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    Tenafly
    Tenafly
    Tenafly
    Ebook172 pages53 minutes

    Tenafly

    By Alice Renner Rigney and Paul J. Stefanowicz

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    About this ebook

    In the mid-19th century, Tenafly was a small Dutch-settled farming community located along the Hudson River, west of the Palisades. Once the railroad started running through the village around 1860, Tenafly developed into an attractive growing neighborhood as well as a summer retreat for wealthy professionals. In 1894, the village broke away from Palisades Township and received borough status. The completion of the George Washington Bridge in 1931 made the journey to Manhattan more convenient, attracting more city dwellers as residents and cementing Tenafly s place in New York suburbia. Since the days of unpaved roads, handfuls of wood-framed stores, and country estates, Tenafly has boasted intimate parks and historic landmarks that give this picturesque Bergen County town its community feel. The photographs in Tenafly show the community s social and physical development throughout its more than 110-year history as a borough.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 20, 2009
    ISBN9781439636978
    Tenafly
    Author

    Alice Renner Rigney

    Longtime residents Alice Renner Rigney and Paul J. Stefanowicz, both products of the local school system, have collected photographs and compiled anecdotes from Tenafly�s historic archives, current and former residents and their families, as well as local writings and documents.

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      Book preview

      Tenafly - Alice Renner Rigney

      Library.

      INTRODUCTION

      The exact origin of the name Tenafly is often disputed. However, one viable version is that the name derived from the Dutch word for willow meadow. Early Tenafly was a picturesque combination of farmland and rocky terrain, with several swampy areas and brooks running throughout. It was largely populated by people of Dutch or Huguenot descent. Local farmers of the 18th century were able to take their goods to New Amsterdam (New York City) from Huyler’s Landing by way of rowboats. Along the Palisades, the town reaches an elevation of 400 feet above sea level, and near the railroad tracks, the elevation is merely 30 feet above sea level.

      The Tenafly (Tienevly) area that appears on J. W. Watkins’s Revolutionary War–era map of 1778 shows a handful of houses along County and Tenafly Roads, one of which, the Roelof Westervelt house, still stands today. Much of the land was part of the Van Cortlandt patent, granted in the 17th century, which passed into the Jay family by way of marriage. Peter Jay inherited these tracts from his father, Sir James Jay, who was the brother of the Supreme Court chief justice John Jay. In 1829, Peter Jay decided to part with the land, so a lottery was held. Many large lots were purchased for investment purposes, but overall, the lottery was not successful, as Tenafly was not accessible enough for wide-scale development at that point.

      By 1859, when the Northern Railroad came to town, the village began to take shape. The railroad station, designed by Daniel T. Atwood, was built in 1872. A trolley service later began in 1910 and took passengers to Jersey City. Once the village was more convenient for city dwellers, the population began to grow rapidly. Wealthy businessmen, many of whom were connected to the burgeoning railroad business, began building estates and moving to Tenafly in the 1880s. Others moved out from New York City. While in 1890, the population of Tenafly was 1,046, it would grow to 3,585 by 1920. As more people came to town, the need for infrastructure grew, and the town began to resemble the community of today. In 1871, the village of Tenafly became part of Palisades Township, formed from the Hackensack Township that was created in 1693.

      In 1894, Tenafly gained independent status as a borough, with an area of four square miles, by a narrow vote of 137–130. The important vote was held in Watson’s Row, a group of stores that stood on Highwood Avenue. By incorporating as a borough, Tenafly would gain ability to use taxes for its own local use without falling under the umbrella of a township’s decisions. The first mayor of Tenafly was Henry Palmer, who was an executive of a dye company. Once the George Washington Bridge became a reality in 1931, and the former large estates were turned into residential development, the population of the borough increased sharply, reaching beyond 14,000 for the first time in the 1950s.

      Until 1870, Tenafly children attended school at the Liberty Pole School in Englewood. In 1871, a new school was built by the community on the corner of West Clinton Avenue and Tenafly Road. This was the lone school in town until 1907, when the Browning School was built to the east along West Clinton Avenue. The Browning School curriculum ran until eighth grade; those students who continued their education further went to school in Englewood. A high school was eventually added to the Browning grammar school, with classes beginning in 1922. Ralph S. Maugham was chosen as principal of the school in 1887, and eventually a second grammar school was erected on Magnolia Avenue bearing his name. As the town developed, the school system grew until four elementary schools—named Maugham, Mackay, Stillman, and Smith after prominent residents—were joined by middle and high schools.

      The oldest congregation of worship in Tenafly is the Presbyterian Church, which was formally organized in 1865. The Episcopal Church was organized shortly after the Civil War, and services for Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church began in 1873. Grace Chapel was started in 1899, while the Methodist Church was instituted in 1909. Today many religious denominations are represented in Tenafly.

      Early on, Tenafly was serviced by a mostly volunteer police force under the marshal system. The police department was officially organized in 1918 under Chief George McLaughlin. Chester (Chet) Campbell ably handled these duties from the 1930s through the 1960s. The original firehouse stood on West Clinton Avenue near Franklin Street before ultimately moving to the borough hall building on Washington Avenue in 1913. The fire department was founded in 1891 under Chief George H. Westervelt, but the first fire on record in Tenafly occurred in a barn in 1778. Hundreds of residents have heroically served in the armed forces during conflict, with 37 having given their lives for their country.

      The Tenafly Library Association was formed in 1891, bringing Tenafly a literary influence in the form of a reading room. After using the top floor of the school building since 1909, the library opened in its own building on the south side of Washington Avenue in 1912. The first town newspaper, the Tenafly Record, was organized and edited by William Jellison in 1884. Later newspapers, such as the Northern Valley Tribune, were

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