A Brief History of South Orange

Early Roots

South Orange is a picturesque residential community containing some of the very best architectural examples of Colonial, Victorian and Revival Era homes, streets lined with gaslights, beautiful parks, ample recreational activities and an attractive Village center.

 South Orange Avenue early 1900’s

The Colonial history of the village dates back to a series of Dutch land grants associated with the 1633 settlement of Jersey City and extending beyond the West of Newark Bay in the 1640’s.  In May 1666, English Puritan Colonists from Connecticut led by Robert Treat landed on the shores of the Passaic River and purchased land, which became known as Newark, from the Lenni Lenape Indians.  Over time settlers desiring larger farms moved westward into South Orange and in 1678, the Lenapes sold the settlers a second parcel of land running from the East Branch of the Rahway River to the mountain top and began to systematically remove to more open lands in Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania.

South Orange Avenue, originally an Indian trail, served as the main thoroughfare for the original settlers and was little more than a simple woods path in these early days. By 1705 however, road statutes required adjacent landowners to maintain the first primitive highways which now included South Orange Avenue and Valley and Ridgewood roads. Washington and his troops often traversed the latter during the American Revolution.

Old road through South Mountain Reservation 

It was also during the period of the American Revolution that the region received a name change from Newark Mountains to Orange.  In June 1780 at a meeting of selected citizens from the western valley and mountain area, discussion centered on establishing a name more suitable for this farming region.  Being several miles from the old River Town of Newark, the inhabitants desired to establish a new name to reduce confusion over location and industry.  Ultimately the names Orange Dale and Orange were decided upon in honor of William and Mary of the Germanic Principality of Orange who came to the British Throne in 1688 and officially recognized the English Bill of Rights guaranteeing representative government and personal liberties to the people of England - ultimately leading to the desire of the American Colonists to separate from England 90 years later.

The name South Orange first appeared in print in a newspaper ad in 1793 in the Newark periodical "Wood's Gazette" eventually replacing the older place names of Chestnut Hill and The Mountain Plantation among others.

However, even with this name change and its various permutations, South Orange was still officially part of Newark until 1806, when what is now the Oranges and Maplewood, considered a backwater of unimproved land and rudimentary farms, was officially separated and called "Orange Township."

The Railroad              

From the Colonial era through the early 19^th Century the mode of transportation gradually improved from horsedrawn wagons and carts to the relative luxury of regular stagecoach service along the roadways. In 1836, the Morris and Essex Railroad developed a single rail track dedicated line between the Village and town of Orange and operated a horse-drawn car. A year later the line was extended further east and two cars were eventually pulled by a wood-burning steam engine built by Seth Boyden in his machine shop in Newark.  This new locomotive was called the Essex. 

Seth Boyden’s Steam Engine Essex

The advent of this new railroad technology established South Orange as a suburb of Newark and a Summer Resort away from the heat and humidity of the increasingly industrial lowlands along the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers.

Lackawanna Sloan Street Station prior to 1913

After the completion of a rail link to Hoboken in 1868, the Village began to see even more rapid transformation from an agricultural settlement to a sophisticated residential railroad suburb of New York City. Over the next few decades swamps were drained to reduce disease carrying insects, roads paved and gas lines put in place. Public street lighting, sewers and water were also added. Street lamps in the town's center burned whale oil until 1860 when gas service became available.

Electric power extended into the Village in the late 1880’s but most of the streets are still lit by gas lamps. The first telephone exchange was opened in Orange in 1879 and in 1899, the Village received its own telephone office.

New Lackawanna Sloan Street Station 1916

Horse Drawn Trolley Service along South Orange Avenue began between Newark and South Orange in the 1860’s.  By 1893 the line had become electrified and in 1900 it was extended south down Valley Street and into the outlying township area now known as Maplewood. 

