light or ventilation. Typical of these is the Bendix plant
at Bendix, begun in 1937, which has spread out in a series of
glass-walled wings.
168 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The Hills Brothers coffee plant, constructed at Edgewater
in 1940, illustrates other possibilities of functional design. The
motif of alternating light and dark bands furnished by the high
windows is reinforced by the long light line of the covered dock
and the striped verticality of the 14-story mixing tower. Di-
rectly across the river the neoclassic Grant's Tomb and the
Gothic Riverside Church furnish an almost startling contrast.
Designed and built by the Austin Company, the structure, with
225,000 square feet of floor space, contains complete facilities
for coffee unloading, storing, roasting, packing and shipping,
as well as a cafeteria and executive offices.
Modern architecture in Bergen County finds its most im-
pressive expression, however, in the George Washington Me-
morial Bridge. Flung against the massive bulk of the Palisades,
the 3, 5 00- foot span at a distance posesses a cobweb grace and
close at hand does not reveal that at this point the towers are
twice as high as the rock barricade. The Port of New York
Authority Building at the New Jersey end, because of its simple
solid appearance and the large stones, found at the site, used
in its construction, blends harmoniously with the environment.
8. National and Racial Groups
SINCE the days of the first Dutch settlers Bergen County's
social heritage has been enriched by repeated infusions of foreign
immigration. Representing more than a score of nationalities,
these immigrants by their zeal and industry have contributed
largely to the county's economic and cultural development.
When the Dutch first arrived some 300 years ago they
found the region inhabited by the Achkinheshacky Indians,
whose primitive civilization was centered between Hackensack
River and Overpeck Creek. Gradually the Indians were pushed
westward; "undoubtedly they taught the first settlers many
things about fishing, hunting, the cultivation of maize."
Accompanying the Dutch into the region were a small
number of French Huguenots who, fleeing France to avoid re-
ligious persecutions, tarried a while in Holland and England.
The capture of New Amsterdam by the British in 1664 was
169
170 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
followed by an influx of English, many of whom established
their farms in the region between Englewood and Ridgefield,
long known as "English Neighborhood."
Adjacent to the thriving settlement of New York, Colonial
Bergen County attracted increasing numbers of Dutch and Eng-
lish. Though later eclipsed by large-scale immigration from
other lands, these early pioneers have left an indelible imprint
on every phase of Bergen County life.
An index to the nationality complexion of Bergen's early
inhabitants is offered by the records of His Majesty's Board of
Justices and Freeholders, which reveal that during the Colonial
period the clerks of the board included Edmund Kingsland, Eng-
lish, Abraham Westervelt, Dutch, Jacobus Demarest, French,
and John Hogan, Irish.
For more than a half century after the Revolution immigra-
tion was slight, being mainly English, Irish, Scottish and Dutch,
Some came directly from their homelands, others from New
York and New England. Then, in the mid-nineteenth century,
a more diversified immigration set in, swelling in later years
with the growth of industry. First to arrive in large numbers
were Germans, followed by Italians, Poles, Czechs and others.
Economic and political factors mainly impelled these newcomers
to leave their native lands, a movement that continued unabated
until well into the twentieth century.
In 1900 there were 20,247 foreign-born. The number rose
to 39,383 in 1910, 54,184 in 1920 and 83,850 in 1930. These
figures show a much greater percentage increase than that for
the country as a whole. Germans constituted the largest group
in 1900 and 1910, but the Italians took the lead in 1920 and
maintained it in 1930. They were followed numerically by the
Germans, Poles, English, Irish and Czechoslovakians.
The figures for foreign-born, however, tell only part of the
story. The 1930 census reveals that out of a total of 272,020
native-born persons, 144,525 were of foreign or mixed parent-
age, commonly known as the second generation. Thus, almost
two-thirds of Bergen's 364,977 population had an immediate or
secondary foreign background.
NATIONAL AND RACIAL GROUPS 171
Municipalities with the largest proportions of foreign stock
are Garfield, Lodi, Cliffside Park, Lyndhurst, Wellington, Fair-
view, East Paterson and Little Ferry. According to the 1930
census, the latest at present (1941) available, out of a population
of 29,739 Garfield has 11,103 persons of foreign birth and
16,510 of foreign or mixed parentage. Lodi's population of
11,549 includes 4,069 foreign-born and 6,228 second-generation
residents. Cliffside Park has 4,402 and 6,691 respectively out of
15,267. Lyndhurst, Wallington, Fair view, East Paterson and
Little Ferry also have large proportions.
A strong inclination to become citizens and participate in
the normal life of the community is indicated by the fact that
since 1921 the Americanization Department of the county
Y.M.C.A. alone has helped 14,000 persons fill out naturalization
papers. Most of the foreign-born strive to retain the native
tongue and customs and to impart them to their children.
Through environment and education, however, the second gen-
eration presents a sharp cleavage with the homeland ways of the
parents, while the third and succeeding generations generally
merge completely with the main stream of American life.
The tendency of many foreign groups to cling together has
given rise to a host of organizations, social, recreational, fraternal
and political. Especially popular are mutual aid and sick and
death benefit societies. Churches offer services in the native
tongue, while several groups maintain part-time schools where
children are taught the language, customs and history of their
parents' native land.
Many organizations maintain quarters where plays, motion
pictures and entertainments are often given in the native tongue.
Also common are social affairs where the foreign-born don native
costumes and participate in homeland dances. The second gen-
eration, however, usually prefers the manners of America.
The Germans began their influx into Bergen County about
1850, when many of them sought refuge in America following
the unsuccesful democratic uprisings of 1848. The first sub-
stantial settlement was made in 1854, when the German Demo-
cratic Land Association of New York City purchased 140 acres
172 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
of land in South Bergen and named it Carlstadt (Carl's City)
in honor of Dr. Carl Klein, leader of the association. The set-
tlement was often referred to as "The Little German Village
on the Hill."
German immigration gained momentum in the latter part
of the nineteenth century; between 1900 and 1930 the German
population of the county more than doubled. Census figures
for 1930 show 14,940 foreign-born and 30,437 second-genera-
tion Germans, well scattered throughout the county. Com-
munities with the largest numbers of the former are Garfield
(1,052), Clitfside Park (838), Teaneck (807), Hackensack
(763), Lyndhurst (642) and Ridgefield Park (508).
Unlike other groups whose social and recreational activities
revolve around the church, the Germans have many secular or-
ganizations such as singing, dramatic and athletic societies. Most
of these are centered in Carlstadt, where the majority of the
population claims German descent, though the foreign-born ele-
ment today is small. The Turn Verein, an athletic organiza-
tion, has been in existence there since 1857, while the Concordia,
a dramatic and singing society, was founded ten years later.
The Maennerchor (Men's Choir) and the Damenchor (Women's
Choir) have branches in various parts of the county.
German picnics and outings, noted for their conviviality,
once attracted large attendances. Though these colorful gather-
ings are now infrequent the school picnic and parade in Carl-
stadt, begun by the first German settlers, is the oldest surviving
annual event in Bergen County. The German language, until
1 9 1 8 a required study in all Carlstadt public schools, is still heard
frequently in street conversations and at the headquarters of
the Turn Verein and Concordia.
Several municipalities have German mutual aid societies as
well as clubs devoted to social and recreational activities. Most
popular of the former is the Krankenkasse, a nation-wide sick
and death benefit society. The clubs frequently hold concerts,
social affairs and entertainments entirely in German. A weekly
newspaper, the Passaic Wochenblatt, is read in Bergen County,
and New York German papers have large circulations.
NATIONAL AND RACIAL GROUPS 173
Until the closing years of the nineteenth century there were
few Italians in Bergen County. In 1900 they numbered 2,055,
increasing to 8,489 in 1910 and 14,162 in 1920. In 1930 there
were 20,785 of foreign birth and 34,474 of Italian or mixed
parentage. The largest numbers of the first group are in Gar-
field (3,174), Lodi (2,446), Hackensack (2,092), Lyndhurst
(1,655) and Cliff side Park (1,278). Many also reside in Engle-
wood, Teaneck, Ridgefield Park, Wallington, Waldwick and
Emerson.
Driven to America by economic necessity, the majority of
Italians who came to Bergen County, most of them from south-
ern Italy and Sicily, found work as mill hands and laborers.
Large numbers were attracted by the silk-dyeing industry at
Lodi and the woolen mills at Garfield and Passaic. Others ob-
tained employment in the factories at Edgewater and settled
in the vicinity of Cliffside Park, Fairview and Fort Lee. Most
of the industrial unions in Bergen have a decided Italian com-
position, and, in many cases, Italian leadership. Palisades Park
has a small colony whose members during the spring and sum-
mer travel widely in small trucks with scissor-grinding equip-
ment.
The center of most Italian activities is the church, where
sermons are usually delivered in the native tongue. Among the
large Italian Roman Catholic churches in Bergen County are
Our Lady of Mount Virgin and Our Lady of Sorrow, both in
Garfield; St. Joseph's in Lodi, Church of the Madonna in Cliff -
side Park, St. Francis in Hackensack and Mt. Carmel in Lynd-
hurst. Connected with these churches are numerous organiza-
tions for children and adults.
Many Italian districts observe saints' days with colorful
parades, gay street carnivals and feasting. Held in roped-off
sections, the carnivals are elaborate affairs with multicolored
lights, booths, bunting, music and fireworks.
Most Italians belong to one or more of the numerous lodges,
fraternities or mutual aid societies. Outstanding is the Sons of
Italy, with branches in all Italian centers, which conducts an
extensive Americanization program. Two Italian newspapers,
174 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The Messenger and the Colonial Sentinel, both published in
Paterson, enjoy considerable circulation. New York Italian
papers are widely read.
One of the few homeland customs practiced by Italians
here, and to a lesser extent by other nationalities as well, is the
native style of preparing food and drink. Italian funerals, par-
ticularly those of lodge members, are frequently elaborate af-
fairs, with flowers in profusion, a uniformed band and a long
procession.
The Poles, who comprise the third largest group of foreign-
born in the county, have arrived mostly during the last few
decades. Though mainly from the peasant class in the old
country, they found employment chiefly in the woolen mills of
Garfield and Passaic. Of the 7,941 persons of Polish birth in the
county, according to the 1930 census, 2,296 reside in Garfield,
which also has 3,763 second-generation Poles; in nearby Wall-
ington more than half of the 9,000 population is of Polish birth
or extraction. Smaller numbers are in Cliff side Park (450),
Lyndhurst (372), Hackensack (315) and Lodi (307). Second-
generation Poles in Bergen County number 12,869.
The center of most Polish activities is the Polish Peoples
Home in Passaic, built and maintained by numerous Polish or-
ganizations in Passaic and Garfield. Besides conducting a well-
balanced program of social activities, the Home sponsors several
organizations and holds Americanization classes for the teaching
of United States and Polish history. The White Eagle House
in Hackensack is the center of Polish activities in that area.
Large Polish organizations in Bergen County include the
Polish National Alliance with branches in Lyndhurst, Garfield,
Hackensack, Wallington, Lodi and Cliffside Park, and units of
the Associated Souls of Poland. Active societies, mostly of the
sick and death benefit variety, are St. Stanislaus', St. Albert's,
St. Anthony's, St. Michael's and St. Joseph's.
The Poles support several large Roman Catholic Churches,
among them St. Joseph's, Hackensack; St. Michael's, Lyndhurst;
St. Stanislaus', Garfield, and the National Catholic Church of
the Transfiguration, Wallington. Three Polish churches in Pas-
NATIONAL AND RACIAL GROUPS 175
sale also serve many Bergen residents. All churches have or-
ganizations for various social, recreational and welfare activities.
Polish residents in Bergen County read the weekly Passaic
Nowiny.
Until the turn of the century there were few people in
Bergen County from what became Czechoslovakia. Many of
these, particularly Czechs and Slovaks, have since immigrated.
Persons of Czechoslovakian birth in Bergen County totaled
3,864 in 1930 with 5,986 of foreign or mixed parentage. Most
of the Czechs are concentrated in Little Ferry and Cliffside
Park, the Slovaks in Garfield and Wellington.
The first substantial body of Czech immigrants came in
1890 when pearl-button makers from Zirovnice, a Bohemian
town, settled in Little Ferry, Cliffside Park and Carlstadt, where
they introduced the craft. Some pearl-button making is still
carried on today.
The Czech influence is clearly evident in Little Ferry, where
fully one-third of the population is of Czech birth or origin.
Czech names are prominent in every walk of civic and commu-
nity life. Two Sokol (Falcon) organizations are actively en-
gaged in social and recreational activities. The Telocvicna
Jednota (Body-Building) Sokol has a membership of about 300
or 400 including women's and children's auxiliaries. Besides
engaging in sports and gymnastics, it frequently presents plays
in the Czech language and conducts social affairs where native
costumes and dances are exhibited. The Delnicky Americky
(American Workingmen's) Sokol is primarily a social-demo-
cratic discussion group, with about 50 members.
Both co-operate in maintaining the Bohemian Free School,
where about 100 children are taught Czech language and his-
tory. The Sokols also participate in national and State conven-
tions and before the partitioning of Czechoslovakia frequently
sent representatives to their homeland to attend various Sokol
functions.
More than half of the foreign-born Czechoslovakians in
Bergen County are Slovaks, most of whom were attracted to
Garfield by opportunities for industrial employment. The
176 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
majority are Orthodox or Roman Catholics who attend church
in Garfield and Passaic. Garfield also has two Protestant Slovak
churches. Most Catholics are affiliated with the Slovak Catholic
Sokol, a gymnastic and fraternal organization with national
headquarters in Passaic which, like the Czech Sokols, has lan-
guage schools and units for children and adults. Its organ, the
Katolicky Sokol, issued from Passaic, has a special children's
section and is widely read in Bergen County.
Deeply concerned for their independence, culture and lan-
guage, the Slovaks maintain a center for fostering Slovak litera-
ture, art and science. Known as the Matica Slovenska (Slovak
Mother), the organization has quarters in the Passaic Catholic
Sokol building.
Among the large Slovak societies in Bergen County are
branches of the Slovak Catholic Union, the National Slovak
Society and St. Elizabeth's Society. These fraternal organiza-
tions draw their membership chiefly from Garfield and Walling-
ton. Occasionally social affairs are conducted featuring Slovak
dances, songs and skits.
Another people who settled here in large numbers during
the past few decades were the Hollanders, mostly from Fries-
land, northernmost province of the Netherlands. Many entered
the building trades, while others found factory employment,
In 1930 there were 3,078 foreign-born and 5,474 second-gen-
eration Hollanders in the county. Though more widely scat-
tered than most nationalities, large numbers are in Midland Park,
Garfield, Ridgewood, Lodi and Fair Lawn. Fully 80 percent
of the population of Midland Park claims Dutch birth or descent
Like their Colonial kin, the Bergen County Dutch of today
are a frugal, conscientious and devout folk. The percentage of
homeowners among them is unusually large.
There are numerous Dutch Reformed churches, all with
Sunday Schools, and several Christian Day Schools where re-
ligious training is stressed. Largest is the Midland Park Chris-
tian School with an enrollment of about 150. Two Midland
Park churches, the First (Holland) Reformed and the Midland
Park Reformed, hold part of their services in Dutch. In order
NATIONAL AND RACIAL GROUPS 177
that there may be more leisure for church, Sunday's meals, for
the most part, are cooked on Saturday.
In addition to numerous church groups the Hollanders
have several distinctive organizations of their own. Two large
social groups, the Ladies Harmonic of Paterson and the U.T.Y.,
a Frisian society of Haledon, have many members in Bergen
County. Het Oosten, a Dutch newspaper published in Pater-
son, enjoys a wide circulation among Bergen residents.
The county experienced its greatest tide of Hungarian im-
migration during 1907-08 when an agricultural crisis in Hun-
gary caused a large-scale exodus of peasants. Most of those who
settled in Bergen became factory workers. Of the 2,499 for-
eign-born Hungarians in Bergen County in 1930, more than
half (1,478) resided in Garfield. The remainder are well dis-
tributed throughout the county. Second-generation Hungar-
ians total 2,972.
Most Hungarian social life is centered about the church.
The Hungarian Baptist Church in Garfield has, in addition to a
Sunday School, a Young People's Circle, a Youth Fellowship
League and a Young People's High School Union. Many Gar-
field residents attend Passaic churches, notably the Hungarian
Reformed Church and St. Stephen's Catholic Church, and take
an active part in their affiliated organizations.
Other nationalities in Bergen County, according to the
1930 census, included:
Foreign- horn Sec. gen.
English 4,912 9,939
Irish: Eire 3,137 10,150
North Ireland 1,277 3,507
Scots 2,954 3,923
French 2,267 2,866
Austrians 2,117 3,972
Russians 2,018 3,115
Swedes 1,877 2,537
Canadians (English) 1,654 2,550
Swiss 1,486 1,978
Norwegians 1,252 1,313
178 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
These groups, generally, are scattered throughout the
county. Largest clusters are at Englewood, which has 659 for-
eign-born Irish; Lodi, with 603 French; and Teaneck, which has
more than 600 Scandinavians, many of whom are served by the
Norwegian Evangelical Free Church of Teaneck, where services
are conducted in Norwegian. Another large foreign -language
church is the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church at Gar-
field. Ridgefield Park has many residents of Swedish extraction,
attributable to a large extent to the settlement of the West View
section in 1883 by a colony of Swedish immigrants.
The Negro population of Bergen County since 1900 has
shown a steady growth. From 2,603 in 1900, the number in-
creased to 3,295 in 1910, 4,136 in 1920 and 8,872 in 1930.
More than half of the 1930 Negro population was concentrated
in two cities, Hackensack with 2,530 and Englewood with 2,524,
Both have Negro community centers. Present estimates place
the number of Negroes in Hackensack at more that 4,000.
Before the Civil War Bergen County had slaveholders, and
notices were common in local newspapers informing the public
of runaway slaves. Most Negroes, however, were freedmen,
some even owning their own farms. A colony of free Negroes
was said to have existed on the Palisades long before the Civil
War. Indeed, the census of 1830 shows 1,890 free Negroes in
Bergen County as against 589 slaves, while by 1850 there were
only 41 slaves in the county. In 1860 the State had 18 slaves
and 25,318 free Negroes.
For many years after the Civil War the influx of Negroes
was slight. But in the early 1920's, when the extensive system
of highways was being built, large numbers came from the South
in search of employment. With their field of employment
limited, most Negroes have become unskilled laborers, mechanics'
helpers and construction and maintenance workers. Negro
women work chiefly in domestic service.
In recent years the progressive "New Negro" movement
has done much to improve the lot of Bergen County Negroes.
Fostered by the younger element who have received some educa-
tion, the purpose of the movement is to secure equal rights and
NATIONAL AND RACIAL GROUPS 179
opportunities. Conferences attended by both whites and
Negroes have been held in Hackensack to discuss the problems
of the Negro and pave the way for better understanding. Edu-
cation, it has been generally agreed, is the chief weapon by which
the Negro may come into full possession of his rights as an
American citizen.
Bergen County's famed "Jackson Whites," an intermixture
of Indians, Negroes and whites, dwell for the most part in the
Ramapo Mountains. Few still remain in their native haunts; it
is believed that about 5,000 are scattered through the region.
Their roots go back to the Revolution, when British author-
ities in New York, fearing the troops might become annoying
to the female population, contracted with a man named Jack-
son to import 3,500 women from England. One boatload was
lost, and since the contract did not specify what color the women
were to be, Jackson made up the number with Negro women
from the West Indies. When they arrived at New York they
were naturally referred to as Jackson's Whites and Jackson's
Blacks.
At the close of the war the women became outcasts and
before long were forced to flee across the Hudson River into
New Jersey. Hounded by the farmers and townspeople, the
group gradually made its way into the wilds of the Ramapos
and found refuge with a number of Tuscarora Indians, who had
been banished from North Carolina in 1714. Here they were
joined by former Hessian soldiers who had been left stranded
in a hostile country and later by runaway slaves. Physical char-
acteristics of present-day Jackson Whites bear strong evidence
of the fusion of these groups.
Prominent among their names are those of De Groat and
Mann. The progenitor of the former was a Dutchman who
moved into the valley late in the eighteenth century and married
an Indian. Mann was probably one of the original settlers. In
1870 two Italians, James and Joseph Castaglionia, joined the
group. Both married Jackson White girls, and their descendants
bear the name of Casalony. Other conspicuous names are De
Fries, De Graw, Burris and Wanamaker.
180 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
For many years the Jackson Whites were regarded as ab-
normal beings. Newspaper records show that they were even
exploited as such in early Barnum exhibitions. But much of
the peculiar behavior and odd characteristics attributed to these
people have been proved figments of imagination.
Although their fear and distrust of people and their desire
for isolation has presented a serious problem in assimilation, this
is being overcome by State and local authorities through an
extensive program of welfare and rehabilitation. Today most
of them have abandoned their mountain shacks and have become
absorbed in normal community life. A group of them, organ-
ized as the Brook Choral Club, sang at the Temple of Religion at
the New York World's Fair.
p. Churches
RELIGION in Bergen County, which at first meant only the
ironclad tenets of the Calvinistic creed, today has spread to in-
clude more than 260 churches of various faiths, augmented by
a network of religious, welfare, social and recreational organiza-
tions. Church membership, which two centuries ago included
virtually the entire population, is now estimated at between
100,000 and 120,000, of whom more than 60 percent regularly
attend services. Similarly, the habit of strict adherence to
ecclesiastically prescribed social behavior has relaxed as the
churches recognized modern social and economic needs.
Dutch Reformed, French Huguenots, German Lutherans and
English Separatists were among Bergen's early inhabitants. Of
these the Dutch were the earliest and most numerous and de-
veloped the most distinctive features in religious and communal
life.
181
182 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Thrift and industry were early implanted in the Dutch
settler. In following the plow and carving out a home in the
wilderness, as well as by devoting himself with sober gravity to
the service of God, he was fulfilling his religious philosophy.
Later, with the first phases of commercial expansion, Calvinism
directed the economic energies of the rising middle class.
Dutch settlers organized the Bergen Reformed Church soon
after incorporation of Bergen Village (Jersey City) and erected
a log building that served as both church and school near the
site of the present school No. 11. Following an appeal in De-
cember 1662 they were supplied with ministers from New
Amsterdam for a time. Under Dutch rule the church was sup-
ported by a general tax. Freedom of worship was generally
permitted provided that members of other sects contributed to
the Dutch religious fund.
At the top of the church organization was the synod in
Holland. Next in authority was the classis, composed of min-
isters and elders in a certain district; for many years the Classis
of Amsterdam governed the church in America. A consistory
included the minister and elders of a kerk (church).
With the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, the
position of the church was reversed. The Dutch colonist, under
political allegiance to England while ecclesiastically bound to
Holland, was taxed for the support of the Church of England;
use of the English prayer book was advocated, and only ministers
licensed by English governors were supposed to preach. Violent
protests by the Classis of Amsterdam, however, won a series of
measures that established freedom of worship.
The crude log church at Bergen was replaced by an octa-
gonal stone building in 1680. For 16 years this remained the
only church building to serve the widely scattered Dutch settlers.
Meanwhile the first permanent settlement in the present
county had been made by David des Marest, a prominent mem-
ber of the Huguenot colony in New York. In 1 677, in protest
against demands, legally enforced, that he contribute to the
salary of the Dutch minister in New Haarlem, des Marest pur-
chased a large tract of land along the east bank of the Hacken-
CHURCHES 183
sack River. Soon he established his family on his land with the
apparent intent of making it the center of a Huguenot settle-
ment.
A French church was organized, and a church building was
erected near the Demarest house at New Bridge (New Milford) ,
adjoining the "Old French Burying Ground." The line of the
church's foundations was traceable until recent years. The Rev.
Pierre Daille conducted services as often as he could while serv-
ing the several scattered French churches, until he was called to
Boston in 1696.
Its members therefore passed into the Dutch Reformed
Church (on-the-Green) of Hackensack, organized in 1686 and
constructed in 1696. The Hackensack record in Dutch reads:
"1696. On the 5 April with letters from the French church"
(the names follow). Elsewhere the church is referred to as
the French church of Kinkachemeck (Kinderkamack). From
all indications it was organized in 1682. If so, it was perhaps
the earliest organized French church in the colonies. It was in
any case the only French Reformed (Huguenot) Church in
New Jersey.
From the beginning the Hackensack church was the center
of community life. Though the congregation might take ad-
vantage of the Sabbath day meeting to discuss family and civic
life, crops and other secular affairs, all forms of labor and enter-
tainment were banned. Nor did the church's influence cease
with Sunday's activities. All week-day frivolities, such as they
were, were subject to the approval of the domine.
Church accommodations reflected the rigorous spirit of the
Colonial period. Usually the early churches were constructed
of stone or planed boards and logs. The interiors, dark and
poorly ventilated, contained a raised, roughly fashioned pulpit,
rows of chairs and backless wooden benches. Warmth was pro-
vided in winter only by straw on the floor, which inspired some
to bring iron, charcoal -heated foot farmers to worship.
Services were simple, often austere. The clerk, or voorleser,
read from the Bible and then directed the singing of a psalm
from his place below the pulpit, while the minister stood in silent
184 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
prayer. The latter then entered the pulpit for the exordium
remotum the presentation of the text and its relation to the
sermon to follow. Facing the pulpit, almsbags in hand, stood
the deacons. Their duty was to pass the cloth kerk sacjes, at-
tached to long poles, with sometimes a small bell at the end.
While the offering was being collected the minister pictured the
needs of the poor and the rewards of a cheerful giver. As soon
as the sermon started the voorleser turned the hour glass to time
the discourse. When the minister finished he was presented
with any requests for special prayers, gathered by the voorleser.
Then another psalm was sung, and the congregation marched
out in a quiet procession.
Worship in outlying regions often was held in barns and
dwellings until there were enough settlers to build a church.
Isolated communities shared a clergyman, who sometimes
traveled to several congregations on the same day. The uncer-
tainty and small size of salaries and the difficulties of travel
resulted in many pulpits' being unfilled.
Guilliam Bertholf, an itinerant voorleser, went to Holland
in 1693 to be ordained and became the first "settled" pastor for
the congregation of Hackensack. Bertholf also acted as teacher.
In 1710 he organized a church at the Ponds (Oakland). Six
years later his missionary efforts were further rewarded when a
church was built at Tappan. Besides serving both, he also oc-
cupied the pulpit at Acquackanonk (Passaic) and traveled to
Staten Island, Tarrytown, Harlem and central New Jersey. In
all the Hackensack church mothered 15 others by 1814.
Meanwhile Lord Cornbury, Crown Governor of New
Jersey, had tried to Anglicize the Reformed Church after his
appointment in 1702 by prescribing English ministers for Dutch
congregations. A protest from the Holland Synod that the
action violated the Articles of Surrender ended the external
threat but did not prevent dissension from within.
The move for Americanization of the Reformed Church
developed mainly over the issue of local church control by the
Classis of Amsterdam. Supported by Bertholf, many com-
municants favored American control and American ordination
CHURCHES 185
of pastors. The status quo was upheld by older church members
and ministers born, educated and ordained in Holland. Two
factions emerged the Coetus, which favored American ordina-
tion, and the Conferentie, which defended the power of the
Classis of Amsterdam.
In 1724 the spread of the Dutch families resulted in the
establishment of Old South Church in Schraalenburgh, near the
site of the present Presbyterian church of the same name in
Bergenfield. A year later a congregation was organized at
Paramus.
The next 23 years were comparatively peaceful. "With the
appointment of the Rev. John Henry Goetschius in 1748 as
colleague to the Rev. Antonius Curtenius at the Hackensack
and Schraalenburgh churches the controversy was renewed.
Goetschius proved a vigorous proponent of the Coetus, and an
administrative struggle developed which led to physical combat.
The factions fought on the way to and from church, and dis-
turbances and assaults occurred even during services. Many
differences resulted from conflicting views on education; con-
sistories advocated Dutch as the language of the free schools,
while numerous colonists insisted on the use of English.
In 1738 the Coetus had submitted its demands to the
tribunal in Amsterdam, which nine years later permitted it to
form a semi-independent classis. The agreement allowed the
congregations at Hackensack and Schraalenburgh each to divide
into two groups with Coetus and Conferentie services on alter-
nate Sundays in the two churches.
The Coetus gained in popularity and by 1760 was selecting
only pastors versed in preaching in English. In 1772 the Classis
of Amsterdam officially recognized the American authority, be-
lieving that the spread of the gospel was more important than
the language of the ritual. But some of the younger generation,
impatient at the delay in granting concessions, had meanwhile
become Episcopalians.
"Articles of Union" were adopted and five district govern-
ing bodies established, three in New York and two in New
Jersey, subordinate to the Classis of Amsterdam. American
186 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
ministers were to be educated at Queen's College (Rutgers).
One of the districts was the Classis of Hackensack, which was
given jurisdiction over the two divided congregations in Hack-
ensack and Schraalenburgh, and the churches at the Ponds,
Paramus, Bergen and English Neighborhood.
Subsequent peaceful growth was interrupted by the Revo-
lutionary War, when political differences again split congrega-
tions. The Rev. Theodoric (Dirck) Romeyn, pastor of the
Hackensack church from 1775 to 1784, aligned himself with
the patriots but failed to convert all of his flock. Tories and
rebels clashed in verbal battle during Sabbath worship. Called
the "Rebel Pastor" by the British, Romeyn requested militia
protection from Governor Livingston in 1779 for his trips to
and from church.
Before and during the war Tory sentiment was especially
strong among the congregation of English Neighborhood. The
Rev. Garret Lydecker, appointed the first pastor in 1768, was
unable to separate political dispute from church administration,
and starting in 1776 the pulpit went unfilled for a decade and
a half.
The early Federal period was marked by church expansion
and a renewal of internal strife. The Reformed Church spread
to Saddle River in 1787 and to Mahwah in 1788. The English
Neighborhood Church in 1793 built an edifice which is still
standing in Ridgefield. The Wyckoff Reformed Church was
erected in 1806, sharing pastors with the Ponds; the Pascack
Reformed Church was built in 1812 at present Park Ridge.
During this period violent prejudices and petty quarrels
disturbed the organization. The joint pastorship of the Hack-
ensack church by Warmoldus Kuypers and Solomon Froleigh,
1786-97, was particularly bitter and divided the congregation.
Barred from the church on one occasion, Froleigh dispersed a
crowd of hostile members by brandishing a sword which he
wore to services. In 1791 differences arose over enlarging the
Hackensack edifice. Younger members settled the question by
tearing out the fixtures and removing benches and chairs to the
Green before the next meeting.
CHURCHES 187
With the death of Kuypers in 1797, Froleigh sought to
control the different factions by opposing the call to the Rev.
James V. C. Romeyn, whose followers in 1801 erected the North
Church of Schraalenburgh. Removed from office by the Gen-
eral Synod for "unconstitutional conduct," Froleigh in 1822
organized the "True Reformed Dutch Church," proposed the
excommunication of the entire Dutch Reformed Church and
kept his adherents out of the church until his death in 1827.
Froleigh's action revived the Coetus-Conferentie contro-
versy. Sharing the opinion that the American synod had be-
come steeped in false doctrine, the Rev. Cornelius Demarest of
the English Neighborhood Church helped lead the movement
away from the established body. He went so far as to institute
legal proceedings to gain possession of the English Neighborhood
Church property for his followers, but in 1831 the State Su-
preme Court ruled in favor of the Dutch Reformed Church.
The new faction, known as the Seceders, severed relations
with the mother church, formed a new denomination, erected
their own buildings and otherwise declared themselves independ-
ent of the American Synod. The secession served as a precedent.
Beginning in 1823, schismatics in the Paramus church held
separate meetings in barns and dwellings until 1858, when suffi-
cient funds were raised to erect an edifice. By 1861 there were
more than a dozen Seceder churches in the county, two of them
at Hackensack.
Two years earlier a New York convention of the "fifteen
or sixteen" Seceder churches had passed a resolution attacking
Sunday Schools as a dangerous innovation, and the large ones
at Schraalenburgh (Dumont) and Godwinville (Wortendyke)
were closed in spite of the pleas of their ministers. Within a
quarter-century nearly every church had a Sunday School, and
a convention of the New Jersey Sunday School Association in
1885 reported 89 in the county with 5,073 scholars, exclusive
of Catholics and Episcopalians, who were apparently not mem-
bers of the association.
During the ferment of the Civil War period Seceder doc-
trine disturbed numerous congregations. Believers in the sect
188 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
asserted that none but themselves would enter Heaven; they
disapproved of Sunday Schools, Bible and Missionary societies,
the paying of salaries to ministers and, according to a Union
newspaper, "a Republican president of the United States." The
bulk of Seceder congregations consisted of old, conservative fam-
ily groups. The majority were proslavery, basing their convic-
tions on the early assertion that slavery was divinely instituted.
Conservative in many phases of gospel, ritual and worship,
various Reformed congregations were also responsible for the use
of the Dutch tongue both in church services and in the home
until the late nineteenth century. At the same time, as the
churches spread after the Civil War they increased their control
of social behavior.
Failure to attend Sabbath services was sometimes punished
by fine until well into the nineteenth century. The committee
on absences of one congregation once reported that a member
spent a "Saturday night in New York, with evil company; had
looked upon the wine when it was red, and gone the way of the
ungodly, returning home in a disreputable condition and unfit
to attend Sunday morning service." The committee fined the
member ten shillings and suspended him for six months.
Seceder sects particularly revered the stern religious prac-
tices of the past. The clerk of the Ramsey Christian Reformed
Church was dismissed in 1899 for having used a camera on
Sunday. In the Paramus church a member was accused of hav-
ing played cards in the smoker of a train, an official was criticized
for "making too long prayers," and the pastor's son was scolded
for "making fun of the deacon." Ministers thundered against
amusements, issued anathemas against dancing and in general
"deplored the moral laxity of the younger generation."
Occasionally ministerial crusades met with serious opposi-
tion. In 1891 farmers in the eastern part of the county threat-
ened to manhandle the Rev. Samuel Squitzer of the Fairview
Baptist Church after he had tried to have a popular tavern closed
on Sundays. Wrote the Pater son Weekly Press:
Of late, he has been preaching against the rum traffic and has
especially made a crusade against Daniel Kelly's hotel, which is the
CHURCHES 189
oldest roadhouse in Fairview. For forty years this house has been a
resort for Bergen County farmers, and not a few of them have been
in the habit of stopping there on a Sunday to pass an hour or two.
Church membership was apparently an important factor
for political candidates. Defeat of one Democratic candidate
for Congress was ascribed to his Irish descent and Catholicism.
The True Dutch Reformed Church, reported the Weekly Press,
had dealt the candidate "a blow under the fifth rib."
The rural character of the county at the end of the century
permitted the church to engage in many phases of social activity,
including bazaars, Shakespearean readings, oyster suppers, hay
rides and Sunday School picnics. Often funds for church pur-
poses were raised in this manner and through public auction
of pews.
Meanwhile discord in the Church-on-the-Green had re-
sulted in the organization of the Second Reformed Church in
Hackensack in 1855. The First Holland Reformed Dutch
Church of Lodi erected an edifice in 1860. Two years later
members of the Lodi congregation formed the Protestant Re-
formed Dutch Church of Closter.
Wortendyke (Midland Park) residents formed the First
Holland Reformed Church congregation in 1872 and after hold-
ing meetings in the schoolhouse for nine years built an edifice
in 1881. The True Christian Reformed (Seceder) Church of
Englewood organized in 1875, and a year later the Reformed
Dutch Chapel at Ramsey was erected.
The twentieth century was marked by the disappearance
of schism and the emergence of a gospel which took cognizance
of modern economic and social problems. Today the Reformed
Church of America has 36 churches in the county; 18 are in
the Bergen Classis, while the remainder are voluntarily affiliated
with the Paramus Classis, the Passaic Classis or the Palisades
Classis.
The Dutch language is now employed only in the church
at Midland Park, and also in the Christian Reformed (Seceder)
Church there. The county's other Seceder Church is in Engle-
wood. Congregations of the Christian Reformed Church in
190 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Paterson and Passaic operate the Christian Sanitarium in
Wyckoff . The Church's Ladies' Aid Society established the Old
Ladies' Home in 1895. The institution's building in Hacken-
sack, constructed in 1901, now has 28 residents and a long wait-
ing list.
Lutheranism entered the county in 1704 when the Rev.
Justus Faulkner came from New York to conduct services in a
barn on the property of Cornelius Boskerk, near Hackensack.
At one time Faulkner's circuit included four churches in New
York and three small congregations in New Jersey. In 1732
another Lutheran congregation organized under him in Hacken-
sack, but not until 1744 was a church built. The first edifice
was in New Milford, just south of the Huguenot cemetery, with
the Rev. William Graff as pastor. It continued until after the
Revolution, when the congregation joined the Dutch Reformed
Church.
Another Lutheran church was built in 1750 near Mahwah.
Saddle River had an Evangelical Lutheran church in 1820.
Ramsey residents, starting at first with Sunday School sessions,
organized the Ramsey Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in
1867 and dedicated a new building four years later. St. Mark's
Lutheran Church of Hackensack was organized in 1 870. Today
there are 27 Lutheran churches in Bergen County under the
general jurisdiction of the New Jersey Conference of the United
Lutheran Synod of New York, embracing 80 churches in North-
ern New Jersey and adjoining counties in New York State and
Pennsylvania. The congregations in the conference maintain
in Jersey City a home for orphaned and underprivileged children
called the "Kinderfreund."
The Methodist Episcopal Church in America was organ-
ized at Baltimore in 1784, but private services were held before
that in Bergen County at New Prospect (Waldwick) . Estab-
lished in 1797, the Waldwick Methodist Episcopal Church
erected an edifice in 1819. As English elements in the county's
population increased Methodism spread rapidly, appearing in
Wortendyke (Midland Park) in 1805; Hackensack, 1835; Al-
pine, 1840; Red Mills (Arcola), 1843; Campgaw (Franklin
CHURCHES 191
Lakes), 1855; Englewood, 1862; Allendale, 1869. Today there
are 28 Methodist churches in the county, embraced in the Jersey
City District of the Newark Conference.
Congregationalism, dating in Bergen County from the
establishment of the Lodi Congregational Church in 1845, has
developed into 13 self-governing church units, affiliated with
the Bergen County Fellowship and also the New Jersey Asso-
ciation of Congregational-Christian Churches. At the church
in Teaneck Norwegian is read and spoken; at the one in Engle-
wood the principal language is Finnish, and at Cliffside Park
Italian is used at a majority of the services.
Baptists, active in Hackensack as early as 1832, erected their
first Bergen County church in English Neighborhood (Fair-
view) in 1850. Other congregations appeared at Rutherford
in 1869, Hackensack in 1870 and Demarest in 1875. There are
now in the county 22 Baptist churches represented in the North
Association, whose territory also embraces Passaic and Sussex
counties.
The First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack organized in
1832 and was supplemented by the First Presbyterian Church
of Englewood in 1860. During the second half of the nine-
teenth century the denomination steadily increased until today
Bergen County has 20 Presbyterian churches, embraced in the
Jersey City Presbytery.
The earliest Episcopal services in the county were held in
1852 in private houses in Fort Lee and, shortly afterward, in
Englewood. Later an Episcopal congregation shared a church
at Edgewater with a Dutch Reformed congregation and bought
the building in 1857. St. Paul's Church in Englewood was con-
structed in 1865, and the following year came the establishment
of Christ Church, Hackensack, out of which grew 1 1 missions.
Today there are 45 Episcopal churches in the Bergen County
portion of the Diocese of Newark.
Several parishes, like others throughout the world, are sup-
porting the Anglo-Catholic movement, which seeks to clarify
and reassert the Catholic and apostolic inheritance of the Epis-
copal Church and to restore the ancient ritual. There are still
192 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
many so-called "Low Church" parishes in the county which have
not taken steps toward collaborating in the movement.
Roman Catholicism, while numbering before the Revolu-
tion many individual members who then and later received the
sacraments from circuit riders, had no established organization
within the county until 1855, when the Church of St. Francis
de Sales was built in Lodi with Father L. D. Senez of St. John's
Church in Paterson as rector. Four years later the Church of
the Madonna was organized in Fort Lee. For several years Wil-
liam Gillespie, a devout farmer, arranged for services by the
Very Rev. William McNulty of Paterson at his farmhouse in
Ho-Ho-Kus; St. Luke's Church, constructed in 1864, was the
culmination of his efforts. After the Civil War Roman Cath-
olicism spread and today is represented by 24 churches embraced
in the Archdiocese of Newark.
Besides these churches, there are within the county numer-
ous parochial and convent schools, Holy Name Hospital in Tea-
neck, St. Michael's Novitiate and St. Joseph's Orphanage in
Englewood Cliffs and a seminary in Darlington. The Immacu-
late Conception Theological Seminary, situated on a landscaped
plot of 1,200 acres, houses 20 instructors and 200 students.
St. Joseph's Orphanage is operated by the Catholic Chari-
ties Board, subject to the supervision of the State departments
of Public Welfare and Education. It provides for the secular
and religious education and the physical welfare of 125 boys
lacking adequate homes and parental care. The teaching staff
is composed of approximately 15 Sisters of the Order of St.
Joseph in Newark.
The $500,000 St. Michael's Novitiate is a four-story brick
building, situated on a landscaped 12 -acre plot overlooking the
Hudson River. It was consecrated April 26, 1939.
The Academy of the Holy Angels at Fort Lee was estab-
lished in 1879 by the Sisters of Notre Dame. It has several
school buildings, a convent and a chapel on a 1 5 -acre plot. Both
elementary and high school curricula are offered. The enroll-
ment is 225 girls. The Madonna School, opposite the Academy,
has about 200 students.
CHURCHES 193
The Christian Science Church, comprising six congregations
today, built a church in Englewood in 1901. While each Chris-
tian Science Church is virtually autonomous, they are all loyal
to the Mother Church in Boston.
The Garfield Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church,
incorporated in 1901, was the first of its denomination in the
State. The original building was destroyed by fire; the present
one, built in 1915, supposedly was financed by the Czar of
Russia.
Seventh Day Adventists, dissenters from the Baptist faith,
appeared between 1900 and 1902 and have established two
churches.
Five houses of worship, each independent, serve the Jewish
population. Congregation Arvath Torah, Englewood, built in
1901, was the first synagogue in Bergen County. It is estimated
that there are about 6,000 Jews in the county, with the major
portion of them in Hackensack. The center of their activities
is the Bergen County Y.M.H.A., Hackensack, a modern three-
story structure that also houses the Bergen County Federation
of Jewish Organization.
Negroes in the county support several churches of the
Methodist, Baptist and Episcopal faiths, situated in Hackensack,
Englewood, Rutherford, Ridgewood, South Hackensack, Park
Ridge and East Rutherford. The first Negro church in the
county, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, was organized in
Ridgewood in 1882, and the African Methodist Church at Park
Ridge was erected in 1897.
Several churches are maintained by people of foreign ex-
traction, notably Germans, Italians, Poles, Swedes and Finns;
in some of the churches services are held in the native language.
At Fort Lee the Norwegian Evangelical Church conducts the
nonsectarian Christian Orphans Home, which cares for about 70
boys and girls ranging in age from babyhood to 17. During
the summer the youngsters go to a camp maintained by the
Home in New York State.
A number of institutions known as Community churches
belong to specific denominations but are maintained by members
194 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
of various Protestant faiths. Some of the so-called Gospel halls
are nondenominational, while others are maintained by the
Plymouth Brethren and have no clergy. In Hackensack and
Ridgewood are Unitarian churches, which deny the doctrine
of the Trinity. Baha'i followers (disciples of a theosophic cult)
have a place of worship in the Baha'i Temple or Center, a struc-
ture of Norway spruce and white cedar logs in Teaneck. About
35 Quakers in Ridgewood and the vicinity meet every Sunday
morning in the rooms of the Ridgewood Y.W.C.A. The Salva-
tion Army carries on religious and welfare operations from head-
quarters in Englewood.
In the final half of the 1890's a sect known as the Lord's
Farmers conducted an experiment in collectivist farming which
aimed at productive use of the land without usury or profit.
Members "did not eat fish, flesh or fowl and did not drink milk,
coffee, tea or spirituous liquors, being strict vegetarians." The
men wore their hair long and were distinguished by luxuriant
beards which they washed daily in kerosene. Activities of the
cult were centered in Woodcliff and drew the attention of New
York newspapers when it was reported that members had
adopted such titles as "The Messiah," "John the Baptist" and
"Simon the Pure," allegations which were denied by Morason
Huntman, group leader. In 1899 the Lord's Farmers went to
other fields, after charges of immoral behavior had been lodged
against them, following testimony that members had engaged
in ecstatic rites.
The Protestant churches have organized the Bergen County
Council of Churches, embracing 175 churches, which is en-
deavoring to correlate their work. Chief among its objectives is
the so-called Ecumenical Movement for uniting the various
branches of the Christian Church throughout the world.
Among other matters considered are the need for establishing
new congregations and the economic and sociological conditions
in industrial centers. The Bergen County Council of Religious
Education, founded in 1867, is made up of representatives of
the Sunday Schools connected with the 175 churches. Its prin-
cipal function is to train teachers for Sunday School work.
CHURCHES 195
The Bergen County Bible Society, formed at the Hacken-
sack Reformed Church in June 1847, is affiliated with the Amer-
ican Bible Society in the distribution and translation of the
Bible among destitute and foreign groups. There are also two
flourishing Bible study organizations; Everyman's Bible Class,
in Rutherford, has a membership of around 1,200, and the
other is in the First Presbyterian Church in Hackensack.
Besides personal training and recreational facilities, the
Young Men's Christian Association of Bergen County provides
courses in secular and religious education, Americanization and
law enforcement. The "Y" has a large building in Hackensack
and branches in Ridgewood, Rutherford and Garfield. Among
its religious observances are the Easter Dawn Services, conducted
in 1941 on the Palisades at Coytesville as well as on the grounds
of the Hackensack branch and at Rutherford and Dumont.
Activities virtually duplicating those of the Y.M.C.A. are par-
ticipated in by the Young Women's Christian Association of
Bergen County.
In addition to numerous sports clubs and social organiza-
tions maintained by individual churches, there is a bowling
league composed of teams from various churches, and until re-
cently there were two church soft-ball leagues.
10. Schools
FROM the early Colonial schools Bergen County's educational
system has expanded until today it includes about 75,000 pupils
and 3,000 teachers in 70 school districts. Grammar school en-
rollment now approximates 50,000, while 32 high schools have
25,000 pupils. The first crude schoolhouses have given way to
more than 200 buildings, mostly of recent construction.
The annual cost of education in Bergen County is about
$12,000,000, and the value of school property is estimated at
$39,000,000. In 1939 the district school tax totaled $9,033,-
423.68 and the State school tax $1,322,966.31. Of the latter
90 percent is returned to the county, which also receives income
from several other sources such as railroad and penalty taxes.
