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Carlstadt
Carlstadt was settled
more than 2 centuries ago by Captain John Barry from
Barbados. The town was named after Dr. Carl
Klein, the first president of the German Democratic
Land Association.
Carlstadt is home to
the Meadowlands Regional Chamber of Commerce offices
and is 15% commercial, 19% residential and 58%
industrial. Its residential and industrial
sectors are basically isolated from each other, with
industry located primarily between Routes 17 and
Washington Avenue in Moonachie. Carlstadt is
located 10 miles from Manhattan and 7 miles from
Newark. It offers excellent access to major
roadways with Route 17 running through the
town and Route 3 close by. There is bus
service to New York City and Carlstadt is less than
5 minutes from Teterboro Airport. The
Meadowlands Sports Complex in Neighboring East
Rutherford is but a minute away.
There is a variety of
housing in the area, with mostly one family homes in
Carlyle Court and mostly two family, older homes
elsewhere. There are also a few condos and
garden apartments. Carlstadt offers a low tax
rate due to strong business and industrial support.
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East Rutherford
Much of East Rutherford's land is taken up by
the Meadowlands Sports Complex, a project begun by
the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in
the 1970s. The concrete complex, which was
erected on the marshlands of the Hackensack
Meadowlands, contains a racetrack, stadium, and
indoor arena (formerly the Brendan Byrne Arena, now
the Continental Airlines Arena), all protected
against flooding by a system of dikes, lagoons, and
pumps. Over 7 million visitors a year come to
watch thoroughbred and harness racing; professional
football, soccer, basketball, and hockey; college
sports; the circus; ice shows; auto racing; and
concerts. Plans include adding a private
"entertainment pavilion' to the complex, with a
football-field-sized simulated rain forest, movie
theatres, stores restaurants, and perhaps indoor
skiing. The racetrack makes a little extra
money by selling manure to mushroom growers, and the
complex supporters programs designed to help
compulsive gamblers.
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Hasbrouck Heights
Hasbrouck Heights,
bordered by Lodi to the north, Teterboro to the
east, Moonachie to the south, and Wood-Ridge to the
west, contains many quiet, tree lined streets,
providing a pleasant atmosphere. Hasbrouck
Heights includes 2 local parks, high school athletic
fields, and high school tennis courts.
Hasbrouck Heights also
provides easy access to other parts of Bergen County
with Routes 17, 46, and 80 virtually intersecting
the town. The town is only 13 miles from New
York City, and minutes from major shopping centers.
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Little Ferry
Little Ferry, bordered
to the north by Hackensack, to the east and south by
the Hackensack River, and to the west by Moonachie
and Teterboro, contains one local park, 4
playgrounds and athletic fields, and 2 public tennis
courts. Schools in Little Ferry include
Memorial School and Washington School, both on
Liberty Street. Since Little Ferry does no
have its own high school, students attend Ridgefield
Park High School only a couple of minutes away.
With Routes 46 and 80
in close proximity, transit to New York City is
relatively easy.
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Lyndhurst
Situated on the eastern
bank of the Passaic River, Lyndhurst is bounded on
the east by the Hackensack Meadowlands, some 19,000
acres of salt- and freshwater marshes, tidal pools,
and uplands that were once thought of as wastelands,
suitable only for dumping garbage. (Many
travelers on the New Jersey Turnpike have been aware
of the dumps as the only hills in an otherwise
almost flat landscape.) These now
protected wetlands are recovering from past abuse,
and some 2,000 acres of them, including the Saw Mill
Creek Wildlife Management Area, make up the
not-yet-completed Richard W. DeKorte State Park.
All but one of the dumps are now closed, and the
county landfill is being landscaped and integrated
into a park. This is not a simple task because
the decaying garbage generates heat, which makes it
hard for plants to establish themselves unless
moisture is increased. If too much moisture is
added, though, there is a risk of pollutants
leaching into the marsh.
Already in place is the
Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission's
Environment Center, a museum and nature center that
focuses on environmental problems, which the New
Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, as part of
its proposal to build the Meadowlands Sports
Complex, agreed to help build, finance and maintain.
