Wiped off the map: Montague's Brick House Village

Just a couple of days after visiting the Sussex County Library to share the story of the Cat Swamp hijacking and murder, we found ourselves pretty much as far north in the state as you can get. We were wandering around looking for the Deckertown Turnpike and the scene of Kilpatrick's Reenactment when we came upon the Milford-Montague Toll Bridge where 206 crosses the Delaware River.

Today, there's a somewhat awkward five point intersection where County Road 521 branches off from 206 and heads northward while the Deckertown Pike and Old Mine Road start and radiate outward. It all looks oddly sanitized and overly engineered, much different than most of the more natural-looking crossroads in Sussex County. Instead of the usual church, general store or gas station, there's just about nothing, save one of those wonderful county historical markers.

The former site of the Brick House Hotel, near the Milford-
Montague Toll Bridge on Route 206.

We stopped to discover we'd found the site of the village of Brick House, once the commercial center of Montague. The WPA Guide to 1930's New Jersey described the community as "scattered along the two-lane macadam highway with a few worn houses, a gas station before the old country store, and the old Brick House Hotel (open)."

The Hotel had indeed been old, even during the Great Depression. Built sometime between 1721 and 1780 along a former Indian trail, it had been a key stop on the Buffalo-Hoboken stagecoach route. Over the years, the brick, wood and stone structure was enlarged to include a barroom, sitting room, dance floor and nine sleeping rooms. A village grew around it, with sufficient commerce, a school and two churches to serve the local population, mostly farmers and their families.

The first strike against Brick House came in 1943 with a devastating fire that took the general store. Less than 10 years later, when Route 206 was realigned to meet the new Milford-Montague Bridge, the Brick House Hotel was taken by eminent domain, condemned and demolished.

The final and most lethal blow to the community was dealt in the early 1960s, with the introduction of plans for the Tocks Island Dam. Conceived to manage downstream flooding and generate hydroelectric power, the project was designed to create a 37-mile long recreational lake by flooding property surrounding the Delaware and designating thousands of acres of land as a park. Depending on which reports you read, the Federal government either declared eminent domain or strong-armed residents off their property, leaving virtual ghost towns to be torn down before the river was dammed and the area was flooded. Brick House sat within the borders of the proposed project, and its remaining buildings were either demolished or displaced.

Ultimately, a combination of factors stopped the project, which was deemed both geologically unwise and unfair to the families who'd lived there, in many cases for generations. The land, already out of the hands of its original owners, was transferred to the National Park Service in 1965, creating the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. However, it was already too late for Brick House village, whose crossroads location is commemorated now only by the blue historic marker and what might be considered a gravestone for the hotel that lent the community its name.

Hidden names bridging the Turnpike

I expected that a quick stop at the Turnpike's Alexander Hamilton Service Area might elicit a brief lesson on our first Secretary of the Treasury, but I found something I didn't anticipate. Walking to the building from my parked car, I saw not one, but five large plaques arranged in a semicircle, ringing an accompanying brass map. They're dedicated to a valorous group of New Jerseyans: six war heroes plus two individuals who distinguished themselves in service to the Turnpike.

A little research revealed that most if not all of the plaques were once affixed to Turnpike bridges that were named for each of the honorees, as noted on the brass map. Each bridge is nearest the pike gets to the honoree's hometown, more or less.

Given the history of the Turnpike, it's entirely fitting that several bridges are named for those who died during wartime. The highway was constructed not long after the conclusion of World War II, and several of its executives and employees were veterans.

• The Wallberg-Lovely Bridge crossing the Rahway River above Exit 12 is dedicated to the first two New Jerseyans to die in World War I. Martin Wallberg of Westfield was a Private with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces when he died on November 10, 1917, while Private Luke Lovely of South Amboy died 20 days later, while serving with the American forces.
• The Lewandowski Bridge is named for three brothers from Lyndhurst - Army Private Alexander, Marine Sergeant Walter and Air Force Lieutenant William - who perished within 18 months of each other during World War II. Their bridge is better known as the Eastern Spur, which soars over the Meadowlands, hugging Laurel Hill.
• The Chaplain Washington Bridge honors Rev. John Washington of Newark, one of four heroic chaplains who gave their own life jackets to sailors during the sinking of the Troopship Dorchester during World War II. His bridge spans the Passaic River north of Exit 14.
• An additional bridge honors Marine Sergeant and Medal of Honor winner John Basilone of Raritan, yet it's not represented at the Hamilton Service Area. Basilone's bridge spans the Raritan River north of New Brunswick.*  

Two more bridges honor civilians:

• The Laderman Bridge crosses the Hackensack and honors toll collector Harry Laderman of Fair Lawn. The first Turnpike employee to die on the job, Laderman was killed when a truck rammed his booth. His death also spurred the Turnpike Authority to protect the booths with cement blocks to prevent additional accidents. 
• The Vincent Casciano Bridge recognizes the State Assemblyman from Bayonne who advocated the construction of the Newark Bay Extension. Linking the Turnpike to the Holland Tunnel, the Extension was designed to ease congestion on the Pulaski Skyway. Appropriately, his bridge is the cantilever structure on the Extension over Newark Bay.

There are a few ironies attached to these plaques and their original placement. For safety reasons, the Turnpike was designed to create as few distractions to the motorist as possible. It's utilitarian, curves are virtually non-existent on the main road, and elevations are generally gradual to reduce the need for acceleration. Bridges were expressly designed to be virtually undetectable to the motorist - consider that a good percentage of the Eastern Spur is elevated, but just about nobody would equate it to the nearby Pulaski Skyway. If you define a bridge by the metalwork or wire rope seen on the George Washington or Goethals, you could say the Turnpike has precious few bridges. And if people did consider the bridges at all, they wouldn't have time to read a commemorative plaque at highway speed.

So, perhaps it's a good thing those plaques are posted at Alexander Hamilton, where motorists can pause for a few moments to appreciate the honorees. Now if the Turnpike would just put more effort into sprucing up the markers that memorialize the folks the service areas are named for...


* I later discovered a similar plaque for the Basilone bridge at the nearby Joyce Kilmer Service Area.