Welcome To West Caldwell
Going west from Caldwell, New Jersey, on Bloomfield Avenue (a main avenue radiating out of Newark), you enter West Caldwell, orignally part of the larger Caldwell Township that once sprawled across northwestern Essex County, but subdivided into the separate towns of Caldwell, West Caldwell, and North Caldwell; what was left of Caldwell Township was renamed Fairfield in 1956. This sign is placed on the median of Bloomfield Avenue as you enter my hometown. The sign was placed here only recently, and the median itself was only landscaped recently in an effort to beautify the town. (Before that, Bloomfield Avenue's medians were strictly patches of grass.) Although the sign looks handcarved, it is in fact fake wood imprinted by a machine. Still, it looks nice.
As the sign says, West Caldwell was incorporated in 1904, one year before Las Vegas, Nevada. Its borders include the old villages of Westville, where a family by the name of Crane set up a grist and saw mill and the DeCamp family owned a dairy farm, and Franklin, where Bloomfield Avenue meets Passaic Avenue and cluster of shopping centers and public buildings serve as our de facto downtown. West Caldwell remained agricultural well into the 1940's before rampant house building and commercial development suburbanized it. Most of the buildings in our "downtown" date back no further than 1970; paradoxiaclly, there are several farmhouses from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that have been integrated into the suburban fabric.
Famous West Caldwell residents, past and present, admittedly do not make much of anything to boast about. They include Tommy Page, a pop singer who had a number-one hit song in 1991 before being relegated to one-hit-wonderland; G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate burglar turned game show constestant and reactionary talk radio host; and, Samuel Alito, the newest U.S. Surpeme Court justice, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with the second-highest negative vote for a confirmed Supreme Court member (after Clarence Thomas).
Needless to say, we talk more about the fact that we have New Jersey's oldest cucumber magnolia tree. It's even pictured on the town seal.
Welcome To West Caldwell
Going west from Caldwell, New Jersey, on Bloomfield Avenue (a main avenue radiating out of Newark), you enter West Caldwell, orignally part of the larger Caldwell Township that once sprawled across northwestern Essex County, but subdivided into the separate towns of Caldwell, West Caldwell, and North Caldwell; what was left of Caldwell Township was renamed Fairfield in 1956. This sign is placed on the median of Bloomfield Avenue as you enter my hometown. The sign was placed here only recently, and the median itself was only landscaped recently in an effort to beautify the town. (Before that, Bloomfield Avenue's medians were strictly patches of grass.) Although the sign looks handcarved, it is in fact fake wood imprinted by a machine. Still, it looks nice.
As the sign says, West Caldwell was incorporated in 1904, one year before Las Vegas, Nevada. Its borders include the old villages of Westville, where a family by the name of Crane set up a grist and saw mill and the DeCamp family owned a dairy farm, and Franklin, where Bloomfield Avenue meets Passaic Avenue and cluster of shopping centers and public buildings serve as our de facto downtown. West Caldwell remained agricultural well into the 1940's before rampant house building and commercial development suburbanized it. Most of the buildings in our "downtown" date back no further than 1970; paradoxiaclly, there are several farmhouses from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that have been integrated into the suburban fabric.
Famous West Caldwell residents, past and present, admittedly do not make much of anything to boast about. They include Tommy Page, a pop singer who had a number-one hit song in 1991 before being relegated to one-hit-wonderland; G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate burglar turned game show constestant and reactionary talk radio host; and, Samuel Alito, the newest U.S. Surpeme Court justice, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with the second-highest negative vote for a confirmed Supreme Court member (after Clarence Thomas).
Needless to say, we talk more about the fact that we have New Jersey's oldest cucumber magnolia tree. It's even pictured on the town seal.