Llewellyn Park. Located just twelve miles west of New York City, Llewellyn Park was established by Llewellyn S. Haskell (18151872), a wealthy New York drug importer and enthusiastic admirer of natural scenery. In 1852, due to his declining health and the recent tragic deaths of four of his five sons, he began to search for a healthier environment for his family. The following year, captivated by the clean air and panoramic views of New Jersey’s Orange Mountains, he purchased forty acres in West Orange. The property’s farmhouse, which Haskell named the Eyrie, was remodeled for his family by America’s leading romantic country house architect, Alexander Jackson Davis. Although not the only architect at work in the park during the 1850s and 1860s, Davis was the most influential. His designs for a veritable treasure trove of Gothic Revival houses came to include a larger villa for Haskell.
The financial panic of 1857, followed by the onset of the Civil War, inhibited building activities in the park. Its area continued to grow, however; by i860 its size had increased to 500 acres. It reached 750 acres (approximately the size of New York’s Central Park) by 1870. Today it contains 420 acres (in the 1970s, the park was divided by the construction of Route 280). Original deed restrictions for potential homeowners were few and essentially limited to the establishment of one-acre minimum villa sites (although the average parcel was six acres) and the prohibition of trades and businesses. Design limitations were not imposed, but most early homeowners preferred romantic, Gothic-inspired residences.
Ocean and Deal Lake. Loch Arbour is the only independent municipality in New Jersey with a village form of government. It was once a portion of a large tract purchased by Gavin Drummond in 1687 from the Unami tribe of the Lenape Indians; other early owners of parcels that would later become Loch Arbour include Thomas Whyte (White), Thomas Potter, Jacob Corlies, and Abner Allen. The 1865 owners of record, Edward and Mary Boyle of New York, died while on holiday in Europe in 1881, and Dr. Samuel Johnson and R. Tenbroeck Stout acquired the property in 1882 and developed the tract as a residential community.
Up until the mid-1950s several small hotels and apartments existed along the ocean and lake. In 1957, Loch Arbour seceded from the once-vast Township of Ocean. The community is currently predominantly single-family residential with a handful of service businesses clustered at the southwestern corner on Main Street. In 2000, the population of 280 was 95 percent white. The median family income in 2000 was $68,542.
Llewellyn Park, West Orange, 1857.
The Ramble, as the common park area is still known, was designed according to the romantic principles earlier advocated by the foremost landscape architect of the first half of the nineteenth century, Andrew Jackson Downing. After Haskell installed rare and exotic imported varieties of trees and shrubs at great expense, contemporary accounts began to describe the park as a paradise—a veritable Eden. At the entrance, Davis designed a gate lodge in the picturesque style of the Eyrie; the structure still exists and continues to be manned by the park’s security force.
Several notable residents have lived in Llewellyn Park, chief among them Thomas A. Edison, who, in 1886, purchased Glenmont (designed in 1880 by Henry Hudson Holly), a twenty-three-room mansion on a 15.67-acre site, which was also near his West Orange laboratory. Along with the laboratory, the site is operated by the National Park Service and is open to the public.
In the nineteenth century, Llewellyn Park became an important prototype for other planned communities. In New Jersey, it provided a model for Short Hills Park, the "ideal community” established in 1874 by Stewart Hartshorn. Today, although most of the original homes of Llewellyn Park are gone, its romantic beauty nevertheless remains.
Lloyd, John Henry "Pop" (b. Apr. 25, 1884; d. Mar. 19,1965). Baseball player. Arguably the greatest shortstop ever to play the game of baseball, John Henry "Pop” Lloyd played and managed in Negro professional baseball from 1906 though 1932. He has been termed the "greatest black baseball player of the first two decades of the twentieth century.” Lloyd was a complete player, who was especially feared as a clutch hitter. He was a superb fielder and base runner, and was widely recognized for his ability to use his knowledge of the game to generate runs and victories for his teams. Those teams included all the great Negro professional clubs of the 1900 to 1920 pre-Negro League era, as well as several Negro Major League clubs of the 1920s. He played with and managed the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants of the Eastern Colored Major League during several seasons in the 1920s. John Lloyd took up residence in Atlantic City in 1930, and from then until his death in 1965 was a mentor and inspiration to generations of Atlantic City youth, serving as a janitor in the public schools, as Little League commissioner, and as manager of several major semiprofessional teams in his adopted city. A stadium on Martin Luther King Boulevard is named in his honor. John Henry Lloyd was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977.
