Road Warrior: Recalling an era when 'Big Red' was king
Sunday, August 18, 2013
By JOHN CICHOWSKI ROAD WARRIOR COLUMNIST
Those of us who routinely use trains, buses or cars to shuttle through Bergen County from Paterson to the Hudson River might find it hard to believe that there was once another horseless way to make this trip. "Trolleys were the only way to travel," said old-time New York Giants baseball fan Edd Dresher, "and they were very cheap."
At 99, the Hackensack native is one of the few who remember the old Hudson River trolley line, disbanded 75 years ago this month after four decades of service. The line took a teenaged Dresher nearly from his father’s newspaper store at Main and Mercer streets to the Edgewater ferries that carried him to 125th Street, where he got another trolley to transport him to his idols at the Polo Grounds. "The River Line cost a nickel for one zone, 15 cents to reach the ferry," recalled Dresher as he rattled off names of long-ago Giants: "Frankie Frisch, Bill Terry, Heinie Groh and Mel Ott in his prime." Why remember trolleys now? Aren’t there more significant transportation anniversaries in 2013? Yes, it has been 110 years since the Wright brothers’ flight.
This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the Henry Ford brainstorm that transformed America: a conveyor-belt assembly line that allowed cars to be built cheaply enough for millions to own. And next year, New Jersey celebrates the 60th anniversary of the completion of a major American toll road — the Garden State Parkway, an achievement that’s celebrated in a new, photo-laced book just published by Arcadia. For those who avoid toll roads, consider another Garden State highway contribution that can’t be avoided: Jersey barriers. Designed in 1946 at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, these portable, concrete, parabolic-shaped medians direct traffic and prevent crashes on tens of thousands of miles of American roadway. But in an era when cars and highways were still in their infancy, electric-powered trolleys were king — the dominant mode of transportation that sped the growth of big cities like New York, Chicago and Boston. Thank Thomas Edison for that.
The great inventor created the first electric locomotive in 1880 for a special New Jersey track in Menlo Park, now called Edison. Seven years later, his protégé Frank Sprague built the first large electric railway system in Richmond, Va. Soon, rail companies built similar systems in towns big and small, including Paterson, Hackensack, Newark and Passaic. Hackensack alone had four lines. But few of them were as efficient and modern as Big Red, the nickname given the Hudson River line for its well-upholstered, crimson-colored cars that carried passengers 18 miles from Paterson to the Edgewater ferries in less than 90 minutes.
Big Red ran from Edgewater to Palisades Amusement Park in Cliffside Park and Fort Lee, then moved on to Route 5 in Ridgefield, Broad Avenue in Leonia, then Bogota, Hackensack, Maywood, Rochelle Park, Paramus, and Broadway in Fair Lawn, Elmwood Park and Paterson. Its cars even carried bike racks, making it easy for Columbia University students to pedal to class in Morningside Heights once they reached Manhattan by ferry. But on Aug. 5, 1938, Public Service Coordinated Transport ceased running the line that helped bring Ivy League education and big league baseball to North Jerseyans. The company was now concentrating on its bus lines. The last Big Red car left the Paterson terminal on West Broadway to the accompaniment of a 30-piece band, according to press accounts.
The Bergen Evening Record’s publisher, John Borg, who attended a mock wake at the Swiss Chalet in Rochelle Park, hailed the change as "another milestone in Bergen County’s progress." His Passaic County rival, Harry Haines, publisher of the Paterson Evening News, suggested that the line’s rights-of-way be donated to municipalities "as beds for new roads." "The Hudson River line was one of the longest and best," said Cliffside Park reader Ralph Langberg, a trolley historian who dug up old newspaper articles for this column. "But from the 1930s to the 1940s, nearly all the lines were disbanded one by one." One reason, according to Langberg: "Trolley company owners were heavily invested in oil, automobiles and tires by then."
After the George Washington Bridge opened in 1931, the days of local trolleys were numbered. The automobile would be the new king. The push to the suburbs began in earnest when veterans returning from World War II were offered low-interest mortgages under a GI bill that encouraged home ownership in towns with plenty of vacant farmland. Congress began financing the Interstate Highway System in 1957, the same year that Bergen County’s first shopping malls opened on Route 4 in Paramus. But now, Hudson County has light-rail trolleys and the prospects for bringing this NJ Transit system to Bergen — at least to Englewood — appear bright.
Federal money was secured in 2007 to initiate a Big Red-type line that would send trolleys from Paterson into Bergen, although NJ Transit lacks the funds to follow through. Time changes habits and priorities, as it did for one former trolley rider in 1938. "By then I had a Plymouth," said Edd Dresher. "I could drive to the Polo Grounds." Road Warrior stops by here Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
Email him at cichowski@northjersey.com.