The road to the center first passes corporate
warehouses and offices, and as you get close to the
center, you will see an occasional dump truck, but
the mountains of garbage and the steady stream of
dump trucks still visible in the mid-'80s are no
longer apparent.
In working to reclaim
the landfills without causing adverse environmental
effects, the center has been pursuing a variety of
approaches that may serve as models for
others. In some cases, methane
collection wells are placed in the dumps, and the
methane gas is sold to local utility companies.
The center has also been able establish a garden of
local plants, and as water quality improves, fish
that have not been seen in the area for many years
are reappearing. An environmental laboratory
at the center conducts research and monitors
progress (the closed landfills must be monitored for
30 years).
The center, which
provides programs for some 10,000 students and
handles perhaps 40,000 general visitors a year, is
solar heated and sits on stilts out over the
Kingsland Creek Marsh. A variety of trails is
available, some around the marshes and some in
upland areas, some of them handicapped accessible. .
The area attracts many birds, particularly in May,
late August, and early September, and there are
observation decks on the trails (Trail maps are
available at the center.) The boardwalk used
on the marsh trail is made of an environmentally
friendly synthetic material. The Lyndhurst
Nature Reserve, two and one-half acres devoted to
serving as an educational example, has been designed
to show how natural succession works; it also
contains bird blinds and wildlife observation areas.
Meadows Path, which goes along the road, will
eventually link the entire area, from Little Ferry
in the North to Kearney in the south. For now,
you can see corporate workers in shirtsleeves and
ties walking toward or away from the center during
lunch break.
Exhibits in the museum,
many of which are interactive, focus on trash
disposal, the nature of urban salt marshes, and the
history of the Meadowlands area. Best known is
the trash museum, oriented towards children, but
interesting to all.
Lyndhurst's downtown
has some interesting buildings, among them the town
hall (Valley Brook Ave.), the library (Valley Brook
Ave.), and the railroad station (Stuyvesant
Ave.). The Little Red Schoolhouse
Museum, dating from the 1890s, functions as the
Lyndhurst Historical Society museum. Focusing
on local history, it contains a c. 1912 schoolroom,
artifacts and local memorabilia, and changing
exhibits.
One block north of the
museum, at 316 Riverside Ave., is the 18th-century
stone Jacob van Winkle house; in 1804 van Winkle
donated the property for the first schoolhouse on
the Little Red Schoolhouse Museum site. Just
south of the schoolhouse is the mid-19th-century
Jeremiah Yearance house, where teachers at the
school often boarded. Across Riverside
Ave. is a section of Riverside County Park, with
tennis courts, picnic groves, playing fields, and a
pedestrian bicycling path.
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Moonachie
The 82
years of Moonachie's history was one of planning,
organization and development. During the years there
has been a refinement of services, growth, and
maturation. People looking to leave overcrowded
urban areas found a community waiting to be
developed. The impassable dirt roads, few homes and
farms slowly disappeared making Moonachie the
forerunner of a developing community including new
homes, mobile homes, and airport, an industry once
again seeing the emphasis on a residential
community.
Moonachie
contains 3 parks, 4 ballfields and Joseph Street
Park which has a tennis court, basketball courts,
handball court, gazebo, and children's recreational
equipment. The town is also close to Route 46
and 17, making travel throughout Bergen County
simple.
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North Arlington
North Arlington is a
crossroads, with Hudson County on one side and Essex
County on the other. It is a residential area
with a small town atmosphere and big city neighbors.
Bus service to
Hackensack and New York City and close proximity to
The Meadowlands Sports Complex make North Arlington
an excellent home for commuters. There are
mostly one-family homes with some two family homes
and three garden apartment complexes.
Children's and adults are kept busy throughout the
year with sports programs, holiday celebrations,
senior citizens programs and small parks, including
one with special equipment for the handicapped.
There is local shopping on Ridge Road and the
Secaucus outlets are approximately 15 minutes away.