Lockwood, Rembrandt (b. 1815; d. 1889). Painter and architect. Rembrandt Lock-wood was born to Millington and Jane A. (Cuisac) Lockwood. The nature of his childhood and education are not known. He painted portraits in Richmond, Virginia, around 1841 and later studied in Munich, where he was inspired by mural cycles depicting religious themes. From 1847 to 1858 he lived in Newark, mostly on High Street. A regular exhibitor with the New Jersey Art-Union, this painter of portraits, landscapes, and interiors benefited from the patronage of Marcus L. Ward. He was also part of a brief school of religious painting in Newark during the mid-i800s. His 27-by-i7-foot painting Last Judgment, which included George Washington among its numerous figures, was completed and exhibited in Newark to much local acclaim. The painting fared less well in the press when exhibited in New York, and Lockwood subsequently turned to architecture during the i860s. Living and working in New York City, he focused on church architecture, completing churches in New York as well as Jersey City’s Congregational Church and the Catholic church at Seventh and Erie. Lockwood, who is known to have had a son and two daughters, died in 1889.
Lodi. 2.3-square-mile borough in Bergen County. First in New Barbadoes Township, Lodi village was included in Lodi Township in 1825 and was incorporated as a borough in 1894. In 1917, it was reduced to its present size when Teterboro was created.
Lodi is home to Felician College, which grew from an orphanage for Polish children established in 1832 by the Felician Sisters. It is also home to Saint Francis de Sales Church, built in 1855, the oldest Catholic church in Bergen County. Lodi developed as an industrial settlement along the banks of the Saddle River when Robert Rennie began a textile print-and-dye mill in the 1830s. The community grew further when the United Piece Dye Works opened in the 1890s, attracting many Italian immigrants to the new jobs. Some of Lodi’s workers became involved in the 1926 textile strike, which spread from the Botany mills in Passaic. By 1930, Lodi’s 11,549 residents were predominantly of Italian ancestry. The community gained much suburban housing after World War II. In 2000, the population of 23,971 was 78 percent white, 9 percent Asian, and 18 percent Hispanic (Hispanics may be of any race). Its largest ethnic group is still of Italian extraction. The median family income in 2000 was $43,421.
Logan. 22.62-square-mile township in Gloucester County that includes Beckett, Center Square, Nortonville, Bridgeport, and Repaupo. In 1638 the first settlers from Europe to arrive in West New Jersey traveled from Sweden and Holland under the leadership of Peter Minuit and landed at the mouth of Raccoon Creek within the boundaries of what is now Logan. Pioneers from Europe continued to build homes and to farm in New Stockholm, their settlement, with the creek on one side and the Delaware River on the other side making it an ideal location to transport produce to Philadelphia. Incorporated in 1877, with land separated from Woolwich, it was first called West Woolwich Township. In 1878 the name was changed to Logan Township in honor of John Alexander "Black Jack” Logan, a Union Army general and U.S. senator who inaugurated Memorial Day.
During the 1980s, farms were sold off to housing developers; to compensate for the influx of new homeowners, the township expanded its tax base by attracting companies that needed large tracts of land for warehouse use. Pureland Industrial Complex was built in the 1990s and rented large warehouses to chemical, recycling, pharmaceutical, and tool and dye companies. Today the suburban township continues to see growth in its commercial sector, but is predominantly made up of single-family homes whose residents commute to Philadelphia for employment. In 2000, the population of 6,032 was 82 percent white and 14 percent black. The median household income was $67,148 according to the 2000 census. For complete census figures, see chart, 133.
