Early photographs of the neighborhood

 A very nice surprise arrived this December in the form of early photographs of the Meadowbrook neighborhood.  You may know that as the neighborhood homes were built and sold, the local Courier Newspaper would publish sold announcements.  These are those photographs, along with a small brochure, and some additional street scene photographs which I'm including here.  Remember, click the images to enlarge them.

Notice how young the trees were!  We need to plant more!

small brochure...

back of a photo.... Remarks: Saturday Buildings Page (publish Jan 15, 1941)

street scene, Farragut Road... the house in the foreground is number 88, which was also the second "model home"


Meadowbrook Road (formerly Johnston Ave) ... look how young the trees are!!! Let's plant more trees!

Abottsford atMali

Abottsford at Mali

Abbottsford Road

Organizing stacks of photos with an older brochure copy on top

a photo vs the newspaper print out framed below, so much more clarity

Looking forward to hopefully more finds, would be neat to see correspondence, or details about the WPA and early construction, but nonetheless, so fun to archive these precious pictures!

Meadowbrook ads 1936

Found these ads, published after the opening Nov 15th 1936, just before the very first holiday weekend for Meadowbrook, which would be Thanksgiving.

While not specifically Thanksgiving themed, there's vibes.

an attempt to "enhance" image of the living room, eg. tufted sofa or davenport 

ad copy

and some delightful nature images...

nature image of bridge and island

nature image of "riding trail" turned into a street - plant more trees!!

Meadowbrook Village (Union County) and Meadowbrook Neighborhood (Somerset County) both from the Mali Estate

Just a skip across the Green Brook is Meadowbrook Village in Union County. Once the location of the former Mali Estate Mansion (now Barlow elementary) the former Gatehouse still exists opposite Johnston Ave.    

Originally it was planned as SFH (Single Family Housing), like Meadowbrook neighborhood on the Somerset county portion of the estate.  Instead the NIMBYs in Plainfield didn't want the zoning to go from A zone to B zone for these smaller home lots but rather to keep the 'estate atmosphere'. 

Whereas in North Plainfield it was a zoning upgrade from fields and riding trails to taxable ratables in the form of homes. 

So two years after the opening of Meadowbrook neighborhood, in the face of the 1937 Recession, with zoning objections holding up work the investors wanted their money working asap... plus it didn't help that the FHA approval process was redlining nearby areas making building any SFH very unlikely ... 

So, what else fits on the same size lot as an Estate Mansion?  

Spoiler alert: Garden apartments. 

Not every nearby mansion owner was able to sell their home due to FHA down grading the value and some missed the opportunity to sell to an apartment builder which is why so many large homes seem sprinkled in between the various apartment complexes on Front Street. 

There's a nice historic marker out front of Meadowbrook Village recognizing the venture as one of the first Garden Apartments so that's neat; 

Also it was featured in a few architecture case studies of the era, so it was quite the triumph in that regard.

 

 

Not sure when they closed up the pool... 

but the pool was fairly operational to the 60s far as I can tell from 'lifeguard wanted' ads.

Interesting is this 1944 ad, not just advertising the SFH (Single Family Housing) in Meadowbrook on the North Plainfield side, but also it lists the former gate house, across from Johnston Avenue, 901 East Front Street, as a property under Meadowbrook Inc. listings.

I like the concept of the Garden Apartment, it seems equitable and environmental friendly, but suppose the footprint isn't as scalable these days.

Pierre Mali of Mali Drive

I moved in a few years ago and thought, 'hmm, I wonder why this is named, 'Mali Drive'?" I did some research and I found Mr. Pierre Mali, born August 19, 1856 in Belgium He passed away 4 October 1923. (I meant to post this earlier in the month of October and forgot; sorry, my bad.)

from his passport....

Pierre helped as the Belgium Consulate General in NY with getting aid to Europe during World War 1.

He is on the far right in this image....

So then how did Pierre get a road in central NJ with his last name on it?

Well, Pierre married Frances "Fanny" Johnston May 1, 1892.

They were married at the family home in NYC

Well, "Fanny", as she was known, her dad was John Taylor Johnston (JTJ). He was the First President of the Met Museum but that was more of "side hustle"... his "day job" was being the President of the Central Railroad of NJ. He connected "the road" as they called it, from PA, through Somerville, to Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City. He also made improvements, like elevating the tracks in Plainfield and moved the train station at Scotch Plains to a new a station called... can you guess where from these 1860 articles?

Gosh, if I owned a railroad, I might name a new station after a family member.... hmm.....

JTJ also owned a large summer estate and farm in NJ called, the Netherwood Estate, but often was referred to as the Johnston Estate. When he died, he passed the Estate down to Frances and because she was married to Pierre the Estate was then known as... The Mali Estate. You can read more about it here.

Pierre passed away 101 years ago, 4 October, 1923... here are some neat obit details written about him.

Pierre and Frances now "reside" near Woodland Ave you can see their large boulder monument from the road but it easier to just stop in and say hi at Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains.

Frances Mali passed away December 7, 1928 so I'll put something up then about her later in the year. The Mali heirs continued to live in Manhattan and in 1936 they sold the Estate to be developed into what is today our neighborhood, as well as the Watchung Square Mall, all the way up to Johnston Drive in Watchung. But thanks to Pierre's last name, we have a unique name for a rounded road...

... you might say, after viewing this 1956 photo, that we've come "full circle".

In memory of George E. T. Wells, President of Meadowbrook Inc

Published this day 27 September, 1947 in remembrance of George E. T. Wells, architect and President of Meadowbrook Inc. ...

(a quick note: here is a link to the post about George from last year that has his formal obituary, bio, and some different images, like the "sibling" neighborhood Washington Park in Maplewood and his days in between these residential NJ projects designing hotels in Miami.... )

This 1 year earlier (1946) bio of George was published for his nomination to lead the local realtors...

But this pretty much was a rough draft for his obit, which you can read here in last year's commemorative post. Note the home address is where the former Mali Mansion stood that he lived in and operated out of while Meadowbrook was being built. Here's a photo comparisson of the old Mali / Johnston mansion published mid 50s

 another view (and article about the Netherwood area)

As irony would have it, about 6 months earlier April 1947, George was giving the Mali family heirs one last tour of the family homestead before it was torn down... (dun dun dun...)

Here's what the neighborhood looked like from a satellite image the year George passed, 1947.

and a closer zoom of the Mali Drive loop showing the east side incomplete and various imprints of the prior depression era WPA Gardens and community Victory Gardens of WWII

.... and a cute ad 2 years later from 1949 for the lots left to build still...

Keeping the irony going full steam, this ad was also published same day, selling built homes in the neighborhood but also empty lots above what is today Watchung Sq Mall along Johnston Drive...

so, as the advertisement suggests, "Do not wait for tomorrow for tomorrow never comes." Here is one of the original brochures of the Meadowbrook neighborhood with George's name on the bottom right.

Various ads for the neighborhood here As you can maybe tell, the neighborhood didn't quite turn out as planned either...