Part XI 

Teaneck Establishes a Park System

When the Planning Board issued its recommendation for a park system in Teaneck, the only areas that resembled a park were a planted strip and triangle at the intersection of State Street and Windsor Road, containing an area of four acres, and a playground for young children on the Municipal Building property. The Board's proposal called for twenty-six parcels, totaling 75.20 acres, distributed throughout all sections of the Township in accordance with expected growth and future needs. Practically all of the parcels were wooded.

Largest Park Site 

The largest of these parcels lay between the West Shore Railroad and a line about 100 feet west of Queen Anne Road and extended from a point opposite Colonial Court to a northerly boundary at Evergreen Place. The area was many feet below the level of Queen Anne Road, and swampy. A spring flowed northward through the property to a drain at West Englewood Avenue. Originally, the tract was shown on the Township Map laid out as streets, and during the late twenties parcels had been sold at an auction sale. A sewer had been built above grade, traversing the area and parallel to the railroad. To make the ground suitable for building, thousands of yards of fill would be needed to raise the level high enough to be serviced by the sewer, and intersect with Queen Anne Road. To any builder planning to use this land for housing, the costs of preparing the site would have been prohibitive. It stood as a blight in the center of the Township, exposed to the gaze of the railroad traveler twice a day.

In 1936, the Township Council created the Advisory Board on Growth, Development and Public Welfare to aid in some of the problems that confronted it at the time; and in the fall of that year, this Board collaborated with the Planning Board in submitting to the Council a design for the development of this low land as a park, utilizing not only the area recommended by the Planning Board in its Master Plan, but extending the limits of the park north to the property line of the West Englewood stores, south to a point below Selvage Avenue, and east to Queen Anne Road. It also included the land west of the railroad to Windsor Road from Forest Avenue north to West Englewood Avenue. 

$100,000 Bond Issue Voted 

The Council saw the wisdom of including the Queen Anne Road frontage, opening the vista for the full length of the park to enhance the values of the whole district lying to the east. An ordinance authorizing the issuance of $100,000 worth of bonds passed without a single oral objection. A large crowd of citizens had come to the meeting prepared to fight for the park ordinance in the event it was attacked, but they had no chance for a battle.

By this time a large number of the parcels in the area had fallen to the Township through tax lien foreclosure, and to consolidate the remaining portions, the ordinance stipulated that $75,000 would be used for the purchases of land. The sum of $10,392 was spent to improve other playgrounds in order to speed a recreation program. The balance of the appropriation paid for expenses incidental to the acquisition of the land and the engineering surveys and design.

$353,000 WPA Grant 

At this time, the Federal Government was in search of civic projects where the use of labor would play a dominant part of the cost, and Township officials promptly journeyed to Washington and arranged for a grant by the Works Progress Administration which amounted to approximately $353,000. This grant employed about seventy-five Teaneck workmen, who were temporarily unemployed, and who, if returned to the Township's poor relief rolls, would have necessitated an expenditure of about $2,100 a month. To proceed with the project at such a time offered this advantage because it could not be expected that Teaneck men would have been employed on projects sponsored by other municipalities.

Approximately 80,000 yards of earth were spread over the swampy ground, play areas appeared, and a sodded slope in a grove at the south end took the form of an outdoor theater. On July 4, 1940, the park was dedicated by the Township to the health and happiness of its citizens, and to their spiritual and civic betterment.

Advisory Board Appointed in 1938 

To consolidate all efforts directed toward a park program, the Township Council appointed an advisory board in November 1938. Its personnel consisted of about forty citizens representing a variety of professional experience. The scope of the board was to plan a system of parks and a program of recreation as a development of the Planning Board's earlier recommendations.

The Park Board organized itself into four main committees: a fact-finding committee, a planning committee, a financial committee, and a committee on recreation. Sources of reference on city planning were studied, and a survey was made on the size, cost of operation and maintenance, and population ratio to park acreage of a number of cities in the state of New York comparable in size to Teaneck.

The particular character of Teaneck's growth caused the Board to differentiate at once between the large congested centers, like New York, where families live crowded in multiple-family dwellings without the slightest patch of lawn and garden, and a community of one-family homes. The problem was one not so much of open spaces offering walks amid foliage, but areas suitable to take the children from the streets. The emphasis in Teaneck was placed on playgrounds, and chiefly those designed for the younger children. Areas large enough for baseball games could not be located in all neighborhoods; only the larger parks could be planned for this branch and kind of sport. In the neighborhood parks, equipment interspersed among trees, under which mothers might rest while watching their offspring at play does not contrast so harshly with the character of residential sections.

Botanical Parks Unnecessary 

Parks of purely botanical character were considered unnecessary in a town where nearly every home owner works with some degree of pride in his own flower bed. However, small triangles and circles caused by intersection of certain streets, strips along the highways, and plots too small in size for any other treatment could be developed along botanical lines with good effect. Trees should be protected, and any schemes of landscaping that included them should be based on a further enhancement of their original setting. 

Go to Next Page

Back to Teaneck After 50 Years Homepage

Back to Teaneck Virtual Village