Firing up a celebration of joy in New Brunswick

John Adams famously predicted that the anniversary of America's independence would "be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty." In a letter to his wife Abigail just after the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the states, he said, "It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

That brings up the question -- when did celebrations actually begin? Who declared the day an official event for commemorating the act of separation from Great Britain and the official birth of the United States? I'm sure if you go to Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, you'll find people who say their forebears were the first to make July 4 a major holiday, but they'd be wrong. Like so much of what occurred during the Revolution, the first celebration was held in New Jersey, ordered by General George Washington himself. You can't get much more official than that.

The story brings us to 1778, just after the Continental Army fought the British at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28. Having demonstrated to the enemy in a daylong conflict that the Americans were a force to be reckoned with, Washington led his 11,000 Continentals to New Brunswick to rest. The Raritan River would provide refreshment to the parched and exhausted troops, who camped on both banks during the first week of July while the General made his headquarters at Ross Hall on River Road in Piscataway.

Marking the route of the 1778 Independence Day celebration
on River Road in Piscataway.

Washington capitalized on the massive gathering of soldiers to make a LOT of noise on the Fourth. He ordered them to line the Raritan's edge in a single file that ran two miles from White's Farm -- the present-day Buccleuch Park -- to Sonman's Hill, where Douglass College of Rutgers University now stands. Bolstered by an artillery force of more than a dozen cannons, the men then fired their muskets one by one in sequence in a feu de joie, or fire of joy.

That was just the start of the celebration. Every soldier was issued an extra ration of rum, and the officers gathered at Ross Hall for an evening party. Notables including Baron von Steuben, Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette were among the 100 people in attendance at Ross Hall.

Imagining the celebration as it occurred is a little difficult these days -- subsequent development and Route 18 have obliterated the 18th century landscape in New Brunswick, though the terrain remains a little more natural once the Raritan flows into Piscataway. Ross Hall was torn down in the 1960s after a destructive fire, though a single wall was saved for eventual restoration; plans are to have it displayed at the nearby Metlar-Bodine House. However, anyone driving the length of the highway along the river can appreciate the sheer mass of humanity it took to create a two-mile long shooting range, along with the duration of the gunfire they created, firing one after the other in sequence.

We can still get a little taste of the 1778 celebration every year on Independence Day. On the afternoon of July 4, reenactors gather at New Brunswick's Buccleuch Park for a smaller though no less enthusiastic feu de joie, a reminder not only of our fight for independence, but of New Jersey's significant sacrifice toward the goal.

New Brunswick's Guest House: maybe, maybe not.

When is a guest house not a guest house? When it’s the Guest House next to the New Brunswick Public Library.

You may have already guessed (no pun intended) that the house in question actually belonged to someone whose name was Guest. In this case, it was Henry Guest, one of the Hub City’s early prominent citizens.

The Guest House as it looked in 1938,
courtesy Historic American Buildings Survey.

Built in 1760, the 2.5 story, finely-cut stone house originally stood at the corner of Livingston Avenue and Carroll Place (now New Street). A city alderman, Guest seems to have been a very busy man with his hand in diverse industries. The stone for his house is said to have come from his quarry on Burnet Street, and he was also a whaler and tanner who developed new processes for treating leather. In fact, he claimed before the New York Society of the Arts that his specially-treated hides could be used for roofing in place of copper. Records of his claims against British raids show that he lost a substantial amount of hides and leather shoes to looting or burning in late 1776 or early 1777.

The Guest House, however, gets its greatest acclaim, ironically enough, from a guest who may or may not have stayed there for a short period during some of the darkest hours in early American history. Ardent patriots, the Guest family was friendly with notables including future President John Adams and pamphleteer Thomas Paine, and it’s said that Paine hid in the house for a short time in December 1776, as the British were making their charge across New Jersey. You might recall from a previous Hidden New Jersey entry that Paine was, at that point, writing The American Crisis, which inspired patriots when the Revolution seemed all but lost. No existing records indicate the exact dates when Paine was there, but a 1951 New Brunswick Sunday Times article theorizes it may have been early December, just before the city fell to the British.

Regardless of whether Paine took refuge there or not, the Guest House can claim some glory as home to Captain Moses Guest, who led the 1779 ambush and capture of Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe, Loyalist commander of the Queen’s Rangers.

Henry Guest reportedly said that if his descendants “would only keep a roof on it, the house would stand till Gabriel blew his trumpet.” However, the house itself very nearly became casualty, not to war, but to 20th century development. In 1925, the Livingston Avenue lot was purchased by the Elks as the site of their New Brunswick lodge. Pharmaceutical titan J. Seward Johnson saved the day, buying the house and offering it to the city, along with $50 in seed money for a fund to finance moving the house to another location and setting it on a new foundation.

Today, the Guest House tells its story in an understated fashion, sitting unobtrusively next to the library. Renovations in 1993 brought a new cedar shake roof, woodwork restorations on porch and portico and a new chimney. Under the care of the library administration, the house now hosts community meetings.

The Vanderbilts of New Brunswick: a fortune started on the banks of the Raritan

Wander around the exhibits in the removed and restored Indian Queen Tavern at East Jersey Olde Towne, and you'll find reference to several comparable inns and taverns that once accommodated steamboat travelers. Not surprisingly, New Brunswick was a busy place, with travelers transferring from boats to the overland stagecoach across the state on their way to Philadelphia, Washington or any number of other points beyond. Among the many names mentioned in the Indian Queen's exhibits, I was surprised to see a very familiar one: Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt? As in Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt? I knew he'd been born on Staten Island and that the family was involved in the early days of the ferry system between there and Manhattan, but I had no idea their influence extended along the Raritan River. Indeed, an article in the February 8, 1901 issue of the San Francisco Call declared that the Bellona Hotel in New Brunswick was the origin of the Vanderbilt fortune.

Vanderbilt's Bellona Hotel, well after the family had sold it.
Courtesy New Brunswick Free Public Library.

It makes sense when viewed in context. By the early 1800s the growing city was becoming a viable shipping port, both for freight (as we saw from Raritan Landing) and for the increasing numbers of people traveling and simply seeking a pleasurable excursion. William Gibbons' New York and New Brunswick Freight Company ran freight and passenger sloops between the two cities in direct competition with Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston.

Vanderbilt had followed his father into the ferry business in 1810, starting his own company at the age of 16. The ensuing years were important ones for the budding mogul: first he married his cousin Sophia Johnson, and then he met Gibbons, who was determined to break the Fulton/Livingston monopoly. Having heard several accounts of Vanderbilt's feats as a boat captain, Gibbons believed he'd found his secret weapon.

Seeing the opportunity to learn from one of the wealthiest and most successful businessman of the time, Vanderbilt agreed to work for Gibbons, even though it meant a cut in pay. Included in the deal was Halfway House, a ramshackle tavern on Burnet Street, near the river. Gibbons expected the Vanderbilts to get it back in habitable shape and run it as an inn, returning 20 percent of the revenue to him. It would also be their home.

