The Tri-Angle Lodge, Newfoundland

The Tri-Angle Lodge stood “2 miles West of Newfoundland NJ,” according to the postcard. The building, which still stands, is on the north side of Route 23 at Canistear Road.

The Lodge was owned and operated by the Arrouge family who owned it from about 1928 until the early 1960s. Gertrude Pittenger (or Pettinger) Arrouge and her son, Dwight, ran it day to day. Some locals still remember walking to the Lodge in their youth to purchase candy, gum, or cigarettes.

The Tri-Angle Lodge in the 1930s. Note the Texaco gas pump at right.

You could also fill your tank up your car with genuine Texaco gasoline. Some remember serenading Dwight with the Texaco jingle when a car would pull up.

The 1950 Census shows Gertrude Arrouge living there with her daughter Joan, Joan’s son, and two lodgers named Card. (Gert’s husband, Emil, died in 1931.)

The Lodge also offered “home cooking” for the hungry, including sandwiches and chicken dinners. You could even hire them to host a dinner party. If you just wanted a snack, you could use the walk-up window.

Evidently known both as “Triangle” and “Tri-Angle”, the Lodge offered “refreshments of all kinds.”

Interestingly, Gertrude’s father, Warren Pettinger, was a “dowser” – a person who could locate water with only a Y-shaped tree branch. A newspaper article, published shortly before he died in 1947, noted that he claimed to have dowsed for – and located – water sources 328 times.

The Lodge building is still there, known as the Razor Tune Ski Shop. It still looks much the same, but has no connection to its countryside past.

-30-

A Brief Description of 1905 Newfoundland

Nice escription of 1905 Newfounland

Some of you know that I like to browse the old newspapers, because you never know what you’ll find there. This clipping, from 1905, is from a longer article (subscription required) and includes a nice description of Newfoundland and some interesting details.

Nice escription of 1905 Newfounland

For starters, “Newfoundland is the centre of the sugar bush country“. Who knew that some folks made maple syrup there?

And this tidbit: “There are two white frame churches with green blinds continually challenging each other from adjacent hills and so near alike that a newcomer might easily get mixed as to his doctrine by going to the rival church by mistake.”

I take this as a description of the M.E. church (now the dog-grooming place) and the long-gone Baptist church on Clinton Road. They were, in fact, almost identical in appearance, having been built by Conrad (later Reverend) Vreeland. (He deserves his own post.)

But it’s the sardonic description of Brown’s Hotel that I like the best:

“There is but one tavern with a bar in the place, and there is a bar that a bishop might dedicate without calling forth whereases and therefores from a single protesting body of his laity. It is a saloon in which there are window-boxes filled with oxalis and geraniums and begonias and other plants generally associated with grandmothers. It is one of the improving duties and pastimes of the bartender to water those plants and pick off the dead leave.

” ‘Botany before booze’ might be the motto of the place, but the only sign displayed is ‘Welcome,’ worked in light blue worsted on bristol-board and hung above the bottles. There are no drunkards there.”

The “saloon” the writer describes almost certainly refers to Brown’s Hotel. While John P. Brown kept a well-stocked bar, that came to an end after his death. J.P.’s son Theodore decreed that Brown’s would go “dry”, and he no longer sold alcohol there. And the writer was clearly very disappointed!

-30-