Another line was run west of the Railroad Station where it turned north off South Orange Avenue below North Ridgewood Road and continued in that direction eventually ending at Main Street in West Orange.  It was, perhaps non-affectionately, referred to as “The Swamp Line” for the fact that it ran through the lowest portions of the Village along the weedy waterway and the valley extending up through Orange and into West Orange.

South Orange Avenue Trolley near Methodist Church

Establishment of  Montrose

The transition of South Orange from farmland to a prestigious residential community is due in part to the  vision of New York attorney John Gorham Vose. Intrigued by the mountain scenery and location, he purchased a home on Scotland Road in 1858 and shortly thereafter began to buy adjacent farms and plots to begin a development of exclusive homes.

    Montrose Trolley Station

In just a few years, over 150 acres between Scotland Road and Centre Street were developed and Vose christened the area Montrose.  Following in his footsteps other  businessmen like Brewer, Turrell, Kingman, Connett, Mead, Speir, and Mayhew, whose names grace many of our current streets, also bought land, carved out lanes, and established additional subdivisions of large Victorian  homes and parks for their own and public enjoyment.

Charlton Avenue Homes in Montrose

Earliest Landmarks                      

Built prior to 1680, the Old Stone House is the oldest in the Village and still stands off South Orange Avenue near Grove Road.  Dutch in origin, it has the further distinction of being the oldest stone house in the State and Region. 

In its current guise the house includes additions made in the mid 1700’s by the Pierson Family and several Victorian enlargements built by William Augustus Brewer Jr. between the 1860’s and 1880’s. 

Colonial Dutch House 1600’s

The colonial house at 167 North Ridgewood Road was built by Henry Squier in 1774 and acquired by William Redmond when he bought the Squier farm in 1850. Later the house was leased to a dairyman named Flood who pastured his cows in what is now Meadowland Park. Flood's Hill in the park, used for winter sleigh riding, still carries the family’s name. William Redmond built the brownstone mansion for his home which is today the Orange Lawn Tennis Club on North Ridgewood Road.   

Haying above Ridgewood Road late 1800’s                   

Another landmark built around 1830 and standing until  destroyed by fire later in the century, was The South Orange Mountain House, a fashionable water-cure facility. 

Owned by Samuel Lord of Lord & Taylor Department Store fame and supervised by physicians, spring water was piped down the mountain for the enjoyment and health benefits of the guests.  While the minerals contained in the water had some value to the establishment’s patrons, by far the most beneficial aspect of a stay at the Mountain House was an escape from the pollution and frequent cholera outbreaks in New York City in the mid 1800’s.   

South Orange Mountain House

This large wooden structure was set on spacious grounds along Ridgewood Road, at the foot of present day Glenside Road, and accommodated 150 guests. The Eclipse Stage Line operated in 1830 between the hotel and Newark. Today the only remnants of the resort are Mountain Station and Mountain House Road, both established to accommodate the many visitors who once frequented it.

The South Orange Library

In November 1864, William Bebe, a New York Merchant and South Orange resident invited some friends to his home to discuss the creation of a local Library.  The idea was enthusiastically received and so was born the South Orange Library.

Many of the leading names in the Village donated both their money, books and effort to help the Library grow.  Families like Durand, Henry, Mayhew, Mead, Taylor, and others appear in the earliest documents of the venture. 

From 1864 to 1889 the Library was located on the second floor of several buildings on Sloan Street, eventually making the remarkable move to the corner of Scotland and South Orange Avenue, when one of the buildings was physically moved, books and all, up the Avenue because of a Sloan Street widening project. 

South Orange Library – 2^nd Floor

Corner of Scotland Rd. and South Orange Ave.  Circa 1889

An 1895 Report from the Library Board queried obtaining larger space but how and where to locate it were still unanswered.  That answer quickly came from Eugene Connett, who offered his own land on the corner of Scotland Road and Taylor Place for the construction of a new edifice.

