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Teaneck |
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George Washington knew Teaneck as well as anyone. And this served him well one November day in 1776 when, standing on the Palisades, he spied the procession of British boats moving up the Hudson. An invasion of 6,000 Redcoats spurred him to ride out of Fort Lee, through the Teaneck woods to his Hackensack headquarters. Abandoning their camps, Washington’s troops, barefoot and bedraggled, marched from their vulnerable position to New Bridge Landing (today’s Brett Park), where they later defeated British forces in a major battle. Teaneck is famous for having been the center of historical events, due partly to the high ridge of land that runs north and south along today’s Queen Anne Road. That ridge was etched with early trails and campsites, making Teaneck geographically ideal for the Lenape Indians in the 1600s and metro-suburbia in 2001. A bustling, heavily populated town today, Teaneck has become a banner setting for Fairleigh Dickinson’s Teaneck-Hackensack Campus. The townspeople are diverse, sophisticated and savvy, much like their neighbors across the Hudson River in Manhattan. Cedar Lane, a thriving thoroughfare, is an attraction itself. In restaurants, alone, the wide street offers an endless choice: Chinese, Italian, Indian, Jamaican, Mexican, Jewish and vegetarian. Something more casual, perhaps? Try a kosher deli, a pizzeria or ice cream parlor, even a pancake house.
On a professional level, Teaneck offers dentists, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and accountants, all within walking distance of FDU. Shopping? It’s a snap at the many gift galleries, couture and moderate dress shops, bookstores and more. Taking in a movie is easy; a theater sits on Cedar Lane. And the entire potpourri is anchored at one end by the Hackensack River and at the other by Holy Name Hospital on one of Teaneck’s main north-south corridors, Teaneck Road. A state-of-the-art medical complex, Holy Name Hospital was founded in 1925 when two Teaneck surgeons and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace transformed the estate of William Walter Phelps into a 115-bed hospital. Teaneck was only a rural village then, but in 1931, with the opening of the George Washington Bridge, homes and businesses began replacing the town’s apple orchards and cornfields. Holy Name grew with the population, adding clinics and new buildings and becoming one of the leading health care providers in Northern New Jersey. In 1954, led by Peter Sammartino, founder and first president of Fairleigh Dickinson, the University purchased Bergen Junior College along the Hackensack River in Teaneck as a second campus. A portion of this riverside campus land was originally an estate created by Peter Henderson, then known as the “Seed Man” (see Hackensack story).
Sammartino, a bird lover, worked with the Audubon Society to create a sanctuary along the river. Each day, bags of feed were thrown on the banks of the Hackensack to keep the birds content. This attracted hordes of ducks, and to everyone’s surprise, it also attracted duck hunters who shot from the opposite shore, now and then leaving bullet holes in an academic building or two. Today, geese and ducks dip in the river and waddle along the banks and lawns, confidently scrutinizing the scouting seagulls. Peacefulness often pervades this shade-tree town, but progress doesn’t always come without a fight. In 1965, Teaneck became the first town in the nation where a white majority voted for school integration — a major step after a long struggle and a brave step in a time of national racial unrest. That type of courage has made Teaneck one of New Jersey’s, if not the nation’s, success stories. |
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