Visiting the almost town of Aeolia

Take a good look at a map of New Jersey's towns and cities, and you'll see the names of once mighty companies that built them or were the dominant employer.

Somerset County's Manville was once home to Johns Manville's massive asbestos processing operation.

Roebling, in Burlington County, was built to house employees of John A. Roebling's Sons and Company, manufacturers of the steel rope that still supports mighty bridges across America.

Helmetta was built around George Helme's snuff factory in Middlesex County.

And then there's Aeolia, in Union County.

Aeolia? Okay, I fudged that one. You might recognize it as Garwood, smack between Cranford and Westfield. The only indication left of the little-known alternative name is the header atop the entrance to the crenelated red brick building on North Avenue. Workers in this century-old building once made pipe organs, player pianos and perforated music rolls for the Aeolian Company, the leader in its industry.

These days, player pianos are a rare novelty, but apparently they were huge in the early days of the 20th century. A 1899 New York Times article stated that Aeolian became the sole player piano company in the United States after absorbing two of its competitors. The company consolidated operations at a new plant in Garwood, built along the Jersey Central Railroad line. As a condition of moving to New Jersey, the article said, the company had the option of naming the town Aeolia.

It's an interesting statement, given that Garwood wasn't even an incorporated town at that point. Rather, it was a real estate development the railroad had carved from the towns of Westfield and Cranford. Named for Samuel Garwood, president of the development company, the community was largely industrial, with Hall Signal Company and Hercules Tube Works being the major employers before Aeolian came to town.

Garwood was a tight-knit, working class community, but its uncertain status caused a fair bit of confusion. According to the town's website, Westfield and Cranford often disagreed over which town was responsible for providing essential services within the less than mile-square enclave. Which school system would Garwood students attend? Who was responsible for paving Center Street through the business district? The Aeolian Company settled the matter of fire protection by forming its own squad and buying equipment.

Most of the issues were resolved when the roughly 400 Garwood citizens achieved independence from their squabbling neighbor towns in 1903. It's an interesting thing to consider these days, as consolidation of municipal services is frequently raised as a cost-cutting alternative to the status quo. For the residents of the newly incorporated Garwood, however, it made a huge difference in solidifying what they could expect from their local government.

Over a hundred years later, much of Garwood's industry has left, and many of the old factory buildings have been torn down or repurposed as retail space. The office section of the Aeolian building still looks neat and manicured, though the factory portions could use some help. For a while, a paperboard recycler operated there, but in recent years the place has looked unused. Whatever becomes of the property, I hope they keep the brick building and the Aeolian sign above the main entrance.

If you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, what do you do on the state's shortest highway?

Since I was a kid, it's been on my bucket list to walk one of New Jersey's highways from end to end. I'd read Michael Aaron Rockland's accounts of hiking Route 1 and Route 22, and the idea, while a bit crazy, seemed like a good one. You can see a lot more at a walking pace than you ever could from a speeding car.

There are a lot of logistics to consider before you take on a highway walk. Where will you stay at the end of the day? Do you have someone pick you up, drive you home and then return you the next morning to the place where you left off, or do you find a motel? How much sustenance do you carry? And how do you deal with the lack of sidewalks? Traffic has gotten heavier and faster since Rockland made his treks in the late 70's, so perhaps his methods wouldn't suffice. Obviously, I need to select my walking highway very carefully.

I think I've found it: State Route 59. Lined with a sidewalk for its full length, its traffic is reasonable and I'm certain I could walk it in a single day. If I can't there's definitely something wrong: it's only 0.15 miles long.

Planned route for NJ 22.

Why in heck would the state build such a short highway? The simple answer is that it didn't mean to. Originally designated State Highway 22, the road was to stretch from the Pine Brook bridge in West Caldwell to Route 27 in Rahway. For some reason, plans never came to fruition, so we're left with a brief bit of road that passes under the Raritan Valley Line railroad bridge, as well as a classic concrete New Jersey highway bridge railing at the intersection of 59 and State Route 28 in Garwood.

If you stand next to that concrete bridge rail and look north, you stare straight at an old residential neighborhood. Maybe that was part of the issue -- the state would have had a heck of a time gaining the necessary property for the road, even with eminent domain.

Looking at the inscriptions on the end posts on the concrete bridge, you'd be forgiven for wondering if the road was intended to be a spur of or replacement for the highway we know today as US Route 22. Route 59 was, in fact, originally designated as State Route 22, even though US 22 already existed in New Jersey (however, in Union and Essex Counties, US 22 was known as State Highway 29, which doesn't intersect with current day State 29 in the Trenton/Lambertville area. Confused yet?). This and other thoroughfare perplexities necessitated highway renumberings in 1927 and again in 1953, when our little 0.15 mile of heaven was redesignated as 59. Nobody made the change on the bridge marker, though, so observant passers-by will no doubt have fun trying to figure out how much more convoluted 22 could possibly get.

One of these days, I'll hit the road and actually walk the length of 59. I'll park at the Walgreens at the southern end, carefully cross the driveway, walk under the railroad overpass and continue past the empty lot to the right until I reach the corner. I might even cross Route 28 to check out the concrete bridge and then head to the adjacent liquor store for a celebratory beverage. I won't want to drink it there, though: it'll be another road crossing and a little more than a tenth of a mile to get back to my car. That's not nearly enough time to get my blood alcohol content down to drive legally.