Author Topic: Main St "cobblestones" repurposed for a BBQ in 1949  (Read 6467 times)

Offline BLeafe

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Main St "cobblestones" repurposed for a BBQ in 1949
« on: April 20, 2015, 11:55:42 AM »
Got an email from Gene Puntasecca (Skip x219) about some cobblestones that were taken from Main St in 1949 and used to build a backyard barbeque on Poplar Ave. He hooked me up with Dave and Joan Gaige, who also live on Poplar. Dave knew the story because his best friend of the last 6 decades plus - Ken McKenzie - is the son of the man who built the BBQ.

Ken's father, Alex, brought the stones home from Main St near the B&W Bakery (the trolley tracks were being removed) and built the barbeque, using the stones for its base. Turns out that they're not cobblestones -  they're Belgian Block (cobblestones have rounded corners, BB does not).

Yesterday, Dave took me to the house, which is a few doors up from his, so I could take the pictures.

Why? Because the current owner of the McKenzie house - Tom Kelly - died last week.

Dave's concern is that the future owner of the house will tear the barbeque down and the Main St BB will be lost forever. He will try to contact the new owner after the house is sold and see what his/her intentions are. If the BBs are unwanted, the hope is that someone else will repurpose them

If the BBs become available, I'll post about it for anyone who'd like to use historic granite pieces of old Main St for something new.

Thanks to Gene, Dave, Joan, and every other historic-minded person who doesn't want Hackensack history to vanish.

« Last Edit: April 20, 2015, 11:58:52 AM by BLeafe »


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Offline Homer Jones

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Re: Main St "cobblestones" repurposed for a BBQ in 1949
« Reply #1 on: April 20, 2015, 12:19:41 PM »
A couple of months ago Ol' Homer was down by that new park by Court Plaza where the United Jersey Bank building used to stand. (Peoples Trust in the Good Ol'Days) When I was crossing one of those islands in the street it looks like they used some of those blocks as a border along the sidewalks that cross the islands. The grass grows between these blocks now; but, you can still see what hey looked like in the days of yesteryear.

Offline Ken McKenzie

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Re: Main St "cobblestones" repurposed for a BBQ in 1949
« Reply #2 on: April 27, 2015, 05:33:17 PM »
Glad you got to see the barbecue my father built. I am trying to get my older brother, Alex (Sandy) to give me more accurate information, since I was only about two or three when the barbecue was built.

I do remember that the stones were from the Main Street area at the intersection with Poplar Ave, and may have been removed as part of the re-configuring of the intersection.

The slate patio in front of the barbecue was made from sidewalk slate that was removed as the sidewalks were changed over to concrete. When I was a kid, many of the properties along Poplar Ave still had slate sidewalks, and they weren't easy to skate on... That may be another piece of slate to the left of the barbecue.

I'm not sure if the round stone was local, or if we brought it back from New Hampshire where we used to spend our summers. I know there was no stone on the property, because as kids we used to dig forts and underground tunnels all over the backyard, and all that was there was sand and clay. My father, Alex, had a connection to New Hampshire in that right out of college he was a member of the first crew of the Mount Washington Observatory, and in 1934, he and two others, recorded the highest wind ever directly measured by man, 231 MPH. We had a cabin in NH so maybe we brought the stones home from there.

We lived in Hackensack from around 1946 until my parents retired and sold the house around 1975.