At the turn of the
century, even though with a population
of less than 400, Bogota
boasted many companies that offered
various employment opportunities. Some
of these companies included The
Bogota
Building & Loan Association, The
Bogota
Water & Light Company, The
Riverside Planning Mill, and The
Bogota
Paper Company. In April 1898, the
Bergen Traction Company was granted a
franchise to run a trolley terminating
at River Road. This trolley connected
with Leonia ,
Englewood
, Fort Lee
, and the 125th Street Ferry.
The Borough of
Bogota , bordered to the north and
east by Teaneck
, to the south by Ridgefield
Park , and to the west by the
Hackensack River, contains several
well-kept parks for recreation and a
private swim club. With easy access to
routes 4, 17, 80, and 46, any part of
northern New Jersey is easily
accessible from Bogota
and is only 15 miles from New York
City.
In 1890,
East Paterson had the only mile long
racetrack in the state. People from all
over, including as far as Pennsylvania and
New York State came to watch harness racing
on a grandstand one block long.
In
1972 Richard Mold of East Paterson was
elected their new mayor. One year into
his productive term, voters of the 2.7
square mile community decided to change
its name from East Paterson to Elmwood
Park.
Today,
buyers often choose Elmwood Park as their
place to live. Elmwood Park is about 8
minutes from Manhattan bordered on the
west by Garfield and on the east by
Saddle Brook. An old fashioned business
district on Market Street includes a
florist, funeral parlor, a tiny diner,
card store, and a deli.
Fair Lawn is
an old Dutch settlement, gained attention
as the site of Radburn, a world-famous
experiment is post-automobile city
planning. The concepts behind Radburn,
which was built in 1929 by Clarence Stein
and Henry Wright have been widely
influential in British and continental town
planning. Organized in super blocks,
Radburn segregated cars from people and had
the fronts of the houses face common
greens. Parking was close enough to a house
to enable a shopper to carry groceries
easily, but the children could walk to
school without ever crossing a street. The
Depression interfered with the original
completion of the plan, and many post-
World War II houses coexist with the 1929
buildings. To get a better sense of the
original flavor, look at photographs in the
lobby of the commercial building at Plaza
Rd. and High Street. The Radburn historic
district includes Fair Lawn ,
Berdan, and Prospect Aves. and Plaza and
Radburn Roads.
Just west of Plaza Road on
Pollitt Drive is the Cadmus House, an
early-19th-century Dutch stone house,
moved to its present site. Once part of a
farm that covered half of present-day
Fair
Lawn , the house has been converted
to a museum. One room is furnished with
Victorian pieces, another with old
fire-fighting equipment, another with
artifacts from a farmhouse destroyed to
build a highway interchange. The
collection also includes a variety of
local memorabilia.
West of Radburn near the
Passaic River is the Garretson Forge and
Farm Restoration. The Garretson family
left the Netherlands in 1660 and bought
this land in 1668. Six generations lived
on the farm until Mary Garretson died in
1950. The property was rescued from a
developer and is currently being
restored. The main section of the
18th-century house was made of dressed
stone; the sandstone blocks were held
together with mortar made of river mud
mixed with straw and hogs' hair. The
carriage shed and the kitchen wing with
its beehive oven have also been restored.
Among the furnishings are a rope bed and
a kas , and there are periodic
displays of 19th- and 20th-century
artifacts, including some from the
Garretson family; early iron work; and
antique farming tools, as well as cooking
demonstrations, sheep-shearing festivals,
and harvest festivals.
Oreos, the country's most
popular cookie, are manufactured at the
Nabisco Fair Lawn
Bakery, as are animal crackers and
Newtons.
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Garfield
Immigrants were originally
attracted to the community of Garfield for
its abundance in employment opportunities
in the textile industry which flourished
there at the turn of the century. These
textile factories supplied uniforms for
most of the troops for both World Wars.
Immigrants today follow the ways of the
past, flocking to Garfield in seek of
employment. In addition, housing is
inexpensive, attracting immigrants with
limited funds.
Recently, big companies
have moved out of the area to make way
for small independent businesses.
Garfield has an advantage of being close
to several major highways. Garfield's
crime rate is comparable or even lower
than New Jersey towns of larger
populations.