The couple divided the labor: Cornelius handling the boating while Sophia ran the lodging. She named the inn Bellona Hall (or Bellona Hotel, depending on the source), after one of the company boats, and it soon became an attraction drawing patrons from New York. President John Quincy Adams even stayed there for an evening in 1826 while traveling from Philadelphia.

Sophia proved to be a supremely able innkeeper, managing all aspects of the Bellona through the birth and raising of 13 children. In addition to cooking, cleaning and entertaining guests, she kept the books and negotiated with wholesalers for the best prices on food, liquor and other supplies. Over the 12 years the Vanderbilts were in New Brunswick, Sophia made a handsome profit, all the more necessary because Cornelius refused to contribute toward the household expenses. Reportedly, she even lent her husband a substantial sum to buy controlling interest in a steamboat.

It's not quite clear exactly when the family left New Brunswick, but it's probably safe to say that it was probably around the time Vanderbilt left the steamboat business in favor of the railroads. With the advent of the Camden and Amboy Railroad and the Delaware and Raritan Canal, New Brunswick's prospects were clearly no longer with the Vanderbilts.

The building itself seems to have fallen into less able hands over time. Some reports labeled it a tenement. A 1908 New York Times article on the sale of the property for $15 and an equal amount of back taxes noted that "In late years the hotel has been used as a boarding house for foreigners." By 1913, the building was razed and replaced with a slaughterhouse.

There's some question about the exact location of the Bellonia, but it's most likely somewhere under the pavement of State Route 18, or maybe somewhere in Boyd Park. Save for Rutgers and a few churches, New Brunswick was notoriously bad about preserving its past, and all vestiges of the old docks and wharf area have been obliterated either by the highway or the redevelopment of the past 35 or 40 years. It's a shame, really. With the proper focus and care, the city's nautical past might have been a big draw for 20th and 21st century visitors.

Pandas rejoice: bamboo abounds in New Brunswick

We didn't see any pandas on our last trip to New Brunswick, but I honestly wouldn't have been shocked if we had, based on what we found.

Toward the end of our recent visit to Rutgers Gardens, we found ourselves in a less showy part of the property. A greenhouse, service buildings and a tractor or two got me thinking that we might have inadvertently walked into an area where visitors weren't encouraged to go. No signs were warning us away, so we figured we'd keep going until they did.

Then, at a point, the usual New Jersey-type overgrowth of shrubs, grass and vines evolved into a monoculture of bamboo. I mean, a LOT of bamboo. "This can't be a coincidence" quantities of bamboo. A break in the exotic wall of greenery drew us onto a footpath arched by distinctly Asian overgrowth. We'd stumbled upon Rutgers Gardens' real secret: its one acre bamboo forest.

Neither Ivan nor I had ever seen a grove of bamboo so expansive, except maybe at a zoo somewhere. As we continued our exploration, a winding path brought us to a rocky brook crossed by a simple wooden footbridge. I half expected to find a Zen sand garden, or perhaps a statue of a sitting Buddha nestled somewhere, but all we found was green foliage and the gentle babble of water streaming by.

The grove's species, Phyllostachys nuda, is known as running bamboo for its tendency of spreading aggressively if it's not hemmed in by concrete or water barriers. While that creates challenges for gardeners, it's a boon to the environment: the faster a plant grows, the more carbon dioxide it removes from the atmosphere. Native to China's Zhejiang province, this evergreen plant can withstand temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit, making it more than suitable to New Jersey's climate. Growers in Idaho have seen the species do well in areas where temperatures dip into the -30 degree Fahrenheit range.

How did bamboo get to Rutgers, and why? According to the Gardens' website, a small grove was originally planted on site in the 1940s as a winter home for honeybee colonies. Maybe it wasn't intended to become the forest it's grown to be, but Rutgers is making the best of it: once a culm (as the stalks are called by botanists) reaches the end of its five to seven year lifespan, it's removed in order to let a newer, healthier one take its place. The cuttings are sold during the Gardens' annual spring flower fair in May. Considering that a new culm can grow to a height of 30 feet in just a few weeks, any bare patches in the grove are filled pretty quickly.

Every culm around us looked healthy and about two inches around at most; a good knock on a few revealed a very solid report, similar to what you'd hear from a good quality tree wood. Rutgers might be missing out on an opportunity here: combine rampant bamboo with the seemingly ubiquitous Phragmites growing in marshes and on roadsides, and you've got building and roofing material in abundance.

In any case, we're getting ahead of ourselves. The Rutgers bamboo grove is beautiful just as it is: a quiet, out of the way place to relax and contemplate life, and an authentic Zen-type experience. Save the plane fare to the Far East: bamboo heaven is just a few miles from Turnpike interchange 9.

Oh, and here's a bonus haiku:

Rutgers bamboo grove

Bliss hidden in New Brunswick

Peaceful, calm and green

A surprising secret garden grows between the Turnpike and Route One

For a while, we've been meaning to get to Rutgers Gardens, the 180-acre bit of bliss located not far off Route One on Ryders Lane in New Brunswick. It's tucked so securely away from the hubbub of the University that many New Jerseyans, let alone Rutgers students and alumni, know about it. Though I visited once or twice during my college years, I honestly forgot exactly where it was and how to get there. Directional signage from the major campuses is virtually non-existent, and if there's any indication from the highway, I must have missed it.

In any case, I had visions of beautiful flowering gardens, well-kept trees and shrubs, and maybe a Rutgers-bred hybrid or twenty in the mix. Given that the WPA-built Log Cabin building on the grounds is a popular wedding reception site, I figured odds were good that we'd see a newly-married couple posing amid the greenery.

The recently hitched folks weren't there yet, but the gardens didn't disappoint. Ivan and I visited on a cloudy August morning, hoping to dodge the rain that was supposed to fall sporadically through the day. We basically had the place to ourselves, give or take a dog walker or two, but it was still early.

Consistent with Rutgers' leadership in holly breeding, visitors are greeted to the site by the nation's second largest American holly collection as they drive onto the grounds. Not far away is an impressive variety of shrubs, leading Ivan to comment that RU had missed its chance to rename its mascot the Scarlet Knight who says NI! (Bring them a shrubbery, anyone? Anyone?) Evergreens, ornamental trees and rhododendrons all get extensive space, too.

Stopping by a cheery potting shed that doubles as a gift shop and information desk, we met a friendly volunteer who filled us in on the latest. The gardens were started in the 1920's as a teaching tool for students in the plant sciences and has evolved over the years to include a broad range of species. Though the land and buildings are owned by the University, the gardens are totally self-sustaining, gaining their revenue from facility rentals and events like farm markets, classes, tours and membership fees, which enables them to offer free admission to the property. In fact, we just missed the annual open house, a major fundraiser that included tours, discussions with horticulturists, a wine tasting and plant sale.