Log cabin. Log cabin is a term that would have been unfamiliar to the thousands of people in New Jersey who inhabited such structures in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Log house, or log dwelling house, would have been the accepted terms. And not all pioneers lived in houses built from logs. In 1939 Harold Shurtleff published TheLog Cabin Myth, which indicated that the early English settlers were unfamiliar with dwellings built of logs. This was true for the British Isles and the Low Countries as well, but people from the mountains and uplands of Central Europe and from the Scandinavian peninsula and Finland were quite familiar with log building techniques. A map of log houses appearing in eighteenth-century advertisements of real estate in New Jersey clearly indicates two major area locations for such dwellings, the southwestern and northwestern parts of the state, which correlate with Swedish and Finnish settlement in the southwest and the movement of Germans from Pennsylvania into the northwest.
Constructing buildings of logs generally involves the placement of the logs alternately one over the other, and fitting them together at the corners with various notching techniques to ensure a tight fit. Some surviving log houses in southwestern New Jersey definitely reflect Swedish practices and, in the northwest, a notching technique in the past referred to as the Pennsylvania German V notch is very common. Thus, the notion arose that log structures were introduced from Sweden and from Germany. Extensive fieldwork in Europe, however, has proved that the location from which the V notch diffused to North America lay on the border of Norway and Sweden and that corner timbering technique was the practice of ethnic Finns. So, one of Europe’s smaller ethnic groups had a remarkable effect on the American landscape and the movement of the frontier. Perhaps an equally important influence originating from the Finns was the introduction of the so-called Virginia, or worm rail fence, which allowed rapid agricultural settlement to take place. The first reference to such a fence in North America is to a location near Finnish settlement in southwestern New Jersey. Log houses and "worm” fences were rapidly accepted by people of non-Finnish ethnic origins in frontier locations.
Log house is a term describing building materials, not the type or form of the structure. Finns built their log houses with an entrance at the gable end. The most common British tradition was to build with an entrance in the long side of the house, opposite the gable. Ultimately, the log dwelling adapted this practice. Most log houses were small, less than twenty feet on a side and one-story or one-and-a-half-stories high. In northwestern New Jersey, where tenanted farmers often prevailed, the rental agreements initially called generally for a log house to be built by the tenant. In general, as prosperity arrived, the log structure was relegated to the function of storage or housing livestock, and gradually disappeared from the landscape.
Long Beach. 4.3-square-mile township in Ocean County. Sparsely settled by whalers in 1678, Long Beach Island attracted mainland fishermen and salvagers of hundreds of shipwrecks. Philadelphia sportsmen arrived by stagecoach in 1816 and New Yorkers came by rail in the 1860s for the short sail across the bay to shoot vast quantities of migratory waterfowl. When the railroad extended its roadbed onto the island north to Barnegat City and south to Beach Haven in 1886, Philadelphia real estate developers advertised the island as a summer vacation spot. With the completion of the bridge and causeway from the mainland in June 1914 the sea oats, dunes, and wildlife habitats ceded to summer cottages. The township communities of Brant Beach, Spray Beach, and the Beach Haven variants-North, Terrace, Crest, Gardens—sprang from the imaginations of the land improvement company directors. Most of Long Beach Island incorporated in 1899 as Long Beach Township (excluding the towns of Barnegat City, Harvey Cedars, Surf City, Ship Bottom, and Beach Haven). Although wracked by hurricanes in 1944 and 1962, the township remains a resort of summer cottages. In 2000, the year-round population of 3,329 was 99 percent white. The median family income in 2000 was $48,697.
In 1990, the population of 31,340 was 68 percent white, 19 percent black, and 2i percent Hispanic (Hispanics may be of any race). The median family income in 2000 was $38,65i.
Gillette, Stirling, and Millington, now familiar to commuters on the Gladstone Line of New Jersey Transit. Small factories in the village of Stirling produced silk from i885 to the i930s and attracted a diverse workforce. In i922 the township’s northern portion split off to form Harding Township.
Despite twentieth-century suburban development, Long Hill retains much of its rural character. The township had a population in 2000 of 8,777, of whom 93 percent was white. Median household income in 2000 was $84,532. For complete census figures, see chart, i33.
