Title: A country place no more
First published: 1994
Description: In this work, Michael J. Birkner relates the history of Bergenfield, New Jersey, from its incorporation as a borough in 1894 to the present. He portrays a bucolic farm village that was eager by the 1880s to join the metropolitan community through a network of railroads and ferries that made travel to and from Manhattan relatively easy and affordable.

By the 1920s Bergenfield was known as a lively commuter suburb of New York, its citizenry enjoying the benefits of a modernizing infrastructure and a panoply of social clubs and civic organizations. Bergenfield's reputation as a community on the rise peaked in the twenties, as population doubled, civic and political leaders exerted influence county-wide, and the borough played a significant role in the agitation for a bridge over the Hudson River.

A Country Place No More details the aims and frustrations of a visionary mayor, Charles Grabowski, who championed planning and zoning, public parks, and the benefits of consolidating services with neighboring communities. When Grabowski's political career collapsed in 1929, months before the nation fell into the grip of its worst economic depression, the stage was set for the emergence of a new political system in Bergenfield.

Town fathers focused their energies on balancing budgets and promoting growth, while largely ignoring the longer-term implications of rapid residential development.

Led by five-term mayor Frank L. Jones and borough attorney Pierce Deamer, the borough put its finances in order and avoided the worst calamities of the Depression era. Bergenfield continued to grow and cemented its reputation as a haven for the modest middle class and upwardly mobile at the beginning of their climb.

Once the postwar boom commenced in 1945, Bergenfield's proximity to New York City, combined with the pro-development policies of successive Republican administrations, assured that the once-quiet village would complete its transformation into a bustling, crowded, and ever-more-urbanized suburb.

Birkner describes the forces that have affected Bergenfield's twentieth-century transformation, showing that geography alone cannot explain why Bergenfield grew as it did. In addition to analyzing the consequences of one-party rule in Bergenfield during a critical era, he conveys what it was like to live there.

Drawing on town records, newspaper files, and one hundred interviews, Birkner sheds light on small town folkways, ethnic and race relations, perceptions of class, and the behind-the-scenes exertion of influence in several discrete power bases: Borough Hall, the Board of Education, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Because Bergenfield differs from the kinds of suburban communities usually treated in popular and scholarly literature, its history will be of interest to students of suburbia as well as to local historians. Bergenfield's experience coping with growth and ethnic diversification may be unique; but it offers many points of intersection with the experiences of suburban enclaves across America.
Subjects: History, New jersey, history
Places: Bergenfield (N.J.)
LC classification: F144.B38 B57 1994