1952 Many Fight Subdivision; Property Owners Protest New Meadowbrook Housing

Published 30 July, 1952, just over 16 years after the neighborhood started. Take a read through the articles, click to enlarge, but here is the TLDR gist of it all ...

The "fight" and "protest" of the home owners in 1952 was that Meadowbrook Inc was going to put up smaller sized homes on even smaller lots, contrary to original plans. The confusion and frustration in these articles really comes across, but gets lost in the sauce of technical details.

Ultimately with help from various Borough and County officials they were able to preserve the lot setbacks and sizes for the neighborhood as submitted in the surveys originally within boundries of Farragut (west), Mountain (north), Netherwood (east), the Green Brook / county border (south). 

However, any influence about imposing or retaining "deed restrictions" of by-gone-eras was thoroughly abandonded as new homes were built for a new generation that included everyone.

As you can read in this excerpt there was clearly some hand wringing and standing outburst attempts to conflate lot sizes and house sizes with "deed restrictions".  The Norwood Homes (confusing as the company building them was named Norwood, not on Norwood Ave) were being built nearby Meadowbrook neighborhood on the north side of Mountain Ave and in similar areas that once upon a time were part of the Johnston/Mali Estate.  But as you can see in the confused outburst these were never part of Meadowbrook Inc., as those lands remained in ownership by the estate heirs under the Netherwood Farms Corporation.  Netherwood Farms Corp. would sell land to Meadowbrook Inc as pieces were built or completed, but that didn't mean the entire former estate was Meadowbrook... 

In 1952, these new homes were built to mirror demand for returning veterans and the VA Loans did not follow prior "deed restrictions" that were included in earlier era FHA loans when Meadowbrook neighborhood (to include Meadowbrook Village apartments in 1938!) was initially started.   After WWII, lessons learned, these new 30-year mortgages and homes were for everyone, and without restrictions.  And to this day thankfully anyone can live in Meadowbrook.

Stay tuned, there's an update to this article at the end of 1952's August with all the particulars decided upon...

... also, this was published 6 August 1952, residents of the Norwood Homes did not care for the opinions of the "choosy" Meadowbrook neighbors. Interesting notes on the veteran population as well as inflation of the time period and its effects.

Ground-breaking day at Meadowbrook

 These snippets were published July 25, 1936 about ground-breaking for the Meadowbrook neighborhood but there wasn't a lot of ceremony or pomp for the event. 

Scanned quality of the newspaper isn't the best from the source
but as a reminder, click the images to enlarge them for reading.

The article was layered into some odd columns when published in the paper
so there's another reason for the fragmented feel of these snippets...

insert your 420 jokes here if you must...

and this map was published earlier in the year, April 1936
illustrating the proposed layout of the neighborhood

You'll notice it cross the Green Brook and is in both Union and Somerset counties

and here is the first survey of the first section filed in June in Somerset county.

And then 2 years later in 1938 it was all shovels and hands on deck, even an excavator
 behind participants for the ground breaking
of Meadowbrook Village in 1938

... 3rd from the left is George Wells, president of Meadowbrook Inc.
the rest are members of the FHA and the new owners of that project.
 
And here is again, 3rd from the right, behind the guy with the shovel, at the ground breaking for the Barlow Elementary school, on the corner of East Front and Farragut, Dec 20th 1938

... my guess is there wasn't a big to-do for the ground breaking for Meadowbrook neighborhood and instead they pivoted their plans for a "reveal" opening of the "model home" later that year November 14th, 1936, as there were still minds (NIMBYs) to change about the progress of this development taking place on the old estate.

Memories of Meadowbrook when it was the Mali Estate

Published this day 10 July, 1931, student essay describing the Mali Estate and Netherwood Farm, along with other photos and maps of various eras to help with the imagery described.  Reminder to click images to enlarge the view.  Enjoy!!

Here is large full page of the article and its columns, excerpts are below...

Here is a postcard I found of the estate at a vintage shop...  let's go for a walk about shall we?

... these captioned Conservatory photos are from a 1936 article

A map of the estate with call-outs of the areas described.

A view of the mansion in a 1950ish reprint about a new bank.

Thanks for this written tour, Jean Price, all these years later 

And a reminder to be sure to visit us over on Instagram when you can: 
https://www.instagram.com/meadowbrookhistory_npnj/