Who doesn’t remember those New Jersey and You, Perfect Together tourism commercials from back in the 1980s and early 1990s featuring Governor Tom Kane. This one has a Bill Cosby voice over and of course the governor at the end. Judging from the look of Governor Kane, we’d date this from the 1980s.
Where else would Bill Cosby go for a weeks vacation with his wife?
Schnackenberg’s Luncheonette, 1110 Washington Street, Hoboken
We got this when we were a little kid and have hung onto it ever since. It is a General Electric manual for of all things New Jersey Department of Transportation trains. It is from the 1970s and is filled with all that great sort of 1960s-1970s industrial typography, plus it has the Star Trek like NJDOT logo on the front.
On the other side of the Assunpink Creek from downtown Trenton is a surprising site, a bit of a gentrified residential area reminiscent of Georgetown in Washington, D. C. The area, known as Mill Hill, has a history stretching back to colonial times complete with an eponymous mill.
It grew into a residential area by the late 1900s and like many similar areas, it declined as industry faltered. Its gentrification stared in 1964 when then Mayor Arthur J. Holland moved his family in to the neighborhood. The area faltered by the 1980s and then a new bunch of pioneers moved in creating the mini-Georgetown like feel to the area.
We actually stumbled onto it today and were pleasantly surprised to find this unexpected gem in Trenton. Then again, New Jersey is full of things that will surprise you!
This very day one hundred years ago, the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, now the Port Authority Trans-Hudson or the PATH train, opened and linked New Jersey with Manhattan, which was only accessible via ferry - provided the weather was good. However, this story starts even before that.
Back in 1874 when the Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company started a tunnel for steam trains in Jersey City in the hopes of tunneling under the North River to Manhattan. They were not successful, experiencing deaths and tunnel blowouts which made them decide to abandon the project in 1882.
Eight years later, a group of British contractors tried their hand at it, but they ran into financial trouble. The project foundered until 1902 when William Gibbs McAdoo and Charles Jacobs started a company to finish the existing tunnel and create a second set of tunnels to go to Lower Manhattan. They were successful and in 1908 the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad was founded to run the trains linking the various New Jersey railroad terminals to New York City.
They were successful even after the Pennsylvania Railroad opened their own North River tunnels which allowed people to ride directly into Manhattan without transferring. However, by the 1950s, like all railroads, its fortunes were failing and there were financial problems.
There were calls for a government takeover, which were eventually heeded when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey took over the railroad on September 1, 1962. When they took it over the PA, literally overnight, obliterated almost every visible trace of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad.
In the book Gotham Turnstiles, author John Henderson remembers the Port Authority takeover:
… I rode the tubes on the way to work at about 10:00 PM on August 31, 1962 as a customer of the H&M. The next morning at about 8:00 AM I went home a rider on a PATH train and I couldn’t believe what happened. Between midnight and eight and the morning 90% of all reference to the H&M had been obliterated. All the signs on the stations, the cars and even the buttons and insignia on the uniforms had been altered to read PATH. The only thing they couldn’t yet change was the embossing on the columns. That had to be the most maniacal change of identity in the annals of railroading.
They weren’t totally successful, since you can find NYC Subway tile mosaics pointing to the H&M, the ocassional manhole cover with H&MRR on it, and of course the historic and abandoned powerhouse in Jersey City (right).
If you are lucky enough to read this on February 25, 2008 you can ride the PATH train for free today until 11 p.m.!
We have already mentioned some New Jersey music. First we mentioned the classic NJN station image song “Positively New Jersey”, then we mentioned in passing Uncle Floyd’s classic ode to New Jersey “Deep in the Heart of Jersey” - a song that brings a smile to almost everyone that hears it - and yesterday the lyric from the classic Paul Simon song America - Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. They’ve all gone to look for America..
But where do you start when talking about music in New Jersey? Frank Sinatra? Bruce Springsteen? Count Basie? Paul Robeson? George Walker? Nelson Riddle? Jon Bon Jovi? Connie Francis? The Stone Pony? Princeton Record Exchange?
Not there. Given the all of the musical talent that the Garden State has produced, there is a great irony.
New Jersey doesn’t have a state song.
Thankfully one proposed song, which has a website which bespeaks the quality of the music, called “I’m From New Jersey” written by a “Red Mascara” in the 1960s has never gotten off the ground. Basically it is a 1960s ad jingle and lacks the staying power of the suspiciously similar sounding classic “Meet the Mets“.
It shouldn’t be confused with singer-songwriter and Newark native John Gorka’s “I’m From New Jersey” that would be perfect for a state song:
I’m from New Jersey, I don’t expect too much
If the world ended today, I would adjust
I’m from New Jersey, No I don’t talk that way
I watched too much TV, When I was young
I’m from New Jersey, My mom’s Italian
I’ve read those mafia books, We don’t belong
There are girls from New Jersey, Who have that great big hair
They’re found in shopping malls, I will take you there
I’m from New Jersey, It’s not like Texas
There is no mystery, I can’t pretend
I’m from New Jersey, It’s like Ohio
But even more so, Imagine that
I know which exit. And where I’m bound
The tolls on the parkway, They will slow you down
New Jersey people, They will suprise you
Cause they’re not expected, To do too much
They will try harder, They may go further
Cause they never think. That they are good enough
I’m from New Jersey, I don’t expect too much
If the world ended today, I would adjust
I would adjust, I would adjust
If that doesn’t sum up New Jersey, we don’t know what does. Well maybe if it mentioned the Turnpike. Nah.
There are some wonderful vintage photos of New Jersey that the Library of Congress has placed on its flickr account. The photo above, taken in Bridgeton, Cumberland County for the Office of War Information in 1941, is just an example of some of the old photos they have. They aren’t all properly tagged, so you’ll have to do some digging!
Some have joked that they have the slogan on the Lower Trenton Toll Supported Bridge is wrong and should read Trenton Takes the World Makes or Trenton Takes Trenton Takes. The bridge which once brought U. S. 1 across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania (where they don’t have a sign saying welcome!) has had the slogan in some form on it since 1911.
The original slogan, coined by Trenton Chamber of Commerce contest winner S. Roy Heath, that first went up on a wooden sign on the south side of the bridge read, The World Takes Trenton Makes and when the original was replaced in 1917 with an illuminated sign, they flipped the wording to the now familiar slogan.
So why? Quite simply it was advertising put up by the Trenton of Chamber of Commerce placed where passengers on the Pennsylvania Railroad could see it as they crossed the river. You should also keep in mind that at the time Trenton was a thriving industrial center, making everything from wires for suspension bridges to bathroom fixtures. Today all that remains is a sad shell of once was.
The original bridge was taken down in 1928 and in 1935 the Trenton Chamber of Commerce who paid for a new neon illuminated sign and its upkeep on the new span. They touted the sign as “one of the largest neon community signs in the world, it is 330 feet long and has letters seven feet high, with capital letters nine feet.”
By 1980, the sign was in disrepair, broken and unable to be lit up and it was replaced, again funded by local businesses. In 1994, the Mercer Chamber of Commerce, the successor to the Trenton Chamber of Commerce gave control of the sign over to the bridge’s current owner the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
In 2005, a $383,427 renovation project an updated and modernized the sign made its debut, as part of a series of capital improvements to the two of its bridges which span the Delaware River between Trenton and Morrisville, Pennsylvania.
Since 2002, there have been two representations of the bridge in the 7th Avenue New Jersey Transit concourse in Penn Station. George Greenamyer’s kinetic sculpture New Jersey on Parade features it as one of the rotating landmarks and as one of Larry Kirkland’s marble etchings of New Jersey scenes and quotes.