Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003

1. GARRET MOUNTAIN RESERVATION, Valley Rd. at the Lackawanna R.R. bridge, is a 570-acre park and picnic ground on the rocky heights overlooking the city. Woodland trails, picnic groves, and broad lawns are maintained by the Passaic County Park Commission. Garret Mountain is said to have been named about a century ago for a secret society that met in garrets at the homes of its members.

   LAMBERT CASTLE, on the mountain slope within the reservation, was built in 1891 by Catholina Lambert, an immigrant who became wealthy as a silk manufacturer. The building is a ponderous castellated structure of rough-surfaced red and gray stone, generously fenestrated, balconied and terraced. It now houses the administrative offices of the Passaic County Park Commission and the PASSAIC COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM (open 1-5 Wed., Thurs., Fri.; 10-5 Sat., Sun.). One room contains the furniture used by Garret A. Hobart of Paterson, who was Vice President in the first McKinley administration. Paintings and antiques are displayed in other rooms. The interior of the building is noted for scrollwork on the newelposts, stained glass windows, and elaborately decorated ceilings.

   From the OBSERVATORY TOWER, near the castle and on the highest elevation of the mountain, stretches a fine view of the countryside for miles around and of the closely packed homes and mills of Paterson.

2. PATERSON MUSEUM (open 1-5 Mon.-Fri.; 10-5 Sat.), 268 Summer St., contains one of the most complete mineral collections in the State. Other exhibits are Indian relics and curios, insects, reptiles, birds, fossils, and historical displays. The most interesting object is the 14-foot submarine built in 1878 by John P. Holland in the Old Gun Mill yard. This was Holland's first attempt at an under-water craft, and it promptly sank on its first trial in the Passaic River. Several other attempts were made, in one of which Holland kept the boat down for 24 hours, but he finally abandoned it to the river bank, where it sank into the mud. Almost 50 years later the hulk was located with a magnet and dug up by several Paterson youths who presented it to the museum.

3. DANFORTH MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open 9-8 weekdays), SE. corner Broadway and Auburn St., is the main building of Paterson's public library system. The gray limestone structure, designed in straightforward formal Classic style, is the work of Henry Bacon. The dignified interior is finished in limestone and marble. It also houses an art gallery, featuring Paterson painters.

4. WASHINGTON MARKET, Washington St. between Fair St. and Hamilton Ave., is an open-air produce center consisting of open front stores and a few stalls along the sidewalk. It is not so large as it was 15 years ago, but it is still one of the noisiest and busiest spots of the city on afternoons and Saturday evenings.

5. The PASSAIC COUNTY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, SE. corner Ward and Hamilton Sts., served as the postoffice until 1932. Built in 1898 in Flemish style, its prototype was the Haarlem Market in Holland. Its red brick walls are generously banded, trimmed, keyed, and quoined with gray limestone. The style, selected as a tribute to the pioneer Dutch of the territory, is incongruous in its modern surroundings.

6. LITTLE ITALY, vicinity of Market, Cross and Mill Sts., is one of the sections inhabited almost exclusively by Italians. Frame houses, most of them lacking paint and many in disrepair, are built close together for the length of each block. The only substantial and modern buildings of the district are a school and ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, a yellow brick structure of modified Gothic design. On March 19 Sicilians in this district honor St. Joseph, the patron saint of Sicily; specially baked delicacies are exhibited in unusual displays and afterward given to the poor. Feasting and dancing mark St. Michael's Feast Day, September 29. On October 12, Columbus Day, the Italian societies turn out in full uniform with bands and banners to parade through the business district. At LAZZARA'S MUSIC HALL, Cross and Ellison Sts., Italian opera companies make occasional appearances, and labor unions hold frequent meetings.

7. EASTSIDE PARK, Broadway and McLean Blvd., on high ground overlooking Passaic River, is a municipally owned recreation center. Noteworthy is the 2,000-foot floral embankment in the pattern of an English garden. In the central area are the GENERAL PULASKI MONUMENT and the SOLDIERS MONUMENT. The park has a deer paddock, and more squirrels at large than the park department wishes.

8. WESTSIDE PARK, Totowa and Preakness Aves., on Passaic River above the falls, also maintained by the city, has winding pathways over a gentle slope shaded by blue spruce and pine. There are terraces, flower, gardens, lawns and shrubbery, and athletic fields. Canoes and rowboats are available.

   In a small plaza is exhibited the FENIAN RAM, John P. Holland's first successful submarine. Launched in 1881, the 31-foot craft was financed largely by contributions from the Irish brotherhood known as the Fenian Society. A popular but erroneous belief was that the submarine was intended for use by the Irish against the British Navy. It was powered with a one-cylinder combustion engine and built for a crew of three. In a trial off Staten Island, the Fenian Ram dove loo feet below the surface and remained submerged for an hour. The vessel lacked a periscope, however, and after Holland had startled a large number of ferry and tugboat capains around New York harbor by his sudden appearances, the- submarine was sunk in collision with a ferry at Weehawken. Later it was salvaged.

   The Government ignored the Irish schoolmaster's invention until 1893, when a contract was finally awarded. Seven years later the Navy Department accepted its first submarine, the Holland. The inventor, like Hudson Maxim, thought that his device would make war impracticable, but he lived to see the beginning of the World War.

9. WRIGHT AERONAUTICAL PLANT (group tours arranged on application), 1120 E. 19th St., is the largest airplane engine factory in the United States. A subsidiary of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, it occupies z5 acres of land and employs more than 3,500 persons, producing annually more than 2,000 engines. The plant was established in Paterson in 1920 and since 1928 has expanded sixfold.

