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Health & Fitness

From the Archives: SOS…Save Rambo's Hotel

Help us save Rambo's Saloon from demolition - this is the most historic film site left in Fort Lee from our days as the birthplace of the American film industry.

As many of you avid Patch readers are aware, this past week saw another historic site in Fort Lee quickly placed on the endangered history list - Rambo’s Hotel at 2423 First Street in the Coytesville section of the borough. Though not a hotel for many decades, this structure was built in 1867. 

The Rambo family ran it as a hotel and bar and in the 20th century Gus Becker tended bar there and eventually purchased the house and it became known as Gus Becker’s Saloon until Gus passed away in 1977 and his family closed the bar around 1980. Since that time the bar area has been reconfigured into rental apartments and Gus’s granddaughter Gloria Limone lived in the back part of the house until her death a few months ago.

Realistically the Fort Lee Film Commission was born in Gus Becker’s / Rambo’s in the early 1970s. As Coytesville kids we would take a break from our summer activities of delivering newspapers, playing baseball and crabbing down the Hudson River to cool ourselves off in that very saloon. In those days kids could enter this local saloon and sit atop a bar stool as we purchased our RC Colas and potato chips from Gus. Gus would regale us with stories of when he tended bar there in the early 20th century when Fort Lee was giving birth to the American film industry. Gus spoke to us of “Poil” White, the movie serial queen, the Barrymores who lived nearby, Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand and D.W. Griffith, on those long ago hazy lazy summer days. These pioneers of American film were just a few of many who made movie history inside and outside Rambo’s Hotel. 

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Arthur C. Miller is the cameraman in the photo of Pearl White that accompanies this article. This image, the logo of the Fort Lee Film Commission, is a production still from the 1918 movie serial The House of Hate, shot in part on Fort Lee’s cliffhanger point. Though a young man in 1918 he already was a veteran of the Fort Lee film scene. In this 1967 book One Reel a Week, he recounts the time he spent in Fort Lee:

It certainly never occurred to any of us that this small rural town would soon become the movie capital of the world, years before Hollywood, California, gained that title. The trolley tracks from the ferry joined Main Street, a little beyond the top of the hill, and about four blocks farther we turned onto Fourth Street, now Lemoine Avenue, and drove through the woods to Coytesville, a little over a mile up the river, and two miles west of the cliffs of the Palisades. 

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Coytesville was sparsely populated, but there were tree-lined dirt roads, and steep wooded hills and forests. First Street was perhaps a mile long, and about halfway was Rambo’s roadhouse and saloon. Rambo’s is a landmark and a historic spot of the early movie-making days. The saloon then was a two-story frame building with a wooden front porch topped by a steep, slanted roof. 

There were no poles or wires to spoil photography from any direction, and the dirt road Rambo’s faced had a typical western appearance. Many a pair of ugly cowboys stepped out the front door of Rambo’s Saloon and squared off on the dusty road for a shoot out. This was also the place where the stagecoach picked up passengers and reported the holdup to the sheriff who immediately formed a posse and started the chase of the bandits. Within a stone’s throw was a tree where each day at least one bad man finished his life dangling from the end of a rope. 

The second floor of this now historic place was used as dressing rooms for most of those who became the early stars of the motion picture business.

These are the words of a cinema pioneer who eventually went to Hollywood and won three Academy Awards for cinematography for How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943) and Anna and the Kind of Siam (1946).

Those words alone should be enough for all of us here in Fort Lee to find a way to speak out against the demolition of this house. Currently, the property is coming before the Fort Lee Zoning Board of Adjustment and the application by the developer calls for the demolition of the house and replacement with a large two-family duplex. 

The only long-term way to prevent the destruction of the few historic structures that remain in Fort Lee is to amend the borough zoning ordinance and Master Plan. As the chair of the Fort Lee Historic Sites, Strucutre, Cultural and Landmark Committee, I have long advocated for such a change. 

Our efforts on this advisory committee created by the Mayor & Council have led to the dedication of the 1922 Palisade Blue Stone Judge Moore House on Palisade Avenue as a borough museum operated by the non-profit Fort Lee Historical Society. But even that structure, owned by the borough, could be razed if future governing bodies decide to sell that property or remove the building. 

The only way to protect even our Fort Lee Museum is to amend the zoning ordinances and include some historic buildings in the ordinance to prevent possible demolition. 

Again, we on the Historic Committee have been advocating for this and lobbying for this for many years. The matter is now being discussed by the Mayor & Council and we are hopeful that there will be a change to the zoning ordinances and Master Plan. But that doesn’t help save Rambo’s as action will not come in time.   

We urge all members of the public interested in saving the most important surviving element from Fort Lee’s days as the first American film town, to petition the Mayor & Council to save this building and to write letters and make calls to the Mayor. Also we urge you to come to the Board of Adjustment meetings on this action to speak to the importance of saving this historic site. The first meeting in which this property is on the agenda is March 19th at 7:30 PM in the courtroom of Borough Hall (309 Main Street). 

Though this building is on the County Register of Historic Sites and is eligible for the National Register of Historic Sites, neither would prevent its demolition for the only way to do that in any town in the USA is to reflect these historic structures in local zoning ordinances and Master Plans. 

Please help us save this history for future generations and secure a part of our history that is a key part of American film history. You can visit the Fort Lee Historical Society web site or Fort Lee Film Commission web site to sign an online petition started by the Fort Lee Historical Society- go to www.thefortleehistoricalsociety.org or www.fortleefilm.org.

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