Public construction funding efforts were quickly implemented and the South Orange Bulletin of September 21, 1895 provided the first glimpse of what was to become the new Library designed by the New York Architectural firm of Stephenson & Greene. 

Connett Library from the South Orange Bulletin  Circa 1895

The original structure was completed in 1896 and a rear wing added in 1930, which incorporated several more rooms and a grade-entrance Children’s Reading Room.

Community, Society and Population

Local rule has changed much from the earliest hunting and gathering culture of the Native Americans, through the 17^th and early 18^th Century’s era of restrictive Puritanical dominance and ultimately to our own less restrictive modern form of democracy.

During the American Revolution the community consisted of only a handful of houses and farms, but unlike adjacent town’s experiences, present-day South Orange and Maplewood remained relatively untouched.   Perhaps like its unattractive 1806 description of being primarily “unimproved land”, neither British nor American Forces felt the need to do too much foraging or destruction in the area.   Fortunately our mills, orchards and their commercial components remained intact and ultimately were of  much societal and financial benefit as the Village entered the 19^th Century and began to serve newcomers to the community.     

The Village Hall, built in 1894, housed the fire department until 1930 when it was moved to Sloan Street.  The police department then moved from its small 1872 office and cell  west of the railroad into the vacated space in Village Hall.

South Orange Village Hall

South Orange Avenue looking west towards South Mountain 1913

In 1841 the first U.S. Post Office in the Village opened at Freeman's Store on South Orange Avenue but was quickly discontinued because of little use by the inhabitants.  By 1843 however another office was opened to serve the  growing hub of the larger community.  

Early Post Office South Orange Avenue

In all, six different leased sites were used until 1937 when the present Works Progress Administration Post Office was opened on Vose Avenue in a building of its own.

In 1972, a separate Police and Municipal Court building was completed near Grove Park and in the late 60’s and 70’s other projects completed, but for the most part the Village remained adherent to the character of it’s past.

Seton Hall University, founded in 1856 by Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley, cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, is the oldest diocesan university in the United States and is the largest Catholic university in the New Jersey.  Originally located in an old girls finishing school in Madison, early on it moved onto it’s current campus along the eastern  boundary of South Orange and Vailsburg. 

Leonard Clune and proud parents – Seton Hall Graduation 1953

Named in honor of Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born Catholic Saint, it currently boasts a total undergraduate and graduate population of close to 10,000 students and remains a key resource and element of the local Community.   

Proximity to New York City, advances in mass transportation, population shifts, two world wars, enlargement of a first class university and development focused on aesthetics and desirable well-planned  neighborhoods, resulted in South Orange seeing its greatest population growth occurring in the 20^th Century.   

Popular 1920’s Sears “Pattern” Home

The 1870 population was only 1,800 but between 1920 and 1928 the population increased from 7,200 to 13,000 primarily due to a post World War I building boom in South Mountain, Newstead and adjacent neighborhoods.  This resulted in a need for more schools, a larger Fire Station and enlargement of various other community services.    Today approximately 17,000 people call South Orange home.

South Mountain School - 1928

The creation of South Orange Township from the earlier “Clinton Township” and  “Orange Town” by an act of the New Jersey Legislature in 1861, led to the eventual grant of the Village Charter in 1869, but not until 1872 was it given authority to levy taxes and borrow money separate from South Orange Township.  Prior to the building of Village Hall and the division of the two chartered entities, Village trustees and Township selectmen met in the South Orange Hotel on the old corner of South Orange Avenue and Valley Street (now Village Plaza).

In 1904, complete separation of Village and Township occurred by action of the State Legislature, after South Orange Village agreed to remain in the school district.

In 1922 the Township of South Orange was officially renamed Maplewood, which itself was not a new name, but rather a combination of the various outlying neighborhoods taking on the later 19^th Century name of the neighborhood adjacent to the train station (formerly Jefferson Village). 

To this day Elementary through High School students in South Orange and Maplewood share a common school system.

Columbia High School – 1927