The showiest area of the property is the Donald B. Lacey Display Garden, named for the state agricultural extension specialist in horticulture who converted it from a huge bearded iris collection to a display of annuals the home gardener can grow in his or her own plot. To celebrate the display's 50th year, Rutgers Gardens' "Best in Show, Sun to Snow" theme highlights what the staff feels are the best species of annuals, perennials and vegetables to grow in New Jersey. The selections change regularly to reflect the growing and blooming seasons for each species. Just behind a locked gate was a large volunteer-run vegetable garden with tomatoes and all sorts of summer squash ripening tantalizingly.

Hikers looking for a less manicured bond with nature can check out the Frank G. Helyar Woods, a 70 acre old-growth forest of beech, hickory and oak trees. Unfortunately the well-marked 2.5 mile path was blocked by a felled tree about 20 yards in, preventing us sandal-shod explorers from trekking much further. Maybe another day, with more energy and wearing more suitable gear, we'll check it out again; it's said to be a nice jaunt out to Weston's Mill Pond and an abandoned Christmas tree farm left to grow on its own.

As we looped around the back end of the Gardens, we found another forest with a more passable trail, but that's a story for next time. Stay tuned!

Flying saucers make history in New Brunswick

In a history-making event that garnered virtually no media attention, flying saucers hovered just feet above the ground on Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus one Monday afternoon in the fall of 1972.

No, not this one.

No, the flying saucers weren't of the "take me to your leader" variety, and their appearance on the Banks on November 6 was entirely planned by terrestrial beings. The hovering craft we're referring to are the rimmed plastic platters better known as Frisbees or, more generically, flying discs, and they were making their debut in college competition. Sprinting that day almost literally in the footsteps of their forebears of more than a century before, Rutgers and Princeton students added Ultimate Frisbee to the rivalry between the two old schools.

That's not to say that Frisbees themselves were a rare sight on campus. The link between college students and flying discs was forged in the 1940s, when Yale undergrads discovered that tins from the nearby Frisbie* Pie Company would sail a good distance when thrown a certain way. By the late '60s, Wham-O was selling plastic discs by the millions, and sailing one from person to person had become the perfect low-key campus activity. It took some enterprising New Jersey teenagers to turn the toss of a disc from a casual pastime between friends into a competitive sport.

Ultimate frisbee combines aspects of football, basketball and soccer, with two teams of seven playing on a field about the size of a football gridiron. The World Flying Disc Federation attributes the start of competitive ultimate to a student at Maplewood's Columbia High School, who proposed the game to the student council in 1968. Rules were written, a playing field was determined and two years later Columbia and Millburn High Schools competed in the first interscholastic game.

That brings us to the fateful day on the parking lot behind Rutgers' College Avenue Gym in New Brunswick, not coincidentally the birthplace of college football. By November 6, 1972, the historic field had been paved over but still retained enough favorable qualities to host the first intercollegiate ultimate disc game. Echoing the outcome of the schools' first history-making meeting in 1869, Rutgers won by two goals, though the 29-27 score was significantly higher than the original 6-4 football game. The Scarlet Knights continued their dominance as competitive ultimate spread to other colleges, winning the first National Collegiate Championships in 1975 and the successor National Ultimate Frisbee Championship in 1976.

Both universities continue to field both men's and women's ultimate teams, as do several other colleges around the state. Consistent with the laid-back nature of the ultimate culture, Rutgers fields a competitive men's A team while welcoming students of any skill to play on a B team without having to try out. There's no expectation or pressure on team members to develop (or want to develop) the skills that would enable them to play on the A level. It's all cool.



*That's not a typo. The bakery name was really spelled "Frisbie." Wham-O changed the spelling to avoid copyright infringement.

The right to vote, and beyond: the legacy of Florence Eagleton

If you're a follower of New Jersey politics, you've no doubt heard of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Located on the Douglass College campus at Wood Lawn, the Institute conducts research on the state's political climate and serves as the University's educational arm on public policy. Countless numbers of state policy makers, journalists and elected officials have benefited from the Institute's programming and resources, whether in undergraduate or graduate-level classes, or seminars targeted to segments of the public.

I've always wondered who it was named for and why it happens to be headquartered on the campus of Rutgers' women's college. As I found from my research, both the setting and the focus of the Institute makes perfect sense once you learn its origin.

The name and the heritage traces to a classic New Jersey Woman With Moxie who wasn't content to simply live the life of a member of late 19th-early 20th century Newark aristocracy. Rather than simply settle for luncheons and charity events, she became one of the state's leading advocates for women's rights in a time when change was neither guaranteed nor completely supported within her social stratus.

Florence Peshine Eagleton was born in 1870 to parents whose families traced back to the earliest days of Newark's founding. Following her education at one of the city's exclusive finishing schools, her parents arranged her marriage to Henry Riggs, who at more than twice her age was already widowed and the father of a 20 year old son. According to Lives of New Jersey Women, their marriage, though without passion, resulted in one son, and they divorced as friends several years later. Though Riggs thought well enough of Florence to name her a beneficiary in his will after their separation, her own family disapproved of the divorce and considered her to be a fallen woman, in the parlance of the day.

Her second marriage was far more successful. At the age of 43, she married Newark neurosurgeon Wells Phillips Eagleton, a far better match, both in age and mutual affection. They were an accomplished pair: he as a well-regarded and often-published physician and she as a philanthropist and advocate for social change.

Florence had come of age during a time when the fight for women's suffrage and access to family planning were coming to a fever pitch. Already having helped found the New Jersey Birth Control League, she dove headfirst into the movement to ratify the 19th Amendment. As leader of the state's Women's Political Union and vice president of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association (WSA), she drove a hugely successful petition drive in Newark, prompting the state legislature to vote to make New Jersey the 29th state to ratify the amendment. That achieved, Eagleton became the first president of the Newark League of Women Voters, the successor to the WSA which is dedicated to educating voters about public policy issues. Under her leadership, the LWV conducted a series of "citizenship schools" to help women make better educated decisions at the polling place.

The leap to the Eagleton Institute, then, becomes easy to understand, but why the Rutgers connection?

An advocate of women's education, Eagleton was an early board member of the New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College) and later became one of the first women to serve as a trustee at Rutgers University. She no doubt became intimately familiar with the school and saw a fertile field in which her life's work could continue well beyond her death.

In her will, she bequested $1 million for the establishment of the Wells Phillips Eagleton and Florence Peshine Eagleton Foundation, directing that the funds go toward "the advancement of learning in the field of practical political affairs and government [so] that a knowledge of the meaning of democracy may be increased through the education of young women and men in democratic government." Further, she wrote, "It is my settled conviction that the cultivation of civic responsibility and leadership among the American people in the field of practical political affairs is of vital and increasing importance to our state and nation ... I make this gift especially for the development of and education for responsible leadership in civic and governmental affairs and the solution of their political problems."

