Butler Business Center – 1950

Here are two views of the stores and merchants populating Main Street in Butler NJ, on a fine Spring day in March 1950. At that time it was a quiet factory town – the devastating fire that would destroy the borough’s largest employer, the Pequanoc Rubber Company, was still seven years into the future. There’s […]

Butler’s CCC Camp

The creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps was President Roosevelt’s grand plan to put some of America’s hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men to work during the Depression. This was one part of his “New Deal” that was a success. These men — often merely boys — were put to work on a variety […]

Lyon’s Butler Theatre

Lyon’s Theatre sits on lower Arch Street, near the Bloomingdale border. Most folk just called it Butler Theatre.  Can’t say I know much about this place, but I’m sure it was the place to be on a Friday night. I wonder what movies they showed? According to the Facebook Butler page, King Hiller — who owned […]

Butler NJ

This is the town that rubber built. Butler was a sleepy town originally known as ‘West Bloomingdale’ in the early 1800s. There was some industry — notably, a small rubber mill operating on the river — but things started to cook when Richard Butler came to town. He took ownership of the Butler Hard Rubber […]

The Great Railroad Sign Caper of 1940 – 1

Who doesn’t like “Then & Now” photos? I have some to share which have never been seen before. The origin of these is as interesting as their content: In 1940, someone stole the black-and-yellow “Railroad Crossing” signs at the two Butler crossings on the Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike. An employee of the NYS&W (New York Susquehanna & […]

Pequannock County?

There was a time when the people of Bloomingdale, which at that time included the north end of Riverdale (“East Bloomingdale”) and most of Butler (“West Bloomingdale”), desired to form a new county. They envisioned taking parts of five counties to form “Pequannock County” — with Bloomingdale as the county seat, of course. This effort […]