The first school in New Jersey is believed to have been
established in the village of Bergen about 1662, almost on the
present site of School No. 11 in Jersey City. The first school -
196
SCHOOLS 197
master was Engelbert Steenhuysen, a Westphalian tailor who
had received a license as voorleser, or sermon reader.
Concern for education continued after the English con-
quest. Gov. Philip Carteret's charter to the town of Bergen
in 1668 contained this provision:
The Freeholders shall have the power to choose their own minister,
for the preaching of the word of God, and being so chosen, all persons
as well as the inhabitants, are to contribute according to their estates
and for the maintenance, or lay out such a proportion of land, for
the minister, and the keeping of a free school, for the education of
youth, as they shall think fit, which land being once laid out, is not
to be alienated, but to remain and continue, from one incumbent to
another, free from paying rent, or taxes whatsoever.
A quarter century later the General Assembly of East
Jersey passed an act providing that
inhabitants of any town in the Province, shall or may by warrant from
a justice of the peace of that county, when they think fit and con-
venient, meet together to make a choice of three more men of the
said town, to make a rate for the salary and maintaining of a school-
master within the said town, for so long as they think fit; and the
consent and agreement of the major part of the inhabitants of the
said town, shall bind and oblige the remaining part.
The first known school within the present limits of the
county was established at Paramus in 1730 by the Reformed
Church. Its founding is typical, as early education was in-
variably connected with the church. In many instances the
church building itself served as the schoolhouse, while often a
one-room schoolhouse was built on land set apart from the
church. As the most learned man in the community, the min-
ister often also served as the schoolmaster.
The Colonial schoolhouse was a crude, one-room log struc-
ture about 16 feet square, the interior walls daubed with clay.
The teacher's desk stood at one end opposite the entrance. Small
windows in either side wall were sometimes covered with oil
paper or sheepskin. Planks along the walls served as desks for
the older pupils, who sat on benches about three feet high. The
center of the room was used by the younger children.
198 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The open fireplace had a chimney of mud and straw which
would often catch fire; the boys took great delight in climbing
up and putting it out. The teacher and the older boys were
kept busy chopping and carrying wood. Since matches were
unknown, it was necessary to fetch live coals from a neighbor
whenever the fire went out.
During this early period Dutch was spoken and taught;
there were only a few English schools. Reading and writing
were the main subjects, with spelling and "cyphering" for the
more advanced pupils. Before the day of slates, writing was
taught in a sandbox by tracing letters with a stick. Standard
textbooks included the Psalter, the Testament and the Catechism.
To these were later added Cheever's Rudiments of Grammar and
Webster's Spelling Book, which contained the alphabet, Roman
and Arabic numerals, names of the days of the week, the months,
the States and their abbreviations. The first reading lesson
began, "No man may put off the law of God."
The class usually chanted its lessons, laying special stress on
the vowels. Parents often attended to hear their children
catechized. While reciting, pupils were required to toe a chalk
mark drawn across the floor.
Classes remained in session from nine o'clock until five.
In some sections the older boys and girls attended in the winter
and the younger ones in the summer. The only definite vacation
was at Christmas time, although children were often excused
to help harvest.
A stern disciplinarian, the Dutch schoolmaster wielded the
rod with considerable rigor and dreaded frequency. He also
made and mended quill pens. To tell time he often used an
hourglass, but the usual custom was to measure the distance a
shadow traveled to and from a "noon mark."
Teachers were paid between 10 and 20 shillings a pupil a
year, about $1.50 to $3, reduced to about $1 when they
"boarded around." Tutoring, the chief preparation for the
academies of higher learning, was the recourse of the wealthy
and those of moderate means who were not near a school.
By the close of the eighteenth century a numlpej: of schools
SCHOOLS 199
had been firmly established. In 1798 the one at Edgewater
built and maintained by Michael Vreeland, a wealthy farmer,
was accommodating children from Taylorsville to Guttenberg.
This and the old "stone school" at English Neighborhood
(Ridgefield) were the only ones for miles around. Liberty Pole
(Englewood) possibly had a school about the time of the Revo-
lution, for records show that one was constructed in 1818 with
stones of two previous buildings.
Bergen County's part in the founding of Queen's College
(Rutgers University) has been almost forgotten. The first
meeting of the trustees was held at the courthouse in Hacken-
sack in May 1767. The call was issued by J. H. Goetschius,
pastor of the Hackensack Reformed Church, and published in
the New York Mercury of April 4, 1767. The meeting was
marked by a long debate as to whether the college should be
placed in Hackensack or New Brunswick. The latter was finally
selected by the margin of one vote.
Private academies had appeared before the Revolution. The
most famous of these was Washington Academy, founded in
1769 when wealthy Reinen Van Giesse donated a site at the
corner of what is now Main and Warren streets, Hackensack.
Less well known schools had previously been established at New
Bridge and Hackensack, while Bergen-Columbia Academy was
started in 1790 in Jersey City, until 1840 part of Bergen
County.
A two-story stone structure with cupola and bell, the
Washington Academy was the most pretentious of its day. Its
academic standards were unexcelled, and men later prominent
in all walks of life received an intensive training in the classics
and languages here. Dr. Peter Wilson, subsequently professor
of Latin and Greek at Columbia College, was the first principal.
Popular education kept pace with the gradual influx of
settlers, and numerous schools sprang up in the early nineteenth
century. Residents of Schraalenburgh (Dumont) built a school
beside the old church there about 1800, and the Pascack Church
also had a school in 1808. New Barbadoes Township outdid its
neighbors in name at least when it established a "university"
200 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
in 1804. Newton or Godwinville (Wortendyke) erected a
schoolhouse in 1811, while a Rutherford school was set up in
the Kipp farmhouse in 1819. Other schools were opened at
Westwood, Ridgewood, Arcola, Allendale, Saddle River, Lodi,
Closter and Old Tappan.
Numerous stories have been handed down concerning these
early efforts. The difficulties attending education are best illus-
trated by the oft-repeated story that pupils of the first Moon-
achie district school in the kitchen of Peter Allen, forced to
travel long distances through the treacherous marshlands, often
became lost. Only by climbing trees could they determine their
whereabouts. Another tale deals with a teacher at the Pascack
school who, driven to drink by the antics of his young charges,
would occasionally fall asleep in the midst of a recitation. This
was the signal for a welcome recess lasting until the school-
master roused from his stupor.
Until well into the ninteenth century school affairs pro-
ceeded in a haphazard manner, since education was considered
something of a luxury. "When farmhouses or outbuildings were
not available, schoolhouses were built by voluntary labor. Most
funds for maintenance or building were privately subscribed.
Parents sent their children wherever they chose and paid a tui-
tion fee. Sometimes the larger landowners combined to pay the
expense of school upkeep, enabling poor children to attend free.
But when funds ran out per capita tuition was charged and
education for the poor ceased.
As early as 1813 attempts were made to have the State set
up a school fund. Four years later the legislature passed an
"act to create a fund for free schools," but the $15,000 appro-
priation was far from adequate. Not until 1820 were town-
ships authorized to levy taxes for educating "such children as are
paupers," while in 1828 township school committees were given
legal authority to tax for building and repair. That same year
the State decided to augment its school fund with taxes from
banks and insurance companies.
The township school committee, consisting usually of three
members elected at an annual town meeting, had complete
SCHOOLS 201
charge of educational activities. It was empowered, among
other things, to create school districts and employ and license
teachers. Too often, however, these committees assumed a cold
indifference and allowed the districts to shift for themselves.
Likewise, the district bodies seldom bothered to report their
activities to the township.
In 1829 the legislature sought to encourage the establish-
ment of "common schools" by voting to appropriate $20,000
annually for this purpose. This sum was to be divided among
the counties "in the ratio of their taxes paid for the support of
government" and then allotted to the townships in proportion
to the taxes paid to the county. Finally, the money was to be
apportioned among the school districts according to the number
of children between the ages of 4 and 16.
This method at first produced some controversy, many
holding that it referred only to children actually attending
school. The larger school districts strongly opposed this inter-
pretation, contending, according to the Paterson Intelligencer
of April 7, 1830, that since they
pay their equal proportion of taxes, and in this way contribute more
than smaller districts towards the school fund ... is there any just
ground of complaint if they receive a larger share of that money back
again? If they do not send as many children as the others, in propor-
tion, it is perhaps their misfortune and no advantage ought to be
taken of it to their injury. . . . Our legislators probably never cal-
culated that all the children in every district would, or could go to
school, at the same time. They very well knew that some of them
would be confined at home part of the year, to aid their parents on
their farms, or to work in mills.
The same issue of the Intelligencer shows that out of 876 chil-
dren between the ages of 4 and 16 in Saddle River Township,
only 344 attended school.
Describing the facilities for education in Bergen County
in 1830, Thomas F. Gordon writes as follows in his Gazetteer,
published in 1834:
The provisions for moral instruction are the religious societies,
consisting of the German [Dutch] Reformed, Episcopalian, Presby-
terian, Baptist and Methodist; a county bible society, Sunday schools
202 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
and temperance societies; academies in the larger villages, and common
schools in every populous vicinity . . . almost every thickly settled
neighborhood has its Sunday school. Temperance societies in many
districts have effectually bruised the head of the worm of the still.
Early in 1832 the State was contemplating using the school
fund to buy stocks in the Delaware and Raritan Canal Com-
pany. A meeting hurriedly called at Hackensack on January
25 resolved that "we do most strenuously object to appropriat-
ing the School Fund for the purpose of this subscription . . .
because it is a sacred fund, raised by much care, economy and
taxation, from the people and for the benefit of the people, and
should not therefore, be diverted from its true and proper
design." The resolution was forwarded to the legislature and
published in the Paterson and Newark newspapers.
Records reveal that in 1837 Bergen's share of the State
school fund was $1,299.92, distributed as follows: Harrington
Township, $226.55; Bergen Township, $214.56; Franklin,
$181.55; Saddle River and Manchester, $168.19; Hackensack,
$142.94; Lodi, $108.38; New Barbadoes, $94.10; Pompton,
$81.82; and West Milford, $81.82. In that year the legislature
voted to allocate to school purposes the surplus revenue of gen-
eral government.
Concern for school matters was erratic during these years.
The Jersey City Advertiser and Bergen County Republican of
July 27, 1838, speaks of a county school convention at Hack-
ensack called to "do something towards strengthening and em-
bodying public sentiment upon this almost primary subject."
But apparently little was accomplished, for when trustees of the
school fund a year later ventured to query the townships on
school conditions only a few replied. And these revealed that
not even half the children of school age attended classes at tui-
tion fees varying from $1.56 to $2.41 a quarter.
In 1843, following another request for reports on the dis-
posal of school funds, School 3 at English Neighborhood replied
that half of its funds still remained because lack of interest had
caused a four-month shutdown. District 8 at "The Flats" noted
that out of the $31.99 received, 75 cents was spent for repairs
SCHOOLS 203
and the remainder equally divided among the children. Some
districts maintained a dignified silence.
Washington Academy had remained the only institution of
advanced learning in Hackensack until 1826, when Lafayette
Academy was erected on the west side of Main Street. An ad-
vertisement for students appearing in the Paterson Intelligencer
of April 15, 1829, cites among Lafayette's advantages that
Hackensack "is intersected by the main road leading from Pater-
son to New York. The facility of intercourse with the city is
secured by a daily Stage between the two places, and also by the
passage of the mail every other day." Among the courses offered
were English, Mathematics, Latin, Greek and Algebra, which
included "surveying with the use of compass." Tuition fees
ranged from $1.50 to $5 a quarter, while board was obtainable
"in respectable families" at $1.50 to $1.75 a week.
In 1834 an academy with both male and female depart-
ments was opened in Manchester (Saddle River Township), and
the 1838 files of the Jersey City Advertiser and Bergen County
Republican reveal that several male and female boarding schools
were then in existence in Jersey City. Many more private
schools and academies flourished for a time, including a "clas-
sical and mathematical Institute" at Hackensack, opened in
1857, and "Mr. Wall's Seminary for Young Girls" in Englewood
Township, established in the following year. Others were Lodi
Institute, Hohokus Academy and Harrington Academy in Old
Tappan. The pretentious three-story Hackensack Academy ap-
peared in 1871, and the Park Ridge Academy a year later.
Washington and Lafayette Academies continued their
rivalry until 1853, when lack of patronage forced the latter to
close. In 1865 Washington Academy abolished tuition fees
and became a free school. Ten years later it had a seating ca-
pacity of 260 and an enrollment of 314. It was later trans-
formed into District 32 School of New Barbadoes Township.
The State, meanwhile, had increased its participation in
public education. In 1841 a State board of education was cre-
ated with power to supervise all school activities, and in 1846
it replaced municipal school committees with superintendents.
204 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Thereafter each township was required to match the amount it
received from the State school fund.
A survey in 1851 by the State Superintendent of Schools
shows Bergen County with 70 school districts, 2,599 pupils and
a school expenditure of $4,128.03. Hohokus Township had 11
districts and 500 pupils; Hackensack, 13 districts, 518 pupils;
Franklin, 10 districts, 471 pupils; Lodi, 5 districts, 138 pupils;
New Barbadoes, 8 districts, 425 pupils; Saddle River, 6 districts,
116 pupils; and Washington, 10 districts, 229 pupils. Tuition
fees varied from $1.50 in Harrington Township to $2.25 in
Hohokus Township, while schools were open, on the average,
slightly more than ten months during the year.
At least one school served purposes other than educational.
The people of Demarest and vicinity were being subjected to a
series of baffling robberies. Farmhouses were broken into
nightly, but no trace of the culprits could be found. The resi-
dents were becoming highly alarmed when a group of them
stumbled upon the loot stored in the schoolhouse loft. The
thieves had been using the school as their base of operations,
taking over after classes had been dismissed for the day.
A mid-nineteenth century country schoolhouse differed
but little physically from its Colonial predecessor. Those unable
to afford a private school received their education in a one-
story wood or stone building painted red, if at all. It was heated
in the winter by a drum stove filled with green cord -wood
furnished by the trustees and cut into lengths by the older boys.
The high benches which had kept the children suspended were
replaced by individual seats and desks. Though much more
comfortable, these new seats at first were roundly censured be-
cause "the crinoline of the little ladies will have to suffer a tight
squeeze."
Boys and girls were taught together but sat on opposite
sides of the room. Many of the boys could attend only during
the winter, since they worked on the farm during the summer,
For the girls a few terms were usually considered sufficient
Graduations were unknown, and scholars left at will or when
they could no longer pay the fees.
SCHOOLS 205
The subjects taught and the books used depended on the
teacher. Complaints were often heard that a country teacher
employed a certain book because it was the only one he was
versed in. Most-used textbooks were Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary y Lippincott's Gazetteer and the Bible. Subjects in-
cluded spelling, reading, arithmetic, elocution, grammar, com-
position, geography, history, penmanship and some algebra.
Next to books and slates, the rod was still the most important
part of school equipment.
In the small, outlying sections it was not unusual for a
schoolmaster, in the interests of self-support, to dabble in numer-
ous vocations, including "compounding medicine for the sick,
practicing pettifogging in justices' courts . . . and preaching
on Sunday."
The schools in the larger towns were better equipped and
staffed. The brick schoolhouse at State and Berry streets in
Hackensack, built in 1853, was an imposing structure with ac-
commodations for about 600 pupils and 884 feet of blackboard
space. Private schools and academies vied in introducing the
latest in educational facilities.
The need for co-operation and uniform instruction led to
efforts by the teachers to co-ordinate their activities. In 1856
the Bergen County Teachers' Institute was organized "to awaken
an interest in general education . . . reveal the best modes of
imparting instruction . . . establish uniformity in those modes
. . . afford an opportunity to the teachers for interchange of
thought and practice, thus promoting harmony and order in our
public schools, and extending their usefulness." Each year the
members met for several days in a different part of the county
to discuss their problems and to hear leading educators talk on
new trends in teaching and discipline. Several township teach-
ers' associations were also formed, while superintendents met
frequently at Hackensack.
Most of the residents remained indifferent toward educa-
tion. Few were willing to serve as school officers, and tactics
bordering on the ludicrous were sometimes resorted to in an
effort to set up the required board of trustees. A deadlocked
206 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
meeting in Paramus in 1857, for example, called on the "spirits"
to select the "victims." Forming a circle, the citizens sat in
mute silence anxiously awaiting a "communication," but to no
avail, according to the Pater son Daily Guardian of April 10.
It was then intimated that the audience was not harmonious, and
that probably there was not sufficient of the "positive" kind of elec-
tricity among them. Thereupon one of the company proposed to get
a supply of the article, which had recently been imported in the
original packages from the North Pole, and preserved in ... a glass
bottle. The "lightening" was accordingly obtained and conveyed from
the bottle to the circle by means of another glass vessel being applied
to the lips whence it diffused its influence over the whole system. The
result was not at once satisfactory. We understand it required no less
than six applications to get a response and it was even feared that a
small "battery" would have to be resorted to. But at last the table
was set in a roar; one of the sides rose up of its own accord and tipped
out the names of the trustees, who, seeing themselves destined by the
celestials as public officers, refused to make any further opposition.
On another occasion a district school meeting in Franklin
Township resorted to the "rum jug." Everyone present took a
sip of the "mountain dew fit to make trustees of men" in the
hope that resistance would be broken. But one swig apparently
wasn't sufficient. Again it made the rounds, "though not so
burdensome to handle as before," comments the Daily Guardian
of April 11, 1857. This time "things assumed a better shape,
tongues became more fluent, it only required another turn of
the bottle to adjust the affair. Thrice had it been raised on high
until it was drained to its dregs, when the appointment of three
men as trustees was perfected. The meeting then adjourned, all
being apparently well satisfied with the proceedings."
The apathy of the residents inevitably had its effects on edu-
cational facilities. Reports of the various township superin-
tendents in December 1859 reveal "a most melancholy state of
things." John A. Terhune of Hohokus observes that
unless the State furnishes our schools with suitable books we have no
means of getting them. The Bible, too, seems not to be very numerous.
Nor have the schools maps of State or county. Nor are the parents
interested in visiting our schools. We have seven school houses built
SCHOOLS 207
of wood, most of them are too small, being about 10 to 26 feet and
containing only one room. . . . Not any are supplied with the proper
apparatus only two have playgrounds attached.
Charles Tanner of Harrington laments that "none of the schools
of the township are free, the assessments varying from one to
two cents per day."
The payment of tuition fees in most schools and the absence
of free and uniform textbooks were long the subjects of wide-
spread dissatisfaction and often served as grist for political mills.
The rate bill or tuition fee system was called "a hinderance to
the prosperity of the school, and a most prolific source of mis-
chief, complaints, trouble, contention and endless neighborhood
feuds."
Conditions failed to improve during the Civil "War era.
Authorities were beset with the familiar problems of poor facili-
ties and slim attendance. One district reported that it employed
but one teacher for its 236 eligible school children and that its
allotment of $650 was "more than sufficient to maintain a free
school the whole year."
Although teachers, during this period, were supposed to be
tested by two county examiners before obtaining a license, few
adhered to the rule, and the requirement was termed a "per-
fect farce." Township superintendents hired teachers indis-
criminately, the only qualification, sometimes, being the will-
ingness to undertake the unpleasant task of collecting tuition
fees.
One of the best-known and most capable superintendents
was John Van Brunt of Hackensack Township, who served from
1846 to 1867, the entire period during which the system was in
effect. Van Brunt sums up one of his numerous reports on the
inadequacies of the school system with this observation: "They
are educated somehow and somewhere."
The importance of proper administration was recognized
in 1867 with the appointment of Alexander Cass, a Teaneck
teacher, as the first Superintendent of Public Instruction. His
broad plan and numerous innovations soon heightened interest
in school affairs. Figures released two years later show 7,404
208 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
pupils, an increase of more than 180 percent over 1851, while
the population had only about doubled. Fifty male teachers
received an average of $47.57 a month and 30 female teachers
got $34.60 each; the latter figure was among the three highest
county averages in the State. Only eleven schools were entirely
free, however.
The passage of the State law in 1871 making all public
schools free spurred townships into providing adequate facilities,
while parents took an increased interest in school affairs. By
1880 the system had 108 teachers, seven of whom were normal
school graduates. Most of the schools, however, were still one-
room affairs, the largest being a seven-room structure at Carl-
stadt. The value of the school plant, listed at $65,942 in 1866,
had multiplied to $228,200 ten years later.
The first woman trustee in the county was Mrs. Mark
Dewsnap of Washington Township, who was chosen to the
board of District 24 in April 1882. Previously Mrs. Van Riper
had been elected to the post but declined, according to the
Weekly Press of April 20, because she "considered the honor an
insult."
Following Cass as county superintendent in 1873, Edgar
Vreeland established the first kindergarten in the region during
his two-year tenure. His successor, John A. Demarest, resigned
in 1886. John Terhune, the next superintendent, inaugurated
eighth-grade examinations for grammar school diplomas, intro-
duced school libraries and popularized Arbor Day programs.
Manual training courses were first offered by the Garfield school
in 1880, while sewing and crocheting courses originated in the
Wood-Ridge school in 1883.
Suburban growth in the latter part of the nineteenth cen-
tury was accompanied by a widespread demand for greater edu-
cational facilities. Schools multiplied but failed to satisfy the
increasing need. A typical problem arose at Englewood in 1884,
when the one-room school for Negroes became so crowded that
parents threatened to withdraw their children.. A hurriedly
called school meeting voted to build an addition.
The main purpose of the legislature's Township School
SCHOOLS 209
Law of 1894 was to consolidate districts under a township board
of education so that poor children would have the same facili-
ties as the rich. The plan met with little success, however, for
citizens of wealthier areas balked. Since the Borough Act per-
mitted portions of townships to incorporate separately, 26
boroughs were formed that year, and thenceforth the total in-
creased constantly.
Despite the negative reaction, the law stimulated imme-
diate improvement. All 80 district schools began furnishing
free textbooks and supplies, while previously only 28 had done
so; it did not become compulsory throughout the State until
1903. During 1894 also an office for the county superintendent
of schools, believed to be the first of its kind in the State, was
established in Hackensack by the Board of Freeholders. Named
Educational Hall, it displayed the work of students in various
parts of the county.
In 1895 the county's 85 schools had an enrollment of
11,452, while annual expenditures had climbed to $310,403.71.
Of the 218 teachers only 50 were males. That year Englewood
and Hackensack began experimental high schools, and in 1897
the latter constructed the first high school building in the
county.
During the twentieth century the educational system of
Bergen County has matched the rapid suburban development
and growth of population. The most important factors in this
expansion have been increased State and local interest, together
with compulsory attendance and child labor laws.
County Superintendent Terhune's report of 1901 already
indicated this expansion. The annual cost had risen to $520,000,
and there were 381 classrooms with a seating capacity of 16,140.
In 1904 the State began regulating high schools, the number
of which increased rapidly. A year later Terhune died, and
George S. Vogel of the State Department of Instruction took
charge briefly until the appointment of Benjamin C. Wooster
of Ridgewood, county superintendent until 1931. Ernest A.
Harding of Wallington served until September 1934 and was
followed by Roy R. Zimmerman of Englewood, the incumbent.
210 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Records and newspapers of the first decade of the twentieth
century have numerous accounts of school construction and the
growing clamor for more. The Bergen Evening Record of Sep-
temper 16, 1908, commented that "the growth of the schools
passes belief." But the demand mounted steadily, and two years
later the Record reported that "more than one Board of Edu-
cation in Bergen County is wrestling with the school problem.
Many new schools are needed. . . . Bergen County has diffi-
culty in providing sufficient room." During that year $382,546
was spent on construction, remodeling and repair. Most of the
new schools had the latest in facilities, including playgrounds,
gymnasiums and equipment for manual and domestic training.
Expenditure for school plants reached its peak of $3,041,760
in 1930; in 1938 $499,013 was spent for land, buildings and
equipment and $364,589 for replacements and repairs.
During the World War the county's school children worked
energetically, rolling bandages, knitting, etc. In appreciation
the soldiers of Camp Merritt at the close of the war bought
37,000 medals for all Bergen County pupils above the kinder-
garten grade. The medal bears on one side the image of a
marching "doughboy" holding the hands of a boy and a girl,
and on the other side the inscription: "Boys of Camp Merritt
are grateful to you."
Growth in attendance was accompanied by the decline of
the belief that schooling was intended mainly for boys, and the
number of female pupils increased until it equaled their propor-
tion of the population. The principal of the Coytesville school
resigned in 1902 because of his inability to control a class of
girls who "made life miserable for him by laughing at his pe-
culiar accent." His successor also gave up because "he was un-
able to make the girls behave." Two decades later the girls of
Hackensack High School attempted to restrain their growing
freedom by resolving to dress modestly, ban chewing gum, dis-
card dress shoes for school, refrain from smoking in public
places and restrict the use of cosmetics.
Bergen County's schools today are modern in every respect,
from toy-equipped kindergarten classes to the science labora-
SCHOOLS 211
tories of high schools. Trained teachers, many of whom more
than fulfill State requirements, employ the latest methods and
facilities in guiding pupils. All of the schools have art instruc-
tion, and manual training is provided in 39 of the 70 districts.
High schools have well -equipped gymnasiums, while elementary
schools have playgrounds. About 40 districts have their own
libraries.
Special attention is paid to individual needs and problems.
About 90 elementary schools are devoted solely to primary
training and kindergarten work. In the education of handi-
capped children the county occupies a front rank; 21 districts
provide facilities for subnormal, blind and crippled children,
and Garfield and Hackensack maintain classes for the blind.
Twenty-three districts have full high school courses, while
nine others have junior high schools. Municipalities without
high schools arrange to have their students attend those of
neighboring towns. About 120 buses transport students who
live at a distance from a school.
All high schools are fully accredited by the State Board of
Education. All but one have home economics and manual train-
ing departments, usually combined with machine shop, metal
work and electrical training; nearly all the senior high schools
have science laboratories, and five have printshops. Clubs for
debating, music, dramatics, foreign languages, stamp collecting,
photography, art and the like are encouraged. Almost every
high school has its band. Many publish student newspapers and
periodicals in addition to the customary yearbooks. An exten-
sive program of intramural and interscholastic athletics is con-
ducted.
Hackensack, Ridgewood, Teaneck, Englewood, Lodi, Gar-
field and Tenafly have the most extensive school properties. The
largest single school is at Teaneck, where the "6-6" plan is fol-
lowed. The first six grades are scattered in small neighborhood
schools, and the pupils of the upper classes are transported by
bus to the Teaneck High School, which has an enrollment of
about 2,000. Teaneck also emphasizes vocational guidance and
conducts a course in aviation.
Schools
Epstein
A ONE-ROOM SCHOOL IN THE RAMAPOS
Kubel
A MODERN GRAMMAR SCHOOL
DWIGHT MORROW HIGH SCHOOL, ENGLEWOOD
WOODWORKING CLASS
Epstein
AVIATION CLASS
KINDERGARTEN RHYTHM ORCHESTRA
Epstein
s
Courtesy Bergen Evening Record
INDOOR AND OUTDOOR ATHLETICS ROUND OUT THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
Epstein
SCHOOLS 213
Most schools keep cumulative records analyzing the pupil's
mental development, work habits, special interests and social
adjustment. Grades are re-evaluated and the child is rated ac-
cording to his potential ability. Conferences with parents are
encouraged.
All pupils have received regular medical examinations in-
cluding compulsory tuberculin tests since July 1940. All schools
have nurses, but only a few districts provide dental examina-
tions. Free distribution of milk is handled largely by the P.T.A.,
the Lions Club and the Elks.
Vocational instruction in the past has been held up by
inadequate budgets, but there is now a popular demand for the
establishment of a modern vocational school. Investigation by
the State Board of Education has established its necessity and
desirability, and action on the project is expected soon.
Each of the 70 school districts is governed by a board of
nine trustees, in nearly all of which three are elected in February
of each year, while in others they are appointed by the head
of the municipal government. The district boards comprise the
Federated Boards of Education of Bergen County, of which
Allison A. Clokey is the current (1941) president.
The Parent-Teacher associations, with branches in most
schools, meet regularly to discuss school problems and participate
in social and welfare activities. In some schools the P.T.A. pro-
vides milk and free lunches for the children, as well as enter-
tainments, playground equipment, etc. It also provides for eye
glasses and clothing for indigent students, while in high schools
the National Youth Administration gives part-time employment
to needy pupils.
There are about 24 Catholic parochial schools in the
county, including five high schools, with an enrollment of ap-
proximately 8,000. and a teaching staff of about 700. The larg-
est is Our Lady Queen of Peace, North Arlington, with 600
pupils in the grammar school and 230 in the high school. St.
Mary's, Rutherford, has about 300 elementary and 500 high
school students, while St. Cecelia's, Englewood, has 410 and 330,
respectively. There are also high school divisions at Holy Trin-
214 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
ity, Fort Lee, and St. Luke's, Ho-Ho-Kus. All parochial schools
are fully accredited by the State. Priests for the Catholic
Church are trained at the Seminary of the Immaculate Concep-
tion at Darlington, near Ramsey. Don Bosco Institute in Ram-
sey is conducted by Silesian Fathers, an order of Polish Catholic
priests, primarily for students of high school age. The Christian
Day School at Midland Park is conducted by the Dutch Re-
formed church.
Private schools continue to serve those who seek more in-
dividual attention. Bergen County Junior College, Teaneck,
has a "study and work" plan similar to that at Antioch College,
Ohio. Approximately 500 students are given practical work
along the lines they have elected to study, while tuition is com-
paratively low.
Founded as a preparatory school for Vassar College, the
Dwight School for Girls, Englewood, draws its 400 students
from among wealthy residents and has a faculty of 36. The
adjacent Englewood School for Boys, a country day school,
provides college preparation for about 110 pupils aged from 8
to 18. Oakland Military Academy, established in 1934, stresses
health and bodily development, especially horsemanship, for its
70 students.
The Hamlin School, Fair Lawn, offers a program ranging
from kindergarten training to high school for boys and girls.
The Abeel School, Hackensack, has about 38 pupils from 2 to
14; and about 40 pupils of the same age group attend Fornachon
Hall, Ridgewood. Rose Haven School for Girls, Rockleigh, has
3 5 boarders and several day students. The Ridgewood Nursery
and the Little School, Englewood, take care of small children,
as do the Bo Peep Nursery School in Teaneck and Radburn
Nursery School.
Numerous business schools offer strictly commercial sub-
jects. The Eagen School of Business, Hackensack, was founded
in 1896 and has about 80 students, with a branch in Englewood.
Other schools of this type are the Donovan School, Hackensack,
the Ridgewood Secretarial School, the Rutherford Business
School, Ace Business School, Bogota, and Campbell's, Hacken-
SCHOOLS 215
sack. Among private schools teaching a particular trade are
the Modern College of Beauty Culture and the Troppodi Fashion
Academy, both in Hackensack.
The former haphazard efforts in adult education have given
way to the extensive program conducted by the Work Projects
Administration for the past several years. About 5,000 persons
from all over the county attend the free evening courses in 20
municipalities in art, science, music, mathematics, journalism,
photography, public speaking, stenography, typing and various
branches of vocational guidance, such as metal and leather crafts,
electricity, carpentry, bookbinding, knitting, basketry and sew-
ing. Classes are also held for illiterates and those seeking natural-
ization. All the programs are sponsored by local boards of edu-
cation. In some towns the Adult Education Committees also
offer special fee courses. Garfield, Rutherford and Hackensack
are outstanding for their fine adult education programs.
Recently the Montclair State Teachers College has con-
ducted extension courses for teachers and students at the State
Street Junior High School in Hackensack. Classes meet once
a week, and the 1939-40 curriculum included courses in creative
crafts, contemporary political life, the modern novel and astron-
omy for teachers.
II. The Press
THERE is a Bergen County editor on almost every corner. He
keeps his eye open for the exact moment when Mr. Smith and
family leave for their summer home at the lake and reports the
arrival of Mrs. Jones' niece from Scranton. He attends all the
municipal council meetings, board of education meetings, Little
Theatre plays and the games of the local sandlot ball team.
When he is not gathering or writing the local news or seeing
his paper through the press, he is thinking about next week's
political editorial or wheedling ads or job printing from local
merchants. The Bergen County editor is not different from the
Salem County editor or the Atlantic County editor; but there
are more of him.
The weekly paper business in Bergen has been growing for
135 years. County historians usually refer to the Newsman
of 1822 as the first to be published in Hackensack, but there
216
THE PRESS 217
has been discovered a frayed, yellowed copy of another publica-
tion, the Impartial Register, which bears the date line, Hack-
ensack, January 1805. This single copy of the Register, the
only one known to exist, belongs to Mrs. Anita Herman of
Ridgewood. According to the editor's announcement, the paper
was published every Tuesday "on paper of good, fine quality,
and . . . executed in a neat style." The news was of foreign
and national affairs; the only local items were advertisements,
which ranged from one of a local private school to an ad placed
by the editor himself for "Egyptian Botanick snuff to cure
hypocondria, histerick and other fits. It is especially recom-
mended to the fair sex."
The first paper to use a county designation was the Bergen
Express and Pater son Advertiser, issued June 11, 1817. Pub-
lished in Paterson, it contained mostly advertisements and a
limited review of the news.
In 1821 the Paterson Phenix and Bergen County Advertiser
began publication in Paterson, and in the same year, when it
was sold to Bradford W. Lyon, the name was changed to the
Paterson Chronicle and Bergen and Essex Advertiser. The
Chronicle was a narrow tabloid, 15 by 25 inches with foui
pages of five columns each. Editor Lyon, no friend of Bergen
County, was an early advocate of the plan to create Passaic
County out of Bergen and Essex counties. Yet his paper was
popular, and he lived to see the consummation of his editorial
demands.
The Chronicle continued in its favored position despite
competition from papers within the county such as the Hack-
ensack Newsman. In the first issue, March 2, 1822, the News-
man promised to give Bergen County "a proper vehicle of in-
formation," but a year later the vehicle broke down. Anothei
Hackensack publication, the Hackensack Star and Bergen
County Farmer, first appeared November 23, 1823. The Star
printed mostly stories of State- wide and national interest; the
local items, which it might have exploited, received minimum
coverage. One of the two publishers, with a better business
sense, perhaps, than his partner, retired in 1824. Faced with the
218 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
choice of appeasing angry creditors or a term in a debtor's cell,
the remaining partner fled the country.
The Chronicle, in the meantime, held its place, and in 1825
its direct successor, the Paterson Intelligencer, was the leading
news sheet of the region. Of all the outside papers serving
Bergen County prior to the Civil "War, it experienced the long-
est reign of prosperity. The Intelligencer was a staunch Whig
paper. Consequently, its reception in Bergen was not always
cordial. County Democrats were not particularly impressed with
such editorial battle cries as "Whigs to the Polls" and "Beware
of the treacherous loco focos."
The Intelligencer did not have a clear field in the county.
Among other weekly papers competing for the Bergen news
market were the Bergen County Gazette and Jersey City Ad-
vertiser (1829-31), Bergen County Courier (1832), Passaic
Guardian and Paterson Advertiser (1835-46), Paterson Guard-
ian (1846-54, then daily until 1915) and the Jersey City Ad-
vertiser and Bergen Republican (1838-46).
Such stiff competition did not mean good pickings. Ad-
vertisements in all the papers were often meager, and subscrip-
tions were commonly paid for in commodities or produce. "Any
of our subscribers who wish to pay their subscriptions in Wood,"
wrote the Paterson Courier editor on December 13, 1831, "can
do so now and throughout the Winter season, by leaving it at
our office." Payment in kind for both advertisements and sub-
scriptions continued throughout the first half of the nineteenth
century. It was not unusual to see wood, fruits, vegetables, old
farm implements and a miscellaneous assortment of goods piled
in the corner of an editor's office.
There was no hesitancy about asking for advertisements,
especially legal ads. The Bergen County Courier once printed
its delivery route to show how wide a circulation it had, and on
the basis of that circulation felt justified in putting forth its
editorial demand without benefit of euphemism or subtlety:
We remarked in a recent number, that we had a greater number
of subscribers to the Courier, than was ever obtained by any paper
published in this county before ours. Our friends who have the con-
THE PRESS 219
trol of legal patronage of this kind, we hope will bear in mind that
the Courier circulates regularly through this county and at much
greater number than any other paper. . . . Will not an advertisement
circulated thus repay the advertiser the small charge we make?
Although the Courier took pride in its county distribution,
it, too, failed to capitalize on local news. The closest it came
to home was a brief announcement of a cholera epidemic in New
York and a reference to prayer and humiliation in Newark to
avert the "scourge of God." It was this broad emphasis which
perhaps accounted for the quick death of the county newspapers.
Their coverage of national, international and metropolitan af-
fairs could not equal that of the larger New York and New
Jersey papers; and it was on this basis that they chose to com-
pete. Not until the newspapers began to represent the growing
county consciousness could they hope to survive. The publica-
tions which developed during the two decades before the Civil
War finally realized how necessary it was to look at the trees
instead of the forest.
New papers were encouraged and no little benefited by
political squabbling that drew circulation from the popular
larger papers of surrounding counties. Before the Presidential
election of 1856, the first in which the Republican party pro-
posed a candidate, the Paterson Tri-Weekly Guardian was recog-
nized by the Board of Chosen Freeholders as the official news-
paper "circulating in the County of Bergen ... no news-
paper being published in the County of Bergen." This was
extremely profitable for the paper: it carried all the county legal
advertising. In circulation it led the Independent Democrat
(formerly the Paterson Intelligencer, which changed its politics
when it was sold in 1856), the Newark Daily Advertiser, the
falls City Register and the Hudson County Democrat.
Then in 1856 the Guardian merged with a minor sheet
called the Republican. Part of the bargain was the Guardian's
promise to back the candidacy of Fremont in the election. It
returned to the Democratic standard after the election, but in
the meantime it had been ousted as the official county paper
because it "had changed its colors and become enmeshed in Black
220 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Republicanism." The Hudson County Democrat had been
adopted by the Democrats in power as the "regular party
organ," a designation tantamount to exclusive rights to the
county's advertising.
Fremont piled up a strong opposition vote, and this gave
the Guardian an excuse to undermine the Hudson County
Democrat. In full knowledge that it could not recapture the
lost field, the Guardian agitated for a Bergen County paper:
There were 1234 votes in Bergen County opposed to the election
of James Buchanan, and the extension of slavery. Citizens of Bergen
County, can you not see that a duty devolves upon you in the new
contest for Freedom and Fremont? Why should your rich county be
longer isolated? Is there any earthly reason why the large town of
Hackensack should be destitute of a paper? Is it proper that the
printing of the county should go out of that place that the county
advertising should be forced abroad? Fremonters of Bergen County,
rally and establish a paper in your midst.
On March 2, 1857, the Bergen County Gazette began pub-
lication in Hackensack. The following September the Guardian
reported the Gazette to be "slowly advancing in circulation.
A friend from the village informs us that the paper is a favorite
among the Court House Clique from whom it is reported to be
the recipient of golden promises. We wish the enterprise success
but heaven save it from the rod of cliquedom."
Heaven was not listening, for the Gazette soon died. The
exact date of its expiration is unknown, but in 1858 its ex-
editor was working on a new publication, the Bergen County
Journal, a stock concern owned jointly by Republican and
Democratic businessmen. The Journal in its first issue, March
6, 1858, featured local news and letters. It was the finest ex-
ample of local journalism Bergen had yet witnessed.
The Guardian, still sore over its loss of Bergen County
patronage, encouraged the new publication and sideswiped the
usurping sheets which county politics favored:
People of Bergen County, sustain your own paper (and take ours
also, of course.) It has been most disgraceful to Bergen that her public
officials have heretofore resorted to the Falls City Register, a black-
THE PRESS 221
guard paper, in which the county advertising has appeared. The
Sheriff of Bergen County . . . officially patronizes a disreputable print
which is edited by a man . . . whose sheet is only known by its smell.
It was time for a paper for Bergen.
The editor of the Journal, William C. Kimball, stressed civic
pride and rural neighborliness. Pro-Union in sympathies, Kim-
ball announced on April 27, 1861, that he was leaving for an
Army training camp and that accordingly "we are under the
necessity of furnishing our readers this week with only half a
sheet." He left in May, but the paper continued publication.
The following August Kimball returned to write an account of
the Union cause which shocked the strong pro-slavery element
in the county. The Journal gasped a few times, but before the
year had ended it was a war casualty. Another was the Bergen
County Patriot, begun in October 1861. It found far too few
potential subscribers in agreement with its belligerent attitude
in advocating the Union cause.
Earlier in 1861, following the Journal's sudden demise,
Hackensack political chieftains, concerned over the split in
county Democratic forces caused by divergent opinions on
slavery, attempted to mend broken party fences by issuing the
Bergen County Democrat. Publishing offices were located in
New York. After a few turbulent weeks the publishers, faced
with bankruptcy, were forced to join with a newspaperman
who had purchased the old ]ournal plant with the idea of start-
ing a paper of his own.
Under the joint ownership the name was changed to Bergen
County Democrat and New Jersey Statesman. Editorial offices
were opened in Hackensack. The Democrat was published with
considerable success, and its constant devotion to the Demo-
cratic Party enabled it to play a powerful role in county politics.
So strong did the Democrat become that it was said to be "the
party textbook to dispute the teachings of which was political
treason."
Opposition to the Democrat was weak. Not until publica-
tion of the Hackensack. Republican, today the oldest weekly
in the county, which appeared first in 1870 as The Watchman,
222 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
did the Democrats taste the effects of political diffusion. Re-
christened the New Jersey Republican and Bergen County
Watchman, the new paper did not find the going easy: owner-
ship changed hands six times in the next 19 years, but it be-
came more solidly entrenched. In 1878 the name was changed
to the Hackensack Republican.
The decades immediately after the Civil War brought
weekly papers to many of the municipalities in the county. The
demand for this type of paper was not heavy, and none of the
early weeklies ever had a large following. Some of them, such
as the New Jersey Radical, which a short time after it first ap-
peared in 1873 merged with the Bergen County Herald, were
absorbed by the large papers; others followed the example of
the Englewood Times and the Englewood Standard, which
joined forces to take advantage of what small business there was,
The merger of these two Englewood papers, incidentally, was
unsuccessful, and the field was left to a latecomer, the Engle-
wood Press, still being published (1941).
The Bergen Index, the Rutherford News, the Ridgewood
Record, the Ridgewood Herald (which later by merger with
another Ridgewood paper became the Ridgewood Her aid -News) ,
the Bee and the Landscape were a few of the more noteworthy
Bergen papers of the late nineteenth century. The Bee, issued
in Rutherford in 1882, was the county's smallest paper. Its
unusual size, 4 1 /2 by 3 1 /2 inches, was not matched by a striking
editorial policy. During the 10 years of its existence it was
known as the "white head" because of its ultra-mild comment,
The Landscape, a monthly, was written, edited and printed at
Saddle River by A. P. Smith, a Negro; it had a wide circulation
until publication was ended by the publisher's death in 1900.
The growth of small municipalities after 1900, which in-
creased the possibility of legal advertisements, spurred the for-
mation of weekly papers. Practically all 60 of them now in
existence depend on ads from the sheriff's office and the muni-
cipal buildings. This dependence forces the papers to engage
actively in local politics, and as the county is Republican such
activity is for the most part limited to intra-party disputes.
THE PRESS 223
Part of the system is multiple publishing; the papers differ only
in their coverage of local council meetings, gatherings of the
various societies and other local happenings. The publishers are
thus paid for advertisements, both public and private, in several
papers, but the printing costs are much reduced.
Among the many firms which publish more than one paper
is the Tenafly Publishing Company, which prints in addition to
its chief publication, the Northern Valley Tribune, also the
Bergen Independent, North Jersey Life and the Ridge field Times.
The F. E. Caston plant at Wood-Ridge publishes the Wood-
Ridge Independent, the Moonachie Independent, the Wood-
Ridge News and the South Bergen Independent.
Not all the weeklies are published by this mass-production
technique, but there is no noticeable variation in either format
or content between the two types. That is not to say that all
60 papers are exactly alike; there are many different page sizes
and a variety of typography, while the make-up is limited only
by the editor's taste. The circulation of these weeklies is, of
course, limited to small areas. In many cases a subscription for
a single year will constitute a lifetime order for the paper with-
out further charge.
In the county are published almost one-fifth of all the
weeklies in the State. Of these 60 papers, only one is in a
foreign language the Hungarian Szabad Sajto, which is pub-
lished at Garfield. The Car Is tad t Free Press, begun as a Ger-
man language paper in 1873, and the Jewish Tribune, published
in Hackensack, are both printed in English. There is a weekly
for each 6,827 people in Bergen, while in the country as a whole
there is one to about 11,000. The combined circulation of all
the weeklies probably reaches 100,000, though this is not guar-
anteed paid.
The first Bergen County daily was established in 1875 by
Captain Corlandt L. Parker, who acquired the Rutherford Park
(later Bergen County) Herald, which was founded as a weekly
in 1872. Originally a family journal for German- American
land societies, vereins and similar organizations, the Herald be-
came a staunch Republican sheet in 1873. Efforts to maintain
224 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
the paper as a daily failed, and in 1876 it reverted to weekly
publication with a Democratic policy. In 1897 the Herald
moved to Westwood, where it was published as the official
county Democratic organ until it folded in 1902.
Until 1895 only the Herald had attempted daily publica-
tion. All the other papers were issued monthly, weekly, semi-
weekly or triweekly. On June 5, 1895, the Bergen Evening
Record, sole daily in the county today and one of the most
prosperous in the metropolitan area, began publication. Con-
taining four pages of five columns each, the first edition fea-
tured an account of an arson ring in New York City. The local
lead reported the first defeat of the Oritani Field Club baseball
team in its game against the Princeton Consolidated nine. Other
stories dealt with a meeting of the Freeholders, a State Senate
investigating committee, the coming battle between Corbett and
Fitzsimmons and activities of President Cleveland's cabinet.
Under "Local Briefs" appeared the information that the merry-
go-round craze continued unabated. There were several adver-
tisements and a small classified column.
The first Record plant had one flat-bed press, a job press,
a case of display type and a batch of seven-point type. The
electric motor for the press was set up on an old butcher block,
and the page forms were made up on a marble slab which had
formerly been a store counter. About 1,000 copies of the first
issue were printed, of which about half were sold. Five boys
handled distribution in Hackensack. In October 1920 the paper
was incorporated as the Bergen Evening Record with John Borg
as president and controlling stockholder.
The Bergen Evening Record is the sounding board of all
county affairs. A thorough coverage of metropolitan and na-
tional events combined with strict attention to all local affairs
has won it a wide circulation throughout Bergen and its neigh-
boring counties. The Record is required reading for those who
wish to keep a finger on the pulse of Bergen County life; its
columns are quoted in 30,000 homes and eagerly watched for
reports of council meetings, charity affairs, card parties and local
scandals.