Florence Eagleton died in 1956 and the Institute was organized not long after. Now the home of the Center for American Women in Politics, it continues her efforts to build and enhance women's influence on the public policy stage, even as it broadens its scope to study immigration, the role of the governor in American states and a host of other issues. Perhaps Florence is little known today, but more importantly, her mission continues.

Exploring the Joyce Kilmer house

To many people, the name Joyce Kilmer means one of three things: the poet who wrote Trees, a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike, or an army base that once operated in Edison. If you've lived or gone to school in New Brunswick, a certain street might come to mind, too. And if you've walked down Joyce Kilmer Avenue, you might have noticed a small cream-colored house with a plaque saying, simply, "Kilmer House." Its first floor now the home of the city's Dial-a-Ride program, the upper portion of the house quietly remains a shrine to the poet and World War I hero.

The Kilmer birthplace

The facade of the house is a puzzle, with no indication of whether any aspects of the family's life there have been preserved, or when one might be able to return to learn more. A bit of sleuthing revealed contact data for New Brunswick Historian George Dawson, who kindly agreed to meet me there and share some insights on the family and the house.

As advertised, the entire first floor is the domain of city employees, yet there are still nice touches befitting a 19th century home. I climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor, walked down a slightly wider corridor and found myself in the room where Kilmer was born. It's uncertain whether any of the furnishings in the room belonged to the family, but the bed, rattan chaise, mantlepiece decorations and wallpaper were all reminiscent of the era when the Kilmers lived there. The rooms farther back contain memorabilia like a chunk of the aged Kilmer tree, the mighty oak on Rutgers' Douglass/Cook campus that was considered by some to be the inspiration for his famed poem. (The tree succumbed to age and disease and was cut down in 1963.)

Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born in the front bedroom of the house in 1886 and was baptized at Christ Church, his first name taken in honor of the parish curate and his middle name from the Episcopal rector, Rev. Elisha Brooks Joyce. His parents, Frederick and Annie, had moved to the house at 17 Codwise Avenue a few years earlier, and Fred operated a pharmacy downtown until 1889, when he joined a new company called Johnson & Johnson as its first scientific director.

Taking the job at J&J appears to have been a wise move for Fred; when Joyce was just five years old, the family moved to a larger house on College Avenue. (Regrettably, that house was demolished in 1960 to make room for the uninspired architecture of Brower Commons.) Fred went on to develop the company's iconic baby powder and contribute to several other advancements; check out J&J's informative Kilmer House blog for more on his fascinating career.

After completing his primary and secondary studies at Rutgers Preparatory School, the younger Kilmer attended Rutgers College, where he was an associate editor of the Daily Targum and a member of Delta Upsilon. Writing came easily to him, math not so much. At the time, college regulations required that students pass all of their subjects before being allowed to move to the next year's studies, and poor grades in sophomore mathematics meant he'd have to retake all of that year's classes before advancing. Instead, he chose to complete his studies at Columbia University, where, it might be presumed, the policies were a little less rigorous.

From his earliest years, Kilmer was deeply spiritual and eventually converted to Catholicism, prompted by his interest in Irish heritage and nationalism. He's also said to have told friends that Catholics write the best poetry. He married Aline Murray in her home Episcopal parish in Metuchen in 1908, but by 1913, the couple were members of New York's Roman Catholic Church of St. Paul the Apostle.

Kilmer graduated from Columbia in 1908 and taught English and Latin at Morristown High School while working to make his mark in New York's literary community as a reviewer. Stints at publishers eventually brought him to the New York Times Sunday magazine, even as he published several volumes of poetry. He and Aline moved to Mahwah, where they welcomed a son and daughter, and where he's said to have written Trees.

This representation of Kilmer
hangs on the wall in the room
where he was born.

Having joined the New York National Guard's 69th Regiment in 1914, Kilmer became part of the regular army after the United States entered World War I. His feelings about war were evident in his poem The White Ships and The Red, published by the Times after the sinking of the Lusitania. Despite his college education, he chose not to pursue an officers' commission and went in as a private. He shipped out to France in October 1917 and was promoted to sergeant five months later. On July 30, 1918, he was killed in action, shot in the head by a sniper. Only 31 years old at the time of his death, he was buried in a military cemetery at Fere-en-Tardenois and remembered by his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel William Donovan, as "a cool-headed solider... full of eagerness at all time to give his full measure of service." The French awarded him the Croix de Guerre posthumously in recognition of his valor.

Back in New Brunswick, the local American Legion post wanted to honor Kilmer, the local enlisted man who'd served so honorably. The Codwise Avenue house had passed through several owners since Fred and Annie sold it in 1903, and the Legionnaires felt it would be an ideal home for their post. They bought the property in 1929, dedicating it the next year with a blessing on the birthplace room from a Christ Church rector. It was henceforth known as the Joyce Kilmer Shrine.

Declining membership, vandalism and rising maintenance costs forced the Joyce Kilmer Post 25 to sell the building to the state as a historic site in 1969, and local historians created the Joyce Kilmer Birthplace Association to drive restoration. The city of New Brunswick took possession in 1983, with the stipulation that the second floor shrine be maintained.

Few people visit the house, as evidenced by the number of signatures in the guest book. You'd hope that local schools would arrange field trips so kids could learn a bit about a local writer and war hero, or that Rutgers might encourage English or Journalism students to stop by. In any case, if your curiosity is piqued, mark December 6 on your calendar. The house is open every year on Kilmer's birthday, and you're more than welcome to stop by and learn more about this hidden but not really hidden New Jersey notable.

The Japanese at Willow Grove Cemetery: revealing New Jersey's role in modernizing a nation

Last week's visit to New Brunswick's Willow Grove Cemetery brought to mind a legend I had heard about seven Japanese citizens who were buried there. According to random scuttlebutt around Rutgers, the unfortunate dead were exchange students who had fallen ill during an epidemic. Thing was, a marker in the Japanese section notes that one of the deceased was living in Brooklyn at the time of his death. Another was a child. I think it's pretty safe to assume that they weren't commuter students. Who, then, were these people, and what was their relationship to New Brunswick?

While getting to the bottom of the story, I discovered Rutgers' little-known contribution to the modernization of Japan in the mid 19th century. I also came upon an interesting American "first" attributed to the university.

The Japanese section at Willow Grove Cemetery today.

One question is easy to answer: only one of the buried people, Kusakabe Taro, attended Rutgers College, though a few of the others had attended Rutgers Grammar School (now known as Rutgers Preparatory School, no longer affiliated with the University). The students were among the first to travel to the United States to gain a Western Civilization-style education. How all of them got here is a little more complicated, as are the reasons why so many lay in rest at Willow Grove.

Kusakabe Taro, Rutgers graduate,
first Phi Beta Kappa from Japan.
Courtesy Rutgers University
Libraries

The admission of Japanese students to Rutgers has its roots in the opening of relations between the island nation and the United States in the mid 1800s. Commodore Matthew Perry's historic visit to the island country marked the beginning of the end of Japan's isolation from the western world. More than 200 years earlier, however, the Netherlands and Portuguese had established relations with Japan, and while the Portuguese were eventually told to leave, a small Dutch contingent was allowed to stay on a separate island as a trading outpost. That Dutch influence eventually played a large part in Rutgers and New Brunswick establishing enduring relationships within Japan.