10. CITY HALL, Market St. between Washington and Colt Sts., is a three-story gray limestone building with a weathered copper dome surmounting a small tower. Erected in 1894 and rebuilt after the fire of 1902, it is the work of John M. Carrere, architect, and exemplifies his taste for the multi-plastered, arched, balustraded and heavily corniced work of the French Beaux Arts of that period. THREE BRONZE STATUES, portraying Alexander Hamilton, Vice President Garret A. Hobart, and Nathan Barnert, philanthropist and former mayor, stand in front of the building. Projections in the facade are a favorite gathering place of thousands of starlings, whose concerted chirping is easily heard above the noise of traffic. Toward nightfall the birds gradually settle down on narrow ledges, packed so closely that they resemble a mourning band across the building. A few years ago it was planned to drive the starlings away with Roman candles, but protests from bird lovers deprived the town of this spectacle.

11. The OLD RACEWAY, NW. corner Prospect and Van Houten Sts., is a sluggish stream 12 feet wide flowing between the sidewalk and the mills, and crossed at intervals by plank bridges. Originating in Passaic River above the falls, it has followed this course for almost a century, although its first value to the mills has long been outmoded by the development of electrical power. The waters of the raceway are used by adjoining dye plants. It does not follow the course of the first raceway built shortly after the founding of Paterson in 1792; rapid establishment of new factories made it necessary to alter the route.

12. FAMILY SHOPS, Grobart, Harmony, and Industry Mills (open on application), 11 Van Houten St., are crowded floors, partitioned off into units where entire families work 60 hours a week for about $12 each. Shafts fly up and down, shuttles weave in and out, and motors drone as father, mother, son and daughter scurry around four looms each, twisting and tying fine silk threads. A family shop consists of 8 to 20 looms, one quill-winding frame and odds and ends scattered over an oily, cage-like floor. Winding wooden stairs lead to electrically-lit factories where the smell is foul and the din is great. Most of the manufacturers show eyestrain and slight deafness from their work. These men -- the "cockroach bosses" of Paterson -- deny that they run the looms. "The looms run us," is their saying. Their overalls and shirts are tattered and grimy; their hands are oily and calloused.

    In these buildings thousands of yards of silk are woven each week for dyeing. Most of the raw silk comes from Japan; small quantities are imported from China, Syria, and Italy. After the skeins are wound on bobbins, the threads of about 1,000 spools are wound around a beam by means of a warping frame resembling a large wheel. The beam is placed on a loom after it is attached to a harness which moves up and down to allow the shuttles to be thrown back and forth, weaving the warp's threads into cloth. Each shuttle contains a quill of thrown silk or filling. Pieces of about 70 yards each are taken off each loom every three days, and are shipped to dye houses.

13. The OLD GUN MILL (open on application), NW. corner Mill and Van Houten Sts., is a two-story brick structure occupied by the Arrow Textile Print Works. The building was erected 1836 by Samuel Colt, who here manufactured the first successful revolvers. Colt got his patent in 1835, and New York capitalists supplied money for the Patent Arms Company. The War Department, however, held that the revolver was impractical, and the enterprise was temporarily abandoned. After the Colt pistol had been tested in the Seminole War, large Government orders were awarded and the factory was busy until peace forced a shutdown in 1840., Shortly afterward Colt sold his last revolver to an Indian trader. Upon the outbreak of the Mexican War an order for 1,000 revolvers was given to the manufacturer; lacking a model, he had to pay a large price for one of his guns. This order was filled at Whitneyville, Connecticut.

    In the same mill Christopher Colt, brother of the inventor, began in 1839 the first silk weaving in Paterson. After a few months he gave up the project.

14. A HYDROELECTRIC PLANT and a STEAM PLANT of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (known throughout Paterson as S.U.M.) are in the gorge of Passaic River, just below the falls. From the sidewalk a steep, sodded embankment slopes to the level of the large brick buildings.

    In 1791 Governor William Paterson of New Jersey signed the charter giving the tax-free Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures the right to organize and sell stock. Not until 1814, when a drastic reorganization of the S.U.M. took place and the Colt family became virtual dictators of the corporation's affairs, did a business boom start the society on the road to financial success. The history since then has been stormy, marked by numerous court cases and disputes with other organizations. In 1824 the Morris Canal and Banking Company sued to gain rights to the Passaic River. The court ruled in 1829 that S.U.M. possessed title "to the flow of all the waters of the Passaic at the great falls, in their ancient channel without diminution or alteration."

    Public opinion forced the society to relinquish its lottery rights in 1848, but the host of other charter privileges remained. When the hydroelectric plant was installed in 1912, the city of Paterson attempted to tax its operation, but the court again ruled in favor of S.U.M. Another suit was lost by the city in 1937. The municipal government contended that he society already had enjoyed 140 years of special rights and that by giving up manufacturing in 1796 and leasing the sites out to private concerns, it has forfeited its tax-exempt privileges.

15. PASSAIC FALLS, the best known scene of the Paterson area, plunges 70 feet from a rocky shelf into a vertically walled chasm just above :he S.U.M. plants. Only during periods of melting snows or heavy rains does the waterfall exist; at other times the flow of Passaic River is entirely diverted by a S.U.M. dam just above the falls. In flood stage the yellow torrent throws up a fine mist that fills the gorge, and the roar can be heard for several blocks.

    A steel footbridge spans the gorge but this is closed to the public by S.U.M., owner of the falls. The adjacent shelfland, once a popular picnic ground, is accessible to sightseers. Had it not been for the action of the great glacier in blocking the old outlet of Passaic River some 20 miles southwest of Paterson, neither the falls nor the river would exist here today.

Little Falls Laundry Plant, 9.4 m., Montclair Art Museum, 12.8 m., Grover Cleveland House, 14 m., Eagle Rock Reservation, 14.7 m. (see Tour 9).

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