Historic South Orange Pictures

I was just wasting a bit of time researching a random bit of South Orange history (while doing laundry and getting kiddies ready for bed!), and Googled my way into a big collection of pictures from about 1914, of South Orange along the railroad tracks, just before the project to elevate them above grade.

http://lackawannarrelevation.blogspot.com/2015/04/south-orange-before-elevation.html

I particularly like it because the locations are so well labelled.

Cool...the grade elevation project was actually written up in Scientific American

http://lackawannarrelevation.blogspot.com/

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The topic I was following was also fascinating (to me, at least)...I had no idea that one of the top US collections of cacti was housed in greenhouses on 3rd Street, where Gaslight Commons was now located. I saw a picture (from the South Orange historic images book) and decided to look it up. W.A. Manda came to the US from Bavaria to collect plants, was hired to curate a plant collection at Harvard, and left to go into the orchid business in Short Hills.

In the late 1890s, I believe, he had a business falling out, and started his own business in South Orange, where he indulged his love of cacti, amassing a collection of 1200 species, and feeding New York's interest in exotic plants until his death in 1933. Who knew?

An old newspaper profile:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19291031&id=GoQcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MmQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2879,2933011&hl=en

(link not working quite right...article on page 4)

They spent $4,000,000 on the project. That would cost about $100,000,000 today and actually more because of many additional regulations on construction projects.

Wow, found out there was a West Turrel Avenue that intersected with the RR. Current Turrell Ave. ends at Scotland.

And there's a map fragment between photo C2126 and C2127 that shows a VALLEY STREET CEMETERY!?! A clear shot of it after C2275 - by 5th St. and Massel Terrace. Ooh and pictures C4097, 8 & 9 - I hope the bodies were re-located when they made the (SO) Memorial Park there!

Thank you,susan1014. These are wonderful photos.

Those are amazing photos! I never knew there was a rail yard in South Orange. That one photo of the "mishap" near the roundhouse is like something out of Thomas the Tank engine

musicmz said:
Wow, found out there was a West Turrel Avenue that intersected with the RR. Current Turrell Ave. ends at Scotland.
And there's a map fragment between photo C2126 and C2127 that shows a VALLEY STREET CEMETERY!?! A clear shot of it after C2275 - by 5th St. and Massel Terrace. Ooh and pictures C4097, 8 & 9 - I hope the bodies were re-located when they made the (SO) Memorial Park there!

I think that's where the park is now. There's a monument in the middle with the names of all the people who were buried there.

Absolutely amazing trove of pictures!! Gives you a new perspective when we're discussing all the "new development" proposed / happening in the village, doesn't it?

Concerning the old cemetery on Valley Street. The people buried there were the original settlers of South Orange. I never could figure out how the town allowed this to happen, turn a cemetery into a playground.. As far as I know the remains are still there.

galileo said:
Concerning the old cemetery on Valley Street. The people buried there were the original settlers of South Orange. I never could figure out how the town allowed this to happen, turn a cemetery into a playground.. As far as I know the remains are still there.

Ohhh, I assumed they were moved elsewhere. Yikes, that's a bit morbid.

mbaldwin - Just looked this up to verify. The tombstone were removed but the remains are still there. When you look at the list of names you'll see lots of street names for South Orange and Maplewood.

I like the idea of children playing joyfully on my grave.

mjh said:
I like the idea of children playing joyfully on my grave. ">

Ahhh, I like that perspective!

Always reminds me of Poltergeist.

galileo said:
When you look at the list of names you'll see lots of street names for South Orange and Maplewood.

Sounds like South Orange's very own Pompeii or Atlantis.

How very jolly. Moldering coffins and rotten remains under the pitter-patter of little children.

Probably just bones by now except for the one HP Lovecraft wrote about.

BG9 said:
How very jolly. Moldering coffins and rotten remains under the pitter-patter of little children.

I'm not sure if this is a record, but 15 posts until a very positive awesome historical post with great pictures about our Village 100 years ago went into the abyss.

If someone would like to start a separate thread regarding the former graveyard and its current use, citing facts and not conjecture, great. Please do.

This thread was not about that. I for one enjoyed reading it and seeing the 100 year old pictures. Thanks Susan.

we had a great time matching up the photos with Google Street view!

.

Rob_Sandow said:

...our Village 100 years ago went into the abyss.

I respectfully disagree. It occurred much more recently.

Rob, I feel your frustration. I was all set to to say how great it was that Susan1014 happened upon that remarkable site. Not to take anything away, but there was discussion that I can't even recall from a while back where I linked to that site, I think about the cemeteries straddling the Parkway in Newark and its destructive path through EO, but I can't find it.

Maybe the cemetery obsession will end by answering the question. All those who thought it was an early version of Poltergeist, you chose correctly. It took all of Googling "Valley Street Cemetery South Orange to come up with this reliable answer..

http://www.interment.net/data/us/nj/essex/southorange/southorange.htm

If there's still a burning desire to keep this creepy matter alive, I agree it should move to its own thread.

Back to one of my favorite topics, the amazing structures bequeathed to us by the Lackawanna Railroad. The SO Viaduct (no one has in this thread, but don't call it a trestle, since those are usually made of wood) was the first four way reinforced flat slab concrete viaduct built on the East Coast. It was written up in all the major engineering and railroad publications for proving that concrete was both cost effective (or cheap as this article says) and attractive as a material for such structures. Here's the Engineering News-Record article from July 13, 1916, soon after the opening...

https://books.google.com/books?id=mONHAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA526&ots=rzL779aJFj&dq=lackawanna%20improvements%20at%20south%20orange&pg=PA527#v=onepage&q=lackawanna%20improvements%20at%20south%20orange&f=false

It's worth noting the reason chosen for elevating the tracks along the Lacakwanna's existing right of way rather than buying property to make room for a third track, grade crossing elimination and new station that precipitated the project. SO was already sufficiently developed that buying property to expand the ROW was out of the question. Combining the station with the grade crossing elimination along the existing ROW was the least expensive option, and concrete allowed it to happen. The Lackawanna is said to of had the most highly developed ROW in the US, having rebuilt virtually it's entire mainline, of which today's Morristown Line was the initial segment, eventually ending in Buffalo.

As for the RR yards folks have seen, yes there were two. The freight yard was where the Village Mews is now located. The abandoned bridge just west of the active bridge over 3rd Street was the siding to access the yard. And the much larger coach yard, where the locomotive in the pit picture was taken, is now Waterlands Fields. SO had a large yard because it was the end of frequent local service at the time, as Summit is today. See figure C2127 on the Lacakawanna Elevation website.

Trans_Parent said:

Rob_Sandow said:

...our Village 100 years ago went into the abyss.

I respectfully disagree. It occurred much more recently.

I see what you did there...