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Rutherford
Once a settlement known
as Boiling Springs, Rutherford was developed in 1862
on land that belonged to John Rutherford, a patriot
and friend of George Washington. There are
still early-18th-century houses to be seen in
Rutherford: the oldest portion of the Nathaniel
Kingsland house (245 Union Ave.), where Washington
rested on his journey from Newburgh to Princeton,
dates from 1760, making it one of the oldest houses
in the state. Washington also visited the Kip
Homestead. Another Dutch stone house, the
Yearance-Berry house, contains the Meadowlands
museum, which specializes in area history but also
exhibits fine and decorative art and crafts.
Permanent exhibits include New Jersey minerals,
antique toys and dolls, and early kitchens; there
are also changing exhibits.
Rutherford is the
birthplace of poet William Carlos Williams, and
until 1996 his house remained in the hands of his
family. One block from his house is the
William Carlos Williams Center, built around the
Rivoli, a 1922 vaudeville theatre that was converted
into a movie house but burned in 1977.
Claiming to be one of the few arts centers in the
United States to be named after a poet, the Williams
center has had several changes of focus; at the end
of 1995 the center announced it would concentrate on
concerts, ballet, opera, and theatre for children.
Farleigh Dickinson,
which now has its campuses in Madison and Teaneck,
opened in Rutherford in 1942 as a junior college.
The Castle (Passaic and Montrose Aves.), the
building the college purchased when it first opened,
was built as a summer home in the 1880s and was
inspired by the French chateaux of Chaumont and
Amboise.
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South Hackensack
South Hackensack is
bordered to the north and east by a Hackensack, to
the south by Little Ferry, and to the west by
Teterboro. Town facilities include a
recreation center, a local park, a public
playground, and an athletic field. Public
schools include Memorial Public school on Vreeland
and Dyer Avenues and Hackensack High School on First
and Beech Streets. South Hackensack is
bordered on one side by Route 46, giving its
residents easy access to transportation to other
parts of the county as well as New York City which
is only 7 miles away.
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Teterboro
New Jersey's second
smallest municipality, Teterboro is home to New
Jersey's third busiest airport. Owned by the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and
operated by Johnson Controls World Service,
Teterboro cannot serve scheduled aircraft, and the
planes that use it are subject to weight limits;
nevertheless, it remains on of the busiest in the
country for private craft. It has been in more
or less constant use since 1920, and many of the
nations leading pilots, among them Floyd Bennet,
Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Amelia Earhart, and Charles
A. Lindbergh, trained at Teterboro. The
astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Walter Shirra got their
first flying experience at this airport.
Gastes' Flying Circus operated out of Teterboro, and
Anthony Fokker (who designed the Red Baron's plane)
manufactured aircraft here. Most of the
borough is taken up by the airport and plants
belonging to some 90 companies, among them the
Bendix Aerospace Division of Allied Corporation, the
borough's largest employer and the owner of all the
houses in the town (there are nine).
Located at the airport
is the Aviation Hall of Fame & Museum of New
Jersey, dedicated to "preserving the history of
aviation in New Jersey and honoring those who made
it." The Aeronautical Educational Center,
which opened a major addition to its space in the
summer of 1997, is on the east side of the field.
On the second floor you can look out over the field
and listen while the controllers guide planes on and
off the field. The collection includes
memorabilia from the early days of New Jersey's
flying history and Arthur Godfrey's aviation
collection, historic engines and wooden propellers,
a model plane collection, helicopters, and
airplanes. There are displays on space flight,
lighter-than-air flight, and women in aviation, all
with an emphasis on the state. The museum
shows films on the history of aviation in New
Jersey, old-time stunt flyers, the destruction of
the Hindenburg, and the history of the
airport.
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Wallington
Just 5 minutes from the
Meadowlands Sports Complex is the quiet little
community of Wallington, off Routes 3 and 21.
There is very little
industry in the municipality which offers mostly one
and two family homes for its residents.
Several ballfields, community organizations and a
shopping mall add to the quality of life in the
area.
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