Photo of the Day: More on ‘New Bridge,’ River Edge NJ

I can still remember the day I took this photo last month. It was a Sunday afternoon, and awfully cold—so much so that, when a friend called and spoke, at some length (surely thinking I was in a warm place), I had to cut him short, because my teeth were chattering and I could hardly hold the cellphone any more. In the last few weeks, as we’ve been battered by one snowstorm after another, I would have regarded any attempt to get outside such as this one as a distinct improvement over what I was now facing: snow so heavy it largely confined me to my street, and ice so treacherous that just walking a few feet could cause a fall.

Anyway…back to this site. I couldn’t take the photo of the bridge from where I wanted to take it, Historic New Bridge Landing, because much of that area was closed off. So I had to circle around and take it from several yards past Sanzari’s New Bridge Inn, in adjacent New Milford.

This was not the first “New Bridge” on the site. That one, a wooden crossing, dated back to 1745, and provided the escape route for George Washington in the critical fall of 1776. This pedestrian-only “New Bridge” is, in fact, 125 years old now, and is still, according to a sign near it, the oldest such iron swing-bridge in New Jersey. It’s now on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places.

This might not be one of those picturesque Vermont covered bridges, but it has its own charms, and is a nice oasis from the swirling traffic and overdevelopment just a few streets away from this corner of northeastern New Jersey.

Photo of the Day: Campbell-Christie House, River Edge NJ

I took this image of Campbell-Christie House back in late January, on the grounds of Historic New Bridge Landing in River Edge, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. Yet this four-room sandstone structure, dating back to April 1774, was originally located a bit more than a mile away, in New Milford. It was not moved to its current location, next to the more famous Steuben House, until 1977.

Jacob Campbell, a mason, built this home around the time of his marriage to Altche Westervelt. Three of their sons became privates in the Bergen Militia in the war that was to transform their neck of the woods in the next few years. The home passed through a couple of hands before being owned by the Christie family, who then occupied it for over a century.

The most famous of the Christies was J. Walter Christie, who was born in this house in 1865. He would achieve some degree of renown early in the 20^th century as an inventor, working on pioneer submarines as well as battleship turret tracks and gun mounts and the modern tank. More dangerously, he took up auto racing, including machines of his own making that briefly held speed records, in contests against the likes of Louis Chevrolet, Henry Ford and Barney Oldfield. That career lasted only three years, when he nearly died in a 1907 race in Pittsburgh, when he was doing 70 miles per hour. Luckily, he survived that accident and went on to pioneer front-wheel drive.

Photo of the Day: View From New Bridge, River Edge NJ

Well, it’s not such a “new bridge” now, but the site—and even the history behind it—remains impressive. I snapped this shot about three weeks ago, when I could actually get around outside in this virtually snowbound winter. This view in River Edge—just a few miles from me in Bergen County, NJ—was taken from “New Bridge,” a crossing strategically placed at the narrows of the Hackensack River. 

The first version of the bridge, from colonial days, gave passage to George Washington and his troops in November 1776, as they made their way from Fort Lee on their way to Trenton. The mill hamlet once here is now gone, but this particular patch of ground—and bend in the river—has been preserved in the form of Historic New Bridge Landing, to instruct visitors about the colonial, Revolutionary and early industrial periods of the United States.