Friday, January 11, 2013
Upcoming Palisades Amusement Park exhibit at the Fort Lee Museum to celebrate the centennial of the world's largest outdoor saltwater pool and the publication of a new book, "Palisades Park."
- THE NEIGHBORHOOD FILES
- Tom Meyers
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Friday, January 11
Palisades has the rides... Palisades has the fun… Come On Over. Shows and dancing are free... so's the parking, so gee... Come On Over. Palisades from coast to coast, where a dime buys the most. Palisades Amusement Park. Swings all day and after dark. (bumm, baa, dumm, bumm, bummmm) Ride the coaster...Get cool...In the waves in the pool. You’ll have fun... so...Come On Over..(dumm de dum da dum... dum) So goes the song Come on Over that was heard over all the New York metropolitan area radio stations and seen on TV commericials in the 1960s. This song, lodged in the recesses of millions of baby boomers’ brains, is an introduction of sorts for all of you readers to come on over to the Fort Lee Museum from March 2 through Sept. 9 this year …
40.84831
-73.9686
Fort Lee Museum
1589 Parker Ave, Fort Lee, NJ
/articles/palisades-amusement-park-exhibit-a-book-a-pool-and-a-centennial
1770199
/locations/8579841
Friday, January 4, 2013
January 1916 in Fort Lee, NJ, where Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand took up residence at the Triangle Movie Studio on Main Street and Linwood Avenue.
Early January is a time to look back as well as ahead - back to the previous year's successes and shortfalls and ahead to what we all hope will be a good year for all. This being an archives piece, I have the great good fortune of revving up the old Fort Lee way back machine and heading to a January distant in time but, as Einstein said, relatively not so distant in scope. The time, my friends, is January of 1916, some 97 years ago. Imagine Fort Lee without the George Washington Bridge, a small rural town with a vibrant Main Street, trolley tracks and movie studios. This was near the apex of Fort Lee’s days as the center of American film production. True, studios were consolidating in Hollywood by 1916, but Fort Lee still had the lead in…
40.85382
-73.97498
Main St & Linwood Ave, Fort Lee, NJ
/articles/happy-new-year-1916-97th-anniversary-of-fatty-in-fort-lee
/locations/8525596
Friday, December 28, 2012
A tribute to Fort Lee's retiring police chief, who once upon a time coached the borough's youth.
- LOCAL CONNECTIONS
- Tom Meyers
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Friday, December 28, 2012
As these short December days melt into memory, we here in Fort Lee should take time to bid farewell to our Police Chief, Tom Ripoli, who will retire with the ringing in of the New Year. The Chief has received many accolades over the past few weeks and will likely see many more in the coming days. All are well deserved. However these accolades center on his time as Chief of the Fort Lee Police Department and for his 41-year career in the department. The Chief is not only from Fort Lee, he is Fort Lee, and I will tell you why from my own personal perspective. Decades ago in the fall of 1972 across Main Street from Borough Hall, I first met Tom Ripoli. I was an 11-year-old kid from the Coytesville section of town. My friend Shawn and I …
Friday, December 21, 2012
A Visit from St. Nicholas Courtesy of Fort Lee's Church of the Good Shepherd circa 1859.
- LOCAL CONNECTIONS
- Tom Meyers
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Friday, December 21, 2012
'Tis the season for many holiday remembrances, and here in our little perch atop the Palisades in Fort Lee, one rarely heard tale comes to mind. As you go about your holiday shopping these last few days before Christmas, I hope you can take the time to relax for a moment or two in front of your fireplace if you have one, and if not, then position yourself near your TV as WPIX brings back its yearly ratings hit, “The Yule Log.” As you relax in this cozy atmosphere, you might be compelled to think of the holiday classic A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens’ acclaimed novella was first published in December of 1843. Why mention this in an archives piece about Fort Lee? Well, in 1859, Reverend Ralph Hoyt authored Echoes of Memory and Emotion. …
Friday, December 14, 2012
The history of one of the oldest roads in Fort Lee captured in photography and art but forsaken today.
- LOCAL CONNECTIONS
- Tom Meyers
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Friday, December 14, 2012
Last week’s piece centered on the Old English Neighborhood of Fort Lee that hugs lower Main Street and River Road just below Kaufer Lane. I left out a discussion of Old Palisade Road because I felt that lonely little road deserved a moment in the sun on its own merits. Just north of the Fort Lee Pump Station on lower Main Street as Main meanders into River Road, there is a lonely, forgotten and somewhat desolate reminder of a time when this section of Fort Lee was noted for its artists and bohemians from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Old Palisade Road climbed the cliffs to Kaufer Lane and beyond. South of its base was The Castle, a foreboding, grand wooden mansion set into the cliffs with turrets and steps made of Palisade …
40.848464
-73.966868
100 Old Palisade Rd, Fort Lee, NJ
/articles/old-palisade-road-then-and-now
/locations/8387421
Friday, December 7, 2012
Members of the Fort Lee Historic Society and Fort Lee Historic Sites Committee hope the creation of this proposed historic district in a small area of Fort Lee will pave the way for more history being preserved.