THE PRESS 225
A consistently independent editorial policy in a predomi-
nantly Republican community is in part responsible for its
steady 50-year growth. The paper's circulation and influence
have also been stimulated by its active interest in county affairs
an interest which has led it to sponsor popular recreational
and cultural events.
Two later attempts to establish daily newspapers in the
county failed. On September 5, 1905, the Daily Times was
published from the old Democrat office in Hackensack. The
venture lasted only two months. On February 16, 1912, the
Bergen Daily News appeared in Hackensack and continued until
November 17, 1921.
The suburban columns of such neighboring dailies as the
Paterson Morning Call, Paterson Evening News, Passaic Herald'
News, Jersey Journal and the Newark Evening News devote
considerable space to Bergen County news and have substantial
circulations in the county.
12. Cultural Activities
THE chief force in the intellectual life of Colonial Bergen was
the Calvinistic doctrine of the Dutch Reformed Church, which
was represented by the Holland-educated clergymen. Staunch
traditionalists, these ministers allowed their congregations only
the limited literary diet endorsed by the theological professors
at Leyden. The few literate laymen read the family Bible, the
psalmbooks and, later, the Dutch almanac.
On the outer fringes of the Dutch settlements the cultural
boundaries established by the early Reformed church were weak-
ened, as was the rigidity of the sect's dogma, by a new group of
religious leaders during the first half of the eighteenth century,
natives of the colony and hence more sympathetic with its view-
point.
The American clergymen were strongly influenced by
Theodorus J. Frelinghuysen, who ministered to the congregation
226
CULTURAL ACTIVITIES 227
in the Raritan area. His departure from religious formalism
and his emphasis on religion of the heart provoked the opposi-
tion of the conservative school, which warned the settlers against
him and protested to the Classis in Holland. In reply Freling-
huysen published three of his best sermons, The Broken Heart
and Contrite Spirit, The Lord's Supper and The Christian Dis-
ciple, which embodied the spiritual quality of his faith. The
Sermons was the best seller of Dutch Colonial days.
Other books circulating in the ecclesiastical circles compris-
ing the Colonial intelligensia were The Adorable Ways of God
by Petrus Van Driessen, Chain of the Godly Truths by Gerard
Haeghoort and The Unknown God by Johannes H. Goetschius.
Part of the rivalry between Americans and Europeans in
the Dutch Reformed Church found expression in the stirring
debates recorded in the records of the churches at Schraalen-
burgh (Dumont), Hackensack and the Ponds (Oakland) and
in the pamphlets and brochures published here. Of the approxi-
mately 50 books which appeared in Dutch America between
1708 and 1794, 37 are said to have been on religious subjects.
Meanwhile, Dutch culture had come into conflict with
English. The struggle for linguistic and cultural ascendancy
between the two groups was an unspectacular but profound
aspect of life in Bergen County during the latter half of the
eighteenth century. Seriously handicapping the Dutch was their
lack of a newspaper. The English gazettes of New York, on
the other hand, attained circulation in Bergen County and
exerted a considerable influence on the population. Moreover,
the official language of the courts and the government was Eng-
lish, although a large percentage of the inhabitants spoke Dutch.
A significant trend was the action of farsighted ministers of the
Reformed Church in advocating that preaching in English be
inaugurated to keep the younger generation in the church.
The Hackensack Valley remained the last stronghold of
Dutch culture until well into the nineteenth century. The new
Schraalenburgh church built in 1801 had a Dutch inscription
over the front door, and as late as the Civil War Dutch was
still widely spoken. J. Dynely Prince in his The Jersey Dutch
228 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Dialect cites examples of the vernacular in Bergen County as
late as 1919.
There developed during the Colonial and Revolutionary
periods an agricultural society that prevailed for the greater part
of the nineteenth century. The force of this mode of life made
itself felt in the intellectual pursuits of the people and was
especially evident in the scattered groups of serious thinkers who
organized "literary" and "debating" societies that argued such
topics as: "Which is more valuable to the farmer, Guano or
Manure?" Political and social issues were not overlooked; a
popular topic was: "Which has received the greater injury from
the White Man, the Indian or Negro?"
Weekly discussions of the Saddle River Debating Society
in the 1850's attracted much attention. "The subjects dis-
cussed are mostly of living importance, or such as tend to elicit
useful information," reported the Paterson Guardian. The God-
winville Debating Society was reported to be in a "nourishing
condition," and another one was being planned at Red Mills.
The editor noted that "the most active and intelligent men"
took part in the debating groups. Organized during the same
period were Moral Societies which attempted to exert a "moral
and persuasive influence to endeavor to suppress every species
of vice . . . and more especially of Intemperance, Sabbath
breaking and profanity."
In February 1867 the Weekly Press reported the formation
of the Hackensack Literary Association, expressing the hope
that "the active, earnest young men of Hackensack, who really
desire to improve themselves will join this society." The same
article also commented on the "flourishing literary society" at
New Bridge, which was said "to contain some fine talent and is
doing some good work among the young men of the village."
The newspaper expressed the hope that "the young men in other
parts of the county will imitate the example thus set and or-
ganize half a dozen or more new literary associations." Several
of these Bergen County "literary" groups were affiliated with
the State Literary Union, which served as a clearing house.
Hackensack, as the county seat, was the cultural and social
CULTURAL ACTIVITIES 229
center of the county. In the winter of 1857 a course of lectures
at the Washington Institute was "well sustained." A lecture by
Horace Greeley on the generous subject of "Europe" attracted
special attention that year. Recitations and recitals were con-
ducted throughout the county, and the population was par-
ticularly regaled with "select readings." Many of these affairs
were conducted in conjunction with the church.
Lecture courses at Hackensack, Paramus (Ridgewood) and
other communities were notable occasions for the rural intel-
lectuals. During the winter of 1865 Union Hall in Paramus
entertained such celebrities as Horace Greeley and Theodore
Filton. A lecture by Greeley on agriculture was praised by the
Weekly Press for "the very many valuable hints which it would
do well for the shiftless farmers of Bergen County to reduce to
practice." The committee was praised for employing such
speaking talent, "thus giving a rural neighborhood advantages
heretofore only enjoyed by those residing in the large cities."
The recitals and readings became "cultural evenings" dur-
ing the 1870's. Typical was one in Shuart's Hall at Ridgewood
Station which featured recitations and readings of prose and
poetry interspersed with music. In the county seat there was
formed the Hackensack Lyceum, which arranged public enter-
tainments, lectures and concerts. Many of these activities were
conducted in Anderson Hall.
Families whose social and cultural backgrounds were at
sharp variance with the original population of the county fol-
lowed the railroads into the previously isolated valleys. Suburban-
ization of farmland, entry of residents from metropolitan centers
and increasing contact with New York, as the number of daily
commuters grew, influenced the intellectual life of Bergen pro-
foundly. As residential villages were built up in the sprawling
agricultural townships more interest was naturally shown in
urban affairs. In Ridgewood, Englewood, Leonia and Ruther-
ford halls and auditoria were built where community activities
were centered, and groups were formed that sponsored music
and drama. In November 1871 the Englewood neighborhood
noted enthusiastically the formal opening of the Athenaeum
230 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
with a concert by "prominent singers." Simultaneously it was
announced that Henry Ward Beecher would shortly deliver a
lecture.
The suburban growth of Bergen County attracted artists
and writers who saw in the county a leisurely retreat adjacent
to New York. The famous actor Joe Jefferson moved to Ho-
Ho-Kus and was soon followed by others.
In 1870 the sum of $1,000 was raised for a library in Hack-
ensack. This was the first in the county. The following year
a newspaper reported that "the Hackensackers rejoice in their
new library and reading room having 500 volumes." By De-
cember 1871 the "Hackensackers" had read 25 biographies, 150
scientific and historical works, 1,030 juveniles and 2,148 novels,
which the reporter thought was "suggestive of the average Hack-
ensack mind."
The Bergen County Historical Society was formed in June
1872, and one of its first efforts, according to contemporary
newspaper reports, was "to try and prevent the old historic
names of the county from being blotted out by namby-pamby
sentimental 'Ridges,' 'Woods' and 'Parks.' "
A library was started at Rutherford Park in 1872, and
shortly after the Englewood branch of the New York Mercan-
tile Library was said to be doing "nicely." The old literary groups
were flourishing and new ones were being formed. The Weekly
Press on June 9, 1873, commented at some length on the recent
discussions of the Irving Literary Association of Saddle River,
which argued "women's right to vote and hold office." By its
affirmative vote, the paper thought, the group had "fully placed
itself abreast with the most advanced thought of the age."
The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle was repre-
sented in Bergen County by the Palisade Circle of Englewood,
"There seems every reason to believe that there will be a very
large class," the Englewood Press predicted of the winter season
of 1891. An attractive course on "The American Year" was
announced.
Lectures illustrated with stereopticon slides became popular
during the 1890's. Such topics as "Alaska," "Paris," "Rambling
PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND CRAFTS 231
in Rome," "In Mexico with a Camera" and "Glimpses of Scot-
land" were included in a course presented at the Englewood
Lyceum in January and February of 1892. The non-illustrated
lecture, however, was the staple fare. The ladies of the Tenafly
Society in November of that year heard lectures on the "History
of the French Revolution 1789-1794," "Marat, Danton and
Robespierre" and "Marie Antoinette."
The suburban towns multiplied and grew until communi<
ties stretched in an almost solid line through the Northern Val-
ley. Westward there were broader unpopulated regions. But
the pattern of community life dominated the county and in-
creased opportunities for contact with the arts. Little theatre
groups, musical organizations, exhibitions of painting and
libraries flourished. Women's clubs, church groups and other
organizations sponsored plays, concerts, exhibits of paintings,
community forums and lectures by outstanding speakers. The
women's clubs had study divisions for art, literature and drama,
creative writing and music.
Painting, Sculpture and Crafts
As in other sections of America, pioneers in Bergen County
wove their art into the fabric of their daily living. Neither
the paint brush nor palette knife was their tool; they worked
with hammer and saw, blacksmith's bellows and whittling knives.
The essence of their art was simplicity and its aim functional
or decorative. The finer problems of representation were not
their concern.
The oldest examples of handicraft are the time-smooth
gravestones in the old burial grounds at Paramus, the Ponds, old
Schraalenburgh and the Green and in the many family cemeteries
throughout the county. These anonymous works show a re-
markably deft sense of line and space. Surrounding the quaint
epitaphs were floral borders, beautifully composed, weeping wil-
lows, a conventional yet varied decorative motif, and occasion-
ally the skull and crossbones, which was used in an especially
232 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
striking fashion on a stone in the Schraalenburgh burial ground.
It was in making things for the living, however, that
Bergen County craftsmen achieved their greatest success. Their
work is best illustrated in the preserve cupboards of the Dutch
Colonial houses, which were usually constructed of pine, poplar,
cherry or apple wood. Decorated with carved sunbursts, flut-
ings and reedings, their simple lines blended with the architec-
tural severity of the houses. The best of these cupboards has
been attributed to James Auryansen who lived just over the
New York State line, but other craftsmen within the county
were exceptionally proficient. The ladder-back chairs have
decorative finials and turned stretchers which are said to be
different from any found along the Atlantic coast. Furniture
of all types, made by farmers and their workmen, indicates that
the skillful use of tools was not uncommon. Like the other
craftsmen, the blacksmith, too, turned artist on occasion,
Candlesticks, fasteners for blinds and weathervanes, wrought by
hands more familiar with rougher objects, were often of sur-
prisingly delicate workmanship and beauty.
With the growing urbanization, the handcraft arts lost their
appeal. Not until well into the nineteenth century and the
early twentieth was the production of craft art objects resumed,
and then on a commercial basis rather than for personal use,
About 1840 George Wolfskeil of Liberty Pole (Englewood)
produced pottery which, if it did not challenge the supremacy
of the Trenton masters, at least achieved commendable artistry,
He worked with the "red paste" or common brick clay base and
won his reputation on the glaze effects. His pie plate with the
medallion of Washington beneath 1 3 stars, his Martha Washing-
ton plates and salt glaze crocks were his outstanding accomplish-
ments.
The handcraft tradition was by no means continuous.
There were, however, three other isolated, noteworthy craft de-
velopments. During the late nineteenth century John B. Lozier
of Oradell became known for his decorations on china and
bric-a-brac. In Edgewater in 1911 Lorentz Kleiner, or Cleiser,
began making tapestry, and for more than 20 years Edgewater
PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND CRAFTS 233
tapestries, handwoven and handsewn, were produced on order
for State capitols, museums, hotels, private clubs, expositions
and prominent individuals here and abroad. Forced out of
business in 1933 as a result of lack of demand and the importa-
tion of less expensive European tapestries, the Edgewater looms
had turned out thousands of pieces valued at from $300 to
$2,000 each. The four buildings that made up its plant con-
tained facilities for every phase of the work, from drawing
designs to finishing huge textile mosaics that sometimes took
as long as a year to weave. At the Newark Museum are two
of the chief works of the looms one depicting the life of the
Hackensack Indians and the other showing Newark in 1826.
Five years after the opening of the Edgewater looms, in
1916, Miss Winifred Mitchell established the Tenafly Weavers.
The beautiful handwoven fabrics made in the studio at Tenafly
became immediately popular, and the studio in Miss Mitchell's
home was soon outgrown. Girls were trained in the ancient
craft under Miss Mitchell's direction, and in 1919 several tutors
from Queen Alexandria's school in Sandringham spent nine
months here teaching the Old World techniques to the Tenafly
Weavers. Today textile buyers from all over the country come
to the large plant in Closter, where the weavers moved, to pur-
chase the artistically woven materials.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century the nucleus
was formed of the art colonies which were to grow in size and
importance until Bergen reached supreme position in art in
New Jersey. Before this influx there had been only one artist
of note in the county, Thomas LeClear (1817-82), a portrait
painter who came to Rutherford after he had established his
reputation in New York. Among his works were pictures of
Edwin Booth, James Russell Lowell, Charles P. Daly and an
unfinished portrait of General Grant for which, if his death had
not intervened, he would have been paid $10,000.
On the rocky Palisades above the Hudson, which furnished
the inspiration for a new school of American painting under the
impetus of men like A. B. Durand, Thomas Cole and Albert
Bierstadt, the young artists of the day built studio shacks to be
234 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
close to the landscapes of the Hudson Valley which they wished
to paint. Many others, whose artistic inspiration did not spring
from the river, also came to Bergen County, which was becom-
ing the country edition of Greenwich Village in its heyday.
The most important of these colonies was at Coytesville, where
"Pop" Hart, Dan Perrine and Robert MacKay lived and worked.
Often the Coytesville artists trudged downhill to Leonia, where
they visited another group which included C. Harry Eaton,
then president of the American Water Color Society, and Peter
Newell, whose illustrations for Alice in Wonderland) Peter
Newell's Mother Goose and other children's books made him the
Walt Disney of his time. Down the river at Edgewater, which
at the turn of the century had not yet embarked on its period
of great industrial expansion, there lived other artists working
in another medium. Among these were Rudy Dirks, originator
of the Katzen jammer Kids, and the cartoonists Tom Powers and
Jimmie Swinnerton.
Alexander Shilling (1866-1937), who studied both here
and in Europe, lived in Leonia for many years during which
his powers as an etcher and landscape painter came to fruition.
Scenes of northern Bergen appear again and again in his work,
which has been acclaimed by critics and has won for him repre-
sentation in the Metropolitan Museum and several medals.
Unlike Shilling, Charles Livingston Bull (1874-1932), the
muralist and illustrator, owed little to his formal art training.
His murals decorate the homes of Isaac N. Seligman, William
Gray Purcell and Charles S. Chapman. His drawings, chiefly
of animals, illustrated his own and stories of others and were
drawn from the memories of his travels. He lived in Oradell.
Chester Loomis (1852-1924), who lived in Englewood, was
complimented chiefly for his strong use of color. Loomis painted
portraits of Bergen County notables and a dramatic mural of
the Half Moon sailing beneath the Palisades for the Englewood
Library.
The most fabulous of these artists was George O. "Pop"
Hart (1871-1933), whose picturesque career sometimes diverts
attention from his vivid, brooding water colors. Aboard cattle
PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND CRAFTS 235
boats, tramp steamers and nondescript sailing boats Hart scoured
the remote ends of the earth, painting signs with vivid scenic
backgrounds to earn his living. When he returned to New
York in 1905 his weather-beaten appearance and the long beard
which he had allowed to grow during his travels immediately
gave him the nickname "Pop."
During the closing years of his life he clung to his cabin
in Coytesville, but his fame spread. Many who occasionally saw
the shabby old man walking through the towns of eastern
Bergen County or along the Saddle River did not suspect Hart's
wide renown. His works hang in private collections throughout
the world, in art galleries all over the United States and in the
South Kensington and British Museums. Hart's most telling
effects were reserved for his paintings of Mexican scenes, which
he interpreted with deep and sympathetic understanding.
The artists who came to Leonia by and large achieved suc-
cess. Although they worked with the utmost independence;,
they formed a center for the exchange of ideas in art. The
very fact of their being there raised the appreciative level of the
community, and this effect filtered out to the rest of the county,
One of the foremost of the Leonia group is Charles S. Chap-
man (1879- ) , a member of the National Academy of Design,
who has been hailed as America's most devoted interpreter of
forest depths in oil. He is particularly noted for his treatment
of trees and has lately caused wide comment on a new technique
which he discovered and developed. Chapman floats oil paints
on water, blends the colors and achieves the design on the sur<
face of the water and then, by laying paper on the oil, transfers
the picture. His large sum of honors includes the Carnegie
prize for his painting Adventure, which was shown in the Na-
tional Academy exhibition in 1938.
Together with Harvey Dunn (1884- ), who now lives in
Tenafly, Chapman founded the Dunn Studios in Leonia. Until
the school closed in 1917 it attracted many exceptional students,
including Dean Cornwall, who later gained national prominence
as a muralist. To a class at his studio Dunn once said: "There is
no such thing as a creative artist. An artist merely expresses
236 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
that which has always been. Don't be subtle. Be obvious. Be
brutal." This advice he has followed himself in his better work.
Dunn paints people in action, grouped in decisive moments; his
pictures are often of struggles with nature. Dunn's illustrations
have appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, The
Century, Cosmopolitan and other periodicals.
Both Dunn and Howard McCormick (1875- ), another
Leonia artist, are associate members of the National Academy of
Design. One of the pioneers of American mural painting, Mc-
Cormick has won his reputation on his studies of Indians and
designed and executed the Indian exhibit at New York's
Museum of Natural History. Some of his paintings decorate
the Museum of Science and Industry in Radio City, and he has
done the panels in gesso in the Leonia grammar school and the
New Jersey State Museum at Trenton. McCormick's technique
has been carried over to his exquisite wood engravings. Mc-
Cormick and Frank Street (1893- ), whose illustrations appear
frequently in popular magazines, established an art school in
Leonia which is a distinct contribution to the community. The
amateurs who gather in the studio to paint or sketch transmit
to their neighbors an increased interest in art and an apprecia-
tion of the artist's technical problems.
Two other Leonia artists, Chester Leich (1889- ) and
Grant Reynard (1887- ), work chiefly in another medium,
etching. Leich has exhibited his etchings, drypoints, soft ground
etchings and aquatints all over the country, and some of them
hang in the Library of Congress and the National Gallery of
Art in Washington, the Museum of New Mexico, the Roerich
Museum and the headquarters of the Society of American
Etchers, both in New York, and in other permanent collections
Reynard, who was a successful illustrator before he turned to
etching and painting, has sold his pictures to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Newark
Museum and to other galleries. Hall of the Mountain King is
one of the most notable of Leich 's drawings, and the drypoint,
Brahm's Sonata, a study of a musicale, best represents what has
been called Reynard's "searching quality."
PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND CRAFTS 237
Rutherford Boyd (1884- ), another of the Leonia group,
is a painter in watercolors and oils and has been art director of
several magazines. For several years Boyd has been experiment-
ing with abstract designs. His abstractions, figures carved in
plaster, wood, lucite, alabaster or similar materials, are basically
spatial variations on a single geometric shape or theme. Thus
with a simple parabola as a theme Boyd has produced a striking
parabolic figure composed of smaller parabolas arranged in
strictly mathematical sequence and varying in height and width.
Striving for perfection of design, the artist holds that the mathe-
matics upon which his compositions are built will provide a
fundamental language of art. To show the development and
some of the possible variations of abstract designs based on a
single geometric figure, Boyd directed a motion picture called
Parabola which was produced, like an animated cartoon, by ex-
posing one frame of film at a time. In his oils Boyd also em-
phasizes design with exceptional success.
Four of the country's outstanding artists once lived in
Leonia: Mahonri Young (1877- ), one of the leading modern
sculptors and an etcher of distinction whose works are exhibited
at the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum and the
Museum of Natural History in New York, the Newark Museum,
the Art Institute at Salt Lake City and other places; Arthur S.
Covey (1877- ), instructor in mural paintings at the National
Academy of Design, past president of the Society of Mural
Painters and painter of several wall designs at the New York
World's Fair; J. Scott Williams (1877- ), also a past president
of the Society of Mural Painters, creator of exceptional alle-
gorical murals, landscapes and designs in glass; and Harry
Townsend (1879- ), official artist of the American Expedi-
tionary Force in the World War whose pictures hang in the
Army War College and the Smithsonian Institution, the Metro-
politan Museum and the New York Public Library.
Mary Swift Powers (1885- )of Englewood is represented
at the Whitney Museum, where her water color of Mallorca
hangs. She is particularly noted for her studies of flowers and
West Indian scenes.
238 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Henry Burkhart (1892- ) named his artist daughter,
Leonia, for his home town. Burkhart, who studied here and
abroad, has had his paintings accepted by the "Whitney Museum
and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Fran-
cisco. Miss Burkhart painted the murals in the Powell, Wyom-
ing, post office, but Bergen County landscapes are her chief
interest. She was awarded honorable mention in an exhibition
at the Montclair Museum of Art and a medal by the American
Artists Professional League.
There are several other families of artists in the county,
among them the Wilcoxes of Tenafly, the Walcotts of Ruther-
ford and the Lambs of Cresskill. Ray Wilcox (1888- ) is
best known for his marine paintings, but his landscapes, too,
have attracted notice. The emotional quality of his work is
expressed by striking contrasts with especially vivid skies. R.
Turner Wilcox (1880- ), his wife, emphasizes contrast, too,
but her work has a delicate finish which is at its best in The
Painted Shawl, perhaps the most sensational of her paintings,
Their daughter, Ruth Wilcox (1908- ), one of the leading
contemporary portrait painters, has won awards for her por-
traits and oil studies.
Both Henry Mills Walcott (1870- ) and his wife, Belle
Havens Walcott (1870- ), have won the Hallgarten Prize of
the National Academy of Design; Henry Mills Walcott was the
recipient the first time it was offered. Some of his pictures hang
at Ohio State University and Ohio Wesleyan University, and
he has been awarded several other marks of distinction.
The Lambs are particularly distinguished for their work
with stained glass. Charles Rollinson Lamb (1871- ), an
architect who began his career as a designer of churches and
monuments such as the Dewey Memorial Arch in Madison
Square, New York, now designs the stained glass produced by
the J. and R. Lamb Corporation. Charles Lamb has been an
officer of many art organizations and a historian of art. The
late Ella Condie Lamb, his wife, and Katherine Stymetz Lamb,
their daughter, work with paints as well as glass. Mrs. Lamb's
portraits and murals have been as favorably commented upon
PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND CRAFTS 239
as the stained glass windows she did for Christ Church in Spring-
field, Illinois, and Miss Lamb, who made the Froelich Memorial
Window in the Newark Museum, has been praised for the bold-
ness of touch and delicacy of effect of her murals.
Charles Lamb's brother, Frederick (1863-1928), who also
studied architecture, was perhaps the most influential artist who
ever lived in Bergen. His murals and his stained glass designs
were pre-eminent artistic accomplishments, and his services were
in demand by many national organizations. Lectures and writ-
ing to stimulate art education took so much of his time that
often little was left for his painting. An outstanding figure
in ecclesiastical architecture, portrait painting and in the field
of civic art improvement, Frederick Lamb was a medal winner
at many exhibitions here and abroad.
H. Willard Ortlip (1886- ), the Fort Lee muralist and
portrait painter, and his wife, Aimee Eschner Ortlip, leave their
formal work for long periods to travel all over the country giv-
ing religious talks illustrated by chalk drawings.
Several of the artists in Bergen have painted county scenes.
John Allison (1889- ) of Englewood, who is a musician as
well as a painter, achieved a striking effect in his chief work,
Erie Engine, by contrasting the locomotive with the autumnal
background of a lofty hill. The Englewood artist, Dexter B.
Dawes (1872- ), has done a sensitive painting of the George
Washington Bridge from Coytesville, and Alfred Du Buis
(1875- ) of Hasbrouck Heights, who specializes in producing
striking color effects in moonlight, is the painter of the land-
scape, The Palisades, which hangs in the gallery of the National
Academy. Various Bergen scenes have been painted by Ridge-
wood's Joseph P. Gaugler (1896- ), who has won first awards
in the New Jersey State Exhibit, the art shows of the Montclair
Museum of Art and the Ridgewood Art Association. Jean H.
Morse (1876- ) of Englewood and Emile Stange (1863- )
of North Hackensack have both painted Hackensack River and
other local scenes. Helen Moore Sewell (1896- ) of Ridge-
wood has used the Pompton Lakes area in several of her works.
Among the artists in Bergen who are chiefly portrait paint-
240 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
ers are: John Bentz (1879- ) of Leonia, whose animated,
realistic miniatures have been widely and favorably commented
upon; Michele A. Cafarelli (1889- ), the Teaneck artist who
painted three portraits which hang in the Paterson Courthouse
and who has also exhibited landscapes and still lifes at the Na-
tional Academy; and Adrian Lamb (1901- ) of Cresskill, who
has executed portraits for Columbia University, the University
of Nebraska and the New York Post.
Marion Swinton (1878-1939) was an artist and teacher of
national celebrity when she died at her Hackensack home. Per-
haps the best-known of her canvasses was one of President
Woodrow Wilson which was widely exhibited throughout the
country and now hangs in the Princeton Club, New York. An-
other acclaimed work was a study of the actor Joseph Jefferson
as Rip Van Winkle. For a time Miss Swinton had studios in
London and Montreal.
Some of the best-known illustrators in the country live in
Bergen County. Alonzo Early Foringer (1878- ) of Saddle
River, who painted the Red Cross war poster, The Greatest
Mother in the World, and Otto Bierhals (1870- ) of Tenafly,
whose illustrations are familiar to readers of Macfadden and
Street and Smith publications, are primarily illustrators, though
they have devoted part of their time to painting murals. Bier-
hals has won honorable mention at exhibitions of the Montclair
Art Museum and the American Art Society in Philadelphia
among others; Foringer *s murals decorate the Utah Statehouse
and many other public buildings. Enos Benjamin Corns tock
(1879- ) of Leonia writes and illustrates books for children.
Another Leonia illustrator-author is Alfred Zantzinger Baker
(1870- ), whose work has been prominently displayed at ex-
hibits of the National Academy of Design and printed in lead-
ing periodicals. He drew the pictures to accompany several
volumes of his humorous and satiric verse.
There are many other artists in the county whose work has
been exhibited at galleries both within and outside of the State.
Among them are: Lillian Reitzenstein, Lillian Remington,
Eleanor L. Rome, Dr. Donald Hull, George O. Bonawit, Helen
PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND CRAFTS 241
Gapen Oehler and Beatrice Calvet of Ridgewood; Florence C.
Gliden, Ann Murphy, Henry A. Ogden, Frank Creve, Carrie
Wieners, Janet Taylor and Edith Brown of Englewood; John W.
Doty of Allendale; Amy Hartung of Wyckoff; Frances Keffer
and Sara M. Hess of Hillsdale; Evelyn Valentine of Radburn;
Hazel K. Wires of Closter; Louis Kennel of Dumont; and
George Mitchell of Rutherford.
In schools, libraries and other public buildings throughout
the county, including the Hackensack Courthouse and Bergen
Pines Hospital, the Art Project of the Work Projects Admin-
istration has painted two large murals and 74 wall panels, rang-
ing in size from 3 by 7 feet to 14 by 18 feet.
The distinguished annalist of art, Daniel Trowbridge Mallet
(1862- ) of Hackensack, has compiled Mallet's Index of
Artists, which includes artists from the ancient Greeks to one-
man exhibitors of the present, and has collected the Library of
Art Data, reproductions of paintings and sculptures.
The county is the home of several well-known sculptors,
chief among them Frederick G. R. Roth (1872- ) of Engle-
wood, a member of the National Academy of Design and
sculptor of several humorous fountains in New York's Central
Park. During his studies in Vienna and Berlin he developed
a predilection for sculpturing animals, which is his chief ex-
pression today. Roth's animals, his pigs, balancing elephants
and waggish dogs, often caught in natural but unusual poses,
are comic and appealing.
The late Charles Henry Niehaus (1855-1935), who was
also a member of the National Academy, had a studio in Grant-
wood until his death. His statues of outstanding American
figures and his memorial groups stand in cities all over the
country. His Planting the Standard of Democracy, a flagstaff
surrounded by an active, virile group, is the World War me-
morial in Newark's Lincoln Park. In New York Niehaus is
represented by the Astor Memorial Doors of Trinity Church
and a statue called Caestus and Athlete at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Catherine Greff Barton (1904- ) of Englewood won a
242 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
$1,000 competition for a United States Navy medal design and
the prize for the best small sculpture at the Christmas exhibition
of the National Association of Women Painters in 1931. Many
critics consider her best work the bust of Lindbergh which is
displayed at the Englewood Library, but her bas-relief portrait
of Miss E. S. Creighton in the Dwight School for Girls at Engle-
wood has also been highly commended. Also of Englewood was
Emilio F. Piatti (1860-1909), whose statue of Gen. Enoch Poor,
the Revolutionary hero, stands on the Green at Hackensack.
Another sculptor whose work can be seen in the county
is Oreste L. Cassi (1871- ) of Fort Lee. Associated with
others, he carved the statuary in the Bergen County Courthouse.
He has also worked on the sculpture of the New York State
Capitol, the Supreme Court building, the Pennsylvania State
College and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Abram Belski (1907- ) of Closter came to America from
London in 1929 after study in Scotland, England, France and
Italy. He specializes in architectural decoration, though he is
not limited to this art form. His numerous figures include a
bust of Will Rogers.
At Leonia F. E. Hammargren (1892- ) conducts a school
of sculpture in the old Dunn studio where he has executed the
figures, fountains and small sculptures that have gained him
notice in several exhibitions. His most important works are
Leda and the Swan, a fountain at Orebro, Sweden, and Torso,
a marble figure at the Brooklyn Museum.
About 45 of the artists in the county are members of the
Bergen County Artists Guild, which was formed in 1937 to
encourage young artists, increase public interest in art and
supply a selling medium. The group meets in Englewood for
instruction and discussion and sponsors four or five art shows
annually in the county. The Ridgefield Park Art Association,
a group of students studying with Anita Friend, plans to hold
two exhibits each year. Outstanding art shows in the county
are the annual Ridgewood Art Exhibit and the Leonia art show,
held triennially. Other exhibits are given occasionally at the
Teaneck Library and in the Plaza Building at Radburn.
The Theatre
The Dutch colonists, steeped in the sobriety of the Dutch
Reformed Church, yet managed to enjoy many pleasant hours
in the congenial inns of Bergen County where at rare intervals
traveling acrobats, jugglers and dancers made unheralded ap-
pearances and went through their acts for a few coins. The
drama of raising a new barn, laying the frame of a church
building or burying a neighbor, however, gave fuller satisfaction
to the Bergen farmer.
During the 1820's the rolling wagon shows came into vogue,
giving brave, unpretentious performances on the village greens
of rural America. Spectators usually stood while watching the
clowns and jugglers go through their paces, although occasion-
ally a chair was brought from the nearby tavern for some fine
lady. Performances were never given at night, for pine torches
and candles did not provide adequate illumination.
Those sections of Bergen County lying within the orbit of
the town of Paterson were sometimes circularized with bills an-
nouncing public amusements in the nearly metropolis. A pop-
ular form of entertainment there was the panoramic show, which
advertised "curious and exact Modells." On January 10, 1827,
the Paterson Intelligencer, then the most widely circulated news-
paper in Bergen County, announced a "Mechanical Exhibition
of the Androides or Animated Mechanism." The owner of the
show assured advertisement readers that "no description of the
Androides can give an adequate idea of the entertainment they
afford." He was careful to include in his announcement a state-
ment that "morality or religion" would find no offense in the
presentation.
Bills announcing a "Theater" at the Passaic Hotel, Paterson,
were received by Bergen County farmers March 16, 1831. In
addition to the handbills, which were distributed in Paterson
and its "country districts," an advertisement in the Intelligencer
ballyhooed "Mr. Hudson, The celebrated Slack Rope Vaulter
who will go through many daring feats, and conclude by throw-
ing a Back Somerset from the Rope in Full Swing" Also on
243
244 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
the program were such comic songs as Chit Chat for the Ladies,
Johnny Cream and Polly Tartar and an Irish song, The Ladies'
Darling, and "the laughable Pantomime, called the Two Philos-
ophers." Taking part in this last number were "Doctor Aldi-
barontifoskiformiastikostifonio" and "Doctor Crononhotonhol-
loges." Moreover, promised the advertisement, "during the
Pantomime Mr. Hudson, the great Fire Eater, will take a Sala-
mander Supper, the bill of fare as follows a dish of live coals
of fire; also, eat several blazing balls of Brimstone, from which
he will draw several tri-coloured Ribbons, etc."
The climax of the spectacular evening was "the new, laugh-
able and much admired Farce, as played in New York for up-
wards of fifty nights in succession with unbounded applause,
entitled, A Race For A Dinner Or Sponge Out Of Town," the
saga of Mr. Sponge, "a poor gentleman who has seen better
days." Tickets to this generous presentation, "to be had at
Mr. Post's Bar," cost 25 cents. "Proper officers are engaged to
enforce decorum," the advertisement guaranteed.
On the whole, however, the churches successfully barred
these early efforts at public amusement. They were aided by
the lack of facilities for the formal staging of a play in Bergen,
where the rare strolling players could perform only in a barn,
shop or tavern. Not until the 1860's were public entertain-
ments given at Anderson Hall in Hackensack. There were
probably occasional animal shows, for in 1 842 a newspaper story
told of an elephant being "precipitated into the water" when
a bridge over the Hackensack at English Neighborhood gave
way.
Of the 1850's Eugene K. Bird, editor of the Hackensack
Republican, wrote:
There were no animating diversions, no circuses, no minstrels,
theatricals, movies or vamps to give life to the monotony of bucolic
existence nothing but choir concerts, picnics, straw rides in winter,
apple parings, husking bees, spelling matches and quilting parties from
which happy swains "saw sweet Nelly home."
Bird could speak only from hearsay, however, for he did
not come to Bergen until 20 years later. Newspapers of the
THE THEATRE 245
period tell a different story: they condemn a form of entertain-
ment called the "theater" which was a favorite recreation with
barroom society, but these cabaret performances had little re-
semblance to conventional dramatic art. "There are a number
of theaters nowdays but these County theaters are a disgrace
to the neighborhood," the Daily Guardian of Paterson reported
in August of 1857. "Here they meet to revel and brawl as a
caucus of the canine race. . . . The only remedy is to let the
Grand Jury know." Another correspondent to the Daily
Guardian also wrote in August 1857: "Here is where the young
are led astray. . . . Here is where the rum is dealt out without
measure and the drunk lay around for miles." That same year
the Board of Freeholders enjoined the sheriff not to allow "any
. . . person exhibiting public shows or other plays or nuisances
to enter the court house of the county of Bergen for that pur-
pose."
Emergence of an amateur theatre of more respectable nature
was imminent. In December 1857 handbills were plastered all
over the county announcing the forthcoming production of
Toodles in Harrington Township. A. Wiltmire, "one of the
leading spirits of Tappan" and manager of the troupe, had
several other plays in rehearsal, the Guardian said. The actors
were "some of the best of Bergen J s sons," and the actresses were
"all farmers' daughters." "Go one; go all," exhorted the news-
paper which a few months before had berated the theatre, "for
Bergen's star is in the ascendant."
Seven years later the short-memoried Weekly Press, an-
nouncing that an amateur group at Paramus would produce
Handy Andy, commented that never before had anything higher
than an ordinary school exhibition been attempted. Postponed
twice because of the murder of President Lincoln, the play was
finally given in a well-filled auditorium April 24, "and everyone
was delighted with the performance."
The Hillsdale Dramatic Association, pioneer little theatre
group in Hackensack, covered itself "all over with glory," the
Weekly Press glowed; and the Paterson paper reported that the
group played Anything for a Change and Turn Him Out in the
246 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
"most wonderful manner." The Park Ridge Dramatic Associa-
tion was also organized in the 1870's.
The circus, too, made a full-dress appearance in Bergen
County. Combining the features of the earlier rolling wagon
shows with such spectacles as "Grand Pageant Equestrian Entree
of Men and Horses," the circus during these years became one
of the most familiar American scenes. In Hackensack, in 1871,
2,500 people jammed into the circus tent for a single perform-
ance. Young rustics from 20 miles around, "in a painful condi-
tion of unusual sprucing up, and evidently not on familiar terms
with their stiff short collars and flame colored neckties," spent
money recklessly, but "there was no disturbance and very little
drunkenness," the Bergen Democrat reported.
The most popular stage presentations of that decade and
the next, however, were minstrel shows. A young law student,
John P. Campbell, was the leading spirit in an amateur group
which gave performances frequently at Irving Hall in Hacken-
sack. Satirical skits, written by Campbell, were in great favor
in Bergen County, especially "Squire Campbell's Kourt," which
ridiculed local figures. The first presentation at the Wortendyke
Music Hall, which became a popular place of amusement, was a
"first class negro minstrel performance."
Minstrel shows were still drawing crowds during the late
eighties and nineties, but competing with them were dramas
given by traveling companies. In 1886, when L. R. Shewell's
Shadows of a Great City was playing for a week at the Pater-
son Opera House, the Erie ran excursion trains for Bergen
County theatregoers. Half fare was charged between Suffern,
Rutherford and all intermediate stations and Paterson.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was still being given, but the Uncle
Tom's Cabin Company, a large group which traveled in a spe-
cial train, did not depend on the merits of the drama alone to
sell tickets. Their announcement, when they played at the
Englewood Lyceum in 1897, did not fail to mention the fact
that the company had "two bands and a steam caliope." The
old South and Negro entertainers, however, made an attractive
enough combination without the circus attributes. .Slavery
THE THEATRE 247
Days, which was played in Ridgewood in 1895 by a group of
40 Negro actors, had "the same familiar scenes that made 'Uncle
Tom's Cabin' famous cake walks cotton pickings, etc.," and
was "filled with those darkey melodies which are enjoyed by
everyone." This musical, romantic "picture of ante-bellum days
down South" may have been of questionable veracity but was
undoubtedly appealing to Bergenites who were still going to
see the entertaining minstrel shows, which were being given
from time to time.
Contemporary dramas were also being played. In 1895
Gloriana, "a high class attraction which has had a 200 night
run in New York," opened the season at the Ridgewood Opera
House, and the next year Bergen playgoers wept at the heart-
rending tale of moral retribution when East Lynne was pre-
sented.
On February 23, 1897, Thomas Edison's new invention, the
motion picture, which had played successfully at Koster and
Bial's and Keith's in New York, appeared at Englewood. The
prediction was ventured that the amazing presentation would
"no doubt create considerable interest." If it did, the interest
was not of long duration, for within a few years vaudeville acts
were the main attractions on programs which included motion
pictures. When The Great Train Robbery, the first picture to
tell a story, was shown at Ridgewood in 1904, Gavin's Com-
edians got top billing.
The professional theatre stimulated amateur playmakers,
and little theatre groups were formed in Hackensack, Engle-
wood and Ridgewood. The first production of the Hackensack
Dramatic Association was My Awful Dad, which was presented
May 21, 1890. The following October the Englewood Lyceum
Company gave Esmerelda, which the newspapers reported was
"largely a comedy." Another Englewood group produced
Sweethearts a few months later, and in 1893 Mixed Pickles was
given at the Ridgewood Opera House. That same year a com-
pany of the "best known amateurs in New York" presented
Old Love Letters at the Hackensack Opera House.
Most of the little theatres now active have been formed
248 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
since the World War, especially during the 1930's. The Leonia
Players' Guild, which grew out of the Leonia High School's
Book and Mask Club in 1919, was the first group of amateurs
to televise a three-act play. In June 1940, three years after its
reorganization, the Guild presented One Mad Night by James
Reach from the television studios of the National Broadcasting
Company in Philadelphia. During its career the organization
has presented such plays as Craig's Wife and Yellow Jack,
numerous costume plays and mysteries, farces and pantomimes.
The Rutherford Little Theatre Guild, formed in 1927, pre-
sents two public performances of three-act plays annually and
several one-act plays at membership meetings. The stage at the
group's workshop, 40 Ames Avenue in Rutherford, was built
by the members. The Radburn Players, organized in 1929,
is the county's largest amateur theatrical group. With more
than 350 members, it presents four three-act plays and eight
one-act plays a year in the auditorium of the Plaza Building,
the community center of the Radburn development.
Under the sponsorship of a permanent list of patrons, the
Bergen County Players have converted a barn in North Hacken-
sack into a little theatre. They have given performances
throughout the county, frequently under the auspices of civic
organizations. The Joe Jefferson Players of Ridgewood and the
Footlighters of Tenafly, both organized in 1936, give four full-
length plays each year. In addition, the Tenafly group presents
four one-acters; it has also given benefit performances for the
Red Cross.
Among the other little theatre organizations in Bergen are:
the Concordia Saengerkreis in Carlstadt, the Lodian Dramatic
Guild in Lodi, the Neighborhood Players in Rochelle Park, the
Bergen County Little Theatre Guild of Bergenfield, the Shake-
speare Fellowship of Saddle River and associations in Hillsdale,
Wood-Ridge, Wyckoflf, Garfield and North Arlington. Many
of the women's clubs produce plays, and the Ridgewood
Woman's Club has several times been host to the State Little
Theatre Tournament.
Most of the organizations have a membership of about 50
MUSIC 249
and produce on the average three full-length plays a year. There
was at one time a proposal for an organization to serve as a clear-
ing house for the various groups so that repetition would be
avoided in dates and plays, but this was never accomplished.
Several Bergen County residents have become prominent in
the professional theatre or in the movies. Jean Muir and Busby
Berkley, the Warner Brothers director, both come from Ridge-
wood. Ernest Truex, stage and screen comedian, and Sidney
Kingsley, the playwright, and his wife, Madge Evans, have
homes at Oakland.
Music
Bergen County's current participation in musical affairs
was hardly indicated by the grudging tolerance of any music,
even church music, by the strict Calvinist dominies in Colonial
days. Hymn singing there was, sometimes led by a choir, more
often by a chorister. But musical instruments were never heard
in the churches; they were looked upon as "profane and irrever-
ent." The only recorded instance of an early musical organiza-
tion was the band formed by David A. Demarest of Closter in
1801. The amateur musicians, with the founder at second
clarinet, practiced for several years at Demarest's commodious
home, but so far as is known never performed publicly.
Otherwise, the people had to come to church to hear music.
The chorister who was appointed by the church officers sang
hymns of his own choosing with the sometimes harmonious as-
sistance of the congregation. The sacred poems of Watts, Dod-
ridge and Toplady were favorites. The best known of the chor-
isters was Isaac D. Demarest, who led the singing at North
Church, Schraalenburgh, for more than half a century after his
selection in 1838.
Soon, however, and in the face of some objection, a compe-
tent musical organization was formed in Bergen. Called the
Bergen County Philharmonic Society, the group arranged to
give its first "musical entertainment" in April 1844 at the
250 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Paramus church. But the fickle church fathers, perhaps
prompted by some of the congregation, changed their collective
mind, and the "Grand Concert of Sacred and Miscellaneous
Vocal and Instrumental Music" had to be shifted to the more
liberal Lutheran church at Saddle River.
The choir, which was "numerous and effective," according
to later reports, was accompanied by a 2 8 -piece orchestra con-
ducted by a member of the Euterpian and Philharmonic So-
cieties of New York. Adults paid 25 cents and children 12%
cents.
Such elaborate concerts were unusual in a Bergen County
just then becoming accustomed to instrumental and vocal solo-
ists in place of the purely religious choir music which for so
long had been its sole mode of musical expression. Then the
gradual concentration of the population in towns provided an
opportunity for profitable musical performances. The audi-
toriums which were being built in several of the communities
attested to the increased desire for public entertainments, and
newspaper advertisements for musical events indicated the in-
creasing sophistication of the programs. The smaller towns
still heard "dainty programmes" as a steady diet recitals exe-
cuted by local performers but communities like Hackensack,
Englewood and Ridgefield tapped fuller springs for their talent
and did not depend for their musical fare on the mayor's daugh-
ter or the little boy whose father taught the Sunday School
classes.
The impetus to musical activity arising from the urban
trend was intensified by the immigration to the county from
Europe of different national groups which brought with them
their old-world interest in the arts. The German settlers who
founded Carlstadt formed the Concordia Saengerkreis in 1869
with a men's and women's chorus. Four years later the Fort
Lee Singing Society was organized, and in 1875 the formation
of the Saddle River Band aroused considerable enthusiasm. In
a year's time the group at Saddle River had mastered "When
This Old Hat Was New" and "Yankee Doodle."
Programs at auditoriums like Anderson Hall in Hackensack
MUSIC 251
were becoming richer and more varied. Lectures on the lives
and works of the great composers found a popular reception in
Englewood and Hackensack. But the peak of variety was
topped in Ridgefield in 1890 with a concert composed of selec-
tions by a glee club, recitations and violin, banjo, tenor and
cornet solos. The tickets were "rapidly and discreetly sold,"
for, said the Englewood Press, "no such conglomeration of
artistic talent has ever before presented itself in this locality."
Touring musical companies hit the larger Bergen County
towns on their circuit in the East. Englewood, especially, was
a favorite stand. In the fall of 1891, among other things, Engle-
wood residents heard the Old Original Tennessee Jubilee Singers
in a program which included such songs as "In the River of
Jordan," "Pick Up the Young Lambs," "Meeting Here Tonight"
and "Keep Inching Along Over Yonder." The Thomas Opera
Company also performed in Englewood that autumn. The
group presented The Chimes of Normandy with a "grand
chorus of 30 voices." Two years later the chief program of the
season was given by the Philharmonic Club of New York.