Originally founded by leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church in America, Rutgers held tenuous links to the religious institution well into the 19th century. Church missionary James Ballagh and Rutgers alumnus Robert Pruyn traveled to Japan to establish contact and encourage young samurai to come to New Brunswick as part of an exchange program. They believed, quite astutely, that the best way to strengthen relations between the two nations was to expose their future leaders to both cultures. Their plan eventually led to two brothers, Yokoi Sahaida and Yokoi Daihei, attending the Grammar School to learn English and learn about American culture. The pair apparently returned to Japan after several years of study in the U.S. but both died at young ages from diseases they had contracted while living here. Coming from a place where Western contact had been limited, they'd had no immunity to illnesses that Americans had built resistance to.

Japanese students attend Kusakabe's funeral.
Courtesy Rutgers University Libraries.

Several other Japanese followed the Yokoi brothers to Rutgers in the years following the Civil War, with four graduating between 1866 and 1876. An informative article published by the Rutgers Libraries notes that it's not clear exactly how many Japanese studied there at a given time, but it's quite evident that at least some of them blended well into campus life. For example, Matsukata Kojiro is seen in a photo of the 1885 football team.

A native of Fukui, Japan, Kusakabe Taro came to Rutgers on the recommendation of alumnus William Griffis, who'd traveled East to teach science and build on interests sparked by his friendships with Japanese students in New Brunswick. Kusakabe soon distinguished himself as an outstanding student in both mathematics and sciences, eventually becoming the first Japanese to gain acceptance to Phi Beta Kappa. Sadly, just a few weeks before his scheduled 1870 graduation, he died from tuberculosis. His degree was awarded posthumously, and the Japanese Consulate arranged for his burial at Willow Grove.

Between 1870 and 1886, the cemetery section received seven other Japanese who lived in New Jersey or New York. It's unclear how many attended Rutgers College or the Grammar School, but one in particular is known to be a small child whose parents were Japanese.

Today, the gravesites are well tended, but they were once victim to the same vandalism suffered by many of the others around the cemetery, obelisks broken and knocked over. The citizens of Fukui, now sister city to New Brunswick, contributed funds to restore the monuments and purchase a headstone for the buried child.

While the preservation of the Japanese section is important and worthwhile, the lasting friendship between Rutgers, New Brunswick and the people of Japan is even more notable. Educational programs continue to foster understanding and offer priceless opportunities for students. The world is a lot smaller than it was when the Yokoi brothers first arrived On the Banks, but the lessons learned from cultural immersion are no less valuable.

Deciphering the dead: New Brunswick's Willow Grove Cemetery

I know... I know... we find ourselves in cemeteries a lot, probably more than anyone who isn't a funeral director, horror groupie or purveyor of dark arts. Truth is, you can find a lot of history in graveyards. Close examination of monuments and grave markers can give you remarkable insight into a community's past and its evolution to what it is today.

New Brunswick's Willow Grove Cemetery is a case in point. Nestled in a lot behind the city library, its wrought iron fencing is barely visible from busy George Street, where I often spied it while riding the Rutgers campus bus. It wasn't until recently that I got around to investigating it, and it took a bit of doing to get there. Morris Street, its actual address, is one way flowing toward George Street, so I had to navigate a couple of blocks of side streets before I found the right way to get access. Fortunately, there was plenty of curbside parking, often a tough find in downtown New Brunswick.

Two things struck me as soon as I got a good look at the graveyard. First, it was obviously once a very desirable place to rest for eternity. Several tall monuments marked railed-off family plots, and I recognized some of the names as notable citizens of New Brunswick and/or Rutgers leaders.

Second, the cemetery is in grave need of restoration. While the grass is reasonably short in much of the acreage, other areas are overgrown with weeds and just plain untended. An aerial view indicates what appear to be a pile of gravestones dumped in the southeastern portion of the property. Easily half of the stones still in burial areas are off their bases, either knocked over or moved. And the back side of a large obelisk inscribed with the cemetery's 19th century trustees is tagged with graffiti.

There's no signage to tell you the name or history of the cemetery; in reality it's actually the conglomeration of three burial grounds. The oldest portion, closest to George Street, was consecrated in 1837 when the Presbyterian Cemetery was moved from Burnett Street (largely replaced by Route 18, this street pretty much ran along the Raritan). Willow Grove officially began in 1851 in the portion of the cemetery closest to Livingston Avenue. The land between the two was opened as the Central (or Cheesman) Cemetery in 1868.

One of the reasons I wanted to check out the cemetery was because I'd heard that some Japanese exchange students were buried there in the 1800s, having perished in New Brunswick while they were attending Rutgers. If memory served, the legend was that there'd been some sort of epidemic that lead to their deaths (My research is pointing to a few different stories, which I'll share in a future post.), and I suspected that this cemetery was their final resting place.

Often, the farther back you go in old cemeteries, the worse the damage is, but fortunately the Japanese section is an exception. Six obelisks stand in memory of the deceased, with Japanese inscriptions on the shafts and English translation of their names and dates on the base. Another base sits alongside, having likely met the same fate as so many of the other monuments around the graveyard that have been tilted over. A more modern, round-topped stone memorializes a child, while another newer granite slab lists the names of the seven adults and their dates of death. It appeared that some sort of remembrance had happened recently, as dried flowers were laid at some of the stones, and several foil-lined coffee cans stood in one corner, smudged with carbon from candles or incense that might have been burned in them. In any case, the shrubbery and bonsai-like trees around the plot lead me to believe that it's being well-cared for.

Not far from the Japanese section, I found a curiously new marker with a fresh American flag stuck in front. Adorned with a shield, the inscription notes the death in line of duty of William Van Arsdale of the New Brunswick Police Department in 1856. Research indicates that Officer Van Arsdale was patrolling the coal yards near the Delaware and Raritan Canal when he fell, broke through the icy surface of the canal and drowned. The next morning, a worker found the officer's hat, frozen into the ice next to the hole his body had created. He left behind a wife and six children.

The easternmost portion of the cemetery is easily the least kept portion, to the point where it's disturbing. In some portions, it appears to be in a successional phase, where shrubs will soon overtake the weeds and grass if left undisturbed. A few obelisks poke out of the tall brush to mark the graves of prominent citizens, while a sloped area appears to be full of discarded gravestones. Climbing in to check it out didn't seem wise, but it also appeared that there'd been a concerted effort to move the stones into a pile. This couldn't have been done surreptitiously by malevolent forces.

