Winfield Park: born of war, a battle to build

If you look through the trees along the northbound side of the Garden State Parkway northbound, just before exit 136, you might notice an enclave of small dwellings, many connected to each other. These nicely kept one- and two-story buildings look a bit like modular housing, yet there's an air of permanence to the entire area.

You've just passed the town of Winfield, a proud enclave of just under 1500 people on a triangular 0.177 square miles of land bordered on two sides by the Rahway River. It's basically a sliver of land between Cranford, Linden and Clark, so small there are only two roads in and out of town. Many in Union County know it as a tight community where generations of families have lived in what was originally built as temporary defense worker housing during World War II.

That's partially true: residents have always been close-knit, and the town was built for defense workers, but the houses were always intended to be permanent. And Winfield holds a unique distinction among American towns: it's the only defense housing project to be established as a separate municipality.

Winfield has its roots in the months before America entered World War II. The U.S. Government's Federal Works Agency had created the Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division to build suitable dwellings for the multitudes of workers who were being hired by manufacturers and shipbuilders supplying the armed forces and America's allies. The low-cost, permanent housing would be a boon for people who lacked enough money for a down payment: the government planned to sell the developments to their resident-owned and operated housing corporations.

Need for housing was particularly acute for employees at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company on Kearny Point, and the FWA set to work to find a large enough piece of land on which to build 700 housing units. Another 300 were built in nearby Newark and Harrison.

Actually locating the development wasn't easy, for both logistical and political reasons. The ideal location would be close to utility networks but in a community where those facilities were underused and land was inexpensive. Open tracts in and immediately around Kearny were largely marsh and easily ruled out as too difficult to develop quickly, forcing the FWA to look farther afield. Ultimately, they investigated seven different communities as possible locations.

Nearly 20 miles away, a small bit of land by the Rahway River in Clark looked ideal. Then the political challenges emerged. While Clark officials had courted the project, their constituents were concerned that the influx of new residents would change the town's character. Taxes were anticipated to double as the cost of services would increase while no new rateables would be built with the community. The issue became so contentious that the entire slate of officials who'd encouraged the project were voted out.

With local government now led by sympathetic officials, opposition leaders then came up with a plan to ensure the defense worker community would have no impact on the town's finances. If they couldn't stop the project, they'd find a way to get it declared an independent town with its own budget, taxes, services and public works obligations.

That's exactly what happened. Just after construction began on the project in June 1941, one of Union County's state assemblymen introduced a bill to establish Winfield Park as a municipality. Through legislative sleight-of-hand, the bill was rushed through both houses without opportunity for discussion or public comment. Governor Charles Edison refused to sign it into law, declaring it to be counter to the needs of national defense, but his veto was easily overturned. For better or worse, Winfield Park was now a municipality -- the only one in New Jersey owned lock, stock and barrel by Uncle Sam.

Opponents inadvertently helped create a sense of camaraderie and self-determination among Winfield residents, starting when the first pioneering 145 families moved into the incomplete town in November 1941. What they found when they arrived was less than ideal -- shoddily built homes with inconceivably poor plumbing, muddy roads and sidewalks, and no electricity -- but they made do. After residents went on a rent strike to underscore their grievances, Federal investigators found the contractor guilty of fraud and bid manipulation, forcing the FWA to hire a new company to finish the project.

Still, Winfield Park residents soldiered on, creating a town from scratch. Defense workers headed to work on a government-supplied bus (when it wasn't broken down) as their families got to know each other. Friendships grew and clubs formed, along with a volunteer ambulance squad and co-op grocery store. A grammar school opened to much fanfare in 1943. And as was originally envisioned, the Winfield Park Mutual Housing Corporation purchased the entire town from the U.S. government in 1950, paying off the mortgage in 1984.

Inevitably, with the arrival of the Garden State Parkway and greater suburbanization, the land on which Winfield sits became more valuable than the homes and small commercial area sitting on it. Though developers have periodically approached community leaders with various proposals for redeveloping the area, the residents have always said no. It appears that they like where they live and who they live with. Why change it now?