In the meantime more communities were forming musical
organizations, mostly choral groups, but sometimes bands or
orchestras. Englewood had a band and Hackensack a cornet
club and the Schubert Symphony Club, which began in 1890
and continued for more than 20 years. The Symphony Club
gave two or more concerts annually, either in the old armory
or the Oritani Clubhouse. The Gounod Society, formed in 1 894,
was also in the county seat. Singing societies were organized in
Englewood, Leonia, Hackensack and Ridgefield Park.
The number of musical organizations increased until the
present total of 20 choral societies and seven orchestras was
reached. One of the first of this later crop was the Orpheus
Club of Ridgewood, which was formed in 1909 for the pur-
pose of "singing part music for the mutual satisfaction of the
members and to give an occasional private concert." In No-
vember 1939 the group gave its sixty-first performance. From
an original 15, the group has grown to 79.
De Witt Clinton Jr., the original conductor, was succeeded
252 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
in 1914 by Wilbur A. Luyster, who served until 1922; Bruno
Huhn then took charge. Frank Kasschau, who has been con-
ducting the chorus since 1929, is also the director of the Ridge-
wood Choral, a women's group organized in November 1928,
The Orpheus Club has appeared at many concerts and com-
munity sings throughout the East and sponsors performances
by prominent artists each season. The 92 members of the
women's group occasionally join with the Orpheus club for con-
certs. Ridgewood also has a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Com-
pany directed by George Sharp, which opened its 1939 season
with Pinafore, and the A Capella Singers, whose annual Christ-
mas concert is a popular event. Charles M. Hobbs Jr. leads the
latter.
The Northern Valley Civic Music Association, organized in
1931, has a membership of about 1,000 drawn mostly from the
Englewood area. The organization sponsors four or five concerts
a year for the members, who pay annual dues of $5. To St
Cecilia's auditorium in Englewood the association has brought
such outstanding musical artists as Kirsten Flagstadt, Lauritz
Melchior, Emanuel Feuermann, Josef Hofmann, Richard Crooks,
John Charles Thomas, Ezio Pinza and Gladys Swarthout.
The Neighborhood Glee Club of the Northern Valley, a
50- voice male chorus directed by John R. Jones, claims to be
the oldest organization of its kind in the county. Founded at
Tenafly in 1905, the club now has 200 subscription members
whose annual contributions of $5 entitle them to three tickets
for each of the two concerts performed each year. The Amphion
Glee Club, which also gives two concerts a year, operates like
the Neighborhood Glee Club. It was organized in 1924 and sings
under the baton of Westervelt Romaine. The Bergen County
Oratorio Society was the outgrowth of a concert by the com-
bined choruses of the Harrington Park Crescendo Club and the
Ridgefield Park Choral Club at the Ridgefield Park High School
in December 1938. Fred A. Semmens conducts the two annual
concerts of the society as well as the performances of the two
groups which formed it. The organization has no sustaining
membership but depends on sale of tickets for its support.
MUSIC 253
About 500 persons attend the concerts of the Oratorio Society
and the Amphion and Neighborhood Glee Clubs.
Charles M. Hobbs Jr., director of the Ridgewood A Capella
Singers, also leads the Wyckoff Choral, the Tenafly Woman's
Chorus and the Hackensack Woman's Chorus. Other choruses
which give public concerts are: Bogota Chorus, Cliff side Park
Choral Society, Dumont Mother Singers, Edgewater Community
Chorus, Hasbrouck Heights Women's Chorus, Palisades Park
Community Chorus, Westwood Women's Chorus, Wood-Ridge
Woman's Chorus, Eintracht Mixed Chorus of Little Ferry,
Liederkranz Mixed Chorus of Little Ferry and the Liedertafel
of Hackensack. This is by no means a complete list; many
musical groups are affiliated with civic, fraternal and religious
organizations.
The six significant instrumental groups, including the
Bergen County WPA Concert Orchestra, which is conducted by
George W. Needham, the supervisor, and August Sieben, give
several concerts each season. The Orchestra of the Teaneck
Symphony Society, Otto Radl, conductor, is the most finished
of all, but others, though less imposing numerically, are com-
posed of highly competent musicians. The Bergen County
String Society, directed by Luigi Catalanatti, gave its first per-
formance in May 1940. Ridgewood, in addition to its choruses,
choir and Gilbert and Sullivan group, also supports a Little
Symphony. In Bergenfield and Fair Lawn orchestras are being
organized.
Part of Bergen County's interest and activity in music
might be traced to the public school system, which leads the rest
of the State in musical education, according to Roger S. Vree-
land, music editor of the Bergen Evening Record. Though the
annual county -wide school music festival has not been held since
1938, plans are under way to resume it. Of particular note is
the annual concert presented by the music department of the
Teaneck High School, which in 1939 obtained Ferde Grofe* to
conduct the school band in his composition "On the Trail" from
the Grand Canyon Suite.
Grofe, who also composed the Knute Rockne Suite and the
254 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Newspaper Suite, comes from Teaneck. Other musical personal-
ities from Bergen include Gladys Swarthout, Metropolitan Opera
and Hollywood star, and her husband, the singer, Frank Chap-
man, who live in Englewood; Ozzie Nelson and Glenn Miller,
the popular dance orchestra leaders who reside in Tenafly; and
Mme. Blanche Arral (Mrs. George B. Wheeler), noted opera
star of several years ago, who has a home in Cliffside Park.
Literature
A considerable number of authors live in Bergen County
now; many others have lived there in the past; but few have
tapped the literary possibilities of the region and then not to
the greatest advantage. A novel based on the Jackson Whites,
the multiracial group of the Ramapo Mountains, is yet to be
written, and so is the story of the pro- Southern Yankees who
were ubiquitous in the county before and during the Civil War.
It was circumstance that forced Tom Paine (1737-1809),
greatest of Revolutionary pamphleteers, to speak of Bergen
County in his famous hortatory essay, The Crisis. He described
the troop movements and tactics calculated to halt the enemy
at the Hackensack River. But it was the event and not the
author's choice which was responsible for Bergen 's inclusion;
afterward no writer was forced to write of the county, and few
of them chose to.
During the first half of the nineteenth century no more
than the rigorous sermons of the Reformed Church ministers
and the discussions of "literary" societies in such places as
Saddle River Township, Godwinville, Hackensack and New
Bridge flourished in the unfertile soil of indifference.
Among the early literary and journalistic commuters who
lived in the county were William B. Dana, publisher of the
Financial Chronicle and Daily Bulletin of New York, and his
wife, Katherine Floyd Dana, of Palisades Township, who wrote
extremely popular children's verse under the nom de plume of
Olive A. Wadsworth during the 1850's and 1860's. Mrs. Dana,
LITERATURE 255
who is represented in all the important children's anthologies,
achieved an anonymous recrudescence of popularity when Kay
Kyser, the band leader, had the whole country singing in falsetto
about three little fishies who swam over the dam, a revised swing
version of her poem "Over in the Meadow":
Over in the meadow
Where the stream runs blue,
Lived an old mother-fish
And her little fishes two.
"Swim," said the mother;
"We swim," said the two;
So they swam and they leaped
Where the stream runs blue.
From Philadelphia, while Mrs. Dana was writing poems for
children, came Thomas Dunn English (1819-1902), novelist
and critic, who spoke and wrote for the Bergen Copperheads,
He served in the State assembly during 1863 and 1864 while
living in Fort Lee and from there directed vitriolic attacks on
Lincoln and the Abolitionist movement. A graduate of the
University of Pennsylvania Medical School, English later be-
came a contributor to Burton's Gentlemen's Magazine, co-edited
by his friend Edgar Allan Poe.
English wrote several inconsequential novels, some of them
under pseudonyms. One of his works was Jacob Schuyler's
Millions, which is set partly in Bergen County. One of his best
lines is the description of old Liberty Pole Tavern at Engle-
wood "making a desperate stand somewhere on the road to the
Ramapo Mountains." Today English is best remembered for his
ballad, "Ben Bolt," which was made famous by Du Maurier in
Trilby.
After the Civil War English continued his attacks on the
memory of Lincoln in the magazine Old Guard, which scandal-
ized New York by the venom of its denunciations. "English
had an irrepressible tendency to bad temper and scurrility," one
critic said. In 1874, using the pseudonym A very Drycuss, Eng-
lish became the editor of a paper within a paper. Newspaper
256 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
publishing, along with gambling, women and drinking, the
author said, could ruin a man. Since publishing had become
epidemic in the county, he went on, and since he had "neither
type, presses or possession of money," he bought two columns
of the Englewood Times and called his "newspaper" the Fort
Lee Fireside. His first issue stated: "The great aim of the Fire-
side will be ... heart stirring, blood thirsty news. If the news
can't be found lying about, we propose to make it. It will be
published whenever the editor can afford it, i.e. semi-occasion-
ally."
Another newspaperman-author of the period was Andrew
S. Fuller (1828-96), for 26 years the agricultural editor of the
New York Sun. While a resident of Ridgewood during the
early sixties Fuller wrote several books on the cultivation of
fruits and on forestry (see Agriculture) . John J. Haring (1834-
1926) described his life in a Bergen County farmhouse of about
the same time in his book of recollections, Floating Chips.
Judge Ashbel Green, who became a resident of Bergen
County in 1863, edited the American edition of Bryce's Ultra
Vires or the Power of Corporations, which was long an authority
in its field. Green was judge of the Court of Common Pleas
in Bergen County.
During the seventies and eighties Harper's, the Atlantic
Monthly and other periodicals printed articles about the Euro-
pean travels of John Sherwood (1818-91), an Englewood law-
yer. Sherwood was also the author of the Comic History of the
United States, which, if not quite so humorous as its title sug-
gests, at least did approach its subject in a lighter vein than usual.
In 1881 Bergen County newspaper readers were belabored
with the details of an undertaking to write a history of the
region. The enterprise took a year, during which time the
inhabitants of both Bergen and Passaic counties were given fre-
quent reports on the status of the work. Prof. W. W. Clayton
of Philadelphia, who was supervising the book, had just com-
pleted a history of Sussex County.
The preparation of the history, explained the Paterson
Weekly Press, was "being done at the solicitation of some of the
LITERATURE 257
leading citizens of the two counties." The plan of the work,
said the Press, included an account of historical events, geo-
graphical, topographical and geological data, chapters on lawyers
and the judiciary, the medical profession, the press, education,
churches and business and genealogies of the families of early
settlers. Two thousand subscribtions at $12 each were needed
for publication, and apparently they were obtained for in 1882
the History of Bergen and Passaic Counties appeared.
Three later histories of the county were written: one by
Frances Augusta Wester velt in 1923; Three Hundred Years
(1940) by Francis Koehler of Hackensack, president of the
Bergen County Historical Society and author of Hilda, a Ro-
mance of the Revolution (1932) ; and History of Bergen County
(1900) by J. M. Van Valen.
As the suburban growth of Bergen County continued in
the 1880's, the region became the home of numerous persons
identified with Wall Street financial interests. On the literary
fringe this element was represented by William M. Grosvernor,
who was called "one of the three great political economists of
the day." One-time editor of the St. Louis Democrat, he was
later on the staff of the New York Tribune, for which he wrote
an extremely popular series of articles called "The A. B.C. of
Money."
Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902) lived in many New Jersey
towns, but it is thought that while at Rutherford he wrote
Rudder Grange, the most popular of his novels.
One of the few literary uses of Bergen County's historical
background was the fiction serial Pascack by Frederick W. Pang-
horn which appeared in the Newark Sunday News in 1901. A
sentimentalized love story, it was described as "very interesting
to the old residents of the county, dating back some time ago
and ending at the opening of the Civil War."
Five years after the publication of Pascack Upton Sinclair,
the literary social reformer, founded his co-operative colony at
Englewood with the royalties from his immensely popular book,
The Jungle. An article in the Weekly Independent describing
his plan of co-operative living attracted 300 applicants; but
258 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
strict selection, based mainly on congeniality, reduced this num-
ber to 40 men and women and 14 children. Newspapermen,
writers and several Columbia professors and their families were
among the founders. After a long search for a large tract of
land, which they hoped to purchase at about $250 an acre, they
finally chose a large classic structure on the Palisades overlooking
Englewood and paid $3,000 an acre for only 10 acres. The
building, called Helicon Hall, had been a select private school
which had failed.
The building was ideal, though it needed repairs. About
the fireplace in the glass-roofed social hall, where trees 20 and
30 feet tall were grouped around a central fountain, 50 persons
could be seated comfortably. Thirty-five bedrooms led on to a
balcony circling this center court. There were dormitories and
playrooms for the children, a swimming pool and recreation
rooms.
So impatient were the experimenters that they moved in
before the repairs had been completed, and for the first few
weeks they dodged scaffolding, painters and plasterers. "They
had no furniture, no food, no fire and no cook lived on crack-
ers and milk and would spend hours hunting for a teaspoon to
eat with," Sinclair wrote later.
Edwin Bjorkman, the author and translator, was there, and
the novelists Grace MacGowan Cook and Alice MacGowan,
Prof. William Noyes of Teachers College and Prof. William
Pepperell Montague of Columbia. The cook was a Cornell grad-
uate who was studying for her Ph.D. at Columbia; and the
furnace tender and general handyman was Sinclair Lewis, who
was to return to Yale the following year to be graduated. John
Dewey used to come over to visit, and so did William James and
Jo Davidson, the sculptor.
Even before Sinclair Lewis' newspaper feature on Helicon
Hall, hinting at free love, was published, the good people of
Englewood resented the colony. New York reporters treated
the colony in much the same way that their successors described
Father Divine's "Heavens." The residents, meanwhile, listened
to lectures on social questions, spent hours in the huge public
LITERATURE 259
room arguing and depended on Sinclair to contribute whenever
the funds ran low.
The experiment continued until a fire in March 1907
burned Helicon Hall to the ground with one dead and eight
injured. The building was insured, but the $10,000 claims for
lost manuscripts filed by some of the literary members were not
taken seriously.
A second "colony," more literary, perhaps, than Helicon
Hall, appeared in the summer of 1915 when a group of Green-
wich Villagers came to live in six or seven little frame shacks
on the western slope of the Palisades at Grantwood. Poets, novel-
ists, painters and sculptors moved their literary discussions, their
artistic problems, their plans and little else from Polly's, the
popular Village tavern, and from their Bohemian garrets to
rough it in the Bergen County woods. Here they had to live
without even the minimum comforts they had had in New
York. They had light in their shacks when there was money
to buy kerosene and water when they carried heavy buckets
from the spring some distance away.
The Grantwood colony attracted little attention from resi-
dents in the vicinity; no scandal attached to it, and neighbors
were too distant to object to occasionally noisy parties. Robert
Carl ton (Bob) Brown, author later of Let There Be Beer! and
You Gotta Live, was the chief social attraction. At his stone
house not far from the clustered shacks he furnished the liquor
and food for a practically continuous party of startling luxury.
Guests could get a kind of vicarious thrill of wealth by digging
their hands deep into a garden urn filled with old Roman coins
which Brown kept for just that purpose.
On the walls of Bob Brown's house Manuel Komroff, who
then was occupied with art and not writing, painted startling,
nightmarish murals. Komroflf was one of several painters in
Grantwood. Albert Glaisze, the cubist, Man Ray, later an out-
standing photographer, Marcel Duchamp, who painted the well-
known "Nude Descending a Stairway," Sam Halpert and several
lesser-known artists visited or lived there in discomfort, fed
mostly on their inspiration. Bernard Karfiol, whose paintings
260 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
now hang in the Metropolitan, lived close by; he worked quietly
and showed his work to no one. Architect Hugh Ferriss, on the
other hand, decorated the walls of several shacks with crayon
sketches of future cities.
The Maecenas of Grantwood was Walter Arensberg, who
bought pictures with abandon and financed the publication of
Alfred Kreymborg's Others, A Magazine of the New Verse,
Kreymborg was the spark of the Grantwood colony, and around
his magazine gathered the literary innovators of the day. Orrick
Johns and his wife Peggy, who later married Malcolm Cowley,
had a cottage close to the Kreymborgs', and many other literary
radicals visited and contributed to the publication. Dr. William
Carlos Williams took time off from his medical practice in near-
by Rutherford and came out frequently in his brand-new Ford,
He brought the gospel from the chief figure of the new poetry,
Ezra Pound, whom he had just seen in London, and from
Pound's chief poetic competitor, Amy Lowell. Pound, Lowell
and Williams all contributed verse to Others. Floyd Dell, asso-
ciate editor of the Masses, occupied a cottage, and Silas Bent, the
journalist, visited the colony several times.
John Reed, Harvard's contribution to the Soviet revolution,
Lola Ridge, Mary Caroline Da vies, Mina Loy, Hippolyte Havel,
Sadakitchi Hartmann, Harry Kelly, Ben Benn, Harry Kemp, and
Bill Tisch, whose bible was Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and
whose gods were Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Havelock Ellis,
were all associated with this American expression of the political
and artistic radicalism which swept through the large cities of
the world just before the first World War.
The chief token of that expresison, Kreymborg's magazine f
did not last long. The title of the magazine was taken from the
editor's dictum: "The old expressions are with us always, and
there are always others." Arensberg, the financial prop, argued
that the motto should conclude: "... but there are always
others." It has been said that the "and" or "but" battle shivered
the prop, for though Arensberg agreed to contribute the first
year's publication cost, he dissociated himself from the venture.
Most of the poets kept coming to Kreymborg's little cheap -wine
LITERATURE 261
parties when he moved back to the Village; the artists followed
Arensberg, the good whiskey and excellent food to his handsome
studio in the West Sixties.
Joseph C. Lincoln (1870- ), poet and author of popular
Cape Cod stories, was a resident of Hackensack for several years
before the World War and wrote some of his most popular tales
there: Cap'n Eri, Mr. Pratt and Blowing Clear, as well as Cape
Cod Ballads.
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) was a Bergen County com-
muter, and some of his poems less popular than "Trees"
reflected his experiences as a daily traveler from his home at
Cragmere, Mahwah, to the office of the New York Times y where
he wrote feature stories.
At the time of his residence in Bergen County Kilmer was
a honeymooner, like many another young breadwinner who had
found the suburban advantages of the county attractive; and
like most of his more prosaic fellow travelers he chafed at the
slowness of the train service. "On the Twelve Forty-five" gives
the poet's impression of riding home on the Erie:
Within the Jersey City shed,
The engine coughs and shakes its head;
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
In Rutherford and Carlton Hill,
The houses lie obscure and still.
Lewis Allen Browne (1876-1937) of Englewood was an
editor, short story writer and author of many original screen
plays and adaptations, including The Last Mile, Strictly Dis-
honorable and The Land of Opportunity, the first motion pic-
ture ever to be shown in the halls of Congress (January 28,
1920). He began his motion picture career in the employ of
Selznick Picture Corporation after having been city editor of
the Boston Journal, associate editor of the New York Sunday
American and associate editor of The Forum. Later he turned
once more to journalism and became literary editor of the Daily
Mirror before his death.
262 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The contemporary writers who live in Bergen County have
homes in the Northern Valley, for the most part, close to the
New York literary market. One of the best known is Channing
Pollock (1880- ) of Leonia, who has had several plays pro-
duced on Broadway. He is best known for The Fool and The
Enemy. One of his lesser dramas, House Beautiful, portrayed
the Bergen County commuter as the plumed knight wrestling
with the dragon all day in Gotham and returning in the eve-
ning to the well-ordered life in the suburbs.
Anne Parrish, who has homes both in New York and Engle-
wood, won the Harper Prize Novel contest in 1925 with The
Perennial Bachelor. She has written also A Pocketful of Poses
(1923), Semi-Attached (1924), Tomorrow Morning (1926)
and The Methodist faun (1929). Wife of Charles Albert
Corliss, prominent corporation official, Miss Parrish says that
working in her gardens at Englewood is "the thing I love best
to do after writing."
The physician-author of Rutherford, Dr. William Carlos
Williams, has been acclaimed for the experimental prose of his
novels, White Mule and A Voyage to Pagany. In 1940 In the
Money, a sequel to White Mule, was received with equal critical
approval. In 1926 he won the $2,000 Dial prize for services
to American literature and in 1931 a poetry prize. His poems
are published in the New Yorker and New Republic. Dr.
Williams' latest book of short stories, Life Along the Passaic
River, might just as well have been called Life Along the Raritan
River or Life Along the Schuylkill River. The book is a good
illustration of the analytical quality of the author's prose which
critics have referred to as "surgical."
Mrs. Elizabeth Cutter Morrow (1873- ) of Englewood,
wife of the late Dwight Morrow and now acting president of
Smith College, has contributed stories and verse to national
magazines and published several books, including The Painted
Pig and Quatrains for My Daughter. Her daughter, Anne
Morrow Lindbergh, whose North to the Orient and Listen, the
Wind were best sellers, created a great stir with her first attempt
in political philosophy, The Wave of the Future, a sober essay
LITERATURE 263
of opinion on the inevitability of a strongly centralized collec-
tive society.
Among the other writers in the county are: Amelia Joseph-
ine Burr of Leonia, who has published several volumes of grace-
ful, formal verse; Margaret Sangster of Tenafly, author of
several books of poems and popular novels and short stories; and
Alexander Harvey of North Hackensack, who has written nu-
merous essays on classical and religious themes.
Winifred Halstead, who graduated from Hackensack High
School in 1923, is the author of Marriage Is So Final, published
in 1939. The heroine is a girl from the suburbs who makes good
in the big city. The suburb is presumably Oradell, where Miss
Halstead lived, but she calls it "Westplain." Mrs. Mary Wolfe
Thompson (1886- ) of Hohokus has also written a novel with
a Bergen County setting, Highway Past Her Door.
There are several authors living in the county whose fic-
tional characters are familiar to all boys. Tom Slade, Roy
Blakeley and Pee- Wee Harris, healthy, adventurous youngsters,
were as much the idols of the post-war generation as Horatio
Alger's characters were of the generation before. These three
came from the pen of Percy Keese Fitzhugh (1876- ) of
Oradell, who also writes under the pseudonym Hugh Lloyd.
James Irving Crump (1887- ) of Oradell is author of the
Boys' Book of Firemen, the Boys 9 Book of Forest Rangers and
others of a popular, educational nature. From 1918 to 1923
Crump was editor of Boys' Life, the Boy Scout magazine. He
was later managing editor of Pictorial Review and today writes
popular magazine fiction and radio dramatizations.
Jim "Bonehead" Tierney, the down-to-earth, infallible de-
tective, who by common sense solved mysteries that baffled the
authorities, was a favorite of fathers and their sons for 30 years.
A product of the prolific pen of the Cresskill author, John
Moroso (1874- ), Tierney was a familiar figure in the pages
of the American Boy. Moroso has also written several plays
and novels, among them The Quarry, a prison story that has
twice been transcribed for the screen.
Another writer of boys' stories is William Heyliger /
264 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
(1884- ) of Ridgefield Park. He finds much of the inspira-
tion for his adventure tales by accompanying young people on
hikes and camping trips. Alice Ross Colver (1892- ) of
Tenafly has written such girls' books as the Bahs Series for Girls
and the Jeanne Series for Girls.
The proximity of the county to the universities of New
York has attracted many leading contemporary educators. Some
of them have achieved fame through their writings as well as
their research or nonliterary educational contributions. Dr.
Harold Clayton Urey (1893- ), Nobel Prize winner in chem-
istry in 1934 for his discovery of heavy water, was editor of the
Journal of Chemical Physics and is the author, with Dr. A. E.
Ruark of the University of North Carolina, of Atoms, Molecules
and Quanta. Dr. Herman Harrell Home (1874- ), professor
of the history of education and the history of philosophy at
New York University, has published many books, among which
are The Democratic Philosophy of Education and the Philosophy
of John Dewey. Both Dr. Urey and Dr. Home are residents
of Leonia. Scott Nearing of Ridgewood, radical sociologist and
author, has had published a great number of books, pamphlets
and brochures, including Must We Starve and Fascism. Franz
Boas (1858- ) of Grantwood, one of the greatest names in
anthropology, has been a Columbia University professor since
1899. The books he has written in his field are beautiful exam-
ples of the application of the scientific method to the study of
society. The Mind of Primitive Man and Anthropology and
Modern Life are among his best-known books.
Of all the literary men and women who have lived in
Bergen Richard Burton (1861- ) was perhaps the most in-
fluential. For several years his home at Englewood was a center
for aspiring young writers and leading literary figures. Burton
found time while he was teaching English literature to write
many noteworthy volumes of poems, essays and literary biog-
raphy and criticism. One of his books of verse, Dumb in June,
reached 10 editions. Editor and lecturer, as well as poet, author
and professor, Burton, who now teaches at Rollins College, is a
member of several national literary organizations.
. Community Scene
THERE are 70 municipalities in Bergen, a greater number than
in any other county in the State. The largest proportion of the
409,646 inhabitants lives in the eastern and southern sections
where only the residents are conscious of municipal boundary
lines. In a few of the towns, on their way toward becoming
cities, new apartment houses now rise conspicuously among the
low homes, and stores are being decked out with shiny new
fagades.
The gateway to the county is the glorious sweep of the
George "Washington Bridge, which links New York to the
rugged, brown cliffs of the Palisades. Down the western slope
of this geologic monument roll the paved streets of the thickly
peopled Northern Valley, the chief commuter section of the
county. Across the flatlands is Hackensack, where new indus-
try hides the vestiges of the old river port, and its surrounding
265
266 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
manufacturing and residential communities. Above the Hack-
ensack Valley towns the municipalities of the Pascack Valley,
composed mostly of middle class commuters, stretch to the New
York State line. Another group of towns along the Passaic
River contains the overflow of industry from Paterson and ex-
tends northward to the beautiful Saddle River Valley, where
the land begins to rise to the west. At the top of the county
in the foothills of the Ramapos, which rise in some places to
1,100 feet, the towns have not yet conspicuously changed the
landscape. Here agriculture and dairying are making their last
stand.
The Northern Valley
Alpine, Bergenfield, Cliffside Park, Closter, Cresskill, Demarest,
Dumont, Edgewater, Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, Fairview, Fort Lee,
Harrington Park, Haworth, Leonia, Northvale, Norwood, Old Tappan,
Palisades Park, Ridgefield, Rockleigh, Teaneck, Tenafly.
Twenty-three communities in eastern Bergen County con-
stitute the Northern Valley, named for the Northern Railroad
of New Jersey. The population of the valley is 141,513, more
than one-third the county total. Rising from the Hudson
River, passing the crest of the Palisades and spread out on its
western slope throughout the valley of Overpeck Creek, these
localities, close to New York City, are imbued with a more
cosmopolitan atmosphere than the rest of the county. The heart
of the area is the wealthy and patrician city of Englewood, just
"over the hill" from Washington Heights in Manhattan. Adja-
cent places such as Englewood Cliffs and Tenafly also are resi-
dential, inhabited chiefly by families of large means, and on the
south is Leonia, noted as an art center. On the southeast fringe,
along the Hudson, is highly industrialized Edgewater; farther
north on the river is the Palisades Interstate Park; and along the
New York State line lies a rural area.
The Overpeck meadows, which continue into the Hacken-
sack Valley on the west, have barely begun to be reclaimed for
THE NORTHERN VALLEY 267
a great industrial development arrested by the depression. The
land would be available for manufacturing sites if Overpeck
Creek were dredged and water power for factories thus supplied.
Nearly every municipality has a public library and fraternal,
civic and social organizations, and numerous religious sects are
represented. The many social agencies are well supported, and
efficient police forces are in operation. Englewood alone has a
paid fire department, the other towns being served by the
volunteer system. The Englewood Hospital and the Holy Name
Hospital in Teaneck are equipped with modern facilities and
maintain clinics.
To thousands of New Yorkers the principal attraction of
New Jersey is the huge Palisades Amusement Park, whose Ferris
wheels, "scenic railways" and other thrillers and shockers are
perched 300 feet above the Hudson in Cliffside Park and Fort
Lee; on summer nights they cast a multicolored glow in the sky
as their illumination creates an illusion of a city in mid-air. Out
of season the gaunt, silent structures remain as the notable ex-
ample of man's alteration of the county's eastern skyline.
The George Washington Bridge adds architectural distinc-
tion to the beauty of the west bank of the river. The New York
tower of the bridge, with its air beacon, is visible for many miles
into the interior of Bergen.
Clinging to the rim of the county is Edgewater, where more
than 10,000 are employed in factories. Most of the 4,028 resi-
dents are native born, with a scattering of Polish, German,
Irish and Italian families. The Ford Motor Company alone has
an assembly plant which provides jobs for 4,000 persons; the
Aluminum Company of America's 2,000 workers produce alum-
inum wares; Lever Brothers are makers of Lifebuoy soap and
Spry; the Barrett Company's products include tar, roofing and
paving materials, pitch, creosote and carbon electrodes; the Na-
tional Sugar Refining Company refines and packs Jack Frost
sugar; and the Corn Products Refining Company, whose il-
luminated sign at night flashes the time across the river every
minute, is noted for its Karo syrup, Kremel dessert and Argo
and Linit starches.
268 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Three miles long and but three blocks wide, the borough
extends from the 125th Street Ferry south to the Hudson
County line. It is the site of the New York, Susquehanna and
Western Railroad freight terminal, which parallels the river
for two miles. More than 25,000 carloads, or 1,000,000 tons,
of coal are handled here annually, and the terminal includes one
of the largest waterfront coal dumpers in the metropolitan
area. In 1894 a railroad tunnel was laid under the Palisades to
the Hackensack meadows.
Previously known as Undercliff, the municipality was
named Edgewater in 1895 and factories first appeared the fol-
lowing decade. A houseboat colony north of the ferry consists
of a group of about 5 old barges and scows that have been con-
verted into living quarters. The houseboats are a part of the
community and are served with water, gas and electricity. Resi-
dents include many former seamen.
In Fort Lee, to the north and east, was the "Hollywood of
the East," now represented chiefly by the ruins of studios of
some of the nation's leading motion -picture producers, although
even today the largest industry is the Consolidated Film In-
dustries Inc., 'which makes reproductions of films. It is as the
western terminus of the George Washington Bridge, however,
that Fort Lee is now best known.
The Academy of the Holy Angels at Fort Lee is a day
boarding school for girls established by the Sisters of Notre
Dame in 1879. Its first building, still standing, is of pre-Revo
lutionary construction. The chapel, convent and academy are
of red brick. The steeple of an old German church at the crest
of the mountain is visible for miles up and down the Overpeck
Valley.
West of Edgewater are Cliffside Park and Fairview, almost
wholly residential. Cliflfside Park's northern section, Grant-
wood, opposite Grant's Tomb in Manhattan, commands an im-
pressive view of the Hudson River and the New York skyline.
The population, which has more than tripled since incorporation
in 1895, includes many commuters and workers in Edgewater
plants. There are few industries. Many of those living in the
THE NORTHERN VALLEY 269
southern or Cliffside section are of foreign extraction, chiefly
Italian. This community is the only one in the county with its
own radio station, WBNX, called "the station that speaks your
language" because many of the programs are in foreign tongues.
The borough has its normal quota of social and fraternal
organizations. Among the six churches is Trinity Episcopal
Church, one of the few Anglo-Catholic parishes in the county.
The church, rebuilt in 1928 after a fire, is constructed of natural
rock from the Palisades. The parish was organized by the late
Maj. S. Wood McClave about 50 years ago. The Roman Cath-
olic Church of the Epiphany, near the old Palisade trolley line, is
opposite the Temple of Whitehead Lodge of Masons. It was
built in 1916. Its organ is played by several talented musicians
in the parish, among whom is James Jordan, organist for Loew's
State Theatre in New York.
Ridgefield, to the west, is often referred to as the "gateway
of Bergen County." Its two square miles of woods and meadow-
land fall in a series of north and south terraces from the plateaus
atop the Palisades to the tidewater marshes of the Hackensack
River and Overpeck Creek. The marshland, called the "Ridge-
field Industrial Terminal," is zoned almost entirely for industry
and contains virtually all of the borough's industrial enterprises.
Several large plants are operated, the most important being the
Lowe Paper Company and the Continental Paper Folding Box
Company. Establishments devoted to gas machines, advertising
displays, paint, wire and wood products and chemical specialties
provide work for others. The Great Bear Spring Company
bottles water from natural springs near its plant. Most workers
in local factories are nonresidents.
The business district is centered at the junction of Broad
and Grand avenues and the traffic circle, flanked by a variety of
shops. Residential sections extend east of Broad Avenue toward
the higher reaches of the town. One- and two-family dwellings
and garden-type apartment buildings predominate. Morsemere,
an exclusive home neighborhood, crosses the borough line on the
north into Palisades Park. About 500 residents commute.
The English Neighborhood (Dutch Reformed) Church
270 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
was erected in 1793. A red sandstone structure of Colonial de-
sign, it has arched windows, a squat square tower and a plain
octagonal steeple. Headstones in the adjacent cemetery date
from the earliest times.
Palisades Park has approximately 100 retail shops, including
three five-and-tens, two "supermarkets" and two department
stores. Of comparatively recent development, this residential
community is contiguous to Fort Lee atop the Palisades and dips
precipitously to the west except for the wide step of Broad
Avenue, the main north and south thoroughfare. The avenue's
intersection with Central Boulevard is the hub of the business
section; in the vicinity are the municipal building, bank, the
library, a school and the post office. Adjacent to the municipal
building is a small park containing the World War memorial.
About 25 organizations of the usual suburban variety flourish.
Most of the residents are native born of native parentage.
There is an Italian colony, and about 700 Jews support a syna-
gogue. A majority of the workers are commuters, although
many are employed in Edgewater and in about a dozen small
local factories. More than 400 buses run daily to and from
New York.
Leonia, to the north of Palisades Park, prides itself on its
strictly residential character. The name derives from the desire
of residents to retain the historic "Lee" when confusion arose
between the post office at Fort Lee village and the local railroad
station, also called Fort Lee. Its one and one-half square miles
fall away from the Palisades ridge westerly to the marshes of
the Overpeck and provide a quiet setting for substantial one-
family homes facing broad, shaded avenues. There are several
modern apartment buildings.
The borough contains many faculty members from New
York City universities, as well as artists, writers and scientists.
Nineteen Leonia residents are listed in the 1938-39 edition of
Who's Who in America. Dr. Harold C. Urey was awarded the
Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1934 and Dr. Enrico Fermi that in
physics in 1938. Besides the luster of intellectual and artistic
distinction shed on the community by individuals, organiza-
THE NORTHERN VALLEY 271
tions abound to encourage corporate appreciation of the refine-
ments of life. Leading with 300 members is the Women's Club,
which is active in the fields of art, civics, international relations,
gardens, the home, literature, the drama, music and social wel-
fare. The Players' Guild, the Men's Neighborhood Club, art
classes and other cultural groups play prominent parts in com-
munal life.
Englewood, north of Leonia, is the epitome of that eastern
section of Bergen, marked by wealth and social prestige, where
education and the arts are fostered by numerous public and
private institutions. The city, which calls itself "Queen of the
Palisades," supports nine public schools, including the $1,000,000
Dwight Morrow High School, built in 1931 and set in the at-
tractive, 47-acre Dwight Morrow Memorial Park. Two junior
high schools are in the public education system, and a parochial
high and elementary school are affiliated with St. Cecilia's Roman
Catholic Church.
The Northern Valley Civic Music Association, which has a
county-wide following, holds concerts and recitals presenting
world-renowned performers and singers. Ample facilities for
recreation include a five-acre municipal stadium, which has a
playground, athletic field and tennis courts, and a large lake
for summer and winter sports. The Englewood Golf Club has
one of the oldest private courses in the East.
The main traffic and commercial artery of Englewood is
Palisade Avenue, a wide thoroughfare descending from the sky-
line in a series of gradations known as the "Seven Sisters Hills"
and passing beautiful homes and estates on its way to the busi-
ness section. Although thought of chiefly for its residential
character, Englewood has 300 retail stores transacting $11,000,-
000 worth of business annually, and 1,000 of its residents work
in local shops and about 20 small plants. There are some 3,000
commuters.
Englewood land was first patented in a Crown grant to
Garret Ly decker early in the eighteenth century. In 1859 J.
Wyman Jones, a New Hampshire lawyer, opened a realty de-
velopment along the tracks of the Northern Railroad and gave
272 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Englewood its name. Actual housing development has lagged
behind quick sale and resale of acreage. In 1939, however, a
trend began toward erection of moderate-priced single homes
and of elaborate apartment buildings. Englewood has attracted
State-wide attention through its division into six zones, each for
a special type of building. The city has more than 4,250 homes
and 19 apartment houses.
Social welfare is supported by a Community Chest, which
collects funds for the Englewood Hospital Association, the Social
Service Federation, the Citizens' Employment Committee, the
Salvation Army, the Children's Aid Committee and Boy and
Girl Scouts. The Bergen County Maternal Health Centre has
a station in the city. The Red Cross and the Bergen County
Tuberculosis and Health Association maintain local chapters.
Home social workers sell their products through the Englewood
Women's Work Exchange, organized in 1884. Englewood has
about 18 churches, of which St. Paul's (Episcopal) and St.
Cecilia's Roman Catholic are architecturally notable. Since 1928
the Actors' Fund Home has harbored in their old age men and
women once famous on the stage and screen. A rambling frame
building, it once belonged to Hetty Green, famous financier.
Descending to the Hudson on the east, Englewood Cliffs'
four square miles of rustic and thickly forested territory are
popular with hikers and picnickers and dotted with the homes
of many retired business men. The Dyckman Street Ferry con-
nects with 207th Street, Manhattan.
North of Englewood Tenafly rises from the Hudson River
and descends in an undulating slope from the crest of the Pal-
isades westward to Tenekill Brook. State Highway Route 1
(US 9W) proceeds northward through the community. The
atmosphere of leisure and abundant living which pervades Engle-
wood continues into Tenafly, and many beautiful homes impart
a solid appearance of well-being. The Knickerbocker Country
Club and the Tenafly Tennis Club are private recreational or-
ganizations. About one-third of the population are commuters,
The J. and R. Lamb Studios here manufacture stained glass.,
mosaics and carved woodwork.
THE NORTHERN VALLEY 273
The Rethmore Home for underprivileged children is main-
tained in Tenafly by the New York City Mission Society of the
Episcopal Church. Mr. and Mrs. J. Hull Browing deeded the
home to the Mission Society. Today 100 underprivileged chil-
dren ranging in age from three to eight years enjoy clean air
and pleasant surroundings for from two weeks to two months.
The Mary Fisher Home, which accommodates authors,
artists, teachers and other professional persons, was founded by
Mary A. Fisher, a writer, in 1899. For more than 30 years
the annual Authors' Matinee and Musicale, a notable winter
event in New York City, has turned over its proceeds to sup-
plement the income from the endowment, contributions and
benefit entertainments.
Teaneck, west of Englewood, has become the fastest-grow-
ing residential community in Bergen County, having risen in
population from 768 in 1900 to 16,515 in 1930 and 25,275 in
1940. Its many commuters use the two stations of the West
Shore Railroad and the numerous bus lines passing through the
town, connecting with New York City, the Hackensack term-
inal, Jersey City and other points. The earlier homes in the
town are spacious frame dwellings, while many Colonial-type
houses have been built in recent years. The earliest settlers were
of Dutch and Huguenot stock and included those of such names
as Brinkerhoff, Demarest, Phelps, Westervelt, Banta, Terhune
and Ackerman.
The famous Phelps Estate, now known as Teaneck Grange,
once comprised 2,000 acres and was the property of William
Walter Phelps, Congressman, Minister to Germany in 1889 and
Judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals in 1893.
Keeping pace with increasing population, Teaneck has en-
gaged in an almost continuous program of school construction.
Seven grade schools, a high school and a parochial school com-
prise the educational system. Bergen Junior College, a coeduca-
tional nonprofit institution, offers courses acceptable for transfer
to leading colleges and universities.
Seventy acres of land are being transformed into 1 1 parks,
9 of which will include playgrounds, and 4 children's play areas.
274 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
A central park project will include a large athletic field, tennis
courts, picnic grounds, children's playground and wading pool.
Teaneck on September 16, 1930, became the first Bergen County
town to institute the Municipal Manager form of government.
The $1,000,000 Teaneck Armory, a PWA project, has com-
plete facilities for housing the 104th Engineers Regiment. The
brick and limestone structure, largest in the county, stands on
13 acres of land donated to the State by the county.
North of Teaneck are the so-called "twin boroughs" of
Bergenfield and Dumont, which before 1894 constituted one
municipality, the village of Schraalenburgh. Both share the
same sewage disposal plant, theatre, railroad and bus lines. Ber-
genfield was the site of part of Camp Merritt, embarkation
point for "World War troops. Today it is the shopping center
for a population nearly twice as large as its own. None of the
town's few industries employs more than 30 persons. More
than 90 percent of the working population is in business in New
York City, and residential construction is proceeding on a large
scale.
Several notable persons live in the borough. Dr. George
Pitkin, one of the country's leading research workers in anaes-
thesia, recently was recognized publicly for his work in develop-
ing spinocane for spinal anaesthesia. The Holy Name Hospital
at Teaneck, of which Dr. Pitkin is chief surgeon, was founded
largely through his efforts. Zenon Schreiber, landscape designer,
and Gustav Weiner, woodcarver, had exhibits at the New York
World's Fair.
The Old South Church (Presbyterian) was built in 1799
and altered in 1866. A typical early red sandstone church, it
has high stained-glass windows, deep-silled in the interior, a
pitched roof with braced overhung eaves, a square bell tower
and lofty spire.
An extensive moderate-cost housing program during the
last few years has added to Dumont's attractiveness as a resi-
dential community. There are ample recreational facilities, an
attractive business center and an abundance of cultural, fraternal
and civic organizations. Community life has centered around
THE NORTHERN VALLEY 275
the historic Old North Church of Schraalenburgh, now the
North Reformed Church. It is a sturdy Dutch Colonial sand-
stone structure with Gothic windows and Romanesque exterior.
The church was organized in 1724 and the present edifice erected
in 1800. An addition was built in 1859. The spire, loftiest and
most tapering in the region, is mounted on a clock tower owned
and maintained by the borough. The adjoining church house
was donated by Dumont Clarke, first mayor, for whom the
borough was named.
In the upper part of the valley is a group of towns which
have retained much of their rustic charm. Descendants of
Colonial families still occupy lands in these communities, and
eighteenth century homesteads are maintained in wooded, roll-
ing countryside. Cresskill is the site of Camp Merritt; the Camp
Merritt Memorial, a 70 -foot granite obelisk, towers high above
the trees in homage "to the million khaki-clad men and women
who passed along the way to and from the war."
Demarest is a rural community where small-scale farming is
carried on, but no industrial activity. About 150 residents are
commuters. The Garden Club takes an active interest in civic
movements.
West of Demarest is the restricted, parklike borough of
Haworth, recently developed from an early settlement. Lying
just east of the Oradell Reservoir, Haworth is distinguished by
ancient trees towering to commanding heights above impressive
English-type dwellings framed in broad expanses of lawn.
Schraalenburgh Road, as in the earliest times, is the principal
thoroughfare, and from that artery southwest to the Oradell
line runs Lakeshore Drive, an attractive road skirting the Oradell
Reservoir. Business is limited to local needs.
The inhabitants of Closter are chiefly of Dutch and German
ancestry. Within the borough are scattered farms and one in-
dustry, the United States Bronze Powder "Works. There is a
busy shopping center on Main Street. The population includes
many commuters. A bank, Chamber of Commerce, a building
and loan society and numerous fraternal and service clubs attest
the progressive spirit of the community. The town falls away
Town and Countryside
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Courtesy N. J. State Highway Dept.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE BRIDGE
GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE
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BUSINESS AS USUAL IN ENGLEWOOD
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OL:
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TWO FORMS OF THE BUILDING BOOM
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A GARDEN DESIGNED FOR LIVING
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THE SUN GILDS A TRAIL IN PALISADES INTERSTATE PARK
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Courtesy Palisades Interstate Park Com.
SUMMER OR FALL, PALISADES INTERSTATE PARK IS A METROPOLITAN PLAYGROt
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iMH.
ENGLEWOOD BOAT BASIN
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CAMP COLONY
IN THE PARK
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THE PALISADES LOOK DOWN ON THE ALPINE FERRY
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HACKENSACK WATERFRONT
HACKENSACK BUS TERMINAL
BOUND FOR SUSQUEHANNA TRANSFER
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Courtesy Bergen Evening Record
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lift!
1
CDD
THE Y FOR ALL, HACKENSACK
ROADSIDE MARKET
AN ESTATE OVERLOOKING THE HACKENSACK
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ORADELL RESERVOIR
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BOILING SPRINGS PARK, EAST RUTHERFORD
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ADULT EDUCATION CLASS, GARFIELD
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ARCOLA COUNTRY CLUB
WOMAN'S CLUB, RIDGEWOOD
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RIDGEWOOD ART EXHIBIT
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RIDGEWOOD COUNTRY CLUB
SPRING PLANTING, SADDLE RIVER VALLEY
TROUT FISHERMEN IN THE SPARKLING RAMAPO
THE RAMAPOS RISE TO THE WEST
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THE NORTHERN VALLEY 277
from the Palisades ridge to the Oradell Reservoir on the south-
west.
A 100 percent residential community is Norwood, north
of Closter, with about 400 commuters. About one-fourth of
the population is of Italian extraction. Zinke's Tavern is an old
house in which rested the bones of Maj. John Andre, British spy
executed in the Revolution, on the night in 1824 when they
were taken up by his descendants to be placed in Westminster
Abbey.
In Harrington Park, west of Norwood, the gently undulat-
ing terrain, watered by numerous ponds and traversed by wind-
ing, tree-lined roads, offers a picturesque blend of scenic wood-
land and fertile, open farmland. Most of the early settlers in
this section were Hollanders, of whom the Harrings or Herrings
gave the community its name. Eighty percent of the population
are commuters. Homes are of frame, stucco, stone and brick
construction. Newer, Colonial-type dwellings have been erected
recently.
North of Harrington Park and extending to the New
York State line is Old Tappan, separated from River Vale on
the west by the Hackensack River. Many farms are operated
by descendants of early settlers. The Old '76 House, in which
Maj. John Andre was imprisoned before his execution, is just
across the State line in Tappan, New York, where Andre was
sentenced in the Tappan Dutch Reformed Church, founded in
1694. Old Tappan has facilities for golf, tennis, swimming,
picnicking and hiking. The Ripple Creek Golf Course is near
the Tappan Road and Washington Avenue intersection.
Another town bordering on New York State is Northvale,
a rural community of small homes built on rolling terrain two
miles west of the Hudson River. This borough has a distinct
Italian flavor, and properties are characterized by grape arbors
and well-kept truck gardens.
