The silken past of Stirling

Paterson may be nationally known as Silk City, but if you wander around New Jersey long enough, you'll find other places with legacies of weaving the lustrous fabric. A historic marker on Route 206 noting a silk truck hijacking and resulting murder led us to the story of Newton's silken past, and now another informative plaque further proves that the Great Falls area didn't have an exclusive on mills.

A few weeks ago I was meeting a friend for lunch in the Long Hill community of Stirling when I came upon this description of the village.

Given the placid, sometimes rural charm of much of Morris County, it was a bit of a surprise to discover that Stirling had been an industrial town. Looking around, I saw only a small business area surrounded by suburban houses. We've been to plenty of factory towns, and Stirling doesn't look like one. If there was a story to be told, I'd have to do some digging.

As it turns out, the hamlet of Stirling owes its existence to the foresight of an insurance company and a railroad. Shortly after the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York announced interest in investing in Morris County land in the late 1860s, the Passaic Valley and Peapack Railroad purchased land in present day Stirling for the construction of a railroad station and right of way. Trains started running in 1872, and the line would eventually extend to the Delaware River, raising the prospect of Pennsylvania coal being shipped through the new community. Organizers named the community for William Alexander, Lord Stirling, the Revolutionary War notable who'd once owned land in the area.

Reliable transportation made it easy to bring in raw materials and labor, and ship out finished product, but first a town needed to be built. Bit by bit, the village came together, starting with eight houses and a railroad depot, followed by a Presbyterian church. The first factory was built on Railroad Avenue to make buttons; it eventually employed 125 people. By 1885 the plant was silenced, victim of an economic downturn, and the entire village, houses and all, was put on the market.

The Stirling silk mill

Silk came to Stirling in 1886 when Jersey City mill owner Claude Chaffanjon bought the factory and surrounding buildings and homes. Having immigrated to the United States years earlier, he brought skilled Italian and French weavers to work in the mill; as was the custom in Europe, many others came with looms of their own and weaved in their homes. The boon in population and industrial output brought growth in the community, too: Chaffanjon donated land for a new Catholic church, and an additional public school was built.

Chaffanjon's stay in Stirling was brief; within a year he'd sold the factory to Julius Schlachter, who brought German and Swiss weavers to town. In 1896 the mill burned down, replaced a year later by a new building. Within 25 years of the opening of the original mill, Stirling's population had become a veritable map of Europe, with Armenians, Germans, Italians, French, Hungarians and Russians mixed with the local born population. Their children generally attended school up to the eighth grade, foregoing high school to follow their parents' path into the mills. When Stirling Silk went bankrupt in 1908, it was bought by the Swiss company Schwartzenbach-Huber.

Though 30 miles away from the state's silk hub, the mill at Stirling wasn't immune to the labor unrest that struck Paterson. A June 1915 New York Times article notes that months of unrest followed management's decision to enact a new wage scale, and that several looms were being sent to other Schwartzenbach-Huber locations in Bayonne and Pennsylvania, presumably where labor was more compliant.

Nor was the Stirling plant protected from a wave of silk thefts that swept the region in the early 1920s. The fabric was a hot commodity - foreign suppliers were still recovering from the ravages of World War II, making U.S.-manufactured silk that much more desirable on the open market. A few months after thieves hijacked a silk mill truck on present-day Route 206 in Sussex County, thieves struck Schwartzenbach-Huber. On November 24, 1924 three masked and armed bandits broke into the factory and beat a 60 year old night watchman unconscious when he confronted them. After restraining him with cloth, they pulled a getaway truck up to the shipping dock and loaded it with 50 cases of silk worth a total of $35,000.

Stirling's silk days have been over for the better part of a century. Schwartzenbach-Huber had sold the mill and housing in 1928, but the weaving trades continued in much smaller companies around the village up to about 1940. As for the old silk mill itself, it burned to the ground in 1974 in its incarnation as a polyurethane foam factory.

Making beautiful music in Washington, the Organ Capital of the World

A hundred years or more ago, beautiful music came from a Northwestern New Jersey community in such abundance that the area was said to be the Organ Capital of the World.

Words from an 1897 catalog paint the picture: "Nestled among the green hills of Warren County... lies the beautiful little city of Washington, where for more than a half century, Cornish Pianos and Organs have been built. [...] Here is no great rush, but an infinite care and painstaking labor are exercised in a quiet co-operative way."

There's no sign of the company or the factory at its old location on the corner of State Route 57 and South Lincoln Avenue today; we learned about it from a docent during our visit to the Bread Lock Museum a few months ago. Astoria, Queens may be the birthplace of the more famous and fabled Steinway and Sons piano dynasty, but one could say the impact of Washington, Warren County on the world of music appreciation for the common person was greater. If the manufacturers in this town had their way, every American family would a piano or organ of their own. According to its own promotional materials, Cornish put out 40 complete instruments every working day, producing up to 12,000 a year in its factory.

