Hackensack, NJ Community Message Boards
General Category => Hackensack History => Topic started by: BLeafe on January 01, 2013, 08:00:00 PM
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I found this uncredited 1888 photo of the Susquehanna RR station-area of Main St after the Blizzard of '88 on the editorial page of today's Record (click image to enlarge). The article was about heating problems in NYC back then and there was no mention of Hackensack.
I don't think I've seen this photo before. Do we even HAVE any Hackensack photos from that far back? I could only find one in the site database from the 19th century - "Court House Green (1890).
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Wow, all those buildings are gone, and there's nothing visible along the curb on the west side of Main Street.
I thought in 1888, there would be houses close to the curb on the west side of Main Street, if not small wooden 1 or 2-story retail. Are we sure that's not somewhere else in Hackensack, such as Anderson St.
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I had been thinking the same thing:
Moore Street Station (Main and Mercer):
(http://www.hackensacknow.org/images/pcHackRRsta.jpg)
Comparing it pictures of Anderson St. Station I find online, it's similar but not exactly the same. Also- the gate crossing appears to be in the wrong place for Anderson. I have not ruled it out though.
Interesting.
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I checked out the Walker Atlas, 1876, from the Historic Resources page of this website.
It looks like the houses were further apart, and set further back from the street than I had thought. So it's possible that the 1888 photo was in fact Main Street.
http://www.hackensack.org/WABC1876Hackensack.pdf
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Detail of Atlas below. You may be right, but then we'd have to assume the old rail station was remodeled at some point because it looks completely different.
If the 1888 picture is Main Street, that's got to be Irving Hall in the background. The building was described as "the old three-story frame fire trap" in Rambling Reminiscences (http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php/topic,1292.msg4064.html). Other sources put Irving Hall at Main and Mercer.