Anchors aweigh in Brooklawn: the hidden naval history of Noreg Village

Wrong turns can lead you into some puzzling places, as was reconfirmed to me recently. I was driving along Broadway in Gloucester City, looking for the waterfront and Proprietors' Park, when I overshot and ended up driving through a very compact housing area. Uniformly-designed, smallish stucco houses, both attached and unattached, stood on postage stamp-sized lots along narrow streets barely wide enough to accommodate two cars across.

The neighborhood put me in the mind of company housing, arranged on a modified grid. One road wound against the Delaware River and a small inlet, marking the outside border of the neighborhood. Other roads branched from a central Paris Avenue like veins on a leaf, with names evoking the local geography (Pennsylvania, New Jersey) and World War I (Pershing, Marne). It all seemed to have been planned to get the maximum density of housing into a peninsula hemmed in by river and creek. Might this might have been a quickly-built village for workers at the Gloucester City and Camden shipyards?

A recent look at Noreg Village housing

That, as I discovered later, was exactly the case. Shortly after the United States entered the war in April 1917, the Navy ordered 30 destroyers and other ship components from the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, prompting the company to ramp up work at its Camden shipyard. Additional workers poured into the region to supply labor, but they needed places to live and house their families.

In a strategy that would later be echoed in World War II developments like Winfield Park and Victory Gardens, the federal government financed the construction of homes for about 6500 shipyard workers in a riverside portion of what was then known as Centre Township. Built by the U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, the middle-income community was completed in 1917. New residents surged into the neighborhood, which was then called Noreg Village.

In 1923, well after the end of hostilities in Europe, the government held a massive auction of the 450 properties, including some commercial buildings and undeveloped lots. Home prices ranged from $1875 to $4000 for two- and three-bedroom properties described in promotional materials as the "ideal place of residence" for "the highest type of men and their families."

Brooklawn was officially formed as a borough in 1924 when it joined a growing number of hamlets separating from Centre Township by referendum. (Lawnside did the same two years later, rendering its parent township defunct.) Now home to about 2000 residents, its residential stock includes additional homes built to the east of Broadway, the road I'd taken to discover this little-known evidence of New Jersey's contribution to America's World War history.

Victory Gardens: a tiny town with an interesting past

Our tour of tiny enclaves continues with Victory Gardens, which is not only the smallest and most densely populated, but the youngest municipality in Morris County. Created by an act of the state legislature in 1951, the borough also has the distinction of being perhaps the only New Jersey community whose electorate voted against seceding from its host municipality, but got cut adrift, nonetheless.

How did this confusing turn of events happen to be?

As you might have guessed from the name, Victory Gardens was born during World War II as housing for workers who were employed at nearby Picatinny Arsenal and other private defense contractors manufacturing war goods. It was built quickly: the Federal government determined the need shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and within six months, it had constructed 300 housing units, streets and supporting infrastructure on about 90 acres of land in Randolph. The community was named for the victory gardens that loyal Americans were planting on their own property to free up farmers' crops for the war effort.

The influx of new people in Randolph seems to have caused some discomfort among longtime residents, which was allayed somewhat by the Federal subsidies that came to the town in exchange for the new construction. However, the climate changed after the government payments ended along with the war. A great many Victory Gardens residents were Democrats in what was otherwise a very Republican area, which made some Randolphers uneasy. Looking toward separating the newer community from its host, Randolph officials held a referendum in September 1951, and voters narrowly agreed that Victory Gardens should be spun off.

This has to be the most cost- and space-efficient
war memorial out there. 

Only problem was, the folks in Victory Gardens overwhelmingly wanted their neighborhood to remain in Randolph. Out of 513 votes cast in Victory Gardens, just 30 approved of the secession plan. Cast from their municipal home, the community approached neighboring Dover with the idea of affiliating there, only to be turned down. Thus, they were on their own.

Victory Gardens continues, looking a lot like a housing development off of South Salem Street, not far from Route 10. Its compact homes are clustered on streets named after a few presidents, most of whom are predictable (Washington, Roosevelt) and a few that aren't (Polk, Garfield). A condo complex was added to the town in the late 80's, but the community remains small, at around 1500 residents.

In researching, I found three other defense-related communities in New Jersey -- Audubon Park and Bellmawr Park in Camden County, and Winfield Park in Union County. They differ from Victory Gardens in that they were created by the Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division of the Federal Works Agency. All still exist today. We'll be taking a look at Winfield, specifically, in a future Hidden New Jersey report.