Unlike Steinway and its luxurious Manhattan showroom, the Cornish Company eschewed retail. Rather, it sold direct to consumer via catalogs and advertisements that emphasized both the quality and relative affordability of the instruments. Potential customers could pick from several ornately-carved cabinets to accent their home decor, and "every responsible person in the land" was encouraged to purchase an organ or piano on credit. Cornish promised that purchasers could return their instrument within a year and get back the payments they'd made plus six percent interest. As an added inducement, the company made arrangements with a correspondence school to provide piano lessons to customers who may not have already known how to play a keyboard instrument.

The factory itself started as a much smaller structure built by a furniture manufacturer in 1858. After purchasing the building in 1880, the Cornish family and built several additions until it took up most of a city block. Nearly two dozen smaller keyboard instrument manufacturers followed, earning Washington its title as Organ Capital of the World.

The ultimate end of the Cornish company and its factory aren't quite clear. Local historians feel that the rise of the phonograph may have led to the company's demise, a good theory considering one didn't need to invest time in lessons to learn to play a record. Some reports say that the company never recovered from a 1922 factory fire, and a 1926 New York Times article states that the building was to be converted to a hotel, with 40 rooms on the second and third floors. Fifty years later, The Star Gazette of Hackettstown and Washington reports that after the company went into receivership in 1921, a former baseball player named Socks Farrell purchased the property, renovating a portion of the old factory to become the Farrell Arms.

Ultimately, the structure appears to have been destroyed in a 1934 fire, replaced over time by a gas station and then the Krauszers food store that stands today. Cornish organs and pianos, however, still stand beautifully in living rooms and parlors around the world, handed down over the generations to their original purchasers' offspring.

Belco: (not) a blast from the past in the Pinelands

Acres and acres of pitch pines and other evergreens obscure the remnants of industry that once dotted the Pinelands. Land cleared for pig iron foundries and papermills in the 1800s has now been overtaken by regrowth, rendering the old factories difficult to locate. Other, more accessible abandoned industrial sites like the Estell Manor glassworks are easily visited within Atlantic County parks.

What we didn't realize on our original visit to Estell Manor was that there was a larger and more recently-built and abandoned factory community nearby. In fact, a good part of the park now stands on the grounds of the World War I era munitions manufacturing site and proving grounds known as Belco. Just outside of the former blast range, the companion factory town of Belcoville is still alive and well.

New Jersey's contributions to the war effort began well before the United States entered the conflict in April 1917, with several suppliers manufacturing ammunition for our allies. Once we were formally in the conflict, four additional factories were constructed around the state by various defense contractors, including the Bethlehem Loading Company, or Belco. Under the direction and supervision of the U.S. Army, Belco cleared about 10,000 acres of marshy pine forest along the Great Egg Harbor River to build the factory along with the nearby village of Belcoville to house more than 3000 workers and their families. An adjacent proving ground was to be the largest testing site of its kind in the world.

Storage facilities for loaded shells.
Courtesy Atlantic County Government.

War is a great motivator for rapid construction, and Belco is a case in point. Work on the factory site and village began simultaneously in early 1918, continuing non-stop, seven days a week. A subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Belco was the only ordinance contractor to supply shells from mining the iron ore through forging the steel, machining, loading and assembling the final product. The site at Estell Manor was responsible for the loading and finishing stages, requiring both factories and complex safety measures to address the highly explosive elements that employees would handle.

The self-contained plant included everything that would be needed to keep production moving, including a power generator, water works, personnel offices, machine shop, blacksmith and carpentry areas, and storage facilities including reinforced powder magazines. A barracks held 1100 soldiers who guarded the plant against potential sabotage, a threat already felt from explosions at Jersey City's Black Tom Wharf and the Canadian Car and Foundry munitions plant in Kingsland.

Safety was paramount. Plants were built at distances to ensure that a fire or blast in one would not set off a chain reaction. A modern water pump and main system included special valves to ensure that firefighters would have adequate water pressure even if part of the system was damaged by explosion. Much of the plant was constructed of wood to prevent sparking that could set off fires, and escape chutes were built into the second floors of the plants, leading to protective ditches. Changing houses were built for both male and female workers to ensure that employees wouldn't track poisonous TNT residue out of the loading areas.

As a result of these measures, Belco was a reasonably safe place to work, and no fires or blasts of note caused significant worker injury or damage to the plant. No employee ever suffered from TNT poisoning though more than 17,000 such incidents occurred at other plants around the country. Nevertheless, a 100-bed hospital stood ready to address injuries and illness.

By July 1918 the first 155 millimeter shells were being filled and rolling off the assembly lines, even as construction work continued on additional factory buildings. Meanwhile, employees enjoyed the benefits of living in modern housing at nearby Belcoville, with running water and heating as well as community amenities like a school, bowling alley, shopping district and YMCA/YWCA.

