unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...
straddling the
boroughs
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
History
In the Middle A ...
of
Cliffside Park
Cliffside Park is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 23,594,Ridgefield, just south of Fort Lee, in eastern Bergen County,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, United States.
Toponymy
Grantwood Heights Land Company was incorporated on February 16, 1900 by Frank Knox. He bought land in the area, including what would later become
Palisades Amusement Park
Palisades Amusement Park was a 38-acre amusement park located in Bergen County, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. It was located atop the New Jersey Palisades lying partly in Cliffside Park and partly in Fort Lee. The pa ...
. Grantwood was so dubbed in the beginning of the 20th century and takes its name from its location on the
Hudson Palisades
The Palisades, also called the New Jersey Palisades or the Hudson River Palisades, are a line of steep cliffs along the west side of the lower Hudson River in Northeastern New Jersey and Southeastern New York in the United States. The cliffs s ...
across the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
which was reached by 130th Street Ferry at Edgewater.Gargiulo, Vince ''Palisades Amusement Park: A Century of Fond Memories'' p. 8. Lulu.com, 2006. . "Knox was a real-estate developer, widely known around the area, who had named a section of Cliffside Park 'Grantwood' because of its location directly across the Hudson River from Grant's Tomb."
Artists' colony
''Grantwood'' was an artist's colony established in 1913 by
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...
and
Samuel Halpert
Samuel Halpert (1884 in Białystok, Russia – 1930 in Detroit, Michigan) was an American painter.
Early days
Halpert's family migrated to New York City in 1890. His father's preoccupation with religious devotion necessitated that Halpert s ...
and became the artistic center for a collective known as the "Others" group of artists. The colony consisted of a number of clapboard shacks on a bluff. Some names of the streets in this part of Ridgefield Heights — Sketch Place, Studio Road and Art Lane — pay homage to Grantwood's history. The first issue of
The Glebe
The Glebe is a neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is located just south of Ottawa's downtown area in the Capital Ward. According to the Glebe Community Association, the neighbourhood is bounded on the north by the Queensway, on the ...
, a literary magazine, was published at the colony in 1913. In 1915,
Alfred Kreymborg
Alfred Francis Kreymborg (December 10, 1883 – August 14, 1966) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, literary editor and anthologist.
Early life and associations
He was born in New York City to Hermann and Louisa Kreymborg (née Nasher), ...
Skipwith Cannell
Skipwith Cannell (1887–1957) was an American poet associated with the Imagist group. His surname is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. He was a friend of William Carlos Williams, and like Ezra Pound he came from Philadelphia. C ...
,
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
, and
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
. Along with works of the founders it published work of
Maxwell Bodenheim
Maxwell Bodenheim (May 26, 1892 – February 6, 1954) was an American poet and novelist. A literary figure in Chicago, he later went to New York where he became known as the King of Greenwich Village Bohemians. His writing brought him intern ...
,
Mina Loy
Mina Loy (born Mina Gertrude Löwy; 27 December 1882 – 25 September 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first-generation modernists to ...
,
Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.
Early life
Moore was born in Kirkwood ...
Carl Sandburg
Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...
,
Orrick Johns
Orrick Glenday Johns (June 2, 1887 – July 8, 1946) was an American poet and playwright. He was one of the earliest modernist free-verse poets in Greenwich Village in 1913-1915 and associated with the artist's colony at Grantwood, New Jerse ...
history of cinema
The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century.
The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. However, the commercial, public scree ...
in the United States can trace its roots to the East Coast where, at one time, Fort Lee, just north of Grantwood, was the motion picture capital of America.
The E.K.Lincoln Studio was built in 1915 in Grantwood on Bergen Boulevard and was owned and operated by E.K. Lincoln, who was both an actor and movie maker. Many in the early film world worked out of this studio and used various spots in the area for location work. The first production was '' The Fighting Chance'' in which Lincoln starred alongside
Violet Horner
Violet Horner (1892 – 1970) was an American silent film actress. She had several starring roles including in one of the Lena Rivers (1914 Whitman film), Lena Rivers films (based on the Mary Jane Holmes novel) released in 1914 and a series of f ...
(who also starred in ''The Girl from Alaska''). Between 1916 and 1917, the studio was rented by Fox Film. In 1920 the United States Photoplay Corporation used it for the film ''Determination''. In 1923, Peter Jones produced the film ''How High Is Up?''.'' Moving Picture World '', June 19, 1915, p. 1922. According to Film Daily (June 1926), the first episode of ''
The Leather Pushers
''The Leather Pushers'' is a 1922 American film serial starring Reginald Denny (and Billy Sullivan in the fourth series), and based on boxing stories by H. C. Witwer originally published in ''Collier's Weekly''. The screenplays were written by ...
'' (1922) with Reginald Denny was filmed there. After World War I, many movie makers, including Lincoln, headed out to Hollywood where the climate enable them to film outdoors all year round. After
talkies
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
came into being in 1927, the studio continued to be used to make Italian and Polish language films. By the end of the Depression, the studio was no longer for film production. The building burnt down the 1960s.
North Hudson County Railway
The North Hudson Railway Company built and operated a streetcar system in Hudson County and southeast Bergen County, New Jersey before and after the start of the 20th century. It was founded by Hillric J. Bonn who became the first President in 1 ...
Helicon Home Colony
Helicon Home Colony was an experimental community formed by author Upton Sinclair in Englewood, New Jersey, United States, with proceeds from his novel ''The Jungle''. Established in October 1906, it burned down in March 1907 and was disbanded. ...