Image Of America

Images of America Montvale

In 2019, as the Borough of Montvale’s historian, and in celebration of the town’s 125th Anniversary, I wrote a pictorial history of the town for the popular series Images of America. The borough’s growth from a small farming community to a population of nearly 9,000 in 2019 is illustrated through photographs. Pictures of 18th-century Dutch Colonial sandstone houses, a 19th-century octagon house, a cider mill that made “Jersey applejack,” horses and buggies, and antique cars all have stories to tell, as do advertisements and posters. In one for an 1896 social and basket picnic, folks were invited to “bring your team, wife and children,” but there would be “no swearing or fighting.” Turn-of-the-century postcards tell of the hundreds of summer visitors escaping the city heat. After Montvale became the last stop in New Jersey on the Garden State Parkway, the western section of the borough changed from farmland to the headquarters of some of the most prestigious national and international corporations, including Benjamin Moore, KPMG, Sharp Electronics, and Western Union, as well as being home to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I am no longer selling the books but they can be purchased from the publisher www.acadianpublishing.com or other online or local bookstores. For local residens they are also available at the CVS pharmacies.