Belcoville housing ranged from dorms for single employees
to large homes for supervisors with families.
Courtesy Atlantic County Government.

Just four months later, with about 70 percent of the plant built, the war ended, though Belco continued to turn out munitions for several months afterward. Plant buildings were dismantled and sold for scrap, leaving only the concrete foundations. Many of the newly-vacant worker houses were sold, taken down and moved to other locations in the area, while many employees remained in Belcoville to keep the community going.

Belco is listed on the New Jersey and National registers of Historic Places, and Ivan and I visited some of the roads and ruins recently, guided by an informative booklet available at the Estell Manor Park Nature Center. On a warm, sunny day, the gnats were in full force, accompanying us as we walked the broad main path into the complex.

Had we not already known that a busy manufacturing plant had been there less than 100 years ago, we'd never have been able to tell. Roadways are still evident from the long, reasonably straight breaks between trees, but many of the side streets are little more but wide strips of overgrown grass marked with wooden signs.

The booklet points out the sites of several Belco buildings which are a 10 or 15 minute stroll from the visitor center (depending on whether you stop to look for the stray cuckoo or vireo calling from the trees). We found the footings or a water tank and the machine shop, blacksmith and carpenter shop before the gnats got to be too much for us. There's more along the other paths, but from what I understand, most of it is along the lines of "you need an imagination to see it." No doubt, a late fall, winter or early spring visit might be more productive for those wanting to find more of the ruins.

Still, a hike through Belco is thought provoking. If such a busy industrial site can revert to virtual wilderness so quickly, what potential is there for other highly-developed tracts to be reclaimed by nature? So much of New Jersey has been paved over, some to great benefit and some not. Maybe sprawl isn't irreversible after all, and maybe old industrial sites can, with some effort, host wildlife once again.

Oh, and if our experience is any indication, it's a wonderfully reliable place to find Yellow-billed cuckoos. During our visit, we saw at least four, including a pair perched comfortably beside each other not far into the woods from the trail.

Hamburg's castle made of wheat: the milling history on Wheatsworth Road

Most Northern New Jersey explorers know about the Gingerbread Castle in Hamburg. Some even remember visiting the whimsical structure during its heyday as the centerpiece of an amusement park between 1930 and 1978. It's one of those places that tends to stick in your mind -- a fanciful fairy-tale castle replete with characters like Humpty-Dumpty and arch-backed black cat, among others.

The Wheatsworth factory, as seen from a HiddenNJMobile.

In near total contradiction to the whimsy of the castle, a large, forbidding concrete building casts a shadow over the abandoned property. A few small turrets and balcony-like structures break up the monotony of the facade, but it's not a pleasant looking place. The windows that aren't boarded up are mostly broken, evidence of a lengthy abandonment. A posted sign informs visitors that an environmental cleanup is in process, not surprising after you notice the traces of painted lettering atop the building which seem to spell the word "synthetic."

Why in heck would someone put something so ugly next to something so adorable ... or was it the other way around? Unfortunately, New Jersey has more than its share of juxtaposition of beauty and industry, but why, when there's so much room in Sussex County, would these two be so close?

A first clue can be found on the old stone gateposts nearby. They're adorned with Arts and Crafts-style Flint Faience tiles depicting idyllic scenes of fields and mills. One even features a steaming bowl of hot cereal, a comforting start for a chilly Sussex County morning, and a millstone is embedded in a nearby wall. Each scene is labeled "Wheatsworth Mills."

Wheatsworth? Like Nabisco Wheatsworth crackers? Absolutely.

Turns out that the Gingerbread Castle's less-than-attractive industrial neighbor was just the last of the wheat-related ventures operated on that spot in Hamburg.

Today, the Wallkill River flows unimpeded past the building and under Wheatsworth Road, but in the day it was harnessed to power a waterwheel for the industry of the day. Joseph Sharp, Jr. built a stone grist mill there in 1808, replacing an ironworks that had made cannonballs surreptitiously for the British during the Revolutionary War. Sharp's mill, by contrast, ground local wheat into flour for American troops during the War of 1812 and no doubt benefited from its location just off the Hamburg Turnpike (now Route 23) after it opened in 1795. That mill was lost to fire in 1834 but was partially rebuilt.

Moving forward to the 20th century, New York-based F.H. Bennett Biscuit Company purchased the site in 1921 to supply flour for its bakeries across the Hudson. Six years later, the company changed its name to Wheatsworth to capitalize on the popularity of the brand name under which it sold biscuits, flour and other bakery goods. Around the same time, the company substantially enlarged the mill building, erecting a taller concrete structure that basically swallowed up the old Sharp mill.

An old sign with a valuable message.

