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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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, 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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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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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 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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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 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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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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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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