Another Downtown Picture (Undated)

[Editor]

Below is a photo of a photo that hangs in Judge Martinotti's Chambers, Bergen County Courthouse.

I haven't seen an aerial from this vantage point before.  Let the dating begin...

(Click image to enlarge/reduce)

[Homer Jones]

This is a tough one. If you look in the South River Street area you can see the old Goldberg Slipper factory on the west side of the Street and the storage sheds across South River Street. Just below the sheds may have been an old County sanitary sewer treatment plant which is now long gone. If our editor can check with somebody in the BCUA, we would know that the photo was taken no later than when that facility was taken down.
You can also see the old City incinerator and DPW which were located where the Costco parking lot is located today. If someone can find out when they were built (possibly as a WPA project)  we can establish a parameter that the photo was taken after the DPW was built but before the sewer plant was demolished.
As an aside, it looks like there was a ball field just to the east of the Goldberg sheds. Perhaps Mr. Editor can check with Bernie Liefer, the president of Goldberg to see if there is any info on that ball field and when that was in use.

[just watching]

I love these old photo guessing games.

Ithink the Jail Annex was built around 1960, so it predates 1960.  There's houses on the east side of Hudson Street north of Kansas Street, where One Bergen Center now stands.  There is also houses on both sides of Court Street west of River Street.  Help us on that, Ol' Homer.  When were those houses torn down?

And perhaps the biggest clue, River Street itself exists.  I know it was built in phases, and unsure when it was built around Lafayette St ?

My guess:  1940 - 1950.

[Homer Jones]

The 1940 - 1950 range is probably the correct range. One new clue just popped into Ol' Homer's field of vision. Take a gander at the area just above the Court Street Bridge at the Record property. Looks like there was site prep work going on at the property "possibly" in advance of the construction of the newspaper production headquarters. Remember that the Record had it's headquarters on upper Main Street and maybe the photo was taken when the Borg's were consolidating everything on River Street.

[Editor]

It dawns on me that this could another picture from the same flight that took this aerial picture

(I checked- they are different. Not sure which is earlier. Knowing that may help.)

http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php/topic,893.0.html (go here for high resolution)

[Homer Jones]

In looking at old photos like these, it is always reassuring to see the Church on the Green since we know that the photo was taken after 1790 which is probably before aerial photographic surveys became popular.
Another item we can see is that the waste treatment facility east of South River Street appears to be gone as does the baseball diamond south and east of the Goldberg storage sheds.
The Record  printing plant had not yet been constructed. This photo leaves no question why Foschini Park is plagued by flooding since it was obviously created on a landfill site.
The Housing Authority buildings at 60 Kansas Street as well as those on Railroad Avenue had also not been constructed yet. And of course everything west of South Summit and Summit Avenues was still mostly virgin land.
The one ponderable which I am still pondering is whether the white dots shown on the Hackensack Golf Club property were sand traps.

[irons35]

it would have to be late 40's.  the Golf club is gone in the picture, the roads that exist today have been cut thru the golf course property. That area was developed by the early 50's.