Weird South Orange, New Jersey

Dedicated to Weird New Jersey magazine.

Photos taken summer 2002; page created December 2002. It is now out of date. The little Flatiron Building has been destroyed in clearing land for a parking deck that is coming soon (local joke). That house no longer has a cow on the porch. And some killjoy found an L for that sign. Come and gone: the No Parking sign at the corner of Valley and Third, its arrow pointing at the two-foot space between the sign and the corner crosswalk. —January 2008.

The south orange itself rests atop a pole outside South Orange Middle School on North Ridgewood Road.

I don't know why it has pumpkin leaves.

...CITIZENS INTERRED IN SOUTH ORANGE CEMETERY...

The cemetery was on this very spot, a park on Valley Street where happy children play. Or maybe they don't: the park is always deserted whenever I go past. The cemetery was closed to burials in 1926, and some time later the individual monuments were removed, but the bodies were not! This column commemorates those whose names were still known in 1971. See http://www.interment.net/ data/us/nj/essex/ southorange/ southorange.htm

The mysterious swallowed house is right at the main intersection of the village, South Orange and Valley. It is completely surrounded by storefront additions.

It's the Leaning Tower of South Orange! I know, it's not a big tower, but it's not a big city.

These people keep a large statue of a cow on their porch. I'm not sure what the other statue is on the right.

It's the Flatiron Building! I know, it's not a big flatiron building, but... you know.

I won't describe this building. But people come out happier than when they go in.

It's nice that someone wrote in that A where a letter fell off. The sign would look incomplete without it.

We can't forget the gaslights. In South Orange, only the downtown area was converted to those newfangled electric streetlights. Otherwise, we still use gas. The expense of lamplighters was done away with by burning the lamps all day, but the gas pressure is under central control, and they burn brighter at night. Bright is of course a relative term with gaslights.

An enlarged detail of a postcard from a hundred years ago shows a type of gaslight pole that can still be seen around town today. By the way, that's the swallowed house behind it. The image at right shows a less ancient pole.

The little arms near the top are rests for the lamplighter's ladder.

The gas flame burns mysterious glowing elements embedded in a small fabric sack called a mantle. It should look like the lamp at left. When the mantle eventually burns through, the much dimmer blue gas flame itself becomes visible. At right, the edges of the broken mantle still glow.

This wonderful art deco... thing is probably a water tank, and I guess maybe a big metal tank on a hilltop needs that many lightning rods just to be on the safe side. But what's with the fake house standing in front of it, with the really big garage? I won't say exactly where this is. The funny thing is, you can see it from a mile away, but when you get close, it's hard to find.

Hey you, it's the duck pond.