Royal retreat

DURING the first decades that swift stages traversed the breadth of northern New Jersey, whose roads while judged by an early commentator “not so good” were nonetheless “absolutely turnpiked,” an ever swelling tide of travelers made for Schooley’s Mountain, one of the earliest leisure destinations in the United States.1 As European colonizers became aware of … More Royal retreat

Scot’s Model

THERE’S no second chance to make a first impression, and this had all the makings of an audacious debut. Notices of a new historical society for New Jersey, emanating from the busy pen of its corresponding secretary, had barely reached the meeting rooms of other learned associations around the country. Now they, and the wider … More Scot’s Model

Try, try again

MORE ancient and enduring than New Jersey’s status as a Revolutionary battleground has been its contest for self-definition. The state is often coarsely cast as suffering a kind of bipolar disorder, forever torn between the megacities it faces across its two frontier rivers. The nature of that struggle is of course far more complex, variously … More Try, try again

The Castle

ECLIPSED early in its development by other colonial ports, Perth Amboy never became the New World metropolis of its founders’ dreams. Antiquarians in William Whitehead’s day could be excused for their disregard of a place with “no crumbling castles, no time-worn battlemented walls, nor monuments of fallen greatness” to meet the eye.1 The town seemed to … More The Castle