The mystery was solved, to some extent, when I checked in with a New Brunswick librarian, who confirmed that the stones had, indeed, been moved intentionally when the graves' contents were transferred to Van Liew Cemetery in North Brunswick. Further research shows that 520 sets of remains were relocated in 1920 to make room for new construction. Perhaps the expense and hassle of moving the gravestones with the remains was too great for consideration; I'll have to make a visit to Van Liew to see where they ended up and how they're marked. In any case, many of the headstones still rest in the Presbyterian Cemetery section of Willow Grove, jumbled and marking nothing.

The Disappearing Dean and the Lady in the Lake

My research on the house dorms of Douglass College brought to mind a sad and rather macabre legend I heard while I was a student at Rutgers. Mabel Smith Douglass, the accomplished woman who'd spearheaded the movement to establish the college that now bears her name, died under mysterious circumstances following her retirement in 1932. Said to be despondent over a series of personal misfortunes, she'd retreated to family property on Lake Placid, rowed a small boat to the deepest part of the lake and disappeared. A two-week long search revealed nothing, and she was assumed to have drowned. Suicide wasn't spoken of publicly, out of respect for her family, but many came to that conclusion.

Mabel Smith Douglass, in a portrait
that hangs in College Hall at the school
that bears her name.

Years later, as the legend goes, two fishermen were enjoying a quiet morning on the lake when one of them felt his line go taut, as if he'd snagged something. With both men tugging firmly, they finally dislodged the line, and up came a perfectly preserved human body. Some said the corpse was frozen solid, with clothing still intact, which sounds highly improbable. Authorities later determined that the two fishermen had discovered the body of Dean Douglass.

Having first heard the story from a friend over a few beers, I didn't give it much credence. My friend insisted it was true; she'd heard it from a college official at a talk on legends and ghosts at Rutgers.

As I've learned, the story does have some elements of truth, as all good ghost stories do. It's even become a much-told local legend at Lake Placid, where Dean Douglass is known as the Lady in the Lake.

Douglass did indeed have family property at the lake, and she retreated after more than a decade of tumult in her personal and professional lives. First, her husband had died in 1917, as she was working with other members of the New Jersey State Federation of Women's Clubs of New Jersey to establish the New Jersey College for Women. Following the founding of NJC, she continued to encounter resistance from Rutgers University administrators even as she strove to nurture and build the school. And in 1923, her teenaged son fatally shot himself, compounding the loss of her husband years earlier.

In 1930 or thereabouts, Douglass suffered what was then termed a nervous breakdown. In the years since, it's been theorized that depression may have run through her family, perhaps accounting for her son's suicide. Chronic depression certainly could have been exacerbated by the quest Douglass had chosen for herself: more than a decade of fighting Rutgers hierarchy and lobbying the state legislature for funding. She was a determined and resolute woman, but even the greatest resolve is no match for the brain chemicals which can draw some people into melancholy.

It seems that she addressed her condition in a very final way on September 21, 1933. Telling her daughter she was going out to find some foliage to decorate their cabin, she instead launched her rowboat onto the lake. Hours later, when Douglass hadn't returned, her daughter frantically called the state police. They searched the woods and found no trace of her until someone noticed the empty boat floating on the lake. Several days of searching there led to nothing, and Douglass was presumed to have drowned after falling out of the boat.

For more than thirty years, that was all that was known about her death. The thriving NJC became Douglass College in 1955, a tribute to its deceased founder. Sadly, Douglass' offspring were not there to enjoy the acclaim on behalf of their mother. Her daughter had committed suicide in 1948 following her own husband's death in an airplane crash.

Then, in 1963, a surprising discovery was made. Members of a Lake Champlain-based diving club were on an excursion 95 feet below the surface of Lake Placid when they found a well-preserved body. The corpse's neck was looped with rope attached to a 50-pound anchor which broke free as one of the divers attempted to move the body. Unfortunately the body started to deteriorate as it rose through the depths of the lake, virtually erasing the facial features which would have made identification easier.

Coroners took a week to assess the body, finally determining from a broken arm bone that it was Douglass. Despite the divers' accounts of the rope and anchor found with the body, the cause of death was never officially changed from accidental. The remarkable underwater condition of the corpse was attributed to the mineral and salt content of the waters of Lake Placid and the near-freezing temperatures at the depth at which it was found.

No living relatives could be located to claim the body, so Douglass College officials handled the final arrangements. Dean Douglass is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, alongside her husband and children. Coincidentally, Green-Wood is also the final resting place of Colonel Henry Rutgers (yes, that Rutgers), whose remains were also the subject of a post-death mystery. But that's a story for another time...

A home away from home: the house dorms at Douglass College

Pick any four-year college in New Jersey, and it's likely you'll find a bunch of old houses on campus, renovated for educational purposes. Some are grand, like the Guggenheim mansion that now serves as the Monmouth University Library. Others are are more modest Victorians or Colonials converted to office space as the school grew around them.

Then there are the houses that were built by schools expressly for the purpose of, well, housing students. Why would a college build a bunch of what look like one-family center-hall Colonials when they could build a big dorm instead? Good question. The story goes something like this:

When New Jersey College for Women was founded in 1918, resident students lived in the large house on George Street which is now known as College Hall. Dean Mabel Smith Douglass knew that the school would grow, so she and the board started exploring housing options for the anticipated student body. However, the search for funding to build dormitories was difficult. No lending institution would extend credit to a women's college, fearing that the school would fail to attract students and would be forced to close before paying its debts.

One bank, however, agreed to an innovative solution: build housing that litterally was houses. By constructing what was essentially a subdivision, NJC would gain a substantial number of dormitory rooms for its students. If the school defaulted on the loan, the bank would have a much easier time unloading individual houses than it would face in selling a large building.

A few of the Corwin houses on the second horseshoe.

Two residential campuses were built, both a fair distance from the college's academic buildings on George Street. Each of the campuses - now known as Gibbons and Corwin - is comprised of several houses containing at least nine bedrooms, plus a kitchenette, living room and basement study rooms. A central lodge on each campus acted as a meeting place and communal lounge. Corwin houses were built on two semi-circular roads, with larger 40-woman houses at each end of the two "horseshoes." True to the plan, each of the houses could easily be sold to private owners as cozy one-family homes, should the bank need to take possession. Each of the nine-bedroom houses had virtually identical floor plans, but the exteriors came in several varieties, just enough to add a little individuality for a potential buyer.

Renamed Douglass College in 1955, the school continued to grow and prosper, prompting the construction of more traditional dorm housing closer to the central campus. Expansion also meant that additional academic buildings were built closer to the Gibbons campus, making that housing more desirable. Corwin, on the other hand, was separated from the rest of Douglass by several Cook College buildings. While generally considered 'last resort' housing, those relegated to living in Corwin were fiercely loyal to their homes on the horseshoes. The coziness of the houses, plus the familiarity that comes from living in close quarters with 16 other students, engendered a unique kind of camaraderie among housemates.