Situated on the Hackensack
River and once a busy ocean port, Hackensack
was first settled by Dutch traders in the
1640s. The seat of Bergen County, it was
until 1921 officially known as New
Barbadoes. During the Revolution, the
Hackensack
green was used as a camping ground for both
Continental and British regiments. The
courthouse complex includes buildings
dating from 1910 to 1933. The courthouse is
neoclassic, but the jail has medieval
turreting. The Administrative Building
dates from the 1930s.
Also on the green is the
First Reformed Church, built in 1791 and
altered in the mid-19th century. The
congregation, organized in 1686, had its
first building by 1696, and stones from
this and the next church are worked into
the present building. Many revolutionary
soldiers are buried in the Graveyard, as
is General Enoch Poor. George Washington
and the marquis de Lafayette attended
Poor's funeral. On the northwest corner
of Church St. and Washington Pl. is the
Bank House, built in the 1830s for the
first bank in Bergen County. Traffic
makes it hard to appreciate the green
unless you leave your car. Farther west
on Essex St. is the Hackensack
Medical Center, founded in 1888 and in
the mid-1990s the largest in the
state.
A big treat in Hackensack
is the New Jersey Naval Museum. There you
can visit the USS Ling, a
diesel-electric-powered World War II
submarine commissioned in 1945. After one
patrol run, the Ling was
decommissioned, and from 1962 to 1971 it
was used as a training vessel at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard. Since 1973, the
Ling has been berthed at the
Hackensack
River. Renovated, it is open for tours.
Inside the museum are exhibits dealing
with the history and science of
submarines; models, including a working
model of a German U-boat; and
submarine-related memorabilia. Outside
are missiles, a mine, and an experimental
fiberglass sail.
Much of Hackensack's
downtown has a 1920s or 1930s flavor.
Note the stone Johnson Free Public
Library, built in 1901 and enlarged in
1915 and 1967; the Oritani Field Club;
and the group of 1930s Sears Roebuck
stores, a prototype of post-World War II
shopping centers.
The Hackensack
River county park consists of 30 acres
along the river behind the Riverside
Square Mall. Trails go through a tidal
marsh and forested wetlands, and there
are overlooks, bird blinds, and
interpretive signs.
At Bergen County Technical
School is a steam engine museum,
recognized by the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers as a regional
historical mechanical-engineering
landmark. The collection includes
operating stationary steam engines and
steam powered equipment, and the museum
is restoring two steam locomotives. At
midnight on New Years Eve there is an
annual whistle blast.
The Borough of
Lodi , bordered by Saddle Brook,
Rochelle
Park and Maywood to
the north, Hackensack
to the east, Hasbrouck
Heights to the south, and Garfield to
the west, features a state park, 4 public
playgrounds, 2 athletic fields, a tennis
court and a private swimming pool.
Lodi
provides easy access to New York City and
the rest of Bergen county via routes 80
and 46, as well as New Jersey
Transit busses .
Among the scramble and
roar of Bergen County traffic, due to
routes 17, 4, 80 and various shopping
centers, Maywood is
surprisingly quiet and there is still a
touch of hometown feeling without being
isolated from the rest of New Jersey.
Maywood's
founders envisioned a commuter town, with
railroads connecting to ferry services
that would provide easy access to New
York City.
Part of Maywood's
old-fashioned charm derives from its
beauty from numerous tree-lined streets.
Maywood
has been named a Tree City: trees have
been catalogued and the town makes a
conscious effort to preserve and replace
them.
The small downtown
shopping district has mostly small,
independently owned businesses. Maywood
has strong volunteer and community
spirit, which, in times of crisis, the
town rallies to raise funds.
New
Milford was incorporated in March,
1922. River Road in New
Milford is probably one of the oldest
streets in Bergen County, and one of the
least changed from its original path. It
was, and still is the most direct route
from Old Bridge to the jumping off points
to New York City.
When
Washington retreated his continental army
via River Road and over New Bridge, the
first invasion of the war came to
New
Milford . For five years the New
Milford Valley became the target,
with invasion after invasion as both
sides sought to reap the harvests of the
rich land.
The
territorial limits of New
Milford are as follows: bounded
northerly by the town of Oradell ,
easterly by Dumont and
Bergenfield
, southerly by the New Bridge Road and
the township of Teaneck ,
and westerly by the Hackensack
River.