As the story is told, F.H. himself was inspired to add the Gingerbread Castle to the factory campus after seeing a production of Hansel and Gretel at New York's Metropolitan Opera. He hired the opera's set designer, Austrian architect Joseph Urban, to create what became the centerpiece of a children's amusement park where Grimm's fairy tales came to life. Reflecting Bennett's business, the castle appeared to be constructed of cookies and crackers, and after its opening in 1930, visiting children were told that if they touched the building, the appealing treats would turn to stone. 

The National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) purchased Wheatsworth in 1931, taking ownership of the factory/mill building but not the castle. After operating there for six years, Nabisco sold the plant to Canterbury Mills, the last operator to use the building for baking-related purposes. The final owner, a wire coatings manufacturer called Plastoid Corporation, took possession in 1943. While they eventually moved production to another location, Plastoid's corporate offices remained in the building until sometime in the 1980s.

Together, the mill building and Gingerbread Castle were listed on Preservation New Jersey's Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2012. Not surprisingly, the castle attracts the greatest interest and has benefitted from partial restoration and a brief reopening in 1989. The far less photogenic mill/factory building seems ignored by all but adventure seekers despite its arguably more historic past. Reportedly suffering from a collapsed roof and internal deterioration, it would no doubt take a lot of effort to make it habitable again, but who knows? And with the Gingerbread Castle and Wallkill River on either side, the view from any of the factory's windows would be a welcome site for anyone who chose to work or live there.

It's a thought...

The Jersey Devil and the Pot House: glassmaking at Estellville

Fresh from our find at Weymouth, Ivan and I headed a slight bit eastward on the Black Horse Pike. I'd heard about another ancient Pinelands factory nestled within an Atlantic County park. We were so close by, we had some time before we were expected elsewhere, why not go for it?

The former Estellville glassworks operated from 1825 to 1877 and was reportedly among the first to produce both window glass and bottles. About three and a half miles south of Mays Landing proper, it's now surrounded by an expansive parkland of playgrounds, picnic areas and untouched woods. The factory site itself is about halfway along the circular park road, well marked out with wayside signs. Though the buildings have deteriorated to about the same level of falling-apartness as the site we'd just visited, helpful numbered maps direct visitors to various features of importance in glassmaking.

Like the Weymouth Furnace, the glassworks was made up of several buildings, but in this case, each represented a stage of the manufacturing process. We first went to the pot house where workers made the vessels in which sand, potash and limestone would be mixed and melted to make glass. According to the wayside, replacement pots were needed often, as they'd become damaged by the high heat of the melting process.

Several steps away, a three-room building once held the furnace where the raw glass was made. It was also where glassblowers would shape the molten material into cylinders that would be flattened in another building and eventually cut into windowpanes. Here's the wild thing: the blowers would often strap themselves to the wall as a counterbalance against the 80 pounds or so of molten glass they'd pick up from the vat with their blowpipes. Those who chose not to take the safety step might -- and sometimes did -- find themselves falling into the pit to meet an unfortunate and painful end.  

Between the furnace building and the flattening building, I noticed several small objects glistening in the sun. They turned out to be weathered pieces of glass, possibly from the factory itself, as none of it seemed thick enough to have been broken bottle shards from a more recent visitor.

The park signs and online guide led me to believe that foundations of workers' houses could be found in the far reaches of the tract, so Ivan and I followed a path into the nearby woods. As we walked, I remembered something I'd read in the handy WPA Guide to New Jersey, which only mentioned the glass factory as a side note. The writers were more interested in highlighting Estellville as the birthplace of the Leeds Devil, more commonly known these days as the Jersey Devil.

Before we go much further, I want to make a statement: we here at Hidden NJ try to avoid the usual Jersey legends and apocryphal stories in favor of the more obscure yet plausible. I'm rather proud that we've published for nearly a year and a half without making hay of Mother Leeds' thirteenth child, but when you stumble upon the purported birthplace of the ol' JD, you have to say something. Plus, he's got wings, so I figured I could include him as a birding feature.

I mulled the possibilities as we walked farther down the path than my research had indicated the workers' homes would have been. The path was well maintained and lined in places by flowering bushes, but who knew if we were walking into territory where a cloven-hooved flying beast would rather be to himself? Focused on finding some of the birds whose songs he'd been hearing, Ivan ignored my suggestions that maybe I'd misread the map and we should instead be looking for the buildings elsewhere.

We decided to turn around after we reached a small deck overlooking a creek and pilings that once apparently supported a bridge. Walking back to the glassworks, we did find an elusive flying creature, but it turned out to be a yellow billed cuckoo rather than ol' JD.

Given the park's size and diversity of habitat, we'll likely be headed back to Estellville sometime soon for birding at a more productive time of day. I guess that means we'll also have another chance to check in on the state's scariest and most active citizen, the immortal Mr. Leeds.