Rockleigh, in the northeast tip of the county on the New
York State line, contains about 40 homes. Some of the resi-
dents are farmers and some are employed at the Pegasus Polo
Club. Homes of simple pattern are scattered, for the most part,
278 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
along Piermont Road. The community is without a store or
industry, borough hall, firehouse, library, post office, public
school or church. The Rose Haven School for Girls receives
pupils from the ages of five to fourteen. In past years Rock-
leigh was a good hunting area for small game and occasional
deer. Tourists and hikers are attracted by its sylvan beauty.
In Alpine, stretching for more than ten miles along the
top and west of the Palisades below the northern State boundary,
is the New Jersey section of the Palisades Interstate Park, where
the beauty of the west bank of the river is preserved and 1,200
acres for recreation is assured in perpetuity. The park, extend-
ing down to Edgewater and up into New York, was set aside by
the authority of the two States and made possible largely by
donations of private land.
Point Lookout in Alpine, from which a magnificent pano-
rama far up and down the river is visible, is the highest point
on the cliffs. Binoculars are provided by the Interstate Park
Commission in summer, and when the visibility is good they
provide a vista of Long Island Sound and Connecticut. The
Hudson, 500 feet below, is calm and placid here, the restrained
force of the great stream deceptively concealed by the reflected
sunbeams and the play of light and shadow provided by the
clouds.
The sheer perpendicularity of the Palisades is emphasized
by the monolithic columnar formations which took shape in the
Triassic period of the geological ages. The Henry Hudson Drive,
beginning at Edgewater, proceeds northward along the river.
Motorists enjoy the reposeful quiet of the section, broken here
and there by the soft murmur of waterfalls.
Alpine, which is connected by ferry with Yonkers, New
York, is sparsely populated, consisting mostly of dense foresta-
tion atop the Palisades and westward. A few palatial dwellings
are hidden by extensively landscaped grounds.
Towering 400 feet above the top of the heights at Alpine
is the antenna tower of Maj. Edwin H. Armstrong's radio ex-
perimental station, where tests are perfecting FM (frequency
modulation) to eliminate static from radio, The Major has
THE NORTHERN VALLEY 279
been laboring for 25 years to prove his theory that static can
be defeated, and similar stations throughout the country are
carrying on research in this field. The Alpine tower is the tall-
est object on the horizon in a wide area of the lower Hudson
Valley.
In recent years the question of transportation has become
acute in the Northern Valley. The number of commuters using
the Northern Railroad dropped from 6,000 to 1,200 owing to
establishment of numerous bus lines and construction of the
George Washington Bridge, which enables businessmen to travel
to and from New York in their cars. This resulted in curtail-
ment of railroad passenger service to three trains a day each way,
in the rush hours, and none on Sundays. The financial weak-
ness of the railroad was followed by a disaffirmance in court of
the lease held by the Erie Railroad and the possibility of discon-
tinuance of service.
Communities along the line became aroused and public
meetings were held. The mayors and leading residents organized
the Northern Railroad Communities Association of New Jersey
and New York Inc. The asociation has mobilized public opinion
to save the railroad from abandonment. The court decreed that
the Erie trustees continue curtailed operation of the Northern
Railroad until April 30, 1940, or until further order of the
court. The judge also ordered that they petition the Interstate
Commerce Commission for abandonment of operation.
The economic health of the entire Northern Valley was
threatened by the situation, with a likelihood of an increase in
taxes and a reduction in valuations on real property. Several
businesses announced that loss of express service and other factors
menaced their remaining in the area. Residents of the towns
affected were urged to support the railroad with passenger and
freight patronage.
It is hoped by the appointment of trustees who can guar-
antee adequate public backing to assure continuation of the
service, after which the Erie is expected to re-lease the line and
operate it more satisfactorily. Meanwhile freight service is being
maintained at a volume to provide sufficient revenue, and pas-
280 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
sengers can use buses from Susquehanna Transfer through the
Lincoln Tunnel to Times Square, Manhattan, for a 10 -cent fare
Efforts also are being made to induce other bus companies to
honor commutation tickets at hours when trains are not running
as well as on Saturdays.
The Hackensack Valley
Bendix, Bogota, Hackensack, Hasbrouck Heights, Little Ferry :
Maywood, Moonachie, New Milford, Oradell, Ridgefield Park, River
Edge, South Hackensack, Wood-Ridge.
The center of gravity of Bergen County's political and
social life and commercial and industrial development lies in
the City of Hackensack, the county seat, and 12 other munici-
palities clustered west of Overpeck Creek and along both banks
of the Hackensack River, about midway between New York
City and Paterson. Containing 78,093 inhabitants, the group
covers slightly more than 22 square miles. The towns on the
east bank of the river are situated on the first elevation of land
west of the Palisades.
The Hackensack River, principal waterway of Bergen
County, traverses this terrain, forming the boundaries of several
municipalities. A wooded resort of pleasure craft in the upper
sections, it is increasingly utilized as an artery of commerce
below the city. The river rises in New York State and follows
a serpentine course to the picturesque Oradell Reservoir, beyond
which it forms a straighter path through the lower valley. In-
termittent dredging has deepened the channel to six feet, and
at high tide tugboats and barges from Newark Bay can reach
Hackensack. Although the river is not without influence on
the life of the region, it is the highway network that covers
northern New Jersey that gives the communities their impor-
tance in the industrial organization of the metropolitan district.
The county capital, founded by Dutch from Manhattan,
today presents a scene of staccato urbanization and striving for
contemporary significance which overlays the memorials of its
THE HACKENSACK VALLEY 281
Colonial and Revolutionary past. Northward from the civic
center, which is dominated by the Courthouse with its classic
dome and by the modern-style County Administrative Build-
ing, runs narrow Main Street, laid out long before the auto-
mobile age. It is jammed with cars of shoppers from many
other towns and extends through the whole business district;
some of the business establishments spill over into side streets.
Along the river are the only major industries: brickyards, oil
tanks, a stone crusher plant and warehouses.
The tracks of the New York, Susquehanna and Western
Railroad bisect the city from east to west, and the stretch of
Main Street from the Susquehanna station at Mercer Street
south to the Courthouse has always had a curiously different
appearance from that above the railroad. Scores of small retail
shops, offering every variety of merchandise, crowd the lower
way, their wares priced to attract those of limited means. North
of the tracks, however, are skyscrapers, banks, department stores,
ornate motion-picture theatres and stores with modish window
dressing a general appearance of prosperity. Chain markets
are up and down the street, numerous neon signs cast a red glow
on the sky at night, and the volume of business indicates the
popularity of the county seat with many who formerly shopped
in New York.
As the older sections of the city and most of its industries
and mercantile activity are concentrated near the river and
adjacent streets, so the residential quarter has pushed up to the
higher ground westward. On the crest is Summit Avenue;
here and along intersecting streets are pretentious residences of
variegated architectural styles and with elaborate landscaping.
An atmosphere of seething politics envelops Hackensack
365 days a year, reaching up from hundreds of local clubs to
the headquarters of both parties near the Courthouse and at-
taining a crescendo of furious campaigning in the weeks pre-
ceding Election Day. All the year round there is ceaseless in-
trigue and maneuvering for position, and the commuter, if he
comes from New York, seems to become more political-minded
than he was in the metropolis.
282 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
According to E. L. Thorndike's 144 Smaller Cities, cover-
ing those that had a population of between 20,000 and 30,000
in 1930, Hackensack ranked eighth in "General Goodness."
Ranking was based on such factors as provisions for education,
wages, home ownership, disease and death rates, literacy and
the number having automobiles, electricity, gas, telephones and
radios. Hackensack was one of two of these cities that spent
more than $20 per capita a year for teachers' salaries.
Among cities in the same classification Hackensack won
first prize in 1938 and 1939 in the Interchamber Health Con-
test, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce of the United
States and based on standards set by the American Public Health
Association. The city received honorable mention in 1940, when
Englewood won first prize, and in 1941.
The Johnson Free Public Library, with 56,000 volumes, is
the largest in the county. The Y. M. C. A., Y. M. H. A. and
the Child Welfare Association are notable among organizations
ministering to social needs. On the waterfront is Riverside Park,
an expansive tract in which concerts and athletic activities offer
escape from the more crowded sections. The Hackensack Hos-
pital, one of four in the county, serves a wide area. The county
seat has the only paid fire department in the valley.
Although Hackensack still contains numerous descendants
of families who have lived on the same land for generations,
more than 20 percent of the 26,279 inhabitants are foreign-
born, most of them Italians. Another distinct element of the
population are the more than 3,000 Negroes, living mainly in a
section extending about five blocks along First Street, a short
distance below Summit Avenue. But all over the city are con-
stant reminders of the community's rich historical background.
Many streets bear old family names, and some of the older
thoroughfares are called after the earlier-established New Jersey
counties.
Perhaps the most revered spot in the city is the Green,
opposite the Courthouse, which was a camping ground in the
Revolutionary War for both American and British soldiers. In
its center is a bronze statue of an American soldier erected as a
THE HACKENSACK VALLEY 283
World War memorial in 1924; it stands on a concrete and
granite base on which are scenes representing all American wars.
A few steps eastward is a statue of Gen. Enoch Poor, Revolu-
tionary officer, whose drawn sword, broken presumably by
vandals, has long awaited repair.
Across the way are the Church on the Green (First Dutch
Reformed), first built in 1696 and one of the oldest in New
Jersey, and the Mansion House (1751) , at which General Wash-
ington paused in the course of his retreat across the State in
the autumn of 1776.
The picture of modernity which is Hackensack contrasts
with the three rural communities to the north, Oradell, New
Milford and River Edge, with their wide, attractively shaded
streets and comfortable homes. They retain more of the ap-
pearance of earlier times than do sections to the east and south
where the satellites of the city, not so old and not so bustling,
reflect its influence. The three northern boroughs, although
housing commuters in modern dwellings, are noted for open
spaces and historic houses and ancient roads over which Con-
tinental armies marched.
At Oradell is the great reservoir of that name which, with
a capacity of 2,800,000,000 gallons, supplies water to the valley
and to other parts of the county. In the town also is perhaps
the most imposing home in the valley, a 16-room replica of a
Norman castle on the site of a 1700 Dutch Colonial homestead
torn down in 1892. This structure, now owned and occupied
by Mrs. Margaret D. Blauvelt, commands a magnificent view
of the Hackensack Valley and the New York skyline, with the
508-acre Oradell Reservoir forming a mirror for the 70 -acre
slope on which the house stands. The richly furnished interior
is in keeping with the impressive facade.
New Milford claims to contain the oldest house in the
State. First built about 1678 by David des Marest, a Huguenot,
the two-room Samuel Demarest homestead, later altered, has
been restored as a family museum. Nearby is an old French
cemetery that served the first permanent settlement in the
county.
284 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Adjoining Hackensack on the north is River Edge, the
North Hackensack section of which comprises the communities
of Cherry Hill and New Bridge, in Revolutionary days known
as Old Bridge. Site of an important Colonial ford across the
Hackensack River, the old bridge figured prominently in Wash-
ington's retreat across New Jersey.
Facing the river at New Bridge is the Steuben House (Ber-
gen County Historical Society Museum), erected in 1757 by
John and Peter Zabriskie as a gristmill. Since the brothers were
Tory sympathizers, the estate was confiscated and deeded to
Baron von Steuben in 1783 in recognition of his services to the
American cause. Three months later the Baron, without having
occupied it, sold it back to the Zabriskies. In 1926 the house
was taken over by the State. It was recently restored by the
WPA under sponsorship of the New Jersey Historic Sites Com-
mission and turned over to the Bergen County Historical So-
ciety as a public museum.
Topographically the transition from town to town in cen-
tral Bergen takes place with a minimum of contrast; low ridges,
rolling hills and flat country afford no marked accentuation of
the land. All the communities are easily accessible from other
metropolitan points. Nearly all have paved streets, water sup*
ply, gas, electricity, sewers and telephone and bus services.
Two of Hackensack's trans-river neighbors, Ridgefield Park
and Bogota, have old names and old roads, but both are less
concerned with the past than with the present. Ridgefield Park,
officially Overpeck Township, occupies a ridge on the peninsula
formed by the confluence of the Hackensack River and Over-
peck Creek. State Highway Route 6 brings the George Wash-
ington Bridge within ten minutes' motoring distance. The last
farm disappeared from Ridgefield Park in 1921.
Bogota, a center of paper-board manufacturing and with
a large commuting population, gets its name from the family
of Roeliff Bougaert, who arrived in 1638. A movement to con-
solidate Bogota and Ridgefield Park was launched more than a
decade ago but soon abandoned.
Directly to the west of Hackensack is Maywood, which
THE HACKENSACK VALLEY 285
presents an example of conservative taste in homes set widely
apart and designed in a tone of quiet dignity along broad high-
ways. The inhabitants are mostly of American stock, and those
not employed in two local chemical plants commute to New
York and nearby towns.
Adjoining the capital on the south is South Hackensack,
which consists of two separated areas left over when neighbor-
ing boroughs were formed from Lodi Township. About one-
third of its acreage is given over to truck farming. Some of
the inhabitants work in a slaughter house, the only industry,
and others are commuters.
Now that the great State highway system projected a dozen
years ago is nearly completed (1941), the development of avia-
tion facilities is considered the next step necessary to progress.
The one conspicuously industrial community in Central Bergen
is Bendix, home of a 200-acre airport and of the $3,000,000
Eclipse Division of Bendix Aviation Corporation and of Air
Associates Inc., both makers of airplane parts. It is hoped to
provide a commercial airport at Bendix for the use of the avia-
tion industries in the area, for the training of civil and military
pilots and as the center for incoming and outgoing express and
freight shipments for the metropolitan region. Those who
visualize this plan point out that freight shipments by air for
the whole nation increased from one-tenth of 1 percent of all
such shipments to 5 percent in five years.
The smallest municipality in population in the county,
Bendix has only 40 inhabitants and lacks a church, public school
or fire department. Some of the greatest names in aviation are
recalled in the community's historic background, but, before
the days of flying, William Cooper, partner in the old New York
Siegel-Cooper department store, bought the land with a view
to building a vacation retreat for his employees. The plan failed,
and Walter C. Teter in an attempt to salvage the investment
induced the 18 residents to form a borough named Teterboro.
It was formed out of Lodi, Moonachie and Little Ferry in 1917.
The Witteman-Lewis Aircraft Corporation built a hangar
and laid out a flying field. Clarence Chamberlin, trans-
286 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Atlantic flier, lived there; Amelia Earhart, Charles A. Lindbergh
and Ruth Nichols used the field.
Through the early years of the depression things were quiet
at Teterboro. In 1937 the place came to the attention of Vin-
cent Bendix, who purchased 100 acres in the belief that the site
was suitable for various divisions of the nation-wide Bendix
interests. On April 14 of that year the borough's voters elected
to change its name to Bendix. The Bendix company sponsors
an annual transcontinental air derby in which leading fliers of
the nation compete.
Little Ferry's population is predominantly foreign-born and
of foreign extraction. One-third of its 4,531 residents are of
Czech origin, and most of the others are of Italian, German-
Polish, Dutch and Slovak ancestry. Numerous old clay pits,
now filled with water, are relics of a defunct industry which at
its peak produced 100,000,000 bricks annually. The borough
is thought of today chiefly as a relaxation and amusement center,
and taverns with all-night licenses cater to patrons from distant
points. The largest social organization is the T. J. Sokol Asso-
ciation, a branch of the nation-wide Sokol (Falcon) organiza-
tion. A liberal group with a pronounced interest in physical
culture, it has 500 members. A Sunday school in the Sokol
hall instructs 100 children in the Czech language and home-
land customs.
West of Little Ferry is the borough of Moonachie, situated
on the lowlands. It consists of truck farms, drainage gulleys,
winding roads and simple cottage-type homes, many built on
"stilts" or high stone foundations for protection against the
dank, swampy soil. According to one legend the area was
named for a local Indian chief.
Farther to the west, beyond the stretches of Bendix, an-
other commuter town, Hasbrouck Heights, is perched on the
highest point of the ridge that rises between the meadowlands
of the Hackensack and the Passaic Valley and is one of an un-
broken chain of towns from the Hudson County line to Hack-
ensack. Steep concrete roads, symmetrically laid out and lined
with neat, substantial homes, flow from the wooded heights
THE HACKENSACK VALLEY 287
down the hill, through a bed of reddish brown clay, to the
green of the Hackensack meadows.
The most striking view of the ridge is from State Route 2,
which runs along the base of the cliff. From the summit a
panorama stretches from industrial Bendix, immediately below,
to the New York skyline. About 2,000 business and profes-
sional persons, almost a third of the population, commute. Has-
brouck Heights is the only municipality in the county that has
no stream or body of water within or on its borders.
Wood-Ridge, to the south, is also built on the western ridge
of the valley. Historic Polifly Road runs through the town and
continues northward into Hackensack. Minor skirmishes took
place here during the Revolution. The settlement remained a
farming community until after the Civil War, when it was
gradually transformed by suburban development.
Three railroads serve the municipalities of the Hackensack
Valley. The West Shore, part of the New York Central System,
makes three stops in Ridgefield Park and one in Bogota. Parallel-
ing its tracks and the Hackensack River to the latter point, the
New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad, lately divorced
from the Erie, traverses Hackensack and Maywood also. The
New Jersey and New York Railroad passes through Oradell,
Hackensack, Hasbrouck Heights and Wood-Ridge.
The two last-named roads, economically enfeebled by the
loss of passengers to buses, were obliged to reduce the number
of trains; however, the Susquehanna has regained its independent
status and appears to have embarked upon a rejuvenated career
with modernization and colorful decoration of its rolling stock,
faster and more frequent service and lower fares.
Many interstate, interurban and local bus lines transect the
area, and all-night service now enables playgoers to remain for
the final curtain of a Broadway show. The suburbs in Central
Bergen have been brought closer in traveling time to the theatre,
shopping and business districts of New York than many out-
lying parts of the great city itself. The old Hudson River
trolley line was the last of the street railways in this region to be
abandoned, in the summer of 1938. Eleven hundred buses
288 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
stop at the Hackensack bus terminal every twenty- four hours.
While electrified rapid transit connecting with the New
York subways was deemed important to the Hackensack Valley
twelve years ago, the abandonment of trolley lines and the
gradual superseding of railroad service by buses for commuting
have caused the agitation for it to subside. The projected
$30,000,000 consolidated bus terminal in New York rather em-
phasizes the partial outmoding of rail lines.
The unused space in the center of the George Washington
Bridge is expected soon to be paved to provide two roadways
in addition to the four now available for buses and heavy trucks.
Plans also call for a four-way suspended highway below the
bridge within five years, thus providing eventually ten lanes
in all.
The future of Bergen County appears to be centered in the
Hackensack Valley. On February 10, 1941, Rep. Frank Osmers
Jr. and Sen. Warren Barbour introduced bills in both houses of
Congress to authorize a survey of the land south from Hacken-
sack to Newark Bay for a vast meadow-reclamation project.
This would involve straightening, widening and deepening the
Hackensack River to accommodate ocean-going ships to the
present head of navigation and thus create a vast inland harbor
which with its surrounding industrial area would revolutionize
the character of the region. In the valley are 27,000 acres of
fine bottom land primarily adaptable to industrial development.
While the expenditure, to be borne chiefly by the Federal Gov-
ernment, is estimated at about $90,000,000, it is believed that
the value of the land reclaimed would greatly exceed the cost
and that the progress which would result is beyond calculation.
The Passaic Valley
Carlstadt, East Paterson, East Rutherford, Fair Lawn, Garfield,
Lodi, Lyndhurst, North Arlington, Rochelle Park, Rutherford, Saddle
River Township, Wallington.
Contrasts are noticeable in the area that spreads diagonally
THE PASSAIC VALLEY 289
across south and west Bergen County from the border of Hudson
County as far north as Fair Lawn. The term Passaic Valley
applied to the region is somewhat arbitrary; topographically, the
section possesses traits common to central Bergen and to Passaic
County on the west. Of the 12 municipalities, the Passaic
River bounds eight.
Containing approximately 34 square miles, the area has a
population of 123,947. The northern half is characterized by
a gently rolling terrain, rising from the eastern bank of the Pas-
saic River to join the level plain which extends to the Saddle
River. Across the southern portion the ground rises more
sharply to become an irregular ridge between Carlstadt and
Lyndhurst and then descends steadily to the wide expanse of
the Hackensack Meadows.
Since Colonial times the waterways of this valley have nur-
tured manufacturing, and until recently the soil yielded crops
which supplied metropolitan markets. Today industry predomi-
nates in Garfield, Lodi, East Paterson and East Rutherford,
Some of the others are essentially home communities, although
industry exists on a minor scale. Their spacious streets are lined
with sycamore, poplar, elm, maple and oak. All have road
improvements, water, gas, electricity and sewage disposal.
Visible across grass-covered flatlands on the east are the
towers of New York. Along the Passaic River Road rusty
used-car lots, gas stations, junkyards, roadside stands, decrepit
houses and old docks represent the backwash of the county's
present and past.
Historic sites emphasize the region's contrasts. The place
where Revolutionary troops crossed the river from Garfield
to Passaic vies for interest with the ruins of a World War muni-
tion works in Lyndhurst. Colonial homesteads dramatize the
present trend in FHA housing. Ground once trod by Washing-
ton's army has yielded up the "ride" victims of New York
gangsters.
Passaic Valley settlers acquired large tracts before 1700,
and for two hundred years the valley was an integral part of
the provincial society created by the landed Dutch and Eng-
290 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
lish. Agriculture remained the chief occupation until the first
decades of the twentieth century.
The economic foundation had begun to change with the
coming of the railroad in the 1860's, followed by realty develop-
ment and expanding industry. European immigrants employed
in Passaic County mills overflowed into Bergen. As the rail-
roads were extended the white-collar commuter also made his
appearance. The need of the millworker and his family for
shelter often resulted in construction of closely packed, poorly
designed quarters.
The flow of Europeans into the valley impinged upon the
character of the region. The old-world life was perpetuated in
costume, speech and social custom. Fears that the foreign groups
would remain strangers to local culture proved unfounded, how-
ever. While a historic mixture of nationalities still is in process
of ferment in most municipalities, old-world families less and
less cling to alien traditions. Progressively, second and third
generations have broken with old-world culture. Homeland
ties are still fostered, however, through various organizations.
Like the rest of Bergen County, the sector abounds in
women's clubs, P.T.A.'s, the American Legion and numerous
fraternal associations. Rutherford alone, the valley's chief com-
muter center, has more than 100 organizations. The acme of
group activity is typified by the Fair Lawn development of
Radburn, where a program of events and organizations is super-
vised by a Citizens' Association.
Important among the valley groups are the 65 religious in-
stitutions, representing a collection of creeds which range from
a Three Saints Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic congregation
to a unit of the Federated Churches of Christ in America. The
church is still a powerful factor in local behavior.
The majority of valley towns have one or more weekly
newspapers that supplement the large circulations of the Passaic
and Paterson dailies and the Bergen Evening Record.
Rail transportation through the valley is provided by foui
railroads, but in recent years bus lines to New York, taking ad-
vantage of the fast highways, have lured many rail commuters
THE PASSAIC VALLEY 291
by providing speedy service day and night. Public Service
operates local, interurban and intercounty buses with the flow
of travel heaviest toward Jersey City, Newark and Passaic
Several independent bus lines also connect with metropolitan
centers.
Five State highways, with a supplementary network of
county roads, tie the region into the metropolitan area: Routes
2, S3, 4, 5 and 6. Following a serpentine course along the Pas-
saic River is historic River Road, originally an Indian trail and
during the Colonial era a much-traveled wagon route to Newark.
Saddle River Road, which parallels the Saddle River through
Saddle River Township and Rochelle Park to join Main Street
in Lodi, is another early artery. Union Avenue, running east
and west through the Ruther fords, was laid out in 1707 as part
of the Polifly Road leading to Hackensack and earlier was an
Indian path connecting with Paulus Hook (Jersey City) .
The valley's industrial importance is focused on Garfield,
the county's largest city, situated at the head of navigation on
the Passaic River. Its growth, dating from 1900, was a direct
result of the overflow of industry from neighboring Passaic. A
leading textile center, Garfield has numerous woolen and worsted
factories. In 1930 a third of the inhabitants were foreign born,
while 90 percent of the remainder were children of foreign-born
parents.
Industry continues east into Lodi, whose lineage is evident
from the Italian surnames of shopkeepers, the rosters of muni-
cipal government, schools, clubs and organizations, and from the
homes, which generally feature stucco, semibrick and columnar
facades.
Much of Lodi's prominence is due to Robert Rennie, who
launched the Lodi print works and dyeshop on the banks of the
Saddle River in the 1830's. The industry expanded to become
the United Piece Dye Works, once the largest plant of its kind
in the world with 6,500 workers. The company failed in the
depression and has curtailed employment to about 700.
Rennie's early enterprise included the establishment of a
school, a church and a railroad spur and attracted other shops
292 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
which dyed and finished cotton products. Today, in addition to
this type of industry, factories produce celluloid articles, dresses,
novelties, suits and cloaks.
Contrasting widely with Garfield is the borough of Fair
Lawn, distinguished by the development of Radburn "the
town for the motor age." Once a sprawling farming region,
the area today epitomizes the county's realty expansion of the
last two decades. During 1939 and 1940 building permits
totaled $3,000,000, and FHA commitments were said to be
among the largest in the United States for comparable districts.
The first great residential change in Fair Lawn occurred
in 1928 when the City Housing Corporation purchased hundreds
of farm acres for the Radburn project. Building permits, repre-
senting a housing increase of 30 percent, totaled $1,071,500.
On the borough's outskirts are several industrial plants,
the largest being the crankshaft division of the Wright Aero-
nautical Corporation, which in 1940 acquired the huge build-
ing of the Textile Dyeing and Finishing Company of Ameria.
Situated between Garfield and Fair Lawn, East Paterson
represents a blend of the two. A division of the Wright Cor-
poration occupies the former plant of the National Silk Dyeing
Company, and there are several small dyeing, stonecutting and
paper-converting plants, but nearly a tenth of the borough is
devoted to greenhouses, nurseries and produce farms. The con-
trast continues into the population, composed of Italians, Poles,
Czechs and Hungarians in the southern sector plus a newer
element of native professional and white-collar groups. Finally,
the general severity of older home areas is lessened by three
sprightly FHA developments fronting River Road.
The rural aspect of the valley continues east into the town-
ships of Saddle River and Rochelle Park, originally parts of the
seventeenth century Paramus grant. Small-scale dairying and
agriculture predominate in Saddle River. A small retail shop-
ping district on Rochelle Avenue, running north one block
from the railroad, serves both communities.
Change in the status of the river towns is reflected by Wall-
ington, south of Garfield, once a busy shipping terminal and now
THE PASSAIC VALLEY 293
a suburban community of millworkers. In the nineteenth cen-
tury the borough shared in the fame of its more illustrious neigh-
bor, Passaic, across the river. Farm produce, fruits, flowers and
lumber made up cargoes freighted to New York and seaboard
points. From the Anderson Lumber Company docks barges
still ply to Newark Bay. Floriculture, introduced by original
Dutch settlers, is popular with modern residents, most of whom
are Poles.
Leading the valley's southern towns in suburban character-
istics is Rutherford, which, with East Rutherford and Lynd-
hurst, bridges the lower portion of the county from the Passaic
River to the Hackensack meadows. One-fourth of the popula-
tion commutes to New York, Newark and Jersey City.
Chiefly a home community, Rutherford is noted for the
absence of taverns, for its compact social life and for the number
of its civic and social organizations. Homes vary from modern
Colonial and apartments to lavish mansions of the nineteenth
century. The Everyman's Bible Class, formed in 1922, has a
membership of 1,200. The largest of the few factories is the
plant of the Advance Dye Works, which employs 165.
Due north, rising on a high ridge which shapes into rolling
hills and broken terrain, is East Rutherford, with residential and
industrial aspects providing a dual personality. Careful zoning
has prevented the encroachment of industry on home areas.
The first mill erected in East Rutherford was the Boiling
Springs Bleachery, now the Standard Bleachery, established in
1850. Approximately 50 industrial firms today produce such
items as roofing, surgical instruments, electric brushes, tools,
ladies' cloaks, plumbing supplies, Venetian blinds, chemicals,
perfumes, bottle caps, mirrors, printers' ink, syringes, knit goods,
rubber goods and paper bags.
Carlstadt, north of East Rutherford, separating the Passaic
and Hackensack valleys by a high rocky ridge, was once called
"the little German town on the hill." Its heritage is perpetuated
in the popular Sommer Garten, where the rhythm of old folk
songs and the clink of beer steins fill quiet, mellow evenings.
The borough's origins reach back to 1851, when a group of
294 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
German political refugees formed the German Democratic Land
Association and later established the community. As many of the
inhabitants were tailors employed in New York, the borough
was first called Tailor Town. Later it was named Carlstadt
(Carl's town) after Dr. Carl Klein, leader of the group.
Traces of Bavarian architecture may be seen on a few
peaked houses with decorated scroll work along the roofs. Else-
where, dwellings are conventional. Terraces feature some of the
streets, and steps connect adjoining levels. On the Hackensack
meadows, below the town proper, is the 430-foot transmitter
tower of radio station WNEW and the less lofty towers of
WINS and WBNX.
Lyndhurst, south of Rutherford, gained headline fame in
1917 when saboteurs caused the meadowland plant of the Cana-
dian Car and Foundry Company to explode with losses amount-
ing to $50,000,000. Quantities of nitrate cotton and unex-
ploded three-inch shells are still embedded in the Kingsland
meadows.
Contributing to the valley's assortment of national stocks,
the township contains a large colony of Italians who occupy a
section in the southwest called The Hook. About 15 percent
of the inhabitants are Poles or Slovaks and live in an area desig-
nated The Hollow. Many other residents are of German descent.
For many years Lyndhurst was called Kingsland after an
English major who came here in the late seventeenth century.
A frequent visitor at the Kingsland manor was Lord Lyndhurst,
whose name later was bestowed upon the region.
The township's largest industrial plants are the Leslie Com-
pany, manufacturers of power sirens for ocean-going steamers,
and the S. B. Pennick Company, manufacturers of crude botan-
ical drugs. Paints, machinery, metal castings, steel parts, chem-
ical solvents, oils, burlap bags and dresses are also produced.
A neat residential town, North Arlington nestles into the
southwestern corner of the county. Holy Cross Cemetery, one
of the largest in Bergen County, provides a good source of busi-
ness for several adjacent stonecutting plants.
The borough was the site of an early copper mine. In
THE PASCACK VALLEY 295
1719 a slave of Arent Schuyler, one of the first settlers, un-
earthed a vein of 80 percent pure copper while plowing, and
until into the nineteenth century mining operations were suc-
cessfully conducted. Schuyler supervised the construction of
Belleville Turnpike to transport his ore to the Passaic River docks
and in 1753 imported the first steam engine used for pumping
in America. The mine ruins still stand on Schuyler Avenue,
but exploration is discouraged.
The Pascack Valley
Emerson, Hillsdale, Montvale, Park Ridge, River Vale, Washing-
ton, Westwood, Woodcliff Lake.
The eight municipalities of the Pascack Valley in the north
central part of Bergen County are in less direct contact with the
currents of metropolitan life than the towns of the Hackensack
and Northern Valleys, yet they are easily accessible by motor
and train. Rolling hills and broad, open vistas of unspoiled
countryside lie above the Pascack Brook. Throughout the sec-
tion are many Dutch Colonial houses, some of them scarcely
recognizable under their newer covers. The aggregate popula-
tion of these communities, which cover an area of about 20
square miles, is 16,814. Montvale and River Vale abut on Rock-
land County, New York, while between and below them are
Park Ridge, Woodcliff Lake and Hillsdale; farther south are
Westwood, Washington and Emerson, which borders the Hack-
ensack Valley region.
The valley is traversed by Kinderkamack Road and Soldier
Hill Road. The latter, leading from Paramus northward
through Emerson, is the route along which Washington hurried
reinforcements in 1778 to Colonel Baylor, who was stationed in
River Vale. Before the General got there, the British made a
surprise attack and slaughtered about 30 of the soldiers after
they had surrendered. News of the ruthless bayoneting spread
throughout the colonies and drew into active fighting many who
had previously been nonparticipants.
296 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
The most populous community in the Pascack Valley is
Westwood, more important in the life of the region than its
population of 5,388 might indicate. Westwood has about 100
modern retail stores which constitute the shopping district of
the valley, and children from surrounding communities make
up almost one-fourth of its school population. The borough
is also the transportation center for the region; the New Jersey
and New York Railroad and five bus lines serve its 1,100 com-
muters. "With 100 clubs of all types, the community is said to
have a more diverse organizational life than any other town
of its size in Bergen.
Many of Westwood's best homes are built about Bogert's
Pond, the site of two gristmills where the town began. The
pond was formed by damming Pascack Brook; the waterfall
which drops over the dam no longer powers mill wheels, but it
adds to Westwood's residential charm.
Just to the south and contrasting with Westwood is Emer-
son, a community composed mostly of Italian construction work-
ers. Emerson was once called Kinderkamack (Ind., "where the
cock crowed") because, it is told, Indians who had stolen cattle
from a neighboring tribe were warned, while camping here, of
the approach of their righteous enemies by the clarion of a dis-
turbed rooster. While the American Army was camped at
Emerson during the Revolution, Gen. Enoch Poor died of fever;
he was buried on the Green at Hackensack.
Almost as much of a contrast as Emerson to bustling West-
wood are the three square miles of the township of Washington,
all that remain of a municipality that once embraced an area of
more than 30 square miles set off from old Harrington Town-
ship by the legislature in 1840. A glance at the map will show
a roughly triangular wedge between Park Ridge and Montvale
which also is marked "Washington Township." Park Ridge,
Montvale and about a dozen other communities were once part
of the larger Washington Township, but when the boundaries
of the new communities were drawn in 1894 it was found that
a swampy, 175-acre strip of land had not been included in any
of the newly created communities. As it remained unclaimed,
THE PASCACK VALLEY 297
the officials of what remained of Washington Township decided
to retain it. It is known as the "Bear's Nest," and about 15
persons reside there. Washington Township proper contains
many hills and ridges, pleasing vistas, a few fruit and truck
farms and several commercial greenhouses.
Hillsdale, which borders Westwood on the north, is second
in population in the valley. More than 95 percent of its two
and one-half square miles is residential, but there are still a few
small scattered farms.
Park Ridge is the home of the few industries in this sec-
tion, chief of which is the firm of Mittag and Volger Inc., one
of the nation's largest makers of typewriter ribbons, papers and
supplies. There are 125 employees at the Park Ridge plant and
about 350 in branches throughout the country. In addition to
their own line, the companies produce ribbons and papers under
2,000 trade names. Six other factories manufacture dresses,
aprons, sweaters, labels and hats.
On Pascack Road at Mill Brook Bridge is a two-story, long,
low store building with old-fashioned, tightly shuttered win-
dows. This is the oldest frame structure in the Pascack Valley.
Built in 1765 by Cornelius Eckerson, who also built the old
stone house where he lived across the street, the Old Trading
Post was a primitive bank of exchange for those engaged in the
Indian trade. John Jacob Astor or his agents are said to have
come to Eckerson J s to buy the wampum with which they paid
Indians for their furs, and perhaps also to drink the fine apple
brandy which Eckerson distilled. The store, which came to be
known as Astor's Trading Post, used to buy wampum from
William Campbell, who with his four sons became wealthy man-
ufacturing the bead and shell money. Campbell's wampum was
sold not only to the Astor interests but also to United States
Indian agents and to trading posts in Canada, Mexico and the
Northwest.
Originally called Pascack, the borough was a real estate
development of the Park Ridge Improvement Association,
formed in 1889. In the 1920's another building surge produced
more pretentious houses than the earlier boom.
298 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
Woodcliff Lake was also part of Pascack. The borough
spreads upward into the foothills that rise above the three-mile
artificial lake, reservoir of the Hackensack Water Company.
The scenic beauty of the lake is the principal attraction.
The name of the community was changed from Pascack
to Woodcliff when the New Jersey and New York Railroad was
being built in 1870, at about the same time that other munici-
palities were dropping their Indian designations for more ro-
mantic-sounding descriptive names. Upon the completion of
the reservoir by the water company in 1903 the word "Lake"
was added to the name of the town.
Bordering New York State are Montvale, largest commu-
nity in the valley (five square miles), and River Vale, where
farms checker the rolling hills. With the exception of a few
stores in Montvale, there are no shopping centers or factories in
either of the communities, and no State or Federal highways pass
through them. Most of the homes are typical farmhouses,
though in River Vale in 1939 the first in a development of 140
stone and brick bungalows was being built.
One of the landmarks of the Pascack Valley is the old
Octagonal House in Montvale. This structure, one of the
"Fowler's Follies" erected in the 1850's and '60's in Northern
New Jersey and New York, was designed by O. S. Fowler, a
New York City publisher whose firm specialized in books on
phrenology, hydropathy (or the water cure) , mesmerism, elec-
trical psychology and fascination or the philosophy of charm-
ing anything, in short, which might come under the head of
spiritual patent medicine. The structure is now a tavern.
The Saddle Rtver Valley J
Glen Rock, Ho-Ho-Kus, Midland Park, Paramus, Ridgewood,
Saddle River Borough, Upper Saddle River, Waldwick.
In the western part of Bergen County a group of eight
municipalities combines Bergen's old agricultural tradition with
the newer pattern of the commuting towns. This region is
THE SADDLE RIVER VALLEY 299
traversed by the Saddle River, a picturesque stream which rises
in New York State and pursues an irregular course through
many communities in Bergen. There are several theories as to
how the river got its name. One says that it flows in the
shape of a saddle at its southern end; another, that a bridle
path once followed the waterway; and a third, that two Scottish
settlers named it after the River Sadie in Scotland.
Extending from Upper Saddle River, bordering on Rock-
land County, New York, and Saddle River Borough, perhaps
the two most rural places in the county, to Glen Rock, the eight
localities in the valley embrace an area of about 30 square miles,
and their aggregate population is 33,765. The key town in the
group is Ridgewood, a solid community which is second only to
Englewood among the municipalities of the county in wealth
and its distinction in the arts, professions and business. Ho-Ho-
Kus, Glen Rock and Midland Park, suburban to Ridgewood,
are also chiefly residential towns, while Paramus is a farming
center.
Ridgewood lies in an extremely attractive natural setting.
The Saddle River winds slowly along its eastern boundary, and
Hohokus Creek flows southward through the center of the vil-
lage. The countless willows bordering these streams and the
spacious lawns, luxuriant flower beds and beautiful rock gardens
surrounding homes of various architectural styles, give the im-
pression of an orderly, dignified memorial park.
The village is one of the principal stations on the main line
of the Erie Railroad, and its 4,000 commuters use this facility
almost exclusively, although several bus lines are available. An
extensive retail business district is concentrated about the
$1,000,000 Erie station, and the Chamber of Commerce asserts
that the merchants serve an area embracing 55,000 persons. Un-
like other large towns in the county, Ridgewood has no heavy
industry, and large plants are not encouraged.
In the last 40 years the community has absorbed families
of many nationalities, but old Dutch stock is still conspicuous,
and the names of early families are ubiquitous Zabriskie, Ack-
erman, Banta, De Baun, Bogert and Hopper among others. The
300 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
residents have formed more than 150 organizations which in-
clude every type from local chapters of national fraternal and
patriotic societies to political, charitable and cultural associations.
One of the most influential groups in the State is the Ridge-
wood "Woman's Club, which today has a roster of more than
1,000 women and its own clubhouse, an attractive Colonial
sandstone and clapboard building.
Ridgewood has one of the largest and finest high schools in
the State, a beautiful red brick building equipped with the most
modern facilities. The school stands at the top of a grassy in-
cline, overlooking the natural amphitheatre where the athletic
field was built.
In 1698 the site of Ridgewood became the property of
John Van Emburgh, who built the first frame house in 1700.
Ridgewood's real development began in the nineteenth century.
Cornelius Wortendyke named the section Newton in 1810, and
later Abraham Godwin called it Godwinville. After the con-
struction of the Paterson and Ramsey Railroad in 1849, some
families moved in from New York. In 1866 the town became
known as Ridgewood because of the many wooded ridges close
by, and 10 years later the community was separated from the
larger Township of Ridgewood. It has operated under the
commission form of government since the passage of the Walsh
act in 1911 and has had but five mayors since.
Adjoining Ridgewood on the north is Ho-Ho-Kus, a town
of high-income commuters which is built on a rugged, gently
sloping terrain. The name is spelled with three capitals and the
hyphens to distinguish the borough from Hohokus Township,
from which it separated in 1908. Ho-Ho-Kus was settled by
Abram Hopper in the eighteenth century and was called Hop-
pertown until late in the nineteenth, though during the Colonial
period it was a part of the section known as Paramus. Subse-
quently Hoppertown became a stopping-off place for travelers
between New York and Albany, who paused at what is now
the Ho-Ho-Kus Inn, a famous tavern which has dominated the
business district for generations, and which in the early days
was known as the Old Mansion House.
THE SADDLE RIVER VALLEY 301
For many years previous to 1933 Ho-Ho-Kus was synony-
mous with horse racing. The North Jersey Agricultural and
Driving Association in 1895 acquired a 2 3 -acre farm on what
is now State Highway Route 2 and there sponsored horse races
and county fairs. Automobile racing was also held here at
intervals after 1919, but the death of one of the drivers in 1934
caused Mayor Bernard Lamb to cancel the racing permit. The
track was partially destroyed by fire, and what remains of it is
rapidly deteriorating. The association is still in existence.
Another landmark in Ho-Ho-Kus is The Hermitage, a red
brick house in the English Gothic style, where Aaron Burr
courted Mrs. Theodosia Prevost, widow of a British army officer.
Its builder, Capt. Philip De Visne, was known as "the hermit."
The house was the scene of much social activity in the early
days of the Republic despite the owner's nominal predilections.
Washington, Lafayette and Mrs. Benedict Arnold were among
the prominent visitors.
The Joseph Jefferson house, East Saddle River Road, was
purchased in 1869 by the famous comedian long associated with
the title role in Rip Van Winkle. One-half of the house, built
in Revolutionary times, is plaster-covered stone; the east sec-
tion, a later addition, is clapboarded. Jefferson had almost the
whole interior of the first floor removed and refinished it in
wood paneling, and he is said to have added the dormer win-
dows which poke through the gambrel roof. The house was
sold after the actor's death in 1905.
Glen Rock, part of Ridge wood until 1894, resembles its
parent community to the north. Impressive homes fill the three
and one-half square miles of its area in the beautiful foothills
of the Watchung and Ramapo mountains. The name of the
borough is derived from the old "rock in the glen," weighing
about 20 tons, which was a meeting place for Indians and today
is a directional marker. A tablet bearing the names of Glen
Rock men who died in the World War has been placed upon it.
There are several small farms, dairies and greenhouses in
Glen Rock, but no heavy industry and only a small retail dis-
trict, for, like their husbands who commute to business and
302 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
professional offices, the wives shop mainly out of town, in Pater-
son, Ridgewood or New York.
To the west of Ridgewood is the industrial borough of
Midland Park. Many of its people are employed in one of the
six local textile plants, the small pump manufacturing works or
the rubber factory which makes elastic bands. Hosiery, drapes
and embroidered goods are also produced. The most conspicuous
building in the business section is that once occupied by the
First National Bank, closed since the banking holiday of 1933.
More than any other in the county, this municipality con-
tinues to reflect the Calvinistic views of the early Dutch settlers:
three of its five churches are outgrowths of the Dutch Reformed
Classis, and membership in those three is the highest in propor-
tion to population of any community in Northern New Jersey.
The borough is divided into two sections, Midland Park proper
and Wortendyke, named for C. A. Wortendyke, owner of the
Midland Park Railroad, which once ran from Ridgewood to
Hawthorne.
The developed section of Waldwick, northwest of Ho-Ho-
Kus, lies mostly above open spaces and farmlands on the western
ridge of the borough, but in the last two years about 150 new
homes have been built in the northeast corner. In the older
section along Franklin Turnpike, for many years the main travel
artery of the section, are larger frame homes set in wide lawns
and the small shopping district of the community. About 10
or 1 5 of the residents work in the Erie Railroad yard where many
of the commuter trains are made up. Waldwick was once a
busy freight terminal, and all Erie locals that come down from
New York State stop here.
Paramus, the second largest municipality in Bergen, is the
antithesis of Ridgewood, which borders it on the northwest,
The borough produces tomatoes, lettuce and corn in addition to
the vegetable which has given it its title, "the Celery Town of
Northern New Jersey." During the season migrant workers
are housed in shacks bordering the celery fields. Before the
Revolution this area was known only for its black, mineral-rich
soil; now it is equally noted for its four golf courses, including
THE SADDLE RIVER VALLEY 303
the exclusive Arcola Country Club, and as the site of the county
hospital, Bergen Pines.
Directly in the path of expansion from present population
centers, Paramus is benefiting from the building revival. Its
flat, forest-dotted terrain has been penetrated in recent years
by State Routes 2 and 4 and by the concomitant roadside
taverns, cubist gas stations and hamburger stands. Homes are
not close together even in the clustered districts which the resi
dents call "settlements." Kenwood, a recent FHA-financed real
estate development of modest homes, and Farview, which takes
its name from the view it affords of the New York skyline, are
the two modern sections of the borough. Arcola is mostly un-
developed, and Spring Valley, with a post office called Valleta to
distinguish it from Spring Valley, New York, is a truck-farming
center.
In 1713 Jacob Zaborowski built a home on the present
Paramus Road in the section which was then referred to as the
"Wearimus Tract" or "New Paramus Patent" officially but called
by the early settlers "Peremesse" or "Peremessing." The door-
way stone of his house, marked "Zaborowski 1713," is in pos-
session of the Zabriskie family. Only a skirmish occurred in
the region during the Revolution, but a mark of the war, a single
bullet hole, remains in a wall of an old Indian trading post
which is now the locker room of the Saddle River Country Club.
The Paramus Church, established in 1725 in what is now Ridge-
wood, held British prisoners during the war.
Saddle River Borough and Upper Saddle River, at the ex-
treme north of the Saddle River Valley, are broad, flat farm
lands and wooded, rolling hills where deer and smaller game
abound. Fishermen find excellent sport in the Saddle River,
which cuts southward through the boroughs and is bordered by
East and West Saddle River roads. Except for a short stretch
of Route 2, which passes through part of Saddle River Borough,
these two narrow, asphalt highways are the best in the sparsely
settled communities. Other narrower, more twisted roads tra-
verse the pleasant, unspoiled terrain.
Although Upper Saddle River was settled early in the eight-
304 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
eenth century, the tempo of life has changed little. Marshals
still compose the police force, and in the one-story frame munic-
ipal building the township committee meets around an ancient
pot-bellied stove.