One of Bergen County's
many Dutch settlements. Oradell
still has some of its early stone houses,
particularly along Kinderkamack and
Paramus
roads. On Midland Rd. you can also see an
example of a Stickley house. The Edward
W. Vaill house was built in 1911
according to one of the plans published
in the Craftsman and furnished
completely in arts and crafts style. The
railroad station dates to 1890. In a
converted late-19th-century firehouse,
the Bergen County Players, a community
group founded in the early 1930s,
presents eight shows each
season,including a minimusical for
children each December.
The hometown of Walter
Schirra, the astronaut who orbited around
the earth six times in 1962, Oradell is
also the home of the Hiram Blauvelt Art
Museum, an unusual museum devoted to a
personal collection focusing on wildlife.
Housed in the former carriage house of
the late-19th-century Blauvelt mansion,
the collection includes examples of
animals from around the world as well as
paintings and sculpture related to animal
themes. Among the holdings is a rare
Audobon edition.
Before the Revolution, a
mill stood on the site on which the
former Hackensack
Water Company built a pumping station
(1882) and other facilities. Now that the
water company no longer uses this
location, a controversy has developed
whether to keep the area for open space
and a nature center or let it be used for
development.
Just south of Oradell ,
in New
Milford , is the Art Center of
Northern New Jersey. Housed in a former
church built in the 1890s, the center
sponsors exhibits in its gallery and
offers classes in all media.
Settled in the mid-17th
century by Dutch emigrants, Paramus
may have derived its name from the Indian
word "permessing", for "abundance of
turkey's." Over 50 years ago the town was
described by the WPA guide to New Jersey
as "an old Dutch farm community...growing
vegetables for the city markets." You can
still find scattered about the town a
half-dozen or so old Dutch stone houses,
but any sense of being in anything as
compact as a farm community is
gone.
In fact, Paramus is
noted among historians of the city for
having led in the development of the
post-World War II shopping mall. The
Garden State Plaza, which opened in 1957,
was an early example of the open mall
that served several regional community
functions, and the Paramus
Park Mall is an early example of the
newer type of enclosed mall that for many
has taken over some of the function's of
the city's downtown. Paramus
Park Mall is architecturally interesting:
the exterior is severe, yet the interior,
with its waterfall, fountain, hanging
shrubs, and diagonally intersecting
skylights, is open and light.
The Bergen County Museum
of Arts and Science is housed in a
mid-19th-century brick building, once the
Bergen County Almshouse and the County
Old Folks Home. The museum's science
exhibits feature a well-known mastodon
skeleton unearthed nearby, Lenape
artifacts, minerals, fossils, and a
nature room. Art exhibits change every
eight weeks and usually consist of
one-person shows by artists from northern
New Jersey and metropolitan New York
City. The museum also has a youth gallery
devoted to work by students in the Bergen
County schools; here the exhibits change
roughly every six weeks. Occasionally
items from the permanent collection are
on display, and the museum has an active
schedule of children's educational
programs and workshops.
Behind the museum in the
same county complex is the award-winning
Norman Bleshman State Regional Day School
for the Handicapped, designed so that
everything will be not only convenient
but pleasurable for someone in a
wheelchair. The horticultural center in
the same area, part of the county's
vocational and technical school
facilities, includes an old barn, a
modern airplane-type windmill, buildings
with solar panels, greenhouses, and a
wood silo.
Van Saun Park, one of
Paramus'
two county parks, is one of the county's
most popular parks. Van Saun can be
crowded in the summer, and two of the
parking lots are reserved for county
residents. Its ten acre zoo features some
200 animals representing 65 species from
North and South America. The zoo is
involved in an endangered species program
and has managed to use its small space so
that the animals do not appear crowded. A
4,000 square foot aviary constructed like
a circus tent and covered with netting
replicates the environment of the
Meadowlands. A boardwalk goes through the
aviary over a 9,000 gallon artificial
pond, which contains native fish turtles,
and waterfowl. The zoo offers a wide
range of educational programs - some
10,000 children a year take part in the
formal programs - as well as seasonal
events like sheep shearing. An 1860s
Bergen County farmyard, complete with
appropriate animals has been re-created,
and during the summer months a miniature
train with a replica of an 1866
locomotive runs around the zoo and the
farmyard. At Washington Spring Park, so
called because Washington's army camped
here in 1780 and according to legend took
water from the natural spring, is a shade
garden. There are also picnic grounds, a
lake and boat basin, a bicycle-pedestrian
path, sledding slopes, and a tennis
center.