Though the Gibbons houses are still in use as housing, Corwin stands largely vacant. A handful of the houses have served as offices for various university departments, but for the most part, the campus looks like a dated subdivision awaiting its first families to move in. Given the costs of retrofitting more than 20 houses with fire suppression systems and internet access, and the university's zeal in building new housing, it's not likely that Corwin will ever serve as dorm space again.

The Jersey bounce: our history in rubber manufacturing

I've long known Butler as a small, quiet borough near Route 23 in Eastern Morris County, but it wasn't until we stopped there one Sunday that I realized the role it played in what was once a prominent industry in the state.

Much of the town's small business district is dominated by a large industrial building standing hard against the railroad tracks. In fact, it appears as if the town center might have been built around the mill-like structure. Little did we know that we were gazing upon yet another milestone in the annals of New Jersey industrial history: the site of the world's oldest manufacturer of hard rubber products.

Richard Butler bought the Newbrough Hard Rubber Company already operating in town and eventually combined it with others to create the American Hard Rubber Company in the late 1800s. Through his vision, the community grew exponentially, with hundreds of workers coming to live near the factory that provided them with jobs. The municipal website says that the Butler Rubber Mill was once the largest manufacturing facility of its kind in the world.

I'd never really connected the dots before, but it seems that New Jersey has a bit of a rubbery past that extends well beyond Butler. According to the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, New Brunswick was the site of one of the country's first rubber factories, built in 1838 by Horace Day. It might also be considered an early recycling venture: the facility manufactured rubber shoes using alcohol, white lead, lampblack and rubber salvaged from imported Brazilian shoes and syringes. Charles Goodyear later successfully sued Day for copyright infringement when the New Jerseyan claimed to have been the first to vulcanize rubber to make it more durable.

In spite of Day's setback and the movement of much of the industry to Akron, Ohio, the state continued to play a prominent role in rubber. Milltown already had a sixty-plus year history in rubber manufacturing when Michelin came to town in 1907, adding a decidedly French influence to the community. Its workers produced over 4500 tires and 15,000 inner tubes a day, until the plant closed in 1930.

Never one to pass on a challenge, Thomas Edison even took a crack at the rubber business in the later years of his life. The breadth and severity of World War I prompted Henry Ford and tire magnate Harvey Firestone to be concerned that future conflicts could curtail the import of South American raw rubber to the United States. Certainly their friend Edison could come up with an alternative?

Many people don't realize that Edison loved chemistry and took great pleasure in experimenting in his lab. In what was destined to be his final project, he set about to derive rubber from the goldenrod, first by hybridizing the plant. His experimentation resulted in taller stalks that yielded more natural rubber than the average plant, yet the actual product failed to meet the desired standard. The U.S. Department of Agriculture continued his work after his death but finally closed the project in 1934, without a positive result.

Butler's rubber industry declined first with the massive 1957 fire at the Pequanock Rubber Company, and finally with the closure of the last factory in the 1970s. The original product may be gone now, but the town can be proud of its contributions to American industry.

Cooperative living down on the farm: Cook College's Helyar House

If you make it to Cook College Ag Field Day tomorrow (and I hope you do!), take a few minutes to stroll down College Farm Road to Helyar House. The 1960's-era building is the modern representation of the resourcefulness of an innovative professor and the persistence of his students during the Great Depression.

Like many students in the 1930s, a host of young men at Rutgers' agriculture school struggled to meet the costs of tuition and college living expenses by doing odd jobs around campus. The farm itself had plenty of opportunities for enterprising young people to keep after the animals, make sure the furnaces stayed lit, and so on. In exchange for their labor, the students with these jobs would get a small room as sleeping quarters. It was a spartan existence, and likely a lonely one.

Agriculture professor Frank Helyar saw an opportunity to change the situation a slight bit. A good part of the ag school campus had been a working farm before Rutgers bought it, and it included an old farmhouse once occupied by a minister named Phelps. Why not open the building to students who were willing to work in exchange for room and board? Beyond the jobs they already had around campus, the residents would also manage the house, make the meals and so forth.

Apparently it was a hard sell to administrators who couldn't see the difference between this planned house and a fraternity, but Helyar stressed the cost-sharing arrangement and the need to provide students with a good living experience. The first group of young men who moved in proved him right: they were hard workers and made the cooperative living arrangements work. Along the way, they also put a spin on the fraternity concept and called their house Alpha Phalpha, the second part being an adaptation of the last name of the house's previous owner.

By the time I got to Rutgers, the frat-derived name was gone in favor of honoring Helyar, and the house had already been taken down in favor of the newer building, but the affable young men who lived there still basically ran the house on their own. It was a great environment to visit, and I'm sure it was a great education for the residents as it still is today. Female and male students at Cook College's successor school can apply for space at the house, which continues to offer a significant cost savings when compared to other on-campus residence options. I'll bet Professor Helyar would be proud and happy to see that his Depression-era concept lives on.

First football, then the constitution, all on College Ave.

Today marks the 142nd anniversary of the first intercollegiate football game between Rutgers and Princeton, played in New Brunswick. As any college football aficionado or proud son or daughter of Rutgers knows, the men in scarlet won the game six goals to four.

But did you know that the game was played at the same location where New Jersey's 1947 state constitution was drafted? And it's the same place the Scarlet Knights' mens basketball team played its home games en route to its storied 1975-76 NCAA Final Four appearance? That's some lucky real estate there, though some may have argument with the constitution.

Many Rutgers students pass the College Avenue Gym without ever realizing the history lurking within and beneath the building. There's a plaque by the front door, memorializing the constitutional convention, but the football connection is missing. Indeed, fans going to present day games couldn't be faulted for thinking the first game was held at the current stadium in Piscataway, given the bronze statue at the north entrance and the large "BIRTHPLACE OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL" painted on the wall inside.

The historic November 6, 1869 game was played in much humbler surroundings, but student spirit was just as intense as it is today. Few know it, but the rivalry between the two New Jersey schools had been fueled by a dispute over who owned a particular Revolutionary War cannon, but that's a story for another day. That, plus a drubbing of the Rutgers baseball team by the Princeton nine, led to the first football game. About 100 spectators came to see the two teams of 25 men playing a game closer to soccer than today's football. Three games were to be played over the course of a few weeks, but only two were held. Seems that the faculties of both schools were concerned that athletic pursuits were getting in the way of academics. Imagine that!

The Barn, as the gym is known, was built in 1931 to replace the fire-ravaged Ballantine Gym which had been located near present day Zimmerli Gallery. While the mens' and womens' basketball teams now play at the Rutgers Athletic Center across the river, the Barn still hosts volleyball and wrestling matches. One wonders if the ghosts of 1869 ever come out to cheer for them. Perhaps when Princeton visits.

Who's good and kind and has bridges named after them?

Cross the Raritan River on Route 1 northbound, and you'll see a sign commemorating the Morris Goodkind Bridge you're traveling atop.

Cross the Raritan River on Route 1 southbound, and you'll see a sign commemorating the Donald Goodkind Bridge you're traveling atop.

