Library glass

The Springfield Library [website] has a meeting room with some very lovely windows!

Merry go round!

The Turtle Back Zoo’s Endangered Species Carousel was only built in 2008 (according to a bit of stained glass above a door), but… well, who cares when a carousel was built, as long as people still love it?

Inside the Morristown Library

In case you were wondering what the inside of the Morristown Library looked like, this is it.

It’s not the old Collegiate Gothic portion, though; that part of the library is still closed off to the public, after the basement exploded last year.

And juuuust for fun…

…that’s what the inside of the library looked like, around 1915.

 

Reference:

Williams, J.M. (1996). Images of America: Morristown. Arcadia Publishing: Dover, NH. ISBN 0752402072.

Inside the Wisner House

The Wisner House, which is where the original owners of the Reeves-Reed Arboretum lived, was included in Union County’s Four Centuries open house event [website].

Unfortunately, they had a photography exhibit on display in the two rooms that were open to the public, and I was told that I couldn’t take pictures indoors because of that.

So here is the Wisner House sun porch thingie, which had no art on display and should therefore be legal for me to post on the interwebz.

(And, below, here it is from the outside.)

Is it part of the original Colonial Revival house? My guess is no, but I am no expert on these things.

Twin Maples

First of all:
New Providence Daily Photo is one year old today! Isn’t that nice.

Moving on:
Hey so today was FOUR CENTURIES [website], which is a weekend where Union County opens up a bunch of its historical sites to the public, and you can go and wander around inside them, and I did, and it was cool, and this was one of them.

The Twin Maples estate, as far as I can tell, is a historical landmark because it’s old and looks pretty, not because it has a particularly interesting history.

But here is the not-so-interesting history, nonetheless:

After the mansion was built in 1908, James Foley and his wife Karoline (nee Davis) lived here until 1916, when Mr. Foley died.

His widow sold the place in 1918 to Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Collins, who lived with their one daughter until she got married (to Dr. W.J. DeForest, a Big Name in Summit) and moved out. Her parents remained in the mansion until Mr. Collins died in 1947.

In 1949, the Collins widow sold the estate to the Summit Fortnightly Club [website], a women’s organization dedicated to do-gooding. (The Summit Junior Fortnightly Club was formed 39 years after the Senior Fortnightly Club; I don’t really know why there are two of these clubs instead of one.)

So what does the Summit Fortnightly Club do with this big mansion of theirs?

Well, they have meetings. And the rent it out to choral groups and tango classes and other clubs who need a meeting space. And every once in a while, they turn it over to decorators for designer showcases, as was the case in 2008.

Click the link above to see what it looked like when it was freshly redecorated; here’s what it looks like now that the designers have taken all their lovely furniture back:

When I got a guided tour of the house, only recently renovated details were pointed out to me (sisal wall coverings! purple media room! a flat-screen TV!), and I was all “wahhhh I want history wahhhhh what’s original wahhhhh.”

The house had been redone in the 1970s or thereabouts, too, so a lot of the “historical character” (which would’ve been old and outdated and gross back then) was probably destroyed at that time. But as it turns out, several of the original floors were retained, even for this go-around, as were the neoclassical moldings. So. Not all is lost.

 

Reference:

Summit Junior Fortnightly Club. (n.d.). “Our History.” http://sjfclub.org/history/index.cfm

[Brief interviews with historically-minded individuals whose names I did not get. (2011).]

Inside the Summit Library

This is what the inside of the Summit Free Public Library looks like.

They have a much better selection of graphic novels than the New Providence Library, but their local history section is, in my opinion, not up to par. (Yeah, sorry, did we not know I was a giant nerd? We do now.)

Also, you have to pay to park there. %&^!.

But: Better selection of graphic novels.

It’s a tradeoff.

Hurricane preparations

So we’re all kind of freaking out about this whole hurricane thing. Well, I’m freaking out, anyway.

Last night, I walked to a nearby grocer to buy some water. Alas, there was none to buy.

This morning, around 8:30AM, I went to the A&P. They still had some water, but it was rapidly disappearing from the shelves.

Same for bread. Probably batteries too, but I didn’t check.

(Those loaves on the right are about $5/loaf, which is probably more than most people want to spend on “just in case” bread.)

The store was inordinately crowded for 8:30AM, as you might imagine.

At this point in the afternoon, I think we’re all just kind of waiting around for the storm to start pummeling us. It’s been sort of drizzly/ rainy all day, but it’s supposed to start being awful from late tonight (i.e. midnight, 1AM, something like that) through Sunday afternoon. The flood warning stays in effect until Monday.

On a personal note, my internet is pretty much nonfunctional. (I’m writing this from the library.) I have a non-storm-related post scheduled, but I probably won’t be able to give any sort of update on Hurricane Irene until Monday. I will try, though.

S is for Sushi

Monster Sushi, in fact.

They have two locations in Manhattan and one right here in little ol’ Summit.

The sushi was fine when I visited, but I’m not much of a connoisseur of these things. The COOL thing about Monster Sushi is that they’ve got Godzilla posters and action figures all over the place. (That might be standard for New York, but… it’s less so around here.)

Go go Godzilla!

R is for Railway station

I work in a New York office, and I’m known as the employee who lives in Jersey. When my manager had to visit Madison for a client, she came back and told me the Madison train station was really beautiful, and asked if all NJ Transit stations were like that.

Answer: no.

While Madison was elevating its tracks, William Haynes Truesdale, president of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad (formerly known as the Morris & Essex, but also known as the DL&W or “Delay, Linger, and Wait”), said that stations being built ought to be compatible with surrounding architecture. Because Madison is home to Drew University, the style of the station is collegiate Gothic; because Madison was an affluent and generous town, they raised wayyy more money for the construction of this station than other towns raised for theirs, and it is fancy indeed.

It was finished in 1916, and it’s been registered on the State and National Registers of Historic Places since 1984! The Gladstone-line shacks don’t have those kinds of bragging rights.

(P.S. Here’s a map of the line, in case you don’t remember where Gladstone or Madison are!)

 
References:
Cunningham, John T. (1998). Images of America: Madison. Arcadia Publishing: Dover, NH.

National Registers of Historic Places. (n.d.) Information board near door of station. Sponsored by NJ Transit: Madison, NJ.

Free Public Library!

This is what the inside of the Millburn Free Public Library looks like!

And this is what the outside looks like, from the back, when you’re passing by on the Morris & Essex train. It’s right near the Millburn train station, too!