The few commuters in Saddle River Borough use the buses
that travel along Route 2 or the Erie trains which they board at
stations in Ramsey, Allendale or Waldwick; the fewer com-
muters in Upper Saddle River must depend on their own cars.
The northern community has no stores, no industries; and in
the lower town industry is limited to wholesale growing of
garden and aquatic plants and breeding of tropical fish.
A sharp turn on a country road in this area will often dis-
close a beautifully simple eighteenth century Dutch stone house,
facing south generally to catch the low rays of the winter sun.
In the burial ground of the Old Stone Dutch Reformed Church,
which stands at the intersection of East Saddle River Road and
Old Stone Church Lane in Upper Saddle River, lie many of the
builders of the old Colonial homes. The Gothic-style fieldstone
church with red sandstone doorways and corners, erected in
1789, is topped by a square cupola and a slim white spire that is
visible for many miles.
Indicative of the leisurely growth of these communities is
the little schoolhouse in Upper Saddle River where a gentle lady
teaches about 30 students separated into five grades. This little
red schoolhouse is painted green.
The Ramapo Valley
Allendale, Franklin Lakes, Hohokus Township, Oakland, Ramsey,
Wyckoff.
In the northwestern corner of Bergen County are the foot-
hills of the Ramapo Mountains. Here, through the deepest
valley in the county, twists the cold, swift Ramapo River,
beckoning fishermen and bathers. Two centuries ago it at-
tracted settlers who built small communities that today still
preserve much of their early natural charm. From 25 to 30
THE RAMAPO VALLEY 305
miles from New York City, these towns are beyond the orbit of
what may truly be considered suburban to the metropolis, al-
though a few of the inhabitants do commute. Vacationers long
ago discovered the quiet wooded countryside, the river and the
numerous lakes in the hills which rise 1,100 feet, more than
twice the height of the Palisades. The combined population of
the towns in this section is 15,514.
Perhaps the most rural of the six municipalities is Hohokus
Township, largest municipality in the county, divided in half
by the Ramapo River, whose waters, rising in the hills beyond
Tuxedo, New York, are augmented by those of the Mahwah
River and numerous brooklets and lakes along its course. The
township is divided into seven sections: Mahwah, the main set-
tlement, West Mahwah, Cragmere, Darlington, Fardale, Mason-
icus and Halifax. West Mahwah and Cragmere Park are really
suburbs of Suffern, New York. Cragmere is a 15 -year-old real
estate development where the township's social leaders live in
homes of the $7,000 to $10,000 class. In Fardale, which is off
the main highway, are the older, more spacious homes of descend-
ants of old timers, and Darlington has no residences, but only
the Roman Catholic Seminary of the Immaculate Conception,
which stands lonely atop a green hill, the Church of the Im-
maculate Conception and the Darlington public school. The
houses in Mahwah climb the steep hill to the east above the
small, modern business section and the factory of the American
Brake Shoe and Foundry Co., which employs about 500, many
of whom are Poles, Negroes and Jackson Whites from the sur-
rounding hills. About 20 Jackson White children attend the
one-room school atop Stag Mountain. On another elevation the
Ramapough Reformed Church has stood since 1795. Joyce
Kilmer once lived in Mahwah in a cottage at the corner of Air-
mount and Armour roads that looks from its heights deep down
the valley. The surrounding birches and elms, it is said, fur-
nished the inspiration for his poem "Trees," which residents
claim was written here.
Oakland, south of Hohokus, characteristically built a replica
of an 1829 Georgian Colonial church when it needed a new
306 BERGEN COUNTY PANORAMA
municipal building in 1936. It is an old community which
never experienced the mushroom growth of other Bergen towns,
though there are jerry-built cottages along the Ramapo River
for the hundreds of summer visitors who flock here. The homes
of the permanent residents are predominantly Victorian frame
dwellings, but there are several of Dutch Colonial architecture
which have been embellished with later additions and decora-
tions. The surrounding hills are an important hunting preserve ,
Known as the Ponds to its early Dutch settlers who pur<
chased the property in 1695, the community became the re-
ligious center for the whole region when the Ponds Dutch Re-
formed Church was built 15 years later. The Revolutionary
Army camped in the area, and supplies were frequently sent
over the log-covered Cannonball Road during the war. Oak-
land was the county seat for three years after Hackensack was
pillaged by the British in 1780, but no more then than now was
the community willing to change its residential quiet for the
bustle of a city.
Franklin Lakes, to the east of Oakland, is named for the
largest of the 20 tree-rimmed lakes cupped in its rolling hills.
Large herds of milk cows graze on the grassy levels and slopes
near the well-kept barns of several dairies, and many poultry
farms are scattered through the region. Homes are concen-
trated in three centers, Campgaw, Crystal Lake and Franklin
Lake.
Business is limited to a few small stores, two woven label
companies, which employ about 35 workers, and the John
MacKenzie cider mill, gristmill and sawmill, one of the last in
the county run by water power. When the mill was rebuilt
in 1900 most of the timbers and old beams from an 1818 struc-
ture were incorporated. A wooden lathe built more than 90
years ago is still used for special work.
Bordering the Saddle River Valley are three communities
most closely resembling the commuter towns of eastern Bergen
County. The northernmost of these, Ramsey, is the business
center of the whole section, though Allendale and Wyckotf both
have modern shopping districts. In addition to its 50 retail estab-
THE RAMAPO VALLEY 307
lishments, Ramsey has three small factories, a motion picture
theatre and a commercial recreation center.
Ramsey bears the name of its first settler, Peter J. Ramsey.
Along its 22 miles of streets are many houses, churches and other
structures built of fieldstone. These stones were once part of the
fences which separated Ramsey farms.
Allendale was an agricultural region, too, until the real
estate boom in the middle twenties, when the strawberry patches
which furnished the chief commodity were cleared for building
lots. Before the turn of the century the community was a noted
summer resort. Like its larger neighbor to the south, Wyckoff,
Allendale has modern homes for the middle income group, neatly
spaced and well kept. Wyckoff , which is larger in area as well
as almost twice as large as Allendale in population, is composed
of several sections, each with a small independent shopping
center. The Sicomac section was a large Indian burying ground.
The township is believed to have been settled in 1720 by
two Dutch farmers, John and William Van Voor Haze, who
were soon followed by others. Wyckoff was a "village of com-
muters" in the first years of the 1900's when agriculture was
already beginning to decline. Though it still has many farms,
three dairies and one of the largest poultry farms in the State,
the community is predominantly residential.
Appendices
Municipal Information
The following information was gathered at the end of 1940, and
many of the facts may have changed by the time this book is pub-
lished. The number of men in police departments reckons the total
available for service, including part-time men, special officers, marshals
and others paid only while working, chancemen and reserves. All fire
departments are voluntary except when indicated otherwise. All
municipalities have a board of health, a school doctor, and at least the
part-time services of a school nurse. Many of them also have baby-
keep-well stations, Red Cross units and the use of an ambulance, some-
times provided by the police or fire department. The ambulance of
the Bergen County Police is subject to call by any municipality. Other
health provisions are described in the Welfare division of Public Affairs.
ALLENDALE, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 2,058, (1930)
1,730. Area: 2.79 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.72, (1935) $4.05.
Assessed Val.i (1940) $1,976,804, (1935) $2,317,298. Schools:
elem., H. S. in Ramsey. Police Dept.: 6 men, radio car. Fire Dept.:
54 men, pumper, hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 12m. Library:
500 vols. Churches: Ep., Meth., R.C. Industries: sawmill, celery
farm, truck gardens. Railroad: Erie. State Highways: routes 2, Ml 7.
Bus Lines: Public Service, Bill's.
ALPINE, bor., inc. 1903. Pop.: (1940) 626, (1930) 521. Area:
5.299 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $2.20, (1935) $1.85. Assessed Val:
(1940) $3,103,718, (1935) $4,263,684. Schools: elem., H. S. in
Tenafly. Police Dept.: 7 men, also Palisades Interstate Park unit of 43;
5 motorcycles, 3 patrol cars, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 17 men, 2 chem-
ical tanks, hose cart. Paved Streets: 13 m. Library: 1,500 vols.
Church: Meth. Industries: shad fishing. State Highway: route 1.
Bus Line: Nyack-DeLuxe. Ferry: Yonkers, New York.
BENDIX, bor., mun. manager, inc. 1937 (as Teterboro, 1917).
Pop.: (1940) 40, (1930) 26. Area: 1.2 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940)
308
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 309
$3.32, (1935) $3.36. Assessed VaL: (1940) $1,299,788, (1935)
$311,806. Police Dept.: volunteer, 6 marshals. Health: airport and
private aircraft doctors, nurses. Paved Streets: 2 m. ..Industries: 5
aircraft and instrument, dirigible, aviation publishing, airport, govern-
ment training center. Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. State Highways:
routes 2, 6. Bus Lines: Public Service, City Service, Westwood Trans.
BERGENFIELD, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 10,275, (1930)
8,816. Area: 3 sq. mi. Tax Kate: (1940) $5.38, (1935) $4.87.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $10,751,127, (1935) $10,792,758. Schools:
4 elem., H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 12 men, two-way radio car,
2 cruisers, 4 motorcycles. Fire Dept. : 3 companies, 76 men, chemical-
ladder, pumper-hose, 4 Indian tanks, ambulance. Paved Streets: 30m.
Library: 12,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches: Bapt., Ep., Evang. and
convent, 2 Luth., Presb., Ref. Industries: 3 textile, 3 clothing, cabinet,
machinery. Railroad: West Shore. Bus Lines: Public Service, Hill,
Rockland-Spring Valley.
BOGOTA, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 7,346, (1930) 7,341,
Area: .703 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.71, (1935) $4.93. Assessed
VaL: (1940) $6,822,179, (1935) $7,224,952. Schools: 3 elem., H. S.,
parochial. Police Dept.: 12 men, 2 two-way radio cars. Fire Dept.:
4 companies, 71 members, 2 pumpers, turret hose, hook and ladder.
Paved Streets: 17 m. Library: 14,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches:
Community, Ep., Luth., R. C. Industries: 3 box and paper board,
concrete pile, building and road material, neckwear. Railroads: Sus-
quehanna, West Shore. Bus Lines: Public Service.
CARLSTADT, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 5,644, (1930)
5,425. Area: 4.2 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.31, (1935) $4.82,
Assessed VaL: (1940) $4,219,554, (1935) $4,275,649. Schools: 3
elem., H. S. in East Rutherford. Police Dept.: 27 men, radio car.
Fire Dept.: 5 companies, 62 men, pumper, chemical engine, hose, hook
and ladder, emergency wagon. Paved Streets: 18 mi. Library: 5,000
vols. Churches: Bapt., Pentecostal, Presb. Industries: candle, 2 chem-
ical, metal working machinery, sun-protection glass, lacquer, millinery,
plastic. Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. State Highways: routes 2, 3.
Bus Lines: Public Service, DeLuxe Coach, City Service.
CLIFFSIDE PARK, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 16,892,
(1930) 15,267. Area: 1. sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.66, (1935)
$4.92. Assessed VaL: (1940) $13,365,650, (1935) $13,613,550.
Schools: 4 elem., H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 27 men, two-way
radio car, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 2 volunteer, 75 men; paid co., 12
310 APPENDICES
men; 4 comb, pumpers, 2 hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 17 m.
Library: 15,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches: Bapt., Chr. Sc., 2 Cong.,
Ep., Hungarian R. C., 2 Luth., Polish R. C, Heb. Industries: auto
body, composition stone, fountain pen-pencil, ornamental iron, ship
model. Bus Lines: Public Service, Hudson Blvd., Orange and Black.
CLOSTER, bor., inc. 1903. Pop.: (1940) 2,603, (1930) 2,502.
Area: 3.31 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.60, (1935) $5.13. Assessed
Val: (1940) $3,597,315, (1930) $3,750,391. Schools: elem., H. S.
Police Dept.: 5 men, vol. marshal, two-way radio car. Fire Dept.:
40 men, pumper, hook and ladder, salvage truck. Paved Streets: 14 m.
Churches: African Meth., Cong., Evan. Luth., Gospel, Ref., R. C.
Industries: tapestry, curtain, bronze powder, cattle feed, greenhouses,
oil burner. Railroad: Northern. Bus Lines: Public Service, Rockland-
Spring Valley.
CRESSKILL, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 2,246, (1930) 1,924.
Area: 2 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.43, (1935) $5.10. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $2,920,878, (1935) $2,966,295. Schools: 2 elem., H. S.
in Tenafly. Police Dept.: 8 men, two-way radio car. Fire Dept.: 2
companies, 46 men, 2 pumpers, hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets:
13 m. Library: 4,000 vols. Churches: Cong., Evan. Luth., Gospel,
R. C. Railroad: Northern. Bus Lines: Public Service, Rockland-
Spring Valley.
DEMAREST, bor., inc. 1903. Pop.: (1940) 1,165, (1930) 1,013.
Area: 2.1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.20, (1935) $3.45. Assessed
Val: (1940) $2,162,843, (1935) $2,321,317. Schools: elem., H. S.
in Tenafly. Police Dept.: 2 men, two-way radio car. Fire Dept.:
28 men, pumper, hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 9 m. Churches:
Bapt., Meth., R. C. Railroad: Northern. Bus Lines: Public Service,
Rockland-Spring Valley.
DUMONT, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 7,556, (1930) 5,861.
Area: 1.79 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $7.43, (1935) $6.18. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $6,510,984, (1935) $5,831,610. Schools: 3 elem., H. S.
Police Dept.: 9 men, radio car. Fire Dept.: 4 companies, 70 men,
2 pumpers, 2 hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 20 m. .Library:
10,600 vols. Churches: Chr. Sc., Ep., Evan. Luth., Meth., Ref., R. C.
Industries: 2 dress, cement. Railroad: West Shore. Bus Lines: Public
Service, Rockland-Spring Valley, Hill.
EAST PATERSON, bor., inc. 1916. Pop.: (1940) 4,937, (1930)
4,779. Area: 2.5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.49, (1935) $6.28.
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 311
Assessed VaL: (1940) $4,044,347, (1935) $4,991,803. Schools: 3
elem., parochial, H. S. in Lodi, Paterson. Police Dept.: 36 men. Fire
Dept.: 3 companies, 125 men, 3 pumpers, triple comb, pumper, hook
and ladder. Paved Streets: 14 m. Churches: 2 Presb., R. C. Indus-
tries: aircraft, 2 silk dyeing, paper, stonecutting, greenhouses, tree
nursery, truck farms, mink raising. Railroads: Susquehanna, Erie.
State Highways: routes 4, 6. Bus Lines: Public Service, Garfield-
Passaic Trans., Intercity, N. J. and N. Y.
EAST RUTHERFORD, bor., inc. 1894 (as Boiling Springs,
1889). Pop.: (1940) 7,268, (1930) 7,080. Area: 3.64 sq. mi. Tax
Rate: (1940) $4.49, (1935) $4.00. Assessed VaL: (1940) $8,189,-
961, (1935) $8,324,926. Schools: 4 elem., H. S., parochial. Police
Dept.: 14 men, radio car. Fire Dept.: 4 companies, 80 men, 2 pumpers,
hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 27 m. Library: 6,000 vols.
Movies: 1. Churches: African Meth., Ep., Luth., Meth., R. C, Heb.
Industries: bleaching, roofing, surgical instrument, nursery, dairy,
periodical, clothing, insulating materials, electric brushes, perfumes,
sun glasses, buttons, inks, burlap, bank note, iron and steel, chemical,
ribbon dyeing, mirrors. Railroad: Erie. State Highway: route 2.
Bus Lines: Public Service, Intercity, N. J. and N. Y., Olympic, Jersey
City-Lyndhurst, Comfort, City Service.
EDGEWATER, bor., inc. 1895 (as Undercliff, 1894). Pop.:
(1940) 4,082, (1930) 4,089. Area: .70 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940)
$3.65, (1935) $3.13. Assessed VaL: (1940) $26,006,159, (1935)
$25,519,004. Schools: 3 elem., H. S. in Fort Lee. Police Dept.: 33
men. Fire Dept.: 28 men. Paved Streets: 8 mi. Library: 5,000 vols.
Movies: 1. Churches: Ep., Presb., R. C. Industries: soap products
and shortening, automobiles, sugar, 2 chemical, aluminum, 2 linseed
oil, corn products, plastics, oil, steel products, coffee. State Highways:
routes 5, 9W, 1-A. Bus Line: Public Service. Ferry: 125th Street,
N. Y. C.
EMERSON, bor., inc. 1909. Pop.: (1940) 1,487, (1930) 1,394.
Area: 2.5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.86, (1935) $4.78. Assessed
Vol.: (1940) $1,644,291, (1935) $1,757,665. Schools: elem., H. S.
in Westwood. Police Dept.: 5 men, radio car. Fire Dept.: 35 men,
pumper, hose. Paved Streets: 14 m. Library: 3,000 vols. Churches:
Community, Cong., R. C. Industries: 2 cement block, laundry, bak-
ery. Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. Bus Lines: Public Service, Rockland-
Spring Valley, Hill.
ENGLEWOOD, city, inc. 1899. Pop.: (1940) 18,966, (1930)
312 APPENDICES
17,805. Area-. 4.9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.87, (1935) $3.96.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $33,387,484, (1935) $37,127,085. Schools:
5 elem., 2 Jr. H. S., H. S., parochial and H. S., 4 private. Police Dept.:
49 men, 5 two-way radio cars, ambulance. Fire Dept.: paid, 26 men,
3 pumpers, 3 hose, 2 hook and ladder, emergency car. Paved Streets:
47 m. Library. 35,000 vols. Movies: 2. Churches: 2 Bapt., Bethany
Meth., Chr. Ref., Chr. Sc., Com., Ep., Finnish Cong., 2 Luth., 2
Meth., 2 Presb., R. C., 2 Heb. Industries: leather bag, pump, 2 sports-
wear, bleachery, pigment, 2 printing-publishing, bakery, chrome plat-
ing, 2 laundries, 2 women's apparel, 2 millwork, electrical insulating,
cleaning-dyeing. Railroad: Northern. State Highway: route 4. Bus
Lines: Public Service, Rockland-Spring Valley, Hill.
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, bor., inc. 1895. Pop.: (1940) 888,
(1930) 809. Area: 1.9 sq, mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $2.89, (1935)
$2.47. Assessed Val: (1940) $3,218,039, (1935) $5,547,054.
Schools: elem., H. S. in Fort Lee, R. C. orphanage. Police Dept.: 4
men, radio car. Fire Dept.: 35 men, pumper, hose. ..Paved Streets:
5 m. Library: 3,000 vols. Churches: R. C. and convent. Industry:
sawmill. State Highway: route 9W. Bus Lines: Public Service,
Nyack-DeLuxe, Hill. Ferry: Dyckman Street, N. Y. C.
FAIR LAWN, bor., inc. 1924. Pop.: (1940) 9,017, (1930) 5,990.
Area: 5.3 sq.'mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.58, (1935) $4.88. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $8,570,409, (1935) $8,264,723. Schools: 5 elem., private,
H. S. in Paterson, Ridgewood, Hawthorne. Police Dept.: 11 men, 2
radio cars. Fire Dept.: 4 companies, 100 men, 4 comb, pumpers, hook
and ladder. Paved Streets: 33 m. Library: 5,000 vols. Churches: 2
Bapt., Church of Chr., Community, Luth., R. C. mission. Industries:
aircraft, knitting, 2 silk, fur, brass work, ink and chemical, woven
label, dairies, poultry, cement block, mink farm. Railroad: Erie.
State Highways: routes 4, S4-B. Bus Lines: Public Service, Intercity,
N. J. and N. Y., Fair Lawn Trans.
FAIRVIEW, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 8,770, (1930) 9,067.
Area: .9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.48, (1935) $5.01. Assessed
Vol.: (1940) $6,549,046, (1935) $6,697,789. Schools: 3 elem., paro-
chial, H. S. in Union City, Cliff side Park. Police Dept.: 16 men,
radio car. Fire Dept.: 4 companies, 100 men, 3 pumpers, hook and
ladder. Paved Streets: 15 m. Movies: 1. Churches: Bapt., Luth.,
Presb., 2 R. C. Industries: 5 monument, bleachery, fireworks, em-
broidery, lace, dress. State Highway: route 1. Bus Lines: Public
Service, Westwood Trans., Manhattan Trans., Orange and Black, Hud-
son Blvd.
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 313
FORT LEE, bor., inc. 1904. Pop.: (1940) 9,468, (1930) 8,759.
Area: 2.5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.65, (1935) $4.55. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $11,471,010, (1935) $14,561,248. Schools: 4 elem.,
H. S., parochial, R. C. day-boarding for girls. Police Dept.: 22 men,
2 radio cars, motorcycle. Fire Dept.: 4 companies, 140 men, 3 pump-
ers, 2 hose, 2 hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 30 m. ..Library: 9,000
vols. Churches: 2 Ep., Evang. Luth., Gospel, Meth., Ref., 2 R. C.,
Union. Industries: film printing, film studio, photo film, scenery, 2
cosmetic, doll carriage. State Highways: routes 1, 4, 5, 6. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Garden State, Rockland-Spring Valley, Hill, Nyack-
DeLuxe, Intercity, N. J. and N. Y., Orange and Black, Hudson Blvd.
FRANKLIN LAKES, bor., inc. 1922. Pop.: (1940) 1,203,
(1930) 893. Area: 9.4 sq. mi. Tax Kate: (1940) $3.27, (1935)
$3.52. Assessed Val.: (1940) $1,297,714, (1935) $1,259,090.
Schools: elem., H. S. in Ramsey. Police Dept.: 3 men. Fire Dept.:
40 men, 2 comb, pumpers. Paved Streets: 21m. Library: 5,000 vols.
Church: Meth. Industries: lumber- and gristmill, 2 label. Railroad:
Susquehanna. State Highway: route S4-B. Bus Line: Paterson-Oak-
land.
GARFIELD, city, inc. 1898. Pop.: (1940) 28,044, (1930)
29,739. Area: 2.1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.40, (1935) $6.34.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $20,883,549, (1935) $20,689,509. Schools:
9 elem., H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 37 men, 3 two-way radio cars.
Fire Dept.: 5 companies, 160 men, chemical engine, 2 pumpers, 2 hose,
2 hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 33 m. Library: 20,000 vols.
Movies: 1. Churches: Bapt., Community, Ep., Hungarian Bapt., Italian
Presb., 2 Italian R. C. missions, Luth., Polish R. C., Presb., Ref., 2
R. C., R. C. convent, Russian Orthodox, Slovak Luth. Industries: 24
apparel, insulation material, 3 rubber goods, pharmaceutical, 4 em-
broidery, bottling, 3 chemical, waxed paper, 2 yarn, piece goods, carton,
lock, slipper, lampshade, packaging and printing machinery, 2 cleaning
and dyeing, adhesive tape, electroplating. Railroad: Erie. State High-
ways: routes 2, 5, 6. Bus Lines: Public Service, Westwood Trans.,
Manhattan Transit, Garfield-Passaic Trans., Olympic.
GLEN ROCK, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 5,177, (1930)
4,369. Area: 2.8 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.43, (1935) $4.28.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $7,876,337, (1935) $8,044,952. Schools: 2
elem., Jr. H. S., H. S. in Ridgewood. Police Dept.: 7 men, radio car.
Fire Dept.: 25 men, pumper, chemical engine, hook and ladder. Paved
Streets: 26 m. Library: 15,300 vols. Churches: Community, Ep.
Industries: greenhouses, dairies, truck gardens. Railroad: Erie. State
314 APPENDICES
Highway: route S4-B. Bus Lines: Public Service, Garden State, Bill's.
HACKENSACK, city, city manager, inc. 1921. Pop.: (1940)
26,279, (1930) 24,568. Area: 4 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.96,
(1935) $5.17. Assessed Val.: (1940) $35,988,254, (1935) $39,-
351,418. Schools: 5 elem., 2 Jr. H. S., Sr. H. S., parochial, private,
Police Dept.: 43 men, 2 women, 3 motorcycles, patrol wagon, 2 two-
way radio cars, 2 auxiliary cars, utility truck. Fire Dept.: 5 paid, 40
men, 2 pumpers, 2 hook and ladder, salvage wagon, chief's car. Paved
Streets: 63 m. Library: 56,000 vols. .Movies: 3. Churches: African
Meth., 4 Bapt., Chr. Sc., Cong., 3 Ep., Gospel, Luth., Meth., Presb.,
3 Ref., 3 R. C, Seventh Day Advent., Unit., Heb. Industries: 15
wearing apparel, 8 furniture and furnishings, 8 printing, 6 laundry,
cleaning and dyeing, 3 beverage, 3 chemical, monument, 5 iron and
steel, surgical instrument, artificial ice, paper. Railroads: N. J. and
N. Y., Susquehanna. State Highways: routes 2, 4, 5, 6. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Garden State, Rockland-Spring Valley, Intercity, N. J.
and N. Y., Westwood Trans., Manhattan Transit.
HARRINGTON PARK, bor., inc. 1907. Pop.: (1940) 1,389,
(1930) 1,251. Area: 2.1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.74, (1935)
$5.69. Assessed Vol.: (1940) $1,510,123, (1935) $1,558,398. Schools:
elem., H. S. in Dumont, Tenafly, Westwood. Police Dept.: 4 men,
radio car. Fire Dept.: 25 men, three-unit truck, hose. Paved Streets:
13m. Churches: Ep., Ref., R. C. Railroad: West Shore. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Hill, Rockland-Spring Valley.
HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 6,716,
(1930) 5,658. Area: 1.5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.96, (1935)
$4.39. Assessed Val: (1940) $7,211,472, (1935) $7,188,177.
Schools: 2 elem., H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 13 men, 2 radio cars.
Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 60 men, 2 comb, pumpers, hook and ladder,
emerg. truck. Paved Streets: 21m. Library: 8,000 vols. Churches:
Ep., Luth., Meth., Ref., R. C. Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. State High-
ways: routes 2, 6. Bus Lines: Public Service, Olympic, DeLuxe Coach,
City Service, Manhattan Transit, Short Line.
HAWORTH, bor., inc. 1904. Pop.: (1940) 1,419, (1930)
1,042. Area: 2.2 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.23, (1935) $3.75.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $2,280,781, (1935) $2,202,506. Schools:
elem., H. S. in Dumont, Tenafly. Police Dept.: 17 men, radio car.
Fire Dept.: 31 men, pumper, booster comb., hook and ladder-hose,
brush-fire fighter. Paved Streets: 10 mi. Library: 7,000 vols.
Churches: Cong., R. C. Railroad: West Shore. Bus Lines: Public
Service, Hill.
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 315
HILLSDALE, bor., inc. 1898. Pop.: (1940) 3,438, (1930)
2,959. Area: 2.9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.85, (1935) $4.42.
Assessed Val: (1940) $3,467,870, (1935) $3,590,261. Schools:
elem., H. S. in Park Ridge, Westwood. Police Dept.: 6 men, radio
car. Fire Dept.: 2 companies, 45 men, pumper, hose. Paved Streets:
16 m. Library: 2,000 vols. Churches: Ep., Meth., R. C. Railroad:
N. J. and N. Y. Bus Lines: Public Service, Rockland-Spring Valley.
HO-HO-KUS, bor., inc. 1908. Pop.: (1940) 1,626, (1930) 925.
Area: 1.8 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.35, (1935) $3.56. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $2,836,540, (1935) $2,255,258. Schools: elem., paro-
chial, parochial H. S., H. S. in Ridgewood. Police Dept.: 4 men,
two-way radio car, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 30 men, 2 pumpers, hose.
Paved Streets: 14 m. Library: 4,250 vols. Churches: Community,
Ep., R. C. Industry: bleachery. Railroad: Erie. State Highways:
routes 2, Ml 7. Bus Lines: Public Service, Bill's, Short Line, Garden
State.
HOHOKUS, twp., inc. 1895. Pop.: (1940) 3,908, (1930) 3,536.
Area: 25.7 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.85, (1935) $3.36. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $3,709,799, (1935) $3,489,407. Schools: 5 elem.,
parochial, H. S. in Ramsey. Police Dept.: 2 men, radio car. Fire
Dept.: 2 companies, 40 men, 2 pumpers, hose, booster tank. Paved
Streets: 37 m. Library: 2,000 vols. Churches: 2 Community, Meth.,
Polish R. C, Ref., 2 R. C. Railroad: Erie. State Highways: routes
2, S4-B. Bus Lines: Public Service, Bill's.
LEONIA, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 5,763, (1930) 5,350.
Area: 1.5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.77, (1935) $4.56. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $8,351,491, (1935) $8,707,411. Schools: elem., H. S.
Police Dept.: 15 men, 3 two-way radio cars. Fire Dept.: 2 com-
panies, 37 men, 3 pumper-hose-hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 25m,
Library: 18,000 vols. Churches: Ep., Luth., Meth., Presb., Ref., R. C,
Railroad: Northern. State Highway: route 4. Bus Lines: Public
Service, Garden State.
LITTLE FERRY, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 4,545, (1930)
3,638. Area: 1.5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $7.91, (1935) $6.58.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $2,459,050, (1935) $2,570,296. Schools: 2
elem., H. S. in Lodi. Police Dept.: 8 men. Fire Dept.: 2 companies,
50 men, 2 hose-hook and ladder. Paved Streets. 12 m. Library:
10,000 vols. Churches: Cong., R. C. Industries: brick kiln, roofing,
3 button, truck farms. Railroads: Susquehanna, West Shore (both in
Ridgefield Park). State Highway: route 6. Bus Lines: Public Service,
Garden State, City Service.
316 APPENDICES
LODI, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 11,552, (1930) 11,549.
Area: 2.2 sq. mi. Tax Kate: (1940) $5.92, (1935) $5.72. Assessed
Val.i (1940) $7,930,787, (1935) $9,889,492. Schools: 3 elem., H. S.,
parochial. Police Dept.: 24 men, 2 radio cars. Fire Dept.: 3 com-
panies, 63 men, 2 comb, hose, rescue truck. Paved Streets: 22 m.
Library: 5,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches: Community, 2 Presb.,
Ref., 2 R. C. Industries: 3 dyeing, 6 apparel, bakery, lithographing,
2 laundries, glove cleaning. Railroad: Susquehanna. State Highways:
routes 2, 6. Bs Lm?s: Public Service, Westwood Trans., Manhattan
Transit, Olympic, DeLuxe Coach.
LYNDHURST, twp., inc. 1880. Pop.: (1940) 17,454, (1930)
17,362. Area: 4.7 sq. mi. Tax Ra.te: (1940) $5.60, (1935) $6.28.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $13,157,884, (1935) $14,200,867. Schools:
7 elem., H. S. Police Dept.: 27 men, 2 two-way radio cars, motor-
cycle, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 55 men, pumper, hose,
hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 32 m. Library: 23,000 vols. Movies:
1. Churches: Ep., Evang. Luth., Meth., Polish R. C., 2 Presb., 2 R. C.
Industries: paint, machine, oil, burlap bag, steel products, 4 dress,
botanical drug, sirens and valves, roofing materials, fruit preserving,
2 chemical. Railroad: D. L. and W. State Highway: route 2. Bus
Lines: Public Service, Comfort, Jersey City-Lyndhurst.
MAYWOOD, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 4,052, (1930)
3,398. Area: 1.3 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.26, (1935) $5.55.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $4,796,803, (1935) $4,808,905. Schools: elem.,
Jr. H. S., H. S. in Bogota. Police Dept.: 10 men, two-way radio car.
Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 75 men, 3 pumper-hose-hook and ladder.
Paved Streets: 14 m. Library: 4,000 vols. Churches: Ep., 2 Evang.
Luth., Presb., Heb. Industries: 5 chemical, malt syrup. Railroad:
Susquehanna. State Highway: route 2. Bus Lines: Public Service,
Garden State, Westwood Trans., Manhattan Transit.
MIDLAND PARK, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 4,525, (1930)
3,638. Area: 1.3 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.38, (1935) $4.69.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $2,904,536, (1935) $2,797,586. Schools: elem.,
parochial, H. S. in Pompton Lakes. Police Dept.: 10 men, radio car.
Fire Dept.: 40 men, pumper, hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 18
m. Library: 5,000 vols. Churches: Ep., Gospel, Meth., 3 Ref. In-
dustries: 6 textile, pump, rubber goods, woodworking, hosiery, candy,
rug cleaning. Railroad: Susquehanna. Bus Lines: Public Service,
Bill's.
MONTVALE, bor., inc. 1896. Pop.: (1940) 1,342, (1930)
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 317
1,243. Area-. 4 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.54, (1935) $4.38.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $1,344,879, (1935) $1,425,986. Scbobls:
elem., H. S. in Park Ridge. Police Dept.: 8 men, radio car. fire
Dept.: 2 companies, 30 men, pumper, hose. Paved Streets: 15 m.
Churches: Ep., Meth. Industries: ice, poultry. Railroad: N. J. and
N. Y. Bus Line: Rockland-Spring Valley.
MOONACHIE, bor., inc. 1910. Pop.: (1940) 1,554, (1930)
1,465. Area: 1.6 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $6.19, (1935) $6.68.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $724,675, (1935) $801,639. Schools: 3 elem.,
H. S. in East Rutherford, Ridgefield Park. Police Dept.: chief, 5
volunteers, 20 marshals. Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 50 men, pumper,
hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 6 m. Library: 500 vols.
Churches: Community, Presb., R. C. Industries: 2 brick, truck farms.
Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. State Highway: route 6. Bus Lines: local
NEW MILFORD, bor., inc. 1872. Pop.: (1940) 3,215, (1930)
2,556. Area: 2.2 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $7.02, (1935) $5.13.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $3,195,141, (1935) $3,364,450. Schools: elem.,
Jr. H. S., H. S. in Hackensack, Dumont. Police Dept.: 23 men, radio
car. Fire Dept. : 2 companies, 5 3 men, 2 comb, pumper hose, ambulance.
Paved Streets: 17 m. Library: 2,500 vols. Churches: Luth., Meth.,
Ref., R. C. Industries: pearl button, knitting, beverage, cleaning and
dyeing, horticulture. Railroads: N. J. and N. Y. (in River Edge).
Bus Lines: Public Service, Rockland-Spring Valley, Hill.
NORTH ARLINGTON, bor., inc. 1896. Pop.: (1940) 9,904,
(1930) 8,263. Area: 2.5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $6.30, (1935)
$6.02. Assessed VaL: (1940) $7,096,897, (1935) $7,102,656.
Schools: 3 elem., H. S., parochial, parochial H. S. Police Dept.: 13
men, 2 radio cars, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 70 men,
pumper, hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 24 m. Library: 2,500
vols. Churches: Ep., Luth., Presb., R. C. and convent. Industries:
2 cement block, 5 monument, comb, beverage, 2 laundries. State
Highway: route 2. Bus Lines: Public Service, Garden State, Jersey
City-Lyndhurst.
NORTHVALE, bor., inc. 1916. Pop.: (1940) ' 1,159, (1930)
1,144. Area: 1.3 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $6.83, (1935) $5.16.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $658,162, (1935) $716,862. Schools: elem.,
H. S. in Closter, Tenafly. Police Dept. : 6 men, radio car. Fire Dept. :
40 men, pumper-hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 7 m. Churches:
Presb., R. C. Industries: dress, artificial flower, pencil, chenille spread,
coating cloth, embroidery. Railroad: Northern. Bus Lines: Public
Service, Rockland-Spring Valley.
318 APPENDICES
NORWOOD, bor., inc. 1905. Pop.: (1940) 1,512, (1930)
1,358. Area: 2.9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.88, (1935) $5.95.
Assessed Vol.: (1940) $1,720,235, (1935) $1,787,548. Schools: elem.,
H. S. in Closter, Tenafly. Police Dept.: 3 men, reserves, radio car.
Fire Dept.: 35 men, pumper, hose. Paved Streets: 10 m. Library:
4,000 vols. Churches: Ep., Presb., R. C. Industries: farms, green-
houses, nurseries. Railroads: Northern, West Shore. Bus Lines: Public
Service, Rockland-Spring Valley.
OAKLAND, bor., inc. 1902. Pop.: (1940) 932, (1930) 735.
Area: 9.1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.81, (1935) $3.51. Assessed
Vol.: (1940) $1,537,822, (1935) $1,552,432. Schools: elem., mili-
tary academy, H. S. in Pompton Lakes. Police Dept.: 24 men. Fire
Dept.: 2 companies, 20 men, pumper-hose. Paved Streets: 9 m,
Library: 2,500 vols. Churches: Ep., Luth., Presb., R. C. and convent,
Industry: woven label. Railroad: Susquehanna. State Highway: S4-B,
Bus Line: Bill's.
OLD TAPPAN, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 609, (1930) 600,
Area,: 3.88 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.52, (1935) $2.83. Assessed
Vali (1940) $542,880, (1935) $519,720. Schools: elem., H. S. in
Dumont. Police Dept.: 4 men. Fire Dept.: 40 men, chemical engine,
hook and ladder, ambulance. Paved Streets: 8 m. Industries: truck
farms.
ORADELL, bor., inc. 1920 (as Delford, 1894). Pop.: (1940)
2,802, (1930) 2,360. Area: 2.7 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.93,
(1935) $3.99. Assessed Val.: (1940) $6,062,045, (1935) $6,548,-
496. Schools: elem., Jr. H. S., H. S. in Englewood. Police Dept.: 6
men, radio car. Fire Dept.: 40 men, engine, hook and ladder. Paved
Streets: 15 m. Library: 13,000 vols. Churches: Chr. Sc., Ep., Ref.,
R. C. Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. Bus Lines: Public Service, Hill,
Rockland-Spring Valley.
PALISADES PARK, bor., inc. 1899. Pop.: (1940) 8,141, (1930)
7,065. Area: 1.3 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.64, (1935) $4.99.
Assessed Vol.: (1940) $6,481,877, (1935) $6,524,604. Schools: elem.,
Jr. H. S., H. S. in Leonia. Police Dept.: 9 men, two-way radio car,
ambulance. Fire Dept.: 2 companies, 40 men, pumper, hook and
ladder, hose. Paved Streets: 26 m. Library: 18,000 vols. Movies: 1.
Churches: Ep., Gospel, Luth., Presb., R. C., Heb. Industries: 2 women's
underwear, film laboratory, soap base, ribbon loom. Railroad: North-
ern. State Highway: route 6. Bus Lines: Public Service, Garden
State, Westwood Trans., Manhattan Transit.
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 319
PARAMUS, bor., inc. 1922. Pop.: (1940) 3,688, (1930) 2,649.
Area: 11.8 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.28, (1935) $3.23. Assessed
VaL: (1940) $4,270,849, (1935) $3,568,350. Schools: 2 elem., H. S.
in Hackensack, Ridgewood. Police Dept.: 18 men, radio car. Fire
Dept.: 4 companies, 60 men, 4 pumper-hook and ladder. Paved
Streets: 33 m. Churches: Bapt., Chr. Ref. mission, Community,
Meth., R. C. Industries: cement block, celery and lettuce. State
Highways: routes 2, 4. Bus Lines: Public Service, Intercity, N. J.
and N. Y., Garden State, Short Line.
PARK RIDGE, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 2,519, (1930)
2,229. Area: 2.3 sq. mi. Tax Kate: (1940) $4.15, (1935) $4.17.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $2,343,897, (1935) $2,254,340. Schools:
elem., H. S. Police Dept.: 7 men, radio car. Fire Dept.: 3 companies,
60 men, engine, hose wagon. Paved Streets: 10 m. Library: 3,000
vols. Churches: African Meth., Cong., Heb., Meth., Ref., R. C.
Industries: typewriter accessories, knitting, woven label, apron, 2
women's wear, greenhouse, hat. Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Rockland-Spring Valley.
RAMSEY, bor., inc. 1908. Pop.: (1940) 3,566, (1930) 3,285.
Area: 5.9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.97, (1935) $3.49. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $3,976,902, (1935) $3,900,498. Schools: elem., H. S.
Police Dept.: 18 men, radio car, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 30 men,
pumper, chemical, hose, hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 22 mi.
Library: 5,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches-. Ep., Luth., Presb., R. C.
Industries: neckwear, laundry. Railroad: Erie. State Highways: routes
2, M17. Bus Lines: Public Service, Bill's, Short Line.
RIDGEFIELD, bor., inc. 1892. Pop.: (1940) 5,271, (1930)
4,617. Area: 2.6 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.28, (1935) $4.74.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $6,247,630, (1935) $6,468,997. Schools: 2
elem., Jr. H. S., parochial, H. S. in Englewood, Leonia. Police Dept.:
13 men, 2 radio cars. Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 50 men, 2 comb,
pumpers. Paved Streets: 26 mi. Library: 10,000 vols. Churches:
Community, Ep., Luth., 2 Ref., R. C. Industries: corrugated board,
paper, box, gas machine, wire, paint, 3 chemical, cement block, Venetian
blind, refrigeration and air-conditioning, water-bottling, advertising
novelties. Railroad: Northern. State Highways: routes 1, 5, 6.
Bus Lines: Public Service, Westwood Trans., Manhattan Transit.
RIDGEFIELD PARK (Overpeck Twp.), vil., inc. 1892. Pop.:
(1940) 11,277, (1930) 10,764. Area: 2 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940)
$5.75, (1935) $5.40. Assessed Vol.: (1940) $10,112,286, (1935)
320 APPENDICES
$11,103,235. Schools: 4 elem., H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 13
men, 3 two-way radio cars, emergency car. Fire Dept.: 6 companies,
120 men, 4 pumper-hose, 2 hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 25 m,
Library: 25,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches: Bapt., Chr. Sc., Com-
munity, Ep., 2 Luth., Meth., Presb., Ref., R. C., Heb. Industries:
3 paper-boxboard, 2 cigar, metal spinning, oil products, music pub-
lishing, shingle-roofing, cinder block, woodwind reeds. Railroads: Sus-
quehanna, West Shore. State Highway: route 6. Bus Lines: Public
Service, Westwood Trans., Manhattan Transit, City Service.
RIDGEWOOD, vil., inc. 1895. Pop.: (1940) 14,948, (1930)
12,188. Area.: 5.9 sq. mi. Tax Kate: (1940) $3.92, (1935) $3.50.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $28,204,517, (1935) $27,832,585. Schools: 5
elem., 2 Jr. H. S., Sr. H. S., parochial, 2 private. Police Dept.: 26
men, 3 two-way radio cars, 2 motorcycles, ambulance. Fire Dept.:
2 companies, 34 men (8 paid), 2 pumper, 2 hook and ladder, 2 hose,
chief's car. Paved Streets: 45 m. Library: 40,000 vols. Churches:
African Meth., Bapt., Chr. Sc., Community, 2 Ep., Luth., Negro
Bapt., 2 Presb., Quaker, R. C., 2 Ref., Unit. Railroad: Erie. State
Highway: route 2. Bus Lines: Public Service, Garden State, Bill's,
Intercity, N. J. and N. Y. Transit.
RIVER EDGE, bor., inc. 1930. Pop.: (1940) 3,287, (1930)
2,210. Area: 1.9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.21, (1935) $5.40.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $3,370,546, (1935) $3,155,343. Schools: elem.,
H. S. in Hackensack. Police Dept.: 7 men, radio car. Fire Dept.:
2 companies, 40 men, 2 pumper-hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 10m.
Library: 3,500 vols. Churches: Cong., Luth., Ref. Railroad: N. J.
and N. Y. State Highway: route 4. Bus Lines: Public Service, Rock-
land-Spring Valley.
RIVER VALE, twp., inc. 1906. Pop.: (1940) 1,112, (1930)
871. Area: 4.4 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.72, (1935) $3.74.
Assessed Val: (1940) $1,160,097, (1935) $1,114,971. Schools: 2
elem., H. S. in Westwood, Park Ridge, Dumont. Police Dept.: 5 men.
Fire Dept.: 2 companies, 35 men, pumper, hose-hook and ladder.
Paved Streets: 11 m. Library: 2,000 vols. Church: Community.
Industry: produce. Bus Lines: Public Service, Hill.
ROCHELLE PARK, twp., inc. 1929. Pop.: (1940) 2,511,
(1930) 1,768. Area: 1.1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.23, (1935)
$5.59. Assessed Val.: (1940) $2,390,086, (1935) $2,319,670.
Schools: elem., parochial, H. S. in Hackensack. Police Dept.: 6 men,
radio car. Fire Dept.: 2 companies, 44 men, pumper, hook and ladder.
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 321
Paved Streets: 5 m. Churches: Ep., R. C. Industries: surgical in-
strument, embroidery, welding, artesian well equipment, tree nursery,
dairy. Railroad: Susquehanna. State Highway: route 2. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Garden State, Short Line, DeLuxe Coach, Westwood
Trans., Manhattan Transit.
ROCKLEIGH, bor., inc. 1927. Pop.: (1940) 79, (1930) 86.
Area: 1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $1.81, (1935) $2.70. Assessed
Vali (1940) $304,150, (1935) $277,500. School: girls' private.
Police Dept.: volunteer, 4 men. Fire Dept.: 18 men, chemical equip.
RUTHERFORD, bor., inc. 1887. Pop.: (1940) 15,466, (1930)
14,915. Area: 2.6 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.80, (1935) $3.54.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $18,545,091, (1935) $23,772,903. Schools:
elem., H. S., parochial, parochial H. S. Police Dept.: 20 men, 2 radio
cars. Fire Dept.: 4 companies, 60 men, 3 pumpers, hose. Paved
Streets: 32 m. Library: 27,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches: African
Meth., Bapt., Chr. Sc., Cong., Ep., Gospel, Luth., Meth., Negro Bapt.,
Presb., Ref., R. C. Industries: dyeing, photo supply. Railroad: Erie
(with East Rutherford). State Highways: routes 2, 3. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Intercity, N. J. and N. Y. Transit, Olympic, Comfort,
Independent, Jersey City-Lyndhurst, City Service, Will Morris.
SADDLE RIVER, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 816, (1930)
657. Area: 4.9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $2.62, (1935) $2.21.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $1,135,670, (1935) $997,775. Schools: elem.,
H. S. in Ramsey. Police Dept.: 6 men. Fire Dept.: 20 men, pumper-
hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 14 m. Library: 5,000 vols. Churches:
Evang. Luth., Zion Tabernacle. Industries: button, water gardens.
State Highway: route 2. Bus Lines: Public Service, Short Line, Bill's.
SADDLE RIVER, twp., inc. 1794. Pop.: (1940) 3,169, (1930)
2,424. Area: 2.7 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.85, (1935) $6.40.
Assessed VaL: (1940) $2,682,127, (1935) $2,552,274. Schools: 4
elem., H. S. in Paterson, Lodi. Police Dept.: volunteer, 22 men,
radio car. Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 60 men, pumper, chemical, hook
and ladder. Paved Streets: 27 m. Church: Ref. Industries: ice cream,
dairies, truck farms, reed, needle, dog-cat food, slaughterhouse, 2
monument, pressed steel. Railroad: Susquehanna. State Highway:
route 6. Bus Lines: Public Service, Garden State.