River Edge
played a crucial part in the Revolution
when George Washington, in November 1776,
led his army over the Hackensack
New Bridge after the surprise attack by
the British at Fort Lee. At that spot is
the Steuben House, a state historic site
that houses the museum of the Bergen
County Historical Society. The oldest
portion of the sandstone house was
probably built in 1713, making this the
oldest extant house in the county, but
there had been a gristmill on the site
several years before that. During the
Revolution the house was owned by Jan
Zabriskie, a leading merchant and a Tory.
It was confiscated and offered to Major
General Baron von Steuben in gratitude
for his work in training the American
troops. The house had suffered
considerable abuse during the war:
because of its strategic location at the
bridge it was used for various military
purposes, including serving as a fort,
throughout the Revolution. According to
legend, Steuben declined the offer
because he didn't want to displace the
Zabriskies; according to another, its
condition made it undesirable.
The Steuben House has an
idyllic setting, known as New Bridge
Landing Historic Park. There are other
buildings in he park, including the
Campbell Christie House, colonials and
stone house moved from New
Milford, and restored as a tavern by
the Bergen County Historical Society. The
Demarest House, an early stone house, was
also moved here from New
Milford. Once thought to have been
built in the late 1670s by the Huguenot
settler David des Marest, it is more
likely a late-18th-century successor on
that site.
Rochelle
Park, in 1871, was a small part of a
larger Midland Township which consisted
of 2 other areas. Rochelle
Park, the smallest and most urban,
was known as Midland Township before the
town's name was changed in 1929 to avoid
confusion. The first post office was
established at the current station on
Railroad Avenue and a year later pipes
and telephone wire were laid. By 1927,
Rochelle
Park even had its own airport.
With
the construction of major highways in the
area in the 1930s, Rochelle
Park quickly became a large suburban
community within easy reach of larger
cities. Bordered by Paramus to
the north, Maywood to
the east, Lodi to
the south, and Saddle Brook to the west,
Rochelle
Park today is in close proximity to
many shopping areas including the Garden
State Plaza, Paramus Park Mall, and
Bergen Mall. Rochelle
Park is also close to New Jersey
Transit lines that go to and from New
York City as well as other parts of
Bergen County.
Saddle
Brook was once part of a larger entity,
Saddle
River Township , one of the oldest in
Bergen County. Saddle Brook was once the
hub of several Indian trails that led to
Hackensack
and Newark. Inns and Hotels sprang up in
the beginning of the century due to the
saw mills in the area.
The
towns annual picnic, which attracts
almost 4,000 people, best defines sense
of community in Saddle Brook. 75 local
organizations and companies donate
materials and time to support the
event.
The
densely populated, middle-class Bergen
County Community works hard to maintain
its sense of community. Saddle Brook
contains a Youth Advisory Board to help
organize the picnic, holiday Christmas
tree lighting, and many sporting
events.
Bergen County's largest
community, Teaneck
was settled by the Dutch in the 17th
century. Some stone houses remain,
particularly on Teaneck
and Riverneck roads. The 18th-century
Brinkerhoff-Demarest house is a national
historic landmark. The source of the
town's name is obscure: perhaps from the
"Tekene," a Native American word for "the
woods," perhaps from the Dutch "Tee
Neck," referring to a curved piece of
land alongside a stream. In 1949 the town
was chosen by the Army Corps of Engineers
as a model American community, and
material on Teaneck
was used as part of the army's program to
explain American democracy to the
Japanese. The town has since developed a
reputation as a multi-ethnic community.
The mosque on Fabry Ct. was the first in
the county, the Bahai center was visited
by the grandson of the religion's founder
in the early 20th century, and in 192
Teaneck
elected the country's first Indian-born
mayor
At Fairleigh Dickinson's
TeaneckHackensack
campus is the community's first Equity
theater. The American Stage Company,
founded in 1985 by Paul Sorvino, presents
four American plays each season.
