From: dmr@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Daniel M. Rosenberg)
Subject: TOWN: Berkeley Heights, NJ
Organization: The Very Large Software Company of America
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 20:13:33 GMT

[ This apparently didn't make it out of Sun, so I'll
try it again from Stanford. ]



Sorry this is later in arriving than I wanted it. It seems alt.suburbs
is still segmented in a couple of places, so beat on your newsadmins,
already.



Berkeley Heights, New Jersey (and environs)


New Providence, New Jersey, was settled in the middle 18th century
just southeast of Newark in the Watchung "mountains," in the
north central part of the state. Berkeley Heights was founded out
of a part of New Providence later on towards the end of the
century, mostly as a railroad station and a few surrounding buildings.

People pretty much farmed for a living; Mr. Mondelli delivered
fresh vegetables around town in his truck until he died a few
years ago, and there was still a tomato patch up on Mountain Avenue,
but it's now covered by the gray block of the Chubb insurance building.

The Warren dairy farm, farther out on Mountain Avenue, was also
still in business until a couple of years ago; the land is now
being subdivided into luxury suburban residences, each tagged as "exclusive
development, only 12 homes," although the three developments completed
or in progress abut each other.

Most of the original settlers of the area of New Providence -- apparently
known formerly as "Turkeytown" -- were recent Italian immigrants who
moved out to the country. New Jersey really *was* "the country" up
through the middle part of this century, even though much of that
country was made up of dumps for nearby New York.

There is still an Italian section of town, surrounding the Erie Lackawanna
station (now run by Conrail). Some of the nicer homes go back
a couple of hundred years. Later on, a broader range of people moved
in, and the two grew quickly.
 
The downtown areas of Berkeley Heights and New Providence look like they
were put together in a hurry in the middle of a suburban settlement
spurt in the 1950's. The commercial buildings are low, long and wide,
with the flat roofs typical of 1950's store construction. Most people
agree the downtown area has turned out to be a planning nightmare,
and an eyesore.

The town council has been agonizing over the downtown area for years,
and there have been several plans to tear up the old Foodtown,
post office and Drug Fair and reconstruct a downtown that has a "center,"
or an identity.

Currently, the buildings are being torn down and replaced with 1990's
versions of themselves, since the themes the council has presented all
seem inappropriate -- such as clusters of adobe buildings. (Adobe
is not a typical mid-Atlantic building material.)

The high school kids hang out where they can downtown, like all high
school kids do. In many places high schoolers choose an open-late
restaurant or a downtown park, but since Berkeley Height's downtown
is a strip of gas stations and supermarkets, and there really
aren't any restaurants where teenagers seem to feel comfortable,
they hang out in front of the Drug Fair or the Cumberland Farms milk
store.

Berkeley Heights' town seal includes a red test tube, symbolic of "science,"
and the AT&T Bell Laboratories location located within the natural
boundaries of Berkeley Heights on the map. The Bell Labs location was
the first in New Jersey, built around World War II when AT&T moved its
research arm out of the Murray Hill district of New York City. (It's
the site of AT&T's Unix Research Group, including Kernighan, Ritchie,
and Thompson.)

Murray Hill, New Jersey, although enclosed in Berkeley Heights, is really
a sort of unincorporated area of Union County, with its own zip code,
and train station. Mail comes from the New Providence post office. Most
of the area of Murray Hill is taken up by the sprawling Bell Labs
complex, the main expansion building of which somewhat resembles
Darth Vader's head. The remainder is an upscale suburban development built
on top of an old golf course.

Murray Hill once tried to construct its own town center around its
train station. The project, when finished, included a charming square
of brick buildings, apothecaries, restaurants,
and gift shops. Murray Hill Square foundered over the course of a few
years, however, and by now is completely converted into condominiums;
people just never got into the habit of visiting it.

Surrounding, and mostly northeast of the old Italian area of town are
newer developments, many expressly constructed for the community of
Bell Labs scientists, the numbers of whom would grow to eventually
encompass a significant subgroup of residents.

A high school was constructed on the hill next to the Bell Labs location,
and it stressed excellence, priding itself on the number of youngsters
it sent on to the nation's more prestigious universities.

Recently, though, the school has suffered from a statewide trend of
declining enrollment. In Berkeley Heights, a large part of the problems
seems to be that young families can no longer afford to move into
town. In many neighborhoods, the sounds of kids at play are heard
less and less frequently.

As neighborhoods mature and people moving away are replaced by older
established professionals with their lives, neighborhood cohesiveness
is decreasing in many areas. In my house, we once knew and socialized
with almost everyone is the surrounding houses; now, ten years later,
my parents know none of them.

[ Part 1 of several. ]
-- 
# Daniel M. Rosenberg         Stanford Univ CSLI      Opinions here are my own
# dmr@csli.stanford.edu  {apple,ucbvax}!labrea!csli!dmr  BIT:dmr%csli@stanford