Note: the story of how our family garden came to be is here. Below are brief updates from the garden. 2023-Feb-26: We started a new grow operation with approximately 300 seeds of 12 different varieties. These included favorites that we re-plant from seeds collected, year after year. There were also...

Gregory Costa The 1915 Census of the State of New Jersey shows Gregory Costa, his wife, two sons, and a maid living at 416 Main Street. They were all born in Italy. Costa’s occupation was confectioner. Costa had paid $2,000 for the lot which was the largest price ever paid...

Blame Vitruvius. In his treatise De Architectura around 27 BCE, the three elements critical to architecture were utilitas (function), firmitas (stability), and venustas (beauty). While so easy to articulate, in practice this harmony in buildings and places was and is so hard to achieve. Fast forward to Colonial America. Many...

Portraits of Noah Brown and Lelia Anderson The origins of Noah Brown are not entirely clear, though a marriage record from 1888 gives a birthdate of 1860 in Amelia County, Virginia. Of interest in the same record is how his parents were listed as father “Johnson” and mother as “Betsy...

Old address 537-538 Main St. 1876 Atlas shows nothing on the block between the Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Street (later Hillside Ave) Voorhees Willroy Voorhees is shown living in Metuchen in the 1885 Census with his mother Julia, and siblings Julia and Benjamin.[1] Willroy Voorhees was proprietor of the South...

John Noble Pierson (1855-1930) was an accomplished terra cotta modeler and architect. He attended the Cooper Institute, the Boston school of Art and the Boston School of Sculpture. Museum of Fine Arts, Copley Square, Boston, Massachusetts. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was founded in 1870 and initially located...

Everts & Steward Map, 1876 A grocery store, boarding house and hostelry were once situated on this corner. As far back as 1876 the Everts & Steward map shows a “Gro. Store” on this corner. The wear and tear on this earlier building were evident. A newspaper article from April...

This is the News From New JerseyOut my window a skinny young man in a black hoodie races to the front door of a house across the street, plops down several flimsy plastic bags, taps a few clicks on his phone, then runs off at full speed through the steady...

Earlier we wrote about Wright Robins, the train station he built near Grove Avenue and Henry Street, and his role in the development of the Robinvale neighborhood of Metuchen between Grove Avenue, Woodbridge Avenue, and Jonesdale Avenue. Wright Robins owned the primary house south of Woodbridge Avenue. David Trumbull Marshall...

Where there are suburban streets and single-family houses today, Metuchen once had a number of sizable estates. While most are long gone their memory lives on in street names and written sources. Uplands was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Holden Spear (Upland Ave and Spear St today), Henry Redfield...