SOUTH HACKENSACK, twp., inc. 1935. Pop.: (1940) 1,241,
(1930) 1,294. Area: .5 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $9.65, (1935)
$8.74. Assessed VaL: (1940) $513,717, (1935) $558,861. Schools:
322 APPENDICES
2 elem., H. S. in Hackensack, Garfield. Police Dept.: 15 men. Fire
Dept.: 2 companies, 40 men, 2 chemical. Paved Streets: 4 m. Church:
Zion Baptist. Industries: slaughterhouse, truck farms. State High-
way: route 6. Bus Lines: Public Service, City Service.
TEANECK, twp., municipal manager, inc. 1895. Pop.: (1940)
25,275, (1930) 16,513. Area: 5.9 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.21,
(1935) $4.62. Assessed Val.: (1940) $28,332,099, (1935) $26,421,-
191. Schools: 7 elem., H. S., parochial, Jr. College. Police Dept.:
39 men, 6 two-way radio cars, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 3 paid, 34 men;
volunteer, 17 men; 9 pieces of equipment. Paved Streets: 64 m. Li-
brary: 20,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches: Bapt., Baha'i, Community,
Ep., 2 Luth., Meth., Norwegian Evang., Presb., R. C, Heb. Indus-
tries: 2 laundry, dairy. Railroad: West Shore. State Highway: route
4. Bus Lines: Public Service, Garden State, Intercity, N. J. and N. Y.
Transit, City Service.
TENAFLY, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 7,413, (1930) 5,669.
Area: 4.4 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.63, (1935) $4.59. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $12,691,505, (1935) $12,104,314. Schools: 2 elem.,
H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 16 men, 2 two-way radio cars. Fire
Dept.: 32 men, 2 pumpers, auxiliary engine, hook ana ladder. Paved
Streets: 34 m. Library: 10,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches: Ep.,
Meth. and chapel, Presb., R. C. and convent. Industries: furniture,
dress, dairy. Railroad: Northern. State Highway: route 1. Bus
Lines: Public Service, Rockland-Spring Valley, Nyack-DeLuxe.
UPPER SADDLE RIVER, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 510,
(1930) 347. Area: 5.03 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $2.37, (1935)
$2.47. Assessed Val.: (1940) $676,665, (1935) $564,125. Schools:
elem., H. S. in Ramsey. Police Dept.: 5 men, deputies. Paved Streets:
13m. Churches: Ref., Meth.
WALDWICK, bor., inc. 1919. Pop.: (1940) 2,475, (1930) 1,728.
Area: 2.4 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.88, (1935) $5.00. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $1,751,309, (1935) $1,720,249. Schools: elem., H. S.
in Ramsey. Police Dept.: 16 men. Fire Dept.: 25 men, pumper,
hose-hook and ladder. Paved Streets: 14 m. Churches: 2 Meth., Ref.
Industry: weaving. Railroad: Erie. State Highways: routes 2, Ml 7.
Bus Lines: Public Service, Bill's, Short Line.
WALLINGTON, bor., inc. 1895. Pop.: (1940) 8,981, (1930)
9,063. Area: 2.4 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.75, (1935) $6.48.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $3,869,456, (1935) $3,972,844. Schools: 3
MUNICIPAL INFORMATION 323
elem., H. S. in East Rutherford, Lodi. Police Dept.: 12 men, radio
car, ambulance. Fire Dept.: 2 companies, 90 men, 2 pumpers, hook
and ladder, emergency truck. Paved Streets-. 10 m. Churches: Polish
National, Presb. Industries: plastic, 3 paint, paper bag, handkerchief,
trucking, greenhouse, linen, steel tubing. Railroad: Erie. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Comfort, Olympic.
WASHINGTON, twp., inc. 1840. Pop.: (1940) 491, (1930)
402. Area: 3.1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.33, (1935) $2.88.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $981,584, (1935) $825,242. Police Dept.:
3 men. Fire Dept.: 24 men, pumper, hook and ladder. Paved Streets:
14 m. Church: Community. Industries: greenhouses, poultry, sand
pits. Bus Line: Public Service.
WESTWOOD, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 5,388, (1930)
4,861. Area: 2.4 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.52, (1935) $4.77.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $5,873,191, (1935) $6,015,081. Schools: 2
elem., H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 14 men, two-way radio car.
Fire Dept.: 3 companies, 60 men, pumper, hook and ladder, hose, chief's
car. Paved Streets: 19 m. Library: 13,000 vols. Movies: 1. Churches:
Bapt., Mount Zion Baptist, Chr. Sc., Ep., Luth., Meth., Ref., R. C,
Seventh-Day Advent., Heb. Industries: woodworking, laundry. Rail-
road: N. J. and N. Y. Bus Lines: Public Service, Rockland-Spring
Valley, Westwood Trans., Manhattan Transit, Hill.
WOODCLIFF LAKE, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 1,037,
(1930) 871. Area: 3.8 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $3.97, (1935)
$3.67. Assessed Val.: (1940) $1,322,683, (1935) $1,596,730.
Schools: elem., H. S. in Park Ridge. Police Dept.: 2 men, volunteers.
Fire Dept.: 2 companies, 30 men, 2 pumper-hose. Paved Streets: 12 m.
Industries: produce, bottling. Railroad: N. J. and N. Y. Bus Lines:
Public Service, Rockland-Spring Valley.
WOOD-RIDGE, bor., inc. 1894. Pop.: (1940) 5,739, (1930)
5,159. Area: 1.1 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $5.54, (1935) $4.95.
Assessed Val.: (1940) $4,506,978, (1935) $4,641,541. Schools: 2
elem., H. S., parochial. Police Dept.: 10 men, radio car. Fire Dept.:
30 men, 2 comb, pumper, auxiliary truck, ambulance. Paved Streets:
13 m. Library: 3,000 vols. Churches: Bapt., Ep., Gospel, Presb.,
R. C. Industries: 3 chemical, embroidery, furniture. Railroad: N. J.
and N. Y. (with Moonachie). State Highway: route 2. Bus Lines:
Public Service, DeLuxe Coach, Olympic.
WYCKOFF, twp., inc. 1926. Pop.: (1940) 3,847, (1930) 3,001.
324 APPENDICES
Area: 6.18 sq. mi. Tax Rate: (1940) $4.22, (1935) $4.85. Assessed
Val.: (1940) $2,838,817, (1935) $2,475,290. Schools: 2 elem., H. S.
in Ramsey, Paterson. Police Dept.: 22 men, radio car. Fire Dept.: 2
companies, 45 men, pumper comb., chemical comb., supply truck.
Paved Streets: 26 m. Library: 7,000 vols. Churches: Gospel, Ref.,
R. C. Industries: iron, dairies, pig farm, nursery. Railroad: Susque-
hanna. State Highway: route S4-B. Bus Lines: Public Service, Pater-
son-Oakland.
Old Houses and Churches
The list below was compiled from various sources which include
the records of the Bergen County Historical Society, Rosalie F. Bailey's
Pre '-Revolutionary Dutch Houses and Families of Northern New Jer-
sey and Southern New York., local authorities and the Historic Ameri-
can Buildings Survey, indicated by (N. J. ). Those so marked
are catalogued in the Library of Congress, where are filed copies of
plans, elevations and details, photographs and historic data, based on
original research. These can be purchased on application to Leicester
B. Holland, Chief of Fine Arts Division, Library of Congress, Wash-
ington, D. C., by referring to the catalogue number. Dates and names
other than those authenticated by the Historic American Buildings
Survey are based on the best authorities available. Dates in parentheses
are those of additions or alterations. Hyphens indicate that the struc-
ture was built between the dates shown.
ALPINE
Cornwallis Headquarters (N. J. 115), l /s mi. n. of Alpine Ferry
House, c. 1750.
Huyler Dock House (N. J. 167), Shore Trail, Palisades Interstate
Park, 1756.
BERGENFIELD
Beuchler-Hauser, 88 E. Clinton Ave., 1790.
Nicholas Kip (N. J. 423), 222 Washington Ave., 1755.
Old South Church, W. Church and Prospect sts., 1799.
Westervelt-Kuhnert, 139 S. Washington Ave., 1776.
BOGOTA
Bogett, 370 River Rd., 1815.
Harper, Fort Lee and River rds., 1701.
OLD HOUSES AND CHURCHES 325
CARLSTADT
Half -Way, Paterson Plank Rd. and Washington Ave., 1770.
Outwater-Feitner, 211 Washington Ave., 1718.
CLOSTER
Aureyonson-David Haring (Censier) , Piermont Rd. nr. Hickory Lane,
1793.
William De Clerique (Breisacher Farms) (N. J. 364), Piermont Rd.,
c. 1810.
Demarest-Curtis, Schraalenburgh and Old Hook rds., c. 1700 (1809).
David D. Doremus (N. J. 361), Hickory Lane nr. Piermont Rd.,
c. 1843.
Dune (N. J. 472), Schraalenburgh Rd., c. 1800.
Lindemann-Hoffman, off Homans Ave., early 18th C.
Naugle-Aureyonson, Hickory Lane e. of Piermont Rd., 1736.
Naugle-Mehlin, Harvard St., 1740.
Rahm, Schraalenburgh Rd., 1710.
Van Der Beck Slave House (N. J. 363), Piermont Rd. n. of High St.,
c. 1700.
Van Scriver or Van Scryver (Lone Stone or Lone Star Inn) , Piermont
Rd. and High St., c. 1700.
CRESSKILL
John Huyler Homestead and Slave House (N. J. 168), County Rd.
opp. Lynwood St., 1770 (1805).
Petrus-Benjamin Westervelt (N. J. 422), County Rd. opp. Westervelt
Ave., 1808.
DEMAREST
Matthew P. Bogert, County Rd. n. of Orchard St., 1819.
Demarest, Piermont Rd. opp. R.R. station, 1817.
Meyerhoff, County Rd. nr. Orchard St., 1723.
DUMONT
Daniel Demarest (N. J. 657), 404 Washington Ave., 1724.
David Demarest, 480 Washington Ave., late 18th or early 19th C.
Dixon Homestead Library, 180 Washington Ave., 1775-90.
North Reformed Church, Washington Ave., 1800-01 (1859).
North Reformed Church Parsonage (N. J. 172), Washington Ave.,
1834.
Zabriskie-Christie (N. J. 5), 10 Colonial Court, c. 1775 (1816).
EAST PATERSON
Doremus, 74 River Dr., 1740.
326 APPENDICES
EAST RUTHERFORD
Cutwater, 162 Hackensack St., 1740.
EMERSON
Blauvelt (N. J. Ill), Old Hook Rd., c. 1780.
ENGLEWOOD
Thomas W. Demarest, 350 Grand Ave., 1803.
Liberty Pole Tavern (now a residence), 115 Palisade Ave., c. 1700.
Garrett Lydecker (N. J. 162), 228 Grand Ave., c. 1720 (1803).
John Van Brunt (N. J. 392), 315 Grand Ave., 1834.
Peter Westervelt (N. J. 112), Grand and Forest aves., 1800.
FAIR LAWN
Bogert, Fair Lawn Ave., 1740-60.
Doremus-Gledhill, Broadway, 1800-30.
Garretson-Brocker, River Rd., 1730-40.
Garretson-Jackson, Fair Lawn Ave. and Saddle River Rd., 1740.
Peter A. Hopper (N. J. 174), 12-72 River Rd., 1766 (1780, 1787),
Hopper-Strehl, Fair Lawn Ave., 1733.
Morrell (Adams), 17-01 Fair Lawn Ave., Pre-Revolutionary.
Dirck Ryerson (N. J. 551) (Light Horse Harry Lee's Hq.), 445
Wagaraw Rd., c. 1750 (1766).
Van Houten, Fair Lawn Ave., 1790.
Jacob Vanderbeck Jr. (N. J. 45), Saddle River Ave. and Dunker
Hook Rd., 1754.
Jacob Vanderbeck Jr. Slave House (N. J. 45 A), Saddle River Ave.
and Dunker Hook Rd., 1754.
Jacob Vanderbeck Sr. (N. J. 563), Dunker Hook Rd., 1740.
FAIR VIEW
Old Fort Homestead, 246 Broad Ave., 1739.
FORT LEE
William Cook, 110 Washington Ave., 1800-30.
FRANKLIN LAKES
MacKenzie Gristmill, Near shore of Franklin Lake, 1810 (1900).
Moore, Franklin Lakes and Colonial rds., 1750-70.
Packer (N. J. 528), Ewing Ave., c. 1730 (1789, 1850).
Van Blarcom, Near shore of Franklin Lake, 1770-90.
Van Houten, Franklin Lakes Rd., c. 1760.
OLD HOUSES AND CHURCHES 327
GLEN ROCK
Ackerman-MacDougall, 652 Ackerman Ave., c. 1760.
Jan Berdan (N. J. 299), 32 Rock Rd., 1727-30.
Garret Hopper-Reeves, 470 Prospect St., 1760.
Hopper-Hillman, 724 Ackerman Ave., early 18th C.
Hopper-Terhune-Van Keuren, 762 Ackerman Ave., c. 1760.
HACKENSACK
Church-on-the-Green (N. J. 4), Hackensack Green, 1792 (1847,
1869).
John Hopper (New Venice Restaurant), 231-9 Polifly Rd., 1816-18.
Nicholas Lozier (N. J. 177) (Westervelt-Van Buskirk), 393 Main
Mansion House (Peter Zabriskie) (N. J. 117), Main St. and Wash-
ington PL, 1751.
Terhune (N. J. 8), 450 River Rd., c. 1685.
HARRINGTON PARK
Bogart- Woods, Harriot Ave., 1765.
George L. Leclercq (Peter Demarest), Lafayette Rd., 1750-85.
HASBROUCK HEIGHTS
Charles Carlock, 181 Terrace Ave., 1800-30.
Isaac Housman-Liegme, 298 Baldwin Ave., 1773-83.
Old Homestead (Housman or Huyseman-Terhune) , 307 Terrace Ave.,
c. 1760.
Stagg, 651 Terrace Ave., 1727.
Oran Zaebest, Terrace and Franklin aves., 1800-30.
HAWORTH
John Durie or Duryea, Schraalenburgh Rd. n. of Madison Ave.,
1776-90.
John Westervelt, Schraalenburgh Rd. nr. Duryea Ave., 1812.
Garret H. Zabriskie (John Henry Christie), New Ave., 1818.
John J. Zabriskie, Schraalenburgh Rd. s. of Hardenburgh Rd., 1814
(1884).
HILLSDALE
Clendenny (Clendennie) , Hillsdale Ave. opp. Oak St., 1740.
S. G. Demarest (N. J. 500), Demarest Ave., 1808.
HO-HO-KUS BOROUGH
Abram Ackerman, Saddle River Rd., Pre-Revolutionary.
John Banta, Saddle River Rd., early 18th C
328 APPENDICES
Hermitage, The (N. J. 98), Franklin Turnpike, c. 1760 (1845).
Terhune (Joseph Jefferson), Saddle River Rd., c. 1790.
HOHOKUS TOWNSHIP
Garret Garrison, Ramapo Valley Rd., c. 1760.
H. O. H. Havemeyer, Ramapo Valley Rd., c. 1760 (1900).
Abraham Van Horn, Darlington Rd., 1770.
Winter, Franklin Turnpike, 1790.
LEONIA
Samuel Cole, Prospect St. and Grand Ave., 1760.
Samuel Moore, 215 Central Ave., c. 1815.
Dirck Vreeland (N. J. 158), 125 Lakeview Ave., 1818.
LYNDHURST
Old School, Farm Ave. and River Rd., 1825.
Jacob W. Van Winkle (N. J. 477), Riverside and Valley Brook aves.,
c. 1795.
Watson, River Rd. and Valley Brook Ave., 1797.
MAYWOOD
John S. Berdan (N. J. 640), 465 Maywood Ave., c. 1819.
Brinkerhoff, 279 Maywood Ave., c. 1778.
Henry H. Van Voorhis (N. J. 667), Maywood and Magnolia aves.,
c. 1780.
MIDLAND PARK
David Baldwin (N. J. 420), 60 Lake Ave., 1838.
Van Riper- Wostbrock Mill, 27 Goffle Rd., 1790.
Cornelius Wortendyke (N. J. 375), 27 Goffle Rd., c. 1796.
Wortendyke-Mastin, 28 Goffle Rd., 1840.
MONTVALE
Abram G. Eckerson (N. J. 175), Chestnut Ridge Rd., 1796-99.
Holdrum-Wanamaker, Spring Valley Rd., 1778.
Van Houten (Edgdren), Main St. nr. Baker Ave., 1700-30.
Van Norden (Mary Hilliard), Summit Ave. nr. Main St., c. 1760.
NEW MILFORD
Baker, New Bridge Rd., c. 1800.
David Demarest Jr. 1 (N. J. 11), 618 River Rd., c. 1693-1720.
Samuel Demarest 2 (N. J. 16), W. of River Rd., c. 1700.
1 Commonly called David Demarest Jr. house, although he died 1691, probably
in a house on this site.
2 Probably an addition to David Demarest Sr.'s house, built c. 1678.
OLD HOUSES AND CHURCHES 329
NORTHVALE
Cooper, Tappan Rd. nr. Paris Ave., 1760-1800.
Hill, Tappan Rd., 1760-1800.
NORWOOD
Blanche (Zinke's Tavern), Blanche Ave. and Tappan Rd., 1750-80.
Gerret H. Blauvelt, Tappan Rd. and Kensington Ave., 1719.
Duke, County Rd., 1805.
Haring-Blauvelt, Tappan Rd., 1783.
OAKLAND
Demarest, Oakland Ave., 1760.
Fox, Oakland Ave., 1790.
Mitchell, Franklin Lakes Rd., 1790.
Van Allen, Oakland Ave. and Crystal Lake Rd., 1740.
OLD TAPPAN
Dewerk-Peter Haring (N. J. 154), Blauvelt Rd., 1712.
Frederick Haring (N. J. 487), Old Tappan and Pearl River rds.,
c. 1775.
Garret J. Haring (N. J. 459), Old Tappan Rd., 1751-62.
ORADELL
Cornelius Cuyper (Cooper), Kinderkamack Rd., 1751.
Voorhis, 417 Kinderkamack Rd., 1810.
PARAMUS
Dirk Epke Banta (N. J. 163), Howland Ave., 1717.
Board-Westhoven, Dunker Hook Rd., 1760-90.
Hopper-Lange, Paramus Rd. n. of Grove St., 1800-30.
Herman Van Dien-Couwds, 109 Paramus Rd., 1731.
Van Saun (N. J. 343), Howland Ave., c. 1750.
Albert Jacob Zabriskie (N. J. 271) (Bogert), Glenn Rd., 1805.
Jacob Zabriskie Farm Group (N. J. 159), Paramus Rd., 1826.
PARK RIDGE
Eckerson (Ackerson) -Demarest (N. J. 175) (Astor Trading Post),
Pascack Rd., 1765.
Jacob Eckerson (Ackerson), 26 N. Main St., c. 1760.
Benjamin Hill, 116 Main St., 1800-30.
Pascack Reformed Church, Main St., 1812.
RIDGEFIELD
Edsall-Day-De Groot (N. J. 170), 1008 De Groot Ave., c. 1790.
330 APPENDICES
English Neighborhood (Old Dutch Reformed) Church (N. J. 552),
bet. Highway and R. R., 1793.
Williamson, Broad Ave., 1711 (1789, 1880).
RIDGEFIELD PARK
Christie (N. J. 160), 16 Homestead PL, 1700-25.
RIDGEWOOD
David Ackerman (N. J. 155), 222 Doremus Ave., c. 1692.
Ackerman-Naugle, 415 Saddle River Rd., 1760.
Ackerman- Van Embergh, 789 Paramus Rd., 1750.
Paramus Church, Route 2, c. 1800.
Van Dien, Paramus Rd., 1800.
Vroom (Hopper), 162 E. Ridgewood Ave., 1800.
Zabriskie, Lin wood Ave. and Paramus Rd., 1700-30.
RIVER EDGE
Kipp, Kinderkamack Rd., c. 1760.
Steuben (N. J. 47), New Bridge Rd., 1729 (1757).
Pell Zabriskie, 1027 Main St., 1760-90.
RIVER VALE
John Demarest* River Vale Ave., c. 1750.
Sheriff Haring Farm, River Vale Ave., c. 1750.
Wm. Holdrom (N. J. 686), River Vale Ave., 1763-76.
Vanderbilt, Prospect and River Vale aves., c. 1750.
ROCHELLE PARK
Samuel C. Demarest (N. J. 90), Rochelle Ave. at Essex St., 1824-26.
Lutkins (N. J. 159), Passaic St., 1760.
ROCKLEIGH
Nicholas Haring (N. J. 169), Piermont Rd., 1805.
Rose Haven School, Rockleigh Rd., 1741.
RUTHERFORD
John W. Berry (N. J. 468), Meadow Rd. and Crane Ave., 1804.
Kettell (Kingsland), 245 Union Ave., 1700-30.
SADDLE RIVER BOROUGH
Abram Ackerman House and Mill (N. J. 156), E. Saddle River Rd.,
1750-60.
James Ackerman (Robinson), E. Saddle River Rd. s. of E. Allendale
Ave., 1815.
OLD HOUSES AND CHURCHES 331
John Raymond Aschenbach, E. Saddle River Rd., 1750-90.
Aschenback (Smith), Chestnut Ridge Ave., 1765.
Scott House, E. Saddle River Rd., early 18th C.
Thomas Van Buskirk (N. J. 300), E. Saddle River Rd. and E. Allen-
dale Ave., 1708-70.
Van Buskirk-Ackerman (N. J. 331), E. Saddle River Rd., 1825.
Zion's Evangelical Lutheran Church (N. J. 330), E. Saddle River
Rd., 1820.
SADDLE RIVER TOWNSHIP
Samuel C. Demarest (N. J. 542), 511 Market St., 1820-37.
TEANECK
John Ackerman (N. J. 298), River Road, c. 1800.
Samuel Banta-Cady (N. J. 171), 1485 Teaneck Rd., 1830.
Hendrick Brinkerhoff-Demarest (N. J. 110), 493 Teaneck Rd., 1748.
Peter Demarest-Lippman, 961 Teaneck Rd., 1756.
Lozier, 1416 Teaneck Rd., 1830.
W. W. and C. W. Westervelt (N. J. 113), 190 Teaneck Rd., 1763.
TENAFLY
Christie-Parsels (N. J. 470), 195 Jefferson Ave., 1804-36.
Roelof Westervelt (N. J. 9), 81 Westervelt Ave., 1745.
UPPER SADDLE RIVER ..
Hopper-Goetschius, E. Saddle River Rd. and Lake St., 1713-28.
Saddle River Reformed Church (N. J. 255), E. Saddle River Rd., 1819.
WALDWICK
Banta, Wyckoff Ave. and Franklin Turnpike, 1800-30.
WASHINGTON
Van Emburgh-Foster (House of Seven Chimneys), Pascack Rd. and
Lafayette Ave., 1812.
WESTWOOD
Bogert, First Ave. and Mills St., 1770-90.
Van Wagoner, Kinderkamack Rd., 1802.
WOODCLIFF LAKE
Hendrick Banta, Pascack Rd., 1770.
WYCKOFF
John C. Stagg (N. J. 678), Sicomac Rd., 1762-97.
332 APPENDICES
Van Horn-Branford (N. J. 391), Lafayette Ave., c. 1745-75.
Albert Van Voorhees (N. J. 161), Franklin and Maple aves., c. 1824.
Van Voorhees-Quackenbush (Brownstone Inn) , Franklin and Wyckoff
aves., 1780.
S. and A. Willis (N. J. 378), Main St., 1774-1840.
Wyckoff Reformed Church (N. J. 338), Wyckoff Ave. nr. Franklin
Ave., 1806.
Recreational Facilities
Along 13 miles of the Hudson shore stretch the 1,200 acres of the
New Jersey section of Palisades Interstate Park, Bergen's chief public
recreational center. The river, the woods and the cliff, as high as 500
feet in some places, attract swimmers, hikers, campers, picnic parties,
boaters and horsemen. The sandy beaches have picnic tables and fire-
places, lockers and showers. Stalls for boats may be rented at the
Englewood, Alpine and Forest View basins. Picnicking is permitted
at the Forest View Basin. (See Swimming, Camping, Hiking.)
BADMINTON: Bergen County closed tournament at Y-for-all, 360
Main Street, 'Hackensack. Other courts: Hackensack Y.M.H.A.,
Rutherford High School, Radburn Community Center, and Engle-
wood, Hawthorne, Ridgewood and Maywood church gymnasiums.
BASEBALL: High school games in local school stadia Saturdays and
weekdays after school hours (7 innings). Twilight games throughout
the county by independent amateur teams.
BASKETBALL: High school, church and organizational teams play
at school, "Y" and private gymnasiums.
BOATING: Boat clubs along the Ramapo, Passaic, Hudson and
Hackensack rivers hold annual regattas on varying dates in June or
July; Rutherford Yacht Club outboard regatta in late April or May.
Rowboats and canoes for hire along Ramapo River (Oakland), Over-
peck Creek (Ridgefield Park), Passaic River (Carlstadt and East
Paterson) and Hackensack River (Hackensack and New Bridge).
Boat basins, Palisades Interstate Park.
BOWLING: More than 100 alleys available. Bergen County Inter-
club League, with 18 teams, is the most important of several in the
county.
RECREATIONAL FACILITIES 333
BOXING: Professional matches in larger communities at irregular
intervals. Diamond Gloves tournament sponsored annually by Bergen
Evening Record last week in August and early September.
CAMPING: Camp Palisades, on the cliff above Englewood Ferry, a
woodland area of 1 5 acres, has hot and cold showers, sewerage facilities,
community house, electricity, city drinking water, police protection;
maintained by Palisades Interstate Park Commission; resident manager.
Ross Camp Colony, just north of Washington Bridge in Palisades Inter-
state Park, 30 three-room cabins which can be rented furnished or
unfurnished; same facilities as Camp Palisades.
FOOTBALL: High school games in local school stadia.
GARDENS: Almost every Bergen County municipality has its garden
club, many of them affiliated with the Federation of Garden Clubs of
Bergen County, Union and Berry streets, Hackensack. Here may be
obtained information on exact dates of flower shows, held generally in
the spring and late September. Visitors are often admitted to both
commercial and private gardens upon written request in advance.
GOLF: Bendix: Aviation Golf Club, Route 6. Demarest: Aldecress
Country Club,* Anderson Avenue. East Pater son: Elmwood Country
Club, Route 4. Englewood: Englewood Country Club,"" Jones Road
Haworth: White Beeches Country Club,* Ha worth Drive and Ivy
Place. Hohokus Twp.: Houvenkopf Country Club,* Route 2 at New
York State line. Old Tap pan: Ripple Creek Golf Club, Cripple Bush
Road. Oradell: Hackensack Golf Club,* Soldier Hill Road. Parammi
Arcola Country Club,* Route 4 and Paramus Road; Orchard Hills
Country Club, Paramus Road north of Route 4; Ridgewood Country
Club,* Midland Avenue; Saddle River Golf and Country Club, Para-
mus Road north of Route 4. River Vale: River Vale Country Club,
River Vale Road. Teaneck: Phelps Manor Country Club, Bennett
Road. Tenafly: Knickerbocker Country Club, Knickerbocker Road
GYMNASTICS: Carlstadt Turn Verein, 500 Broad Street, Carlstadt;
T. J. Sokol Association, 14 Garden Street, Little Ferry; American
Gymnastic Society, Anderson Avenue, Fairview.
HIKING: The Shore Path (12/ 2 miles) in Palisades Interstate Park,
a broad, smooth, relatively level route which runs beside the Hudson
the entire length of the park, is composed of four hiking trails:
1. Bluff Point north to Englewood Boat Basin (2 l / 2 miles).
* Private; guests must be accompanied by members.
334 APPENDICES
Drinking fountains, fireplaces, picnic areas, Ross Camp Colony (camp-
ing privileges by the week) .
2. Englewood Boat Basin north to Alpine Boat Basin (5 miles).
Longest of the four hikes through virgin woodland; usual facilities.
3. Alpine Boat Basin north to Forest View Boat Basin (2 l / 2
miles). Historic sites and museums and usual facilities.
4. Forest View Basin north to Sneden's Landing (2 l /z miles).
Difficult trail through isolated territory; picnic area, pavilion, play-
ground.
In addition to the Shore Path, several trails take the steep, difficult
climb up the cliff from the river bank at Ross Camp Colony, Engle-
wood Playground, Excelsior Dock, Alpine Ferry Plaza and Forest View
Boat Basin.
The chief hiking path in the Ramapos is Cannonball Trail, north
of Oakland.
HOCKEY: River Vale Ice Arena, River Vale Road, River Vale;
skating after match.
HUNTING AND FISHING: Dates of open seasons and information
on bag limits, which change from year to year, obtainable when license
is purchased from municipal clerks or the New Jersey Fish and Game
Commission (resident fishing, $2.10, nonresident, $5.50; resident hunt-
ing and fishing,' $3.10, nonresident, $10.50; hunting same as fishing).
The county has 30 rod and gun clubs, some of them with posted
grounds and most of them affiliated with the Bergen County Federa-
tion of Sportsmen's Clubs and the Consolidated Sportsmen of New
Jersey.
Fishing: The streams and ponds of the county are stocked each year
with brook, brown and rainbow trout, bass, pike, yellow perch, pickerel
and bluegill sunfish. The open season is generally during January,
when pike, pickerel and perch may be taken, and from April 15 (be-
ginning of trout season) to the end of November. The following
streams and ponds are stocked at the places listed: Hackensack River
at River Vale and many small streams and ponds that feed it, includ-
ing Boiling Spring Brook at Old Tappan, Old Tappan Run at Old
Tappan, Pearl River Brook at Montvale, Teller's Brook at River Vale,
Tenekill Creek at Closter, Washington Spring Brook at Cherry Hill,
Holdrum's Pond at River Vale, Morrow Lake at Englewood, Roosevelt
Common Lake at Tenafly and Willow Lake at Little Ferry; Pascack
Creek at Montvale and its tributaries, which include Bear Creek at
Woodcliff Lake and Pascack Creek West at Northvale, Electric Lake
at Montvale, Gottlieb's Pond at Park Ridge and Woodcliff Lake at
Woodcliff Lake; Cole's Pond at Ridgewood; N.T.G. Lake at Ramsey;
RECREATIONAL FACILITIES 335
Van Emburgh's Pond at West Ridgewood; Valentine Brook at Haw-
thorne; Ramapo River at Oakland, known as the best trout stream in
the county; and Saddle River and the waters that flow into it, including
Hohokus Creek at Wyckoff, New Lake at Ridgewood, Pond Brook at
Campgaw, Sprout Brook at Arcola, Tallman Brook at Upper Saddle
River and White's Pond at Waldwick.
Hunting: Hunting areas for the most part are in the northern part
of the county, especially in the Ramapos (Oakland, Campgaw, Mah
wah, River Vale and Ramsey), and the Upper Saddle River section,
where deer abounds. Raccoon, duck, squirrel, otter, weasel, fox, musk-
rat, quail, rabbit, geese and grouse are native, and the Fish and Game
Commission has released pheasants, checker partridges and beavers
There is a bounty of $6 on foxes.
MUSEUMS: Demarest Family Museum, off River Road adjacent to
old French Cemetery, New Milford; contains Colonial and early State
documents and relics and Demarest family records. Bergen County
Historical Society, New Bridge; Colonial Zabriskie-Steuben House, re-
stored by the State and the WPA, contains relics, documents and
furniture of Colonial times. Huyler Dock House (1756), Shore Trail
(footpath) from Alpine Ferry, Palisades Interstate Park. Cornwall^
Headquarters (c. 1750), }/8 mile north of Alpine Ferry on Shore Trail,
Alpine; furnished in Colonial style by State Federation of Women's
Clubs; open daily in spring and summer, week ends only fall and
winter.
POLO: Pegasus Polo Club, Rockleigh; indoor polo November to
May, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8:30 P.M.; outdoor games at Rock-
leigh and Oradell during summer, Sundays at 3:30. College and club
teams scheduled.
RIDING: Closter: Oliver's Riding Stables, Old Dock Road. Fair Lawn:
Radburn Riding Academy, Fair Lawn Avenue. Hohokus Twp.: Cow
Town Ranch, Campgaw Road between Darlington and Fardale roads.
Midland Park: Stonewall Farm Riding Academy, Park Avenue. Mont-
vale: Oak Run Stables, Spring Valley Road near Grand Avenue.
Oradell: Central Riding Club, Grant Avenue; Platt's Riding Stables,
Soldier Hill Road and Summit Avenue. Paramus: Blue Ridge Stables,
90 Spring Valley Road; Rockingham Riding Academy, Forest Avenue
near Spring Valley Road. Rockleigh: Pegasus Riding Academy, Rock-
leigh Avenue. Washington: Mar-Bel Stables, Ridgewood Road near
Pine Lake entrance; Bighorn Riding Academy, Linwood and High-
land avenues.
336 APPENDICES
SKATING: Roller Skating: Rinks open daily 7:30-11 P.M.; matinees
Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, 2 or 2:30-5 P.M. Paramus Roller
Skating Rink, Route 2 north of Midland Avenue, Paramus; Leonia
Roller Skating Rink Inc., 373 Broad Avenue, Leonia (no Saturday
matinees) .
Ice Skating: Ponds and streams throughout county; River Vale Ice
Arena, River Vale Road, River Vale.
SWIMMING: Allendale: Crestwood Lake, W. Crestwood Avenue;
San Jacinto Club, Brookside and W. Crescent avenues. Dumont:
Dumont Natatorium, 16 S. Washington Avenue. Fair Lawn: Fair
Lawn Bathing Beach, River Road near Paterson boundary. Fort Lee:
Palisades Amusement Park Pool, 780 Palisade Avenue; Shadow Lake
Beach Club, Old Mill Road. Garfield: Y.M.C.A., 29 Outwater Lane
(members only). Hackensack: Hackensack Swimming Pool, River
Road north of Anderson Avenue; Maple Springs Beach, Hackensack
Avenue near Route 4; Oritani Club Pool, River Road (members only) ;
Y.M.C.A., 360 Main Street (members only); Y.M.H.A., 211 Essex
Street (members only); Y.W.C.A., 360 Main Street (members only).
Hillsdale: Pascack Valley Pool, Piermont Avenue and Cedar Lane.
Hohokus Twp.: Hopkins Lake, Fardale and Wyckoff avenues; Sunset
Lake, Island Road. Lyndhurst: Municipal pool, River Road and Court
Avenue. Oakland: Kutik's White Birch Grove, Oakland Avenue near
Bailey Avenue; Miller's Park Pool, Oakland Avenue north of Ponds
Road; Moog's Riverside Rest, West Oakland Avenue near Ramapo
River bridge; Oakland Beach, Beach Street and Oakland Avenue;
Oakland Chalet, Oakland Avenue; Ramapo Pleasure Land, both sides
of Ramapo River near intersection of Oakland and Ramapo avenues;
Sandy Beach, Spruce Street and Oakland Avenue; West Oakland Grove,
Ramapo River (across Ramapo River bridge) paralleling West Oakland
Avenue. Old Tappan: Lake Idlewild, Orangeburgh Road near Old
Tappan Road; Northern Valley Pool, Orangeburgh Road; Supply Pool,
Orangeburgh Road North near Old Tappan Road. Palisades Interstate
Park: Bloomer's Beach (Englewood Ferry), Ross Dock Camp Colony
(for campers only), Alpine Bathing Beach, north of Alpine-Yonkers
Ferry. Paramus: Paramus Bathing Beach, Paramus Road and Grove
Street; Ridgewood Country Club, Midland Avenue (members only),
Ridgewood: Gray don Pool, Lin wood Avenue (residents only).
Rochelle Park: Arcola Swimming Pool, Passaic Street. Upper Saddle
River: Anona Park Club Pool, W. Saddle River Road (members only).
Waldwick: Municipal pool, Prospect Avenue. Washington: Pine Lake,
Pascack and Ridgewood Roads.
TENNIS: Courts in every community. Numerous tournaments
CHRONOLOGY 337
sponsored by private tennis clubs, including the closed championships
at the court of the Leonia Tennis Club.
TRACK: St. Mary's Athletic Association of Dumont (A.A.U.)
sponsors meets at Dumont Athletic Field during summer. High school
meets during school season.
Chronology
1609 Sept. 12. Henry Hudson sails the Half Moon up Hudson
River.
1618 Dutch East India Company establishes a trading post called
Bergen in what is now Jersey City.
1630 July 12. Grant on west side of Hudson made to Michael
Pauw.
1638 Sarah Kierstede receives grant of 2,120 acres along Overpeck
Creek.
1641 Small fort and trading depot built at junction of Hackensack
River and Overpeck Creek.
1643 Indian uprising sweeps settlers out of territory west of the
Hudson.
1658 Trading post opens under Palisades.
1664 New Netherland conquered by English.
1668 Capt. William Sanford acquires for Nathaniel Kingsland
15,308 acres between Hackensack and Passaic rivers.
1675 County courts established by assembly.
1677 David des Marest settles on east bank of Hackensack River.
1683 Counties of Bergen, Essex, Middlesex and Monmouth created
by assembly; road boards set up.
1686 Dutch Reformed Church (on-the-Green) organized at
Hackensack.
1696 First Church-on-the-Green built.
1704 First Lutheran services held in barn near Hackensack.
Commissioners of Highways appointed to lay out roads.
1710 Boundary lines reset and Hackensack made county seat.
1715 May 19. Board of Freeholders provides for building jail and
courthouse on Hackensack Green.
1719 Vein of copper discovered in what is now North Arlington.
1730 First known school established at Paramus.
1761 Freeholders appropriate first sum for bridge building.
1768 First stagecoach operated from New Bridge, above Hacken-
sack, to Powles Hook (Jersey City) .
338 APPENDICES
1769 Washington Academy opened in Hackensack.
1774 June 25. Committee of Correspondence formed.
1775 Militia and Minute Men organized at Hackensack.
Wampum factory established at Park Ridge by John Camp-
bell.
1776 May 15. "His Majesty's Justices and Freeholders" hold last
meeting in Hackensack.
Nov. Washington retreats through county.
1777 Sept. Aaron Burr attacks British force at Arcola.
1778 British massacre Americans at River Vale.
1780 British and Hessians burn courthouse; county seat moved to
Yaughpaugh (Oakland).
1787 Cotton mill established at Waldwick by John Rosencrantz
1790 Population 12,601.
1797 First Methodist Episcopal church organized at Waldwick.
1800 Strawberry patches developed for New York market.
Population 15,156.
1802 Nov. 30. Bergen Turnpike Company receives first road
charter in county.
1804 Nov. Bank established at Powles Hook (Jersey City).
1810 Population 16,603.
1812 Cornelius Wortendyke opens wool-carding mill at Midland
Park.
1818 Bergen County Medical Society established.
1820 Population 18,178.
Townships authorized to levy taxes to educate "such children
as are paupers."
1825 Washington Bank established in Hackensack.
1830 Population 22,414.
Hackensack has 150 dwellings and 1,000 inhabitants.
1832 Paterson and Hudson River (horse) Railroad begins operating
Cholera epidemic takes many lives.
First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack organized.
1834 New Jersey and New York legislatures name commission to
study bridging of Hudson River.
1835 First steam locomotive, the MacNeil, is run on the tracks of
the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad.
1837 Feb. 7. Passaic County separates.
1840 Feb. Hudson County separates; population of Bergen County
reduced to 9,450.
1845 Lodi Congregational Church organized.
1846 School superintendents replace municipal school committees.
CHRONOLOGY 339
1849 May. Bergen County Mutual Fire Insurance Company or-
ganized.
1850 Population 14,708; Negro slaves number 41.
U. S. Census reveals 1,128 farms with 493 employees and
80,494 improved acres.
Baptists erect Fairview church at English Neighborhood.
1852 Episcopalians hold first services in Fort Lee.
May 12. Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders passes
first appropriation for "supporting the poor," $2,500.
1854 First suburban real estate development started at Rutherford
Park (Carlstadt).
1855 Lodi Chemical Works constructed by Robert Rennie.
Roman Catholics incorporate Church of St. Francis de Sales
at Lodi.
1856 July. Bergen County farmers are clearing large sums on
strawberry fields.
1857 Pearls found in Bergen brooks, but the rush soon abates.
1858 December. Bergen County Agricultural Society organized.
1859 December. Township school superintendents report "a most
melancholy state of things."
1860 Population 21,618.
Bergen County votes for Breckenridge, the Southern Demo-
crat, in preference to Lincoln or Douglas.
Census shows value of farms to have doubled during the
decade to $11,834,825, plus $340,845 for machinery and
implements, while value of garden produce has more than
tripled to $295,540.
1861 Bergen County opposes Lincoln administration as war is
declared.
1863 New Jersey permits incorporation of New York and New
Jersey Bridge Commission, to build a span across Hudson
River, preferably at Fort Lee; New York disapproves.
1867 Alexander Cass appointed first Superintendent of Public In-
struction.
1868 Purchasers paying as high as $500 an acre for property which
before the Civil War cost $50.
1869 Water mains are introduced in Hackensack.
1870 Population 31,033.
First library opens in Hackensack.
1871 State law making all public schools free spurs townships into
providing adequate facilities.
David Ackerson Pell elected first Republican sheriff.
340 APPENDICES
1872 March. First passenger train is run over the Erie Railroad
line between Hackensack and Paterson.
June. Bergen County Historical Society organized.
First brick yard established at Little Ferry.
1873 Ridgefield Park (West Shore) Railroad starts operating.
County School Superintendent Edgar Vreeland establishes
first kindergarten.
1875 Colorado potato bug begins a two-year attack on potato crop,
Mrs. Henry B. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony are refused
votes at Tenafly polls.
1879 October. Bergen County Agricultural Association sponsors
its first fair at Ho-Ho-Kus.
1880 Population 36,786.
First telegraph lines erected.
First manual training courses offered by the Garfield school
1882 Englewood Electric Company introduces electricity.
Telephone exchange set up in Hackensack by Domestic Tele-
phone Company.
Sept. Entire valley between Hohokus and Ridgewood flooded
with water several feet deep.
First Negro church organized at Ridgewood.
1887 Oritani Field Club established in Hackensack to foster
athletics.
1888 May. Hackensack Hospital opens, followed a week later by
Englewood Hospital.
1889 Dec. 2. Freeholders assume control of highways in county.
1890 Population 47,226.
Hundreds of acres, principally near Hackensack, are cut up
into building lots.
1891 Feb. 3. American Federation of Labor issues charter to
Hackensack Local 265.
1893 Golf course laid out by Ho-Ho-Kus Club.
1894 Borough Act leads to creation of numerous municipalities.
1895 June 5. Bergen Evening Record begins publication.
July 14. Cherry Hill, Hackensack, devastated by tornado.
1899 Small utilities merge into the Gas and Electric Company of
Bergen County.
Bergen County Traction Company completes its trolley route
from Fort Lee to Bogota.
County valuations reach $42,391,770, an increase of almost
100 percent in five years.
1900 Population 78,441, a gain of 66 percent in 10 years.
1900-02 Seventh Day Adventists organize.
CHRONOLOGY 341
1901 Synagogue built at Englewood.
Nov. 9. First trolley cars run through Hackensack.
Garfield Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church incor-
porated.
Christian Science Church established at Englewood.
1902 Lodi has five-week strike of dye-house employees.
1905 Public Service Corporation of New Jersey absorbs Gas and
Electric Company of Bergen County.
1907 Cinema producing companies begin operating in the Fort
Lee area.
The Great Train Robbery, first story picture ever made, is
filmed at Fort Lee.
1909 April. Mary Pickford makes screen debut at Fort Lee.
July. First bus runs between Paterson and Ridgewood.
Frank W. Goodale flies dirigible from Palisades Amusement
Park to Times Square and back.
First moving picture theatre, the "Bijou," opens in Hack-
ensack.
1910 Population 138,002.
1911 County valuations soar to $109,634,724.
Edgewater Tapestry Works open and make tapestries for
numerous museums and individuals.
1912 New $1,000,000 courthouse completed in Hackensack.
1914 Mosquito Extermination Commission created.
1915 Sept. 2. Seven-man Board of Freeholders declared legal after
referenda and court actions.
November. Road toll system abolished.
1916 First building for county isolation hospital (Bergen Pines)
erected in Paramus.
1917 Jan. 11. Fire and explosion, resulting from sabotage by
German spies, wrecks plant of Canadian Car and Foundry
Company at Kingsland (Lyndhurst) .
June 14. A total of 15,983 war service registrants found
tentatively eligible.
War Department establishes Camp Merritt in Dumont and
Cresskill, from which 478,566 left for Europe.
1920 Population 210,703, a gain of 76 percent during the decade.
1921 Bergen County Police Department organized by Freeholders,
1922 Prosecutor Archibald Hart asks Freeholders for $100,000 to
suppress sale of illegal liquor.
Bergen County Federation of Garden Clubs formed.
342 APPENDICES
1925 Legislation passed for construction of George Washington
Bridge.
1926 Woolen plants in Garfield and dye houses in Lodi closed by
strike.
1927 Bergen County Chamber of Commerce founded.
Sept. 21. Ground broken at Fort Lee for George Washing-
ton Bridge.
1929 Oct. Bergen County real estate boom crashes.
1930 Population 364,977, a gain of 73 percent during the decade.
1931 Oct. George Washington Bridge opens for traffic.
1933 Four-story Administrative Building erected adjoining the
courthouse.
1935 FHA building boom gets under way.
Harry C. Harper establishes first (now Packard-Bamberger)
supermarket.
1938 WPA-constructed municipal bus terminal completed at
Hackensack.
Aug. 5. Last trolley car runs between Paterson and Edge-
water.
County Planning Board issues first complete zoning survey.
1939 Eastern Bergen County Labor Industrial Council formed.
Bergen County has more than 30 percent of mortgage in-
surance applications and greatest number of commitments
made in all New Jersey.
Tercentenary of Hackensack Valley is celebrated.
Steuben House at New Bridge dedicated as historical shrine.
1940 Population 409,646.
Selected Bibliography
The following list does not include a number of standard reference
works such as histories of art, biographical and genealogical cyclopedias
and the various publications of the New Jersey Historical Society; nor
does it contain works treating very specialized aspects of the whole
State, such as its geology or constitutional history, nor broader treat-
ments such as the Colonial history of the Middle Atlantic States.
RECORDS
Minute Books, Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders, 1715-
Minute Books, Old Franklin Township.
BERGEN COUNTY PLANNING BOARD REPORTS
Annual Report of Progress, 1938.