I've been taking this route occasionally for my entire adult life, and it's only recently that I discovered the difference. Sure, I'd noticed that the two directions are carried on different spans, with the southbound bridge being several years newer than the northbound, but I never gave the name much thought. I knew the Morris Goodkind name, but I guess I assumed it covered both directions, and I assumed he was a notable New Jerseyan from colonial times. Discovering the Donald connection got me curious. I don't know of many colonial Donalds.

So who are these Goodkind guys, and why do they get bridges named after them? The answer is quite simple, actually: they were both engineers with the New Jersey Department of Transportation and responsible for the design of the bridges that now bear their names.

The older bridge, built in 1929, is much more graceful: concrete with arches beneath and commemorative plaques embedded at either end. I've never been able to read them because they're against the left-most lane and impossible to get to with your life intact; in more recent years they've also been sprayed with graffiti. There's a war memorial at the southern end, largely unreadable at highway speed. Originally called College Bridge, the span was named after the elder Goodkind in 1969, just one of his many accolades. He'd won a medal for excellence in bridge design from the American Society of Civil Engineers for the bridge's design and eventually became chief bridge engineer for the state highway department. The Pulaski Skyway is just one of the spans built under his leadership. Interestingly, he'd begun his career in subway design in New York City.

According to the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, Morris believed that bridges were monuments to structural elegance and that unless a bridge was beautiful, the engineer had not given all that was expected of him. It's a shame that his son didn't (or perhaps couldn't) design the newer bridge consistent with that goal. A garden-variety highway bridge of steel and concrete, the southbound span was built in 1974 and named after Donald in 2004. Maybe engineering standards at the time favored that kind of design, or maybe it was more cost effective, but wow ... not really all that impressive-looking. The body of his work, however, warrants recognition. Like his father, Donald also made notable contributions to the state's roads and engineering discipline. He was also a trustee of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and co-founder of the state Consulting Engineers Council.

You have to admit, there's a nice little symmetry to the father-son bridges. They show the tenor of their times, and they certainly get the job done.

Franklin and Adams slept here: Indian Queen Tavern at East Jersey Olde Towne

New Brunswick's reputation as a Revolutionary-era city is tempered largely by the presence of Rutgers University, one of the original eight colonial colleges. Essentially all of the period architecture is gone from the city's riverfront and dock area, obliterated by Route 18 and redevelopment over the past 30 years. However, history buffs and fans of the musical 1776 are well aware of the some of the more notable of the era's personages who visited during the war.

Yes, Alexander Hamilton was there with his troops at a point... but the big guns are John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. New Brunswick was a stopover for them in August 1776 as they traveled from Philadelphia to Perth Amboy and Staten Island to meet with British General Howe. According to David McCullough's venerable biography John Adams, the pair were to represent America's side in a discussion of the recent declaration of independence from the British crown. The conversation ended, of course, with a stark refusal to surrender and thus rejoin the empire.

The story of the night before the discussion is rather whimsical in nature and says a lot about the historic pair. Because accommodations in New Brunswick were mostly full at the time, Adams and Franklin were forced to share a room. Some even say that the pair even had to share a mattress. It wouldn't be surprising -- after all, inns of the day didn't exactly have the queen posturpedics today's hotels do. According to legend, Franklin spent much of the night expounding on the merits of keeping the window open. He'd published a theory on the benefits of fresh air, believing that people in closed rooms were more likely to catch cold from each other. Adams, on the other hand, feared the night air but eventually fell asleep to the sound of his bed partner explaining his beliefs.

Fortunately, the inn where they overnighted, the Indian Queen Tavern, has been restored. Unfortunately, it's not at its original location at the corner of Albany and Water Streets, an intersection now covered by an entrance to Route 18. You can visit the tavern now at East Jersey Olde Towne in Piscataway, which is where I found it.

Olde Towne is a collection of historic and reconstructed homes and buildings from around Middlesex County and environs, all arranged in a tidy, walkable community off River Road. Though they feel a bit too tidily situated, the New Brunswick barracks next to a tavern next to a home and blacksmith shop... and a tiny square brick church.... a visitor quickly warms to the thought of them all located in one place. You could do a nice little study of East Jersey colonial architecture in probably a half hour.

The tavern and the barracks, especially, caught my attention. Long interested in New Brunswick's colonial past, I took a look at the addresses and tried to place where the buildings had stood, in comparison to today's streetscape. Not surprisingly, both were fairly close to the Raritan, if not absolutely on it. The city had been a busy and productive port area, with lots of shipping and commerce. No doubt, it was quite a toddling town in its day. Small wonder that colonial luminaries had found their way there.

The community is open from Tuesday through Friday and on Sunday afternoons; I guess they keep it closed on Saturdays due to the proximity to Rutgers Stadium. Unfortunately that's when I was there, so I didn't get the chance to check out the building interiors, but it's definitely worth another visit. The Indian Queen, at the very least, deserves more attention.

Stuffin’ our Faces in New Brunswick

Twilight was fast approaching in Salem County when we started our way toward the Turnpike and home.  Ivan must have been reading my mind, because he suggested that we take a detour on Exit 9 and grab dinner at Stuff Yer Face in New Brunswick. Saying that is like suggesting I might like to breathe:  it’s a total no-brainer.  (Does this guy know the way to my heart, or what?)

How much do I love Stuff Yer Face?  I started going there as a Rutgers freshman, and I still return several times a year for one of their signature strombolis. They’ve made this basic Italian staple an art form, offering dozens of variations filled with any number of cheeses, meats and vegetables. Some have described it as a rolled-up pizza, but that doesn’t begin to explain how freakin’ good it is. Oh, and you know celebrity chef Mario Batali? He started his career there as a line cook, so I can honestly say I ate his creations before he got famous.

Now, usually I make my SYF jaunts on a quiet afternoon, but this time we’d likely get there at its busiest.  Would it be loaded with noisy college students, making us look like the quintessential mom and dad? More importantly, would we get a table before we both died of hunger? That last question was also complicated by a Turnpike warning sign prompting us to detour onto Route 130: that added an extra 15 or 20 minutes to the trip.

Not surprisingly, there was a 30 minute wait for a table when we got there, so we headed to the bar so Ivan could check out their extensive menu of brews.  It definitely lives up to its reputation. While there, we chatted briefly with a couple of very polite frat boys who were celebrating a birthday with pitchers of a neon-blue libation. At the other end of the bar, a couple more in our age range was whiling away their table wait by playing darts with their young daughter.

We got called for a table right at the 30 minute mark, and I didn’t even have to look at a menu: Emily boli (vegetarian) and an enormous diet soda.  And please bring it quickly.  Not long later:  yum.  And a delicious way to conclude a long, eventful day of wandering, birding and exploring.

It’s kind of neat, actually:  when I started going to Stuff Yer Face back in the 80’s, it was rare to see anyone there over the age of 30.  It seems that my contemporaries keep returning, even as the place continues to be wildly popular with Rutgers students today.