- LOCAL CONNECTIONS
- Tom Meyers
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Friday, December 7, 2012
This time of the year always brings me back to thoughts of the fall of 1776 and General Washington’s retreat from Fort Lee, or as we refer to it, "Washington’s Retreat to Victory." As mentioned in previous pieces, General Washington led more than 2,000 of his troops west on Fort Lee's present day Main Street on Nov. 20, 1776 as they abandoned Fort Lee when they received warning that the British had crossed the Hudson River and were heading to capture Fort Lee. This archives piece will deal with the area of Fort Lee where the main fortification of Fort Constitution, later named Fort Lee, was built in 1776. While the Palisade Interstate Park has done a magnificent job in recreating the spirit of “Fort” Lee at the Fort Lee Historic Park off…
Friday, November 30, 2012
From the Archives: A brief history of the Palisades cliffs in Fort Lee.
- LOCAL CONNECTIONS
- Tom Meyers
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Friday, November 30, 2012
The Palisades cliffs of Fort Lee are referenced in many of these archive pieces. Often I use as a point of reference the fact that we denizens of Fort Lee reside perched atop these very cliffs. These ancient cliffs define us as a borough. Carol Ortlip, a Fort Lee native and a member of the famed Ortlip family of artists of Fort Lee, wrote a book some years ago titled We Became Like A Hand: A Story of Five Sisters. Carol brought a new meaning to growing up on these cliffs, as she wrote about her family life atop the cliffs near Old Palisades Road, the present day site of several high-rises, including The Century. She captured life as a child here in Fort Lee on these very cliffs and though she and her sisters fanned out across America as…
Friday, November 23, 2012
A restored "Historic Fort Lee" painting will be dedicated at the Fort Lee Public Library on Saturday at 12 p.m.
The Ortlip family of artists are among many artists who called Fort Lee their home from the 19th through the 20th century. As hard as it may seem to believe today, back in the post-Civil War era through the early part of the 20th century, Fort Lee was a resort community with lavish hotels atop the Palisades. Here many artists ventured to capture on canvas the wonderful views of the Hudson River atop the bluffs of Fort Lee’s Palisades. Many artists associated with the famous Ashcan School of the early 20th century created their art in Fort Lee. It was a realist artistic movement made up of eight members, including John French Sloan and Edward Hopper. Other artists of note to work and live in Fort Lee were George Overbury Hart, better known…
40.852923
-73.973582
Fort Lee Public Library
320 Main St, Fort Lee, NJ
/articles/thanksgiving-homecoming-in-historic-fort-lee
1770853
/locations/8194096
Friday, November 16, 2012
The 236th anniversary celebration of General Washington's Retreat to Victory in Fort Lee is Saturday, Nov. 17, with events continuing throughout the weekend.
As Thanksgiving approaches next week, this is a time to reflect on many things in our lives as Americans, from the most recent visit of a superstorm named Sandy and the ensuing havoc, to those things we all have to be grateful for in our Fort Lee of 2012. Each November, our borough takes on the look of the town depicted in the Ray Bradbury story, Something Wicked This Way Comes. The book and the film based on this story evoke all the darkness and mystery of autumn, and, in a way, if you look from our perch on the Palisades, Fort Lee too takes on a very Gothic look, as the grayness of the days gives way to long crisp nights. This is the climate that is just right for a step back in time, that time being 1776. Fort Lee has changed markedly …
40.851691
-73.964006
Fort Lee Historic Park
Hudson Terrace, Fort Lee, NJ
/articles/a-walk-with-washington-in-modern-day-fort-lee
1776204
/locations/8155516
40.84913
-73.9692
Monument Park
Palisade Ave & Angioletti Pl, Fort Lee, NJ
/articles/a-walk-with-washington-in-modern-day-fort-lee
1799828
/locations/8155517
Friday, October 26, 2012
From the Archives: It's Alive!
The turning of the leaves atop the Palisades here in Fort Lee connote many things to many people. Most people think of Halloween and tricks or treats as the calendar creeps closer to Oct. 31. But since 2003 this time of the year in Fort Lee brings back memories of Alois Dettlaff. Al was an aged film collector from cosmopolitan Cudahy, Wisconsin, who visited us not so many years ago. Like the meeting of Abbott & Costello with Frankenstein, this meeting of Al Dettlaff and the Fort Lee Film Commission is legendary and worth unearthing during this ghostly season of Halloween. Jim Beckerman, noted entertainment reporter for The Record, spoke to me after a film screening back in 2002. Jim had covered the Fort Lee Film Commission for many of our…
Tom Meyers
2:38 pm on Sunday, January 13, 2013
Tracy, Yes people in the past have identified themselves in images we have placed on display in the Fort Lee Museum re Palisades Amusement Park - that is always a lot of un - similar situations have happened with, for example, exhibits on Fort Lee's Riviers Nightclub. This has led many to donate or loan some of their own personal collections to the Fort Lee Museum. more ›