Land Subdivision in Bergen County. March 1939.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 343
Passenger Transportation in Bergen County. June 1939.
Water Supply and Sanitation in Bergen County. October 1939.
Zoning in Bergen County. June 1938.
NEWSPAPERS
Bergen County Democrat, Hackensack, 1877-1919; Bergen Evening
Record, Hackensack; Bergen Review, Closter; Dumont Citizen;
Englewood Press; Fair Lawn and Paramus Clarion; Garfield News;
Hackensack Republican; Hasbrouck Heights Observer; Interboro
Review, Bergenfield; North Jersey Citizen, Tenafly; Northern Valley
Tribune, Tenafly; Pater son Chronicle and Essex and Bergen Ad-
vertiser, 1822-24; Pater son Courier, 1831-34; Paterson Daily
Guardian, 1885-1902; Paterson Daily Press, 1902-15; Paterson Daily
Register, 1859-65; Paterson Evening News; Paterson Intelligencer,
1825-49; Paterson Morning Call; Paterson Sunday Call, 1885-88;
Paterson Tri-Weekly Guardian, May-Nov. 1856; Paterson Weekly
Call, 1885-88; Paterson Weekly Guardian, 1857-84; Paterson Weekly
....Press, 1863-1902; Ridgewood News; South Bergen Eagle, Lynd-
hurst; South Bergen Review, Rutherford; Times Review, Teaneck;
Wallington Review; Wyckoff News.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS
Allen, Rufus B. New Jersey Education in the 1600's. Perth Amboy,
Raritan Bay Publishing Co., 1931. 121 p.
Annual Statistical Report. Hackensack, Division of Health, 1936.
34 p.
Bailey, Rosalie F. Pre -Revolutionary Dutch Houses and Families. New
York, Morrow, 1936. 612 p.
Barber, John W., and Henry Howe. Historical Collections of the
State of New Jersey. New York, S. Tuttle, 1844. 512 p.
Bird, Eugene K. Rambling Reminiscences. Hackensack Republican,
1922. 31 p.
. Wind-jammers of the Hackensack. Hackensack Republican,
1916. 9 p.
Camp Merritt, New Jersey, September 1917 January, 1920. Camp
Merritt, Camp Merritt Memorial Association, 1924. 48 p.
Catlin, George L. Suburban Homes. New York, Erie Railway Co.,
1871, 97 p.: 1872, 117 p.
Clayton, W. Woodford. History of Bergen and Passaic Counties.
Philadelphia, Everts and Peck, 1882. 577 p.
Demarest, Rev. David D. The Huguenots on the Hackensack. New
Brunswick, Daily Fredonian, 1886. 24 p.
Demarest, Mary A. and William H. S. The Demarest Family. New
344 APPENDICES
Brunswick, Thatcher-Anderson Co., 1938. 576 p.
Doremus, Cornelius. Bench and Bar and Courts of Bergen County.
1923. 18 p.
General Report of the Municipal Government. Hackensack, 1935.
95 p.
Gordon, Thomas F. Gazetteer of the State of New Jersey. Trenton,
D. Fenton, 1834. 604 p.
Haring, John J. Floating Chips. 1924. 139 p.
Harvey, Cornelius B., ed. Genealogical History of Hudson and Bergen
County. New York, New Jersey Genealogical Company, 1900.
617 p.
Heneveld, Rev. George C. History of Wyckoff Reformed Church.
Wyckoff News, 1931.
Hudson, Robert B. Radhurn, A Plan of Living. New York, Ameri-
can Association for Adult Education, 1934. 118 p.
Humphrey, J. A. Englewood. New York, Ogilvie, 1899. 237 p.
Koehler, Francis C. Three Hundred 'Years. Chester, N. J., 1940.
Kull, Irving S., ed. New Jersey: A History. New York, American
Historical Society, 1930. 5 vol.
Lane, Wheaton J. From Indian Trail to Iron Horse. Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1939. 473 p.
Learning, Aaron, and Jacob Spicer. The Grants, Concessions, and
Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey. Somerville,
Honeyman and Co., 1881. 763 p. reprint.
Lee, Francis B. New Jersey as a Colony and as a State. New York,
Publishing Society of New Jersey, 1902. 5 vol.
Mack, A. C. Palisades of the Hudson. Edgewater, Palisades Press,
1909. 58 p.
McNomee, Harry G. The Church of the Ponds. Pompton Lakes,
The Bulletin, 1935. 68 p.
Morrison, George E. Hackensack and Bergen County. Hackensack
Real Estate Board, 1926. 96 p.
Nelson, William, and Charles A. Shriner. History of Paterson and Its
Environs. New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1920.
Vol. I.
N. J. Department of Agriculture. Agriculture in New Jersey.
Trenton, 1937. Circular 267. 73 p.
. Some Old Farms and Farmhouses in New Jersey. Trenton,
1938.
New Jersey Magazine. Vol. I, May-Oct. 1867.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 345
New Jersey Palisades Commission Report 1899-1909. Trenton,
MacCrellish.
New Mil ford. Planning and Adjustment Board, 1939.
Pelletier, J. Arthur. Closter. 1938.
Read, D. D., ed. History of Hackensack. Hackensack, Bergen County
Democrat, 1898. 133 p.
Records of the Reformed Dutch Churches of Hackensack and Schraal-
enburgh. New York, Collections of the Holland Society, 1891.
Sackett, William E., ed. New Jersey's First Citizens. Paterson, J. J.
Scannell, 1917-18. 564 p.; Vol. 2, J. J. Scannell, ed., 1919-20.
713 p.
Sisson, Eva B. Story of Tenafly. Tenafly Trust Co., 1939. 74 p.
Smith, Samuel. History of the Colony Nova-Caesaria, or New Jersey.
Trenton, "William S. Sharpe, 1890. 613 p. reprint.
Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New Jersey. Historic Road-
sides. Plainfield, 1928. 115 p.
Sterling, Adaline W. The Book of Englewood. Englewood, Mayor
and Council, 1922. 508 p.
Storms, J. C. Origin of the Jackson-Whites of the Ramapo Moun-
tains. Park Ridge, 1936. 26 p.
. The Oldest Inhabitant. Park Ridge, 1934. 72 p.
. The Story of Wampum. Park Ridge, 1936. 32 p.
Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bergen County Council of Religious
Education and the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bergen County
Sunday School Association. 1937.
The Old Church on the Green. Hackensack, 250th Anniversary Pro-
gram.
Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Bergen County Extension Service of
Agriculture in Home Economics. Hackensack, 1939. 12 p.
Van Valen, J. M. History of Bergen County. New York, New
Jersey Publishing and Engraving Company, 1900. 691 p.
Walker, A. H. Atlas of Bergen County, 1776-1876. Reading, C. C.
Pease.
Westervelt, Frances A. History of Bergen County, 1620-1923. New
York, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1923. 3 vol.
. The Final Century of the Wampum Industry in Bergen
County. Bergen County Historical Society, 1924. 24 p.
Whitehead, John. The Passaic Valley. New York, New Jersey Genea-
logical Co., 1901. 2 vol.
Woodward, Carl Raymond. The Development of Agriculture in New
Jersey, 1640-1880. New Brunswick, N. J. Agricultural Experiment
Station, 1927. 321 p.
Index
Religious denominations are listed under "churches," historic buildings under
"houses," manufactured products under "industries," immigrants under "national
groups" and modes of travel under "transportation."
Ackerson, Garry, 24
Acquackanonk, 13, 19
Administrative Building, Bergen County
(see Public buildings)
Advance Dye Works, 293
Agricultural Extension Service, 83, 85
Agriculture, 16, 35, 68-88, 285, 292,
302, 307
Air Associates Inc., 113, 285
Allendale, 306-7
Allison, John, 239
Alpine, 278-9
Aluminum Co., 112-3, 267
American Brake. Shoe and Foundry Co.,
106, 114, 305
American Cigar Box Co., 106
American E. C. and Schultz Powder Co.,
105
American Legion, 61
American Pegamoid Co., 105
Ammann, O. H., 146
Anderson Lumber Co., 293
Andre, Ma j. John, 15,277
Archer Daniels Midland Co., 113, 119
Architecture, 155-68
Arcola, 14, 303
Arensberg, Walter, 260-1
Arlington Copper Co., 91
Armstrong, Maj. Edwin H., 278
Astor Trading Post, 94-5, 297
Auryansen, James, 232
Austin Co., 168
B
Baker, Alfred Zantzinger, 240
Banking, 95, 98, 102-3, 106, 112
Banta, Epke (Egbert), 161
Banta, John R. T., 132
Barret, Palmer and Heal, 106
Barrett Co., 119, 267
Barton, Catherine Greff, 241-2
Baylor, Col. George, 13, 295
Becton, Dickinson and Co., 110, 113
Bee, The, 222
Bellman Brook Bleachery, 110
Bendix, 285-6
Bendix, Vincent, 286
Bendix Aviation Corp., 113, 114, 167, 285
Bentz, John, 240
Berdan, Elizabeth M., 84
Bergen (Village), 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15
Bergen County Agricultural Assn., 73-4,
79
Bergen County Board of Agriculture, 82
Bergen County Board of Chosen Free-
holders, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 23, 27, 28,
31, 38-9, 41, 50-3, 54, 64, 122, 124,
125, 126, 130, 137, 138-9, 143, 145,
153, 219,245
Bergen County Chamber of Commerce,
47, 57, 84, 114-5
Bergen County Democrat, 26, 27, 28,
221
Bergen County Fed. of Garden Clubs, 84
Bergen County Gazette, 220
Bergen County Herald, 223-4
Bergen County Historical Soc., 49, 92,
158, 230, 284
Bergen County Journal, 220, 221
Bergen County Junior College, 214
Bergen County Medical Soc., 59
Bergen County Patriot, 26, 221
Bergen County Planning Board, 49, 56,
85-6, 120, 144, 149, 151, 154
Bergen County Teachers' Institute, 205
Bergen County Traction Co., 140, 141
Bergen Daily News, 125
Bergen Evening Record, 118, 224-5, 290
Bergen Express and Pater son Advertiser,
217
Bergen Pines, 59-62, 64, 166
346
INDEX 347
Bergen Turnpike, 81, 125, 129-30, 140,
141, 143
Bergenfield, 274
Berry, Capt. Henry, 123, 124
Berry, Capt. John, 7, 124
Berry, John J., 102-3
Berry, W. H., 94
Bertholf, Rev. Guilliam, 184
Beuerlein nursery, 88
Bierhals, Otto, 240
Bierstadt, Albert, 233
Binder, J. W., 47, 146
Bird, Eugene K., 244
Blair, William, 94
Blauvelt, Cornelius L., 24
Blauvelt, Hiram B. Demarest, 49
Blauvelt, Margaret D., 283
Boas, Franz, 264
Bobbink and Atkins Nursery, 88
Bogart, Gilbert D., 29
Bogert, Albert D., 103
Bogert, Cornelius V. R., 166
Bogota, 86, 110, 284
Bogota Paper Co., 10 J
Boiling Springs (see East Rutherford)
Boiling Springs Bleachery, 293
Borg, John, 146, 224
Boskerk, Cornelius, 190
Boudinot, Elias, 7
Bougaert, RoeliflF, 284
Boyd, Adam, 127
Boyd, Rutherford, 237
Brinkerhoff, James I., 24
British (see National groups, English)
Brookdale Bleachery, 105
Browing, J. Hull, 273
Brown, Abraham, 98
Brown, Henry, 98
Brown, Robert Carlton (Bob), 259
Browne, Lewis Allen, 261
Bull, Charles Livingston, 234
Bull, Harrison, 104
Burdett family, 122
Burkhart family, 238
Burns and Smith, 97, 103, 105
Burr, Aaron, 14, 15, 301
Burr, Amelia Josephine, 263
Burton, Richard, 264
Cafarelli, Michele A., 240
Camp Merritt, 44-5, 210, 274, 275
Campbell, John P., 246
Campbell family, 91-2, 297
Campbell Wall Paper Co., 106, 110, 117
Campgaw (see Franklin Lakes)
Canadian Car and Foundry Co., 40, 109,
294
Carlstadt, 28, 32, 171-2, 293-4
Carls tad 't Free Press, 223
Carlton Hill (see East Rutherford)
Carteret, Gov. Philip, 6, 7, 121, 197
Casey, Edward Pearce, 165
Cass, Alexander, 207
Cassedy, John, 19
Cassi, Oreste L., 242
Caston plant, 223
Catalanatti, Luigi, 253
Olery, 86-7, 302
Chapman, Charles S., 235
Chase, Grace Koster, 84
Cherry Hill, 31,284
Child labor, 116
Child welfare, 63-4
Cholera epidemic, 1 8
Choral societies, 251-3
Church-on- the-Green, 14, 161, 183-4,
189, 283
Churches, 181-95, 290; Baha'i, 194; Bap-
tist, 177, 193; Christian Science, 193;
Congregational, 191; Dutch Reformed,
14, 161, 165, 176-7, 181-90, 226-7,
249, 269-70, 275, 277, 283, 302, 304,
305, 306; Episcopal, 165, 166, 182, 191-
2, 193, 269, 272, 273; Greek Orthodox,
176, 178, 193; Hebrew, 193, 270; Hun-
garian Reformed, 177; Lutheran, 181,
190; Methodist, 190-1, 193; Nonde-
nominational, 194; Norwegian Evange-
lical, 178, 193; Presbyterian, 191, 274;
Protestant Slovak, 176; Quaker, 194;
Roman Catholic, 165, 173, 174-5, 176,
177, 192, 213, 269, 271, 272; Seventh
Day Adventist, 193
City Housing Corp., 292
Civil War, 25-7, 96, 98, 221
Clarke, Dumont, 275
Clayton, W. W., 256
Cliff side Park, 268-9
Clinton, De Witt Jr., 251
Clinton Iron Works, 93
Clokey, Allison A., 213
Closter, 29, 275-6
Cole, Barney, 123
Cole, Christopher, 123
Cole, Thomas, 233
Collignon Brothers, 103
Colonization, 5-8
Columbia Protektosite Co., 114
348
INDEX
Colver, Alice Ross, 264
Committee of correspondence, 1 1
Committee of safety, 1 1
Communipaw (see Jersey City)
Commuters, 29, 151, 268 ff.
Comstock, Enos Benjamin, 240
Concession and Agreement, 6, 123
Conestoga wagon, 128
Conrad, Otto, 114
Consolidated Film Industries, 114, 268
Constitutional Convention of 1844, 19
Continental Army, 11, 12, 13, 14, 70
Continental Congress, 14
Continental Paper Folding Box Co., 269
Cooper, Tunis R., 97
Cooper, William, 285
Copperheads, 25
Corduroy Rd., 126
Corn Products Refining Co., 113, 267
Cornbury, Lord, 184
Cornwall, Dean, 235
Cornwallis, Lord, 12, 13
Cortelyou, Jacob, 8
County Act, 19
Courthouse, Bergen County
(see Public buildings)
Courts, 6, 7,9, 13, 53-4, 55
Covey, Arthur S., 237
Coytesville, 107, 234
Crazin Mfg. Co., 105
Cresskill, 275
Crump, James Irving, 263
Crystal Lake (see Franklin Lakes)
Curtenius, Rev. Antonius, 185
D
Daille, Rev. Pierre, 183
Daily Times, 225
Dairying, 72, 292, 306, 307
Dana family, 254-5
Dater, John Y., 26
Davis, Alexander Jackson, 161
Dawes, B. Dexter, 239
Day, William, 161
Dederick, Hans, 124
Delaware and Raritan Canal Co., 202
D. L. and W. R. R., 114
Demarest, 275
Demarest, Rev. Cornelius, 187
Demarest, David A., 249
Demarest, Isaac D., 249
Demarest, Jacobus, 170
Demarest, John A., 208
Demarest, P. V. B., 104
Demarest, Thomas W., 135
Demarest family, 123
Demarest woolen mill, 97, 103
Democratic Party, 18, 22-3, 28, 37-40,
218
Depression, 47-8
des Marest, David, 8, 182-3, 283
De Visne, Capt. Philip, 301
De Voe, Andrew Jackson, 82
De Vries, Capt. David Pietersen, 5
Dewsnap, Mrs. Mark, 208
Deyoe, M. B., 104
Dirks, Rudy, 234
Domestic Telephone Co., 36
Du Buis, Alfred, 239
Dumont, 34, 274-5
Dundee Mfg. Co., 94
Dunn, Harvey, 235
Dupuy, John J., 101
Durand, A. B., 233
Dutch East India Co., 4, 5
Dutch West India Co., 5
E
East Jersey, 1
East Paterson, 171, 292
East Rutherford, 29, 113, 293
Eaton, C. Harry, 234
E. C. Co., 105
Eckerson, Col. Cornelius, 95, 297
Edgewater, 110, 112-3, 267-8
Edgewater Looms, 232-3
Edsall, Samuel, 7
Electric Co. of N. J., 3 6
Elsworth, Jeredine, 127
Elterich Art Tile Stove Co., 105
Ely, Matt C., 146
Embury, Aymar II, 162
Emerson, 296
Englewood, 12, 14, 29, 111, 199, 266,
267, 271-2, 282
Englewood Cliffs, 266, 272
Englewood Electric Co., 3 5
English, Thomas Dunn, 26, 255-6
English Neighborhood, 8, 170
Ennet, Robert, 1 3 1
Erie R. R., 28, 43, 99-100, 116, 134, 135,
136, 152-3, 279, 287, 299
Fair Lawn, 290, 292
Fairs, 79, 301
Fairview, 32, 86, 171, 268, 303
INDEX 349
Fardale, 305
Far view, 303
Faulkner, Rev. Justus, 190
Federal Housing Administration, 292
Federated Boards of Education of Bergen
County, 2 1 3
Fermi, Enrico, 270
Ferriss, Hugh, 260
Filton, Theodore, 229
Finances, 55-6
Fisher, Mary A., 273
Fitzhugh, Percy Keese, 263
Flintkote Co., 113
Floods, 31
Fokker, Anthony, 109
Folklore, 30
Ford Motor Co., 110, 112, 267
Foringer, Alonzo Early, 240
Forstmann and Huffman, 109, 117
Fort Amsterdam, 6
Fort Constitution, 12
Fort Lee, 12, 13, 33, 38, 40, 47-8, 70,
86, 107, 268, 270
Fort Lee and N. Y. Steam Boat Co., 131
Fort Lee Fireside, 256
Fort Lee Law and Order Soc., 3 3
Fortenbach mill, 105
Fortenbach Watch Case Mfg. Co., 98
4-H Clubs, 85
Fowler, O. S., 298
France, Thomas, 8
Franklin Lakes, 306
Franklin Twp., 19, 33, 72, 206
Frelinghuysen, Rev. Theodorus, 226-7
French and Indian War, 10
Frequency Modulation, 278-9
Freund, Walter J., 153
Friend, Anita, 242
Fritsch plant, 99, 101
Froleigh, Rev. Solomon, 186-7
Fuchsand Land, 110
Fuller, Andrew, S., 77-8, 256
Fulton, Robert, 131
Gambling, 33, 37
Garden State Hosiery Co., 114
Gardner Brickyard, 102
Garfield, 6, 29, 32, 43, 46, 86, 101,
110, 111, 117, 171,291
Garfield Clothing Co., 116
Garfield Worsted Mills, 109
Gas and Electric Co. of Bergen County, 3 6
Gaugler, Joseph P., 239
Geology, 1-2
George III, 1 1
George Washington Memorial Bridge, 47,
48, 146-7, 154, 168, 267, 268, 279, 288
Gillespie, William, 192
Givernaud Brothers, 103, 117
Glen Rock, 301-2
Godwin, Abraham, 300
Godwin ville, 17, 77, 187, 200, 300
Goetschius, Rev. Johannes H., 185, 199,
227
Gordon, James Reilly, 166
Government, 6, 8, 9, 10, 50-66
Graff, Rev. William, 190
Graham, George, 96
Grange, the, 83
Grantwood, 259, 268
Great Bear Spring Co., 269
Green, Ashbel, 256
Green, The, 282-3
Greene, Gen. Nathaniel, 12
Gristmills, 16, 72, 90-1, 92-3, 95, 97,
104, 296, 306
Grofe, Ferde, 253
Grosvernor, William M., 257
Guttenberg, 33
Hackensack, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17,
21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36,
43, 46, 47, 50, 59, 63, 111, 128, 228-
9, 280-3
Hackensack and N. Y. R. R., 135, 136
Hackensack Brick Co., 1 14
Hackensack Gas Light Co., 35
Hackensack meadows, 114
Hackensack Melon, 3 5
Hackensack Newsman, 216, 217
Hackensack Republican, 221-2
Hackensack River, 94, 280, 288
Hackensack Star and Bergen County
Farmer, 72, 217-8
Hackensack Twp., 73
Hackensack Valley, 81, 280-8
Hackensack Water Co., 36, 298
Haeghoort, Rev. Gerard, 227
Halifax, 305
Hall Fishing Tackle Co., 104
Halstead, Winifred, 263
Hamilton, Alexander, 17
Handfield Brickyard, 102
Handicrafts, 231-3
Hammargren, F. E., 242
Harding, Ernest A., 209
350
INDEX
Raring, Dr. John J., 77, 104, 256
Harrington Park, 277
Harrington Twp., 33, 296
Hart, George O. "Pop," 234-5
Harvey, Alexander, 263
Hasbrouck Heights, 286-7
Hawkey, Dick, 125
Haworth, 275
Helicon Hall, 258
Henkel's piggery, 88
Hennessy, Charles O'Connor, 40
Herman, Anita, 217
Hessians, 13
Heyden Chemical Co., 43, 101, 109
Heyliger, William, 263-4
Hills Brothers, 168
Hillsdale, 297
Himmers, William M., 37
Hird, Lewis A., 146
Hobbs, Charles M. Jr., 252, 253
Ho-Ho-Kus Borough, 79, 300-1
Hohokus Twp., 33, 36, 86, 300, 305
Holland Tunnel, 145
Holman, George B., 105
Holsman, Daniel, 26
Holt plant, 104
Hooper, Andrew, 75
Hopkins and Dickinson Mfg. Co., 99, 101
Hopper, Abram, 300
Hopper, Henry, 90
Hopper, Ike, 80
Hoppertown (see Ho-Ho-Kus)
Home, Herman Harrell, 264
Horseracing, 33,37,79,301
Hospitals, 59, 64, 65-6, 267, 274, 282
Hotels, 32, 108
Houses: Blanch, 15, 277; De Groot, 159;
Demarest (Closter), 159; Demarest,
Samuel, 49, 156, 157, 158, 283; Fow-
ler's Follies, 298; Haring, 156, 158;
Hermitage, 15, 301; Holdrum- Wana-
maker, 160; Joseph Jefferson, 301; Man-
sion, 13, 283; Naugle-Aureyonson, 158;
Octagonal, 298; Old '76, 277; Old
Mansion, 300; Scott, 159; Steuben, 15,
49, 157-8, 284; Terhune, 158; Van-
derbilt, 157; Vreeland, 159, 160; Wes-
tervelt, 158; Wortendyke, 160; Wort-
endyke Barn, 160; Zabriskie, 160
Howe, Adm. Richard, 12
Hudson, Henry, 4, 5
Hudson County, 16, 18, 95
Hudson River Traction Co., 142
Huguenots, 8, 169, 181, 183, 273, 283
Huhn, Bruno, 252
Hume, Raphael, 165
Huntman. Morason, 194
Hunton Iron Foundry, 97
Huyler, John, 24, 132
Huyler and Rutan, 104
Immigration, 19, 31, 290
Impartial Register, 217
Indians, 4, 5,6, 169,296, 301
Industrial valuations, 89, 106-7, 109-11
Industries, 16-7, 21; abattoirs, 99, 285;
advertising displays, 269; airplane parts,
109-10, 113, 285, 292; automobiles,
267; baby carriages, 101; basketmaking,
96; bobbins, 99, 103; books, 106; bottle
caps, 113; brakeshoes, 106, 114, 305;
brickmaking, 99, 101-2, 103, 286;
brushes, 106, 114; burlap bags, 294; but-
tonmaking, 113, 175; cabinets, 103;
candles, 103, 114; carbon electrodes,
267; carriages, 94, 97, 104; celluloid,
292; chairs, 97, 103; chemicals, 96, 99,
103, 104, 105, 106, 110, 112, 113, 114,
269, 285, 294; cider, 103, 306; clean-
ing, 105; clothing, 112, 113, 114, 292,
294, 297; coal tar, 113, 267; coffee, 113;
distilling, 93, 95, 103; drugs, 294; elec-
trical supplies, 112, 113; engine special-
ties, 114; farm implements, 96; fishing,
113; foods, 267; gas machines, 269;
glass, 93; horse collars, 103; hosiery,
114, 302; ice cream, 99; iron, 16, 93,
97; jewelry, 99; labels, 297, 306; lamp-
wicks, 97; lenses, 104; lime, 99; litho-
graphing supplies, 110; locks, 101; lum-
ber, 30, 94, 96, 105; machinery, 113,
294; mining, 91, 93, 98, 294-5; muni-
tions, 93, 105, 109; musical reeds, 114;
neckwear, 114; nickel, 101; oil, 98, 101,
110, 113, 294; packaging machinery,
112; paint, 269, 294; paper, 94, 95, 104,
105, 106, 107, 110, 112, 114, 269,
284, 292; paving materials, 267; pepsin,
104; perfumes, 101; photography, 104;
pottery, 93; printing, 114; printing sup-
plies, 112, 113; pumps, 302; quarrying,
91; rat traps, 106; refrigerator cars, 101;
roofing materials, 110, 113, 267; rubber
goods, 104, 302; sailmaking, 94; shades,
103, 104; sheepskins, 105; shipbuilding,
98, 122; shoes, 103; slippers, 114; soap,
267; sporting goods, 101; stationery,
106; steel parts, 294; stonecutting, 292;
INDEX 351
sugar, 110; sunglasses, 113, 114; surgi-
cal supplies, 105, 110, 113, 114; sweat-
ers, 114; textiles, 16, 17, 92, 93-4, 95,
96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107,
110, 112, 114, 291, 292, 293, 302; to-
bacco, 93; type cases, 103; typewriting
supplies, 104, 114, 297; velocipedes, 101;
watch cases, 103; waxed paper, 112;
well-pipes, 99; wires, 269; wood prod-
ucts, 269
Industry and Commerce, 89-119
Influenza epidemic, 44
Insurance, 73
Jackson Whites, 179-80, 305
Jallade, Louis E,. 167
James, Duke of York, 6
James, William, 258
Jansen, William, 121
Jefferson, Joseph, 79, 230, 301
Jersey City, 12, 13, 14, 19,93
Jersey City and Albany R. R., 136
Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson St.
Ry. Co., 141, 142
Jersey City Water Supply Co., 36
Johnson, Andrew, 8
Johnson, William M., 37, 38, 106
Johnson Free Public Library, 166, 282
Jones, J. Wyman, 29, 271
Jones, John R., 252
Joosten, Rutgert, 8
Joralemon family, 98
Jordan, James, 269
K
Karfiol, Bernard, 259-60
Kasschau, Frank, 252
Kenwood, 303
Kierstede, Sarah, 5
Kilmer, Joyce, 261, 305
Kimball, William C., 221
Kinderkamack (see Emerson)
Kinderkamack Rd., 126, 295
Kingsland (see Lyndhurst)
Kingsland, Edmund, 170
Kingsland, Nathaniel, 7
Kingsland, Stephen, 98
Kingsland explosion, 40-1, 109, 294
Kinzley, Capt. "Joe," 131
Kipp, Nicasie, 8
Klein, Dr. Carl, 294
Kleiner (Cleiser), Lorentz, 232
Klinge, Gustav, 106
Koehler, Francis C., 49, 257
KomrofF, Manuel, 259
Kreymborg, Alfred, 260-1
Krone Brothers, 106
Kuypers, Rev. Warmoldus, 186-7
Labor, 115-9, 173
Lafayette, Marquis de. 14
Lafayette Academy, 203
Lamb, Bernard, 301
Lamb family, 238-9,240
Lamb Studios, 238-9, 272
Land disputes, 5, 10
Land speculation, 28-30, 34-5, 47, 48,
102, 116
Landscape, The, 222
Larson, Gov. Morgan F., 147
LeBrocq, Philip, 106
LeClear, Thomas, 233
Lectures, 230-1
Lee, Ma j. Henry, 14, 15
Leich, Chester, 236
Lemmerman, Henry, 29
Leonia, 235, 266, 270-1
Leslie Co., 114,294
Lever Brothers, 119, 267
Lewis, Sinclair, 258
Liberty Loan, 42, 43
Liberty Pole (see Englewood)
Libraries, 230, 267
Licht, Lawrence, 167
Lincoln, Joseph C., 261
Lincoln Tunnel, 147, 152, 280
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 262
Lindenthal, Gustave, 145
Link, Charles, 105
Linn, William A., 112
Literary societies, 228-31
Literature, 254-64
Little Ferry, 32, 34, 171, 286
Little theatres, 245-6, 247-9
Livingston, Gov. William, 14
Lloyd, Hugh, 263
Lodi, 32, 34, 117, 171,291-2
Lodi Chemical Works, 96
Lodi Mfg. Co., 94
Lodi Print Works, 1 1 5
LodiR. R., 136
Lodi Twp., 33,285
Long Dock Co., 134
Loomis, Chester, 234
Lord's Farmers, 194
352 INDEX
Lowe Paper Co., 106, 269
Lozier, Henry, 132
Lozier, John B., 232
Lozier, John S., 132
Lozier, Capt. Stephen, 122
Luyster, Wilbur A., 252
Ly decker, Rev. Garret, 186, 271
Lyndhurst, 19, 86, 109, 171, 293, 294
Lyon, Bradford W., 217
M
MacKay, Robert, 234
Mackay, William B., 40, 146
MacKenzie, William, 96
Mahwah, 305
Mahwah Water Co., 36
Mallet, Daniel Trowbridge, 241
Manhattan (see New York City)
Marsellus, Henry, 29
Masonic Club, 61
Masonicus, 305
Maywood, 32, 284-5
Maywood and Citro Chemical Works, 114
Maywood Art Tile Co., 105
McCormick, Howard, 236
McKee and Harrison, 101
McNulty, Rev. William, 192
Mehrhof Brothers,. 102, 131
Mercer, Gen. Hugh, 12
Mercer, James W., 3 8
Meremiah, John, 98
Merrill, Louis F., 83
Merritt, Gen. Wesley, 44
Metal castings, 294
Mexican War, 24
Michaux, Andrew, 71
Midland Park, 302
Midland Park R. R., 302
Midland R. R. of N. J., 136
Midland Twp., 33
Militia, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 24, 25
Mitchell, Winifred, 233
Mittag and Volger, 104, 114, 297
Molinari, Anton, 104
Montvale, 296, 298
Moonachie, 286
Moroso, John, 263
Morris and Essex R. R., 134
Morrow, Elizabeth Cutter, 262
Morrow, Dr. Joseph R., 59
Morrow and Son, 96, 104
Morse, Jean H., 239
Morsemere (see Ridgefield and Palisades
Park)
Mosquito Extermination Comm., 57-8
Motion pictures, 40, 107-9, 114, 249, 268
Music, 249-54, 271
N
National groups, 169-80; Austrians, 177;
Canadians, 177; Czechoslovaks, 170,
175-6, 286, 292, 294; Dutch, 4, 7, 15,
16, 19, 155, 169, 170, 176-7, 198, 227-
8, 273, 275, 277, 280, 286, 289, 299,
302, 306, 307; English, 6, 7, 11, 12,
13, 14, 19, 70, 159, 170, 177, 182,
227, 289, 295; Finns, 193; Flemings,
7, 156; French, 177; Germans, 7, 19,
170, 171-2, 193, 267, 275, 286, 293-4;
Hungarians, 177, 292; Irish, 170, 177,
178, 267; Italians, 170, 173-4, 193, 267,
269, 270, 277, 282, 286, 291, 292, 294,
296; Norwegians, 177; Poles, 8, 170,
174-5, 193, 267, 286, 292, 293, 294,
305; Russians, 177; Scots, 7, 19, 170,
177; Swedes, 177, 193; Swiss, 177
National Guard, 3 1
National Silk Dyeing Co., 110
National Sugar Refining Co., 113, 119,
267
Nearing, Scott, 264
Needham, George W., 253
Negroes, 23, 28, 178-9, 193, 208, 282,
305
Netro Chemical Co., 109
New Amsterdam (see New York City)
New Barbadoes Twp., 9, 14, 33, 103, 199
New Bridge, 5, 284
N. J. and Hudson River Ry. and Ferry
Co., 141, 142
N. J. and N. Y. R. R., 135, 152, 153,
287, 296, 298
N. J. Board of Education, 203-4
N. J. Board of Public Utilities Commis-
sioners, 153
N. J. Legislature, 19, 26, 124, 128, 130,
134, 139, 153, 197, 200, 201-2, 208, 209
N. J. Medical Soc., 59
N. J. Midland R. R., 135-6
N. J. Mink Farm, 88
N. J. R. R., 132
NewMilford, 8, 86, 283
New Netherland, 5
New Netherland Council, 6
N. Y. and Erie R. R., 133
N. Y. and N. J. Bridge Comm., 144
N. Y. and N. J. Telephone Co., 36
N. Y. and Oswego Midland R. R., 136
INDEX
353
N. Y. Central R. R., 135, 136,287
New York City, 6, 7, 16, 120
N. Y., Susquehanna and Western R. R.,
117, 135-6, 152, 268, 281, 287
N. Y. Water Proof Paper Co., 99
N. Y., West Shore and Buffalo R. R., 136
Newark and Hackensack Traction Co.,
141, 142
Newell, Peter, 234
Newspapers, 136, 172, 173-4, 175, 177,
217-25, 227, 290
Newton (see Ridgewood)
Nichols, Seth, 99
Niehaus, Charles Henry, 241
North Arlington, 19
North Bergen, 18
North Jersey Rapid Transit Com.j 153
North Jersey Transit Comm., 154
Northern R. R. Communities Assn., 152,
279
Northern R. R. of N. J., 135, 152-3,
279-80
Northern Valley, 266-80
Northvale, 277
Norwood, 277
Noyes, Weller H., 144
o
Oakland, 305-6
Oblenis and Bogert, 103
Ogden, Samuel, 127
Old Bridge, 284
Old People's Home, 62-3, 166-7
Old Tappan, 277
Olmstead, C M., 106
Oradell, 283
Oradell Reservoir, 283
Oratam, 5, 6
Ortlip family, 239
Osmers, Frank Jr., 288
Overpeck Twp., 284
OrvilTwp., 33
Packard-Bamberger supermarket, 111
Packer, William A., 96
Paine, Tom, 13,254
Painting, 233-41
Palisades, 30, 33, 107,278
Palisades Amusement Park, 267
Palisades Interstate Park, 31, 266, 278
Palisades Park, 34, 173, 270
Palisades R. R., 139
Panghorn, Frederick W., 257
Panics, 21-2, 29, 95, 96, 101, 127
Paramus, 15, 59, 77, 86, 302-3
Paramus Rd., 126
Parent-Teachers' Assn., 213
Park Ridge, 296, 297
Parker, Capt. Corlandt L., 223
Parks, 57
Parrish, Anne, 262
Pascack (see Park Ridge and Woodcliff
Lake)
Pascack Valley, 135,295-8
Passaic County, 16, 18, 19, 95
Passaic River, 289, 291
Passaic Valley, 288-95
Paterson and Hudson River R. R., 132,
133
Paterson Chronicle, 217
Paterson Intelligencer, 218, 219
Paterson Plank Rd., 138
Paterson-Ramapo R. R., 133
Paterson Tri-Weekly Guardian, 219-20
Patroon system, 6
Paulus Hook (see Jersey City)
Pauw, Michael, 5
Peerless Mfg. Co., 104
Pegasus Polo Club, 277
Pell, David Ackerson, 37, 38, 106
Penn, William, 10
Pennick Co., 294
Perrine, Dan, 234
Phelps, William Walter, 29, 37, 103, 273
Phoenix Steam Sawing Mill, 104
Piatti, Emilio F., 242
Pitkin, Dr. George, 274
Plank Rd., 127-8
Police, 54-5
Polifly Rd., 124, 291
Politics, 17, 18, 19, 22-3, 24-7, 37-40,
134, 189,218-25,281
Pollock, Channing, 262
Pompton, 19
Pompton Furnace, 13
Ponds, the (see Oakland)
Poor, Gen. Enoch, 14, 283, 296
Population, 15, 16, 19, 23, 31, 34, 47,
50, 69, 170-1, 177-8
Port of N. Y. Authority, 47, 144-7, 154,
168
Post, John A., 105
Post and Hengevelt, 104
Postal system, 36
Powers, Mary Swift, 237
Powers, Tom, 234
Powles Hook (see Jersey City)
354
INDEX
Pratt, B. G., 81
Prevost, Theodosia, 15, 301
Price, Rodman M., 22
Prince, J. Dynely, 227
Prizefights, 33
Public buildings, 9, 13, 17, 37, 166-7
Public Service Corp., 36, 43, 44, 142, 291
Public Works Administration, 274
Pullman Palace Car Co., 101
R
Radburn, 163, 290
Radio stations, 269, 294
Radl, Otto, 253
Ramapo Mountains, 15, 304
Ramapo River, 3 04
Ramapo Valley, 8, 304-7
Ramapo Water Gardens, 88
Ramsey, 306-7
Ramsey, Peter J., 3 07
Ramsey, W. J., 22
Red Mill, 90, 96
Regional Plan Assn., 151, 154
Religion, 7, 15-6, 35, 70, 171 (see also
Churches)
Rennie, James, 93
Rennie, Robert, 93-4, 96-7, 99, 103,
115, 136, 291
Republican Party, 1~8, 22, 28, 37-40
Retail trade, 94-5, 111, 271, 281, 306
Revolution, American, 10, 11-5, 70, 127,
186, 284, 287, 295, 296, 303, 306
Reynard, Grant, 236
Richter, Paul, 104
Ridgefield, 269-70
Ridgefield and Teaneck Ry. Co., 141
Ridgefield Park, 8, 29, 86, 114, 284
Ridgefield Park R. R., 136
Ridgefield Twp., 33
Ridgewood, 111, 299-300
Ridgewood Twp., 3 3
Ridgewood Woman's Club, 248, 300
River Edge, 86,283,284
River Rd., 126, 291
River Vale, 295,298
Roadside markets, 84
Rochelle Park Velvet Co., 106
Rockland Electric Co. of N. Y., 36
Rockleigh, 277-8
Rogers and Co., 105
Romaine, Westervelt, 252
Romeyn, Rev. James V. C, 187
Romeyn, Rev. Theodoric, 186
Roosevelt, Pres. Franklin D., 147
Rosencrantz, John, 92
Roth, Frederick G. R., 241
Rutan and Bensen, 92
Rutgers University, 10, 77, 186, 199
Rutherford, 34, 111, 290, 293
Rutherford Park (see Carlstadt)
Rutherford Park Herald, 223
Saborewski (see Zabriskie)
Saddle River, 299
Saddle River Borough, 303-4
Saddle River Rd., 291
Saddle River Twp., 33, 73, 96, 292
Saddle River Valley, 298-304
St. John, Dr. David, 59
Salvation Army, 194
Sanford, Capt. William, 7
Sangster, Margaret, 263
Sanitation, 57
Sawmills, 16, 90-1, 95, 96, 97, 104, 159,
306
Scharg Brothers, 110
Schools, 7, 116, 167, 172, 175, 176, 196-
215, 268, 271, 273, 278, 300, 305;
adult, 215; business, 214-5; parochial,
192, 213-4; private, 214; Sunday, 187,
194, 200, 201; trade, 115, 214-5
Schraalenburgh, 25, 185, 186, 187, 199,
274
Schraalenburgh Rd., 275
Schreiber, Zenon, 274
Schuyler, Col. Arent, 91, 295
Schwartzenbach and Huber, 101, 110,
117
Sculpture, 241-2
Seceders (see Churches, Dutch Reformed)
Semmens, Fred A., 252
Semmindinger, August, 104
Seufert, Judge William M., 12
Sewell, Helen Moore, 239
Sharp, George, 252
Sherwood, John, 256
Shilling, Alexander, 234
Shipping, 94,96, 122-3, 131
Shower and Cole, 102
Sieben, August, 253
Sinclair, Upton, 257-9
Slavery, 23-4, 178
Smith, A. P., 222
Smith, Higbee, 99
Smith, Martin, 96
Smith, Michael, 124
Smith and Nichols, 99
INDEX
355
Smock, Henrick, 8
Smults Brickyard, 102
Sneden, Arthur Durant, 165
Socialist Party, 42
Soldier Hill Rd., 295
Soley, Charles R., 10 J
South Hackensack, 285
Spanish-American War, 3 1
Spencer-Kellogg Co., 119
Spotless Cleaners, 119
Spring Lake Poultry Farm, 88
Spring Valley, 303
Squitzer, Rev. Samuel, 188
Stagg, De Peyster, 102
Stagg, John, 161
Standard Bleachery, 96, 293
Stange, Emile, 239
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 32
Steamboats, 131-2
Steenhuysen, Engelbert, 197
Stein, Clarence, 163
Steuben, Gen. von, 158, 284
Stevens, Col. John, 95, 127, 131, 145
Stockton, Frank R., 257
Stone, W. Raymond, 84
Strawberries, 21, 75-6
Street, Frank, 236
Strikes (see Labor)
Superintendent of Public Instruction, 207,
208
Supermarkets, 111, 270
Swinton, Marion, 240
"Tappan Patent," 8
Taverns, 16, 22, 81, 243, 300
Taxes, 9, 55, 124, 182, 196, 200, 201
Tanner, Charles, 207
Tailor Town, 294
Teaneck, 111, 273-4
Teaneck Armory, 274
Telegraph, 36
Telephones, 36
Tenafly, 266, 272-3
Tenafly Publishing Co., 223
Tenafly Weavers, 233
Terhune, John A., 206, 208
Teter, Walter C., 285
Teterboro, 285-6
Tetor, Frederick A., 146
Theatre, the, 243-9
Thoma's jewelry factory, 99, 103
Thomas, Douglas G., 146
Thompkins, Floyd W., 29
Thompson, Martin, 161
Thompson, Mary Wolfe, 263
Thorndike, E. L., 282
Thume, John, 102
Tories, 13, 15
Town, Ithiel, 161
Townsend, Harry, 237
Transportation, 16, 120-54, 279-80, 287-
8, 296; bridges, 21, 72, 126, 127, 128,
130, 137-8, 144-7; buses, 143, 150-1,
287-8; ferries, 121-2, 131, 151-2, 272,
278; highways, 16, 21, 56, 123-31,
136-9, 143-4, 147, 148-50, 288, 291;
railroads, 16, 21, 28, 96, 103, 114, 116,
132-6, 151-4, 268, 279-80, 287-8, 290-
1; stagecoaches, 126-9; traffic, 149-50;
trollies, 139-43, 150-1; tunnels, 145-8;
turnpikes, 16, 72, 108, 129-31, 137, 138
Travers, William H., 101
Tricker's nursery, 88
U
Undercliflf (see Edgewater)
Union Army, 27
Union Twp., 33
Union Traction Co., 141
Union Transit Co., 143
Unions (see Labor)
United Cork Co., 110
U. S. Bronze Powder Works, 275
U.S. Dye Works, 104
Upper Saddle River, 86, 303-4
Urey, Harold Clayton, 264, 270
Valley Rd., 126
(Van Boskirk), Lawrence Andries, 124
Van Brunt, John, 135, 207
Van Buskirk, Andrew, 126
Van Buskirk, Henry, 122, 123
Van Buskirk, Jacob, 91, 97, 122, 123
Van Buskirk, Samuel, 1 3
Van Driessen, Petrus, 227
Van Emburgh, John, 300
Van Horn, Rutt, 8
Van Ostrum, Henrick, 124
Van Riper, Abraham, 93
Van Riper, George, 1 1 5
Van Riper Mfg. Co., 99
Van Valen, J. M., 257
Van Voor Haze family, 307
Vansarmarant, Clause Janson, 124
Varlet, Nicholas, 7
356
INDEX
Veldran, William, 104
Visiting nurses, 66
Vogel, George S., 209
Vogue Needlecraft Co., 1 14
Vreeland, Cornelius, 29
Vreeland, Edgar, 208
(Vreeland), Enoch Michelsen, 124
Vreeland, Michael, 199
Vreeland, Roger S., 253
Vriesendael, 5
w
Wakelee, Edmund W., 37, 47
Walcott family, 238
Waldwick, 302
Wellington, 171, 292-3
Wampum, 91-2, 95, 297
War of 1812, 14
Washington, 33,296-7
Washington, Gen. George, 12, 14, 15, 295
Washington Academy, 199, 203
Water, 36, 57, 283
Weiner, Gustav, 274
Welfare, 17, 58-67, 272
Wertenbaker, Thomas J., 156, 157, 160,
161
West Mahwah, 305
West Shore R. R., 287
Westervelt, Abraham, 19, 170
Wester velt, Frances Augusta, 257
Westwood, 296
Wetzel, Carolyn F., 84
Whigs, 17, 18
White, Edward A., 146
White, John, 94, 104
Whitehead, Joe, 123
Wilcox family, 238
Wilkens Brothers, 105
Willocks, George, 8
Wilson, Dr. Peter, 199
Williams, J. Scott, 237
Williams, Dr. William Carlos, 260, 262
Willi's Water Gardens, 88
Wiltmire, A., 245
Windjammers of the Hackensack, 122
Witteman and Lewis Aircraft Co., 109,
285
Wolfskeil, George W., 93, 232
Wood-Ridge, 287
Woodcliff Lake, 36, 298
Wooster, Benjamin C., 209
WPAjJ54, 158, 241, 253, 284
World War I, 40-5, 83-4, 210
Wortendyke, 92, 302
Wortendyke, Abraham, 92, 97
Wortendyke, Albert A., 103
Wortendyke, Cornelius, 92, 97, 302
Wortendyke mill, 101, 103, 104, 105,
115
Wostbrock, Henry J., 110
Wright, Carl W., 146
Wright, Henry, 163
Wright Aeronautical Corp., 113, 292
Wyckoff, 25, 29, 306-7
Yaughpaugh (see Oakland)
Yereance, Frederick, 98
Young, Mahonri, 237
Young Men's Christian Association, 167,
171, 195
Young Women's Christian Association,
195
Zabriskie, Abraham, 91
Zabriskie, Albert, 8
Zabriskie, J. J., 96
Zabriskie, Jacob, 8, 90, 303
Zabriskie, John, 158, 284
Zabriskie, Peter, 13, 158, 284
Zimmerman, Roy R., 209
Zingsem, Godfrey N., 135
Zoning, 57