Long Branch. 5.1-square-mile city in eastern Monmouth County. Long Branch was settled in 1668 as part of the larger Shrewsbury and Middletown tract, with the earliest settlements inland, where farming was better supported. It continued as part of Shrewsbury until 1849, when its governance shifted to Ocean Township. In 1867, it became the Borough of Long Branch and in 1904, a city charter was granted.
Long Branch grew in popularity as a seashore resort during the nineteenth century, when increased prosperity permitted vacationing and leisurely pursuits. The first routes to Long Branch were by overland coach or by sea, and vacationers were predominantly from Philadelphia and New York. Boats began docking in Long Branch in 1828, when the first pier was built. The first direct railroad to Long Branch opened in i860. Gambling and horse racing added to Long Branch’s appeal. Through the mid-nineteenth century, large hotels were built to accommodate the growing crowds. The combination of sun, sea, gaming, and dancing, along with reasonably easy access to urban centers, made Long Branch the preeminent resort town on the Eastern Seaboard. The allure of Long Branch even reached the Oval Office. Seven presidents vacationed here during their tenures in office: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson. Seven Presidents Oceanfront Park exists today as a tribute to these chief executives who spent summers at Long Branch.
Gambling was abolished in 1897 by state constitutional amendment, changing Long Branch from a fashionable and bustling seaside resort to a quiet residential community. Vacationers still came to Long Branch but not in the numbers seen during the nineteenth century. With its heyday behind it, Long Branch shifted to a light industrial center. Primary industries included manufacturing, construction, healthcare, and retail. Like many urban areas, Long Branch entered a period of decline during the mid-twentieth century. A low point was struck on June 8, i987, when the last remaining pier, the 825-foot-long amusement pier, burned in an accidental fire. In recent years, Long Branch has entered a renaissance.
Long Hill. 12.1-square-mile township in Morris County formerly called Passaic Township. By referendum in i992 residents re-adopted the oldest name for the locality. Beginning in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Long Hill occupies land to the south along the low mountain ridge from which it takes its name and sweeps gently down to the Passaic River.
English-speaking farmers settled here in the 1730s. A century later German immigrants arrived and, in i848, built a church in the hamlet of Meyersville. The area was part of Morris Township from i740 to i866, when the southern portion was incorporated as Passaic Township.
Stirling Silk Mill, Long Hill Township.
Long Pond Ironworks State Park. Long Pond is a 1,725-acre park in West Milford, displaying the remnants of ironmak-ing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The centerpiece of the park is the Long Pond Ironworks Historic District. Established by Peter Hasenclever in 1766, this hydro-powered ironworks on the Wanaque River employed five hundred German ironworkers. The ironworks produced pig iron until i882, when it was closed for economic reasons. For seventy-five years the ironworks sat vacant and abandoned until the Friends of Long Pond Ironworks took over management of the site in i957. Today the ironworks, listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places, has been partially restored.
Longport. 1.62-square-mile borough in Atlantic County. Longport is a mile and a half long, and at its widest point is half a mile. The eastern side consists of beachfront along the Atlantic Ocean, with the bay on the western side. In 1857 James Long acquired a portion of land, which later became part of the borough. He owned the property for twenty-five years and over that time period sand accumulated in the area, adding approximately one mile to the original purchase. Long never developed the area, but sold it to his friend M. Simpson McCullough, who turned the area into a seashore resort. McCullough named the area "Longport” after Long and because of the extensive stretch of land that borders the bay. The borough was incorporated in 1898. Between 1900 and 1916 the borough lost ten of its blocks due to sand erosion. Longport continues to be a mostly residential resort town with a summer population of between 4,000 and 5,000 people.
In 2000, the permanent population of 1,054 was 99 percent white. The median household income was $51,324. For complete census figures, see chart, 133.
Long Valley. Long Valley is a narrow, deeply incised northeast-southwest trending valley that begins in the limestone lowlands near Monroe, New York, and crosses the state border at Greenwood Lake at 800 feet. It descends to 470 feet at Califon in Hunterdon County, where it joins the South Branch of the Raritan River. It was also known as Long-wood Valley and German Valley, based on early settlement by German immigrants. Underlain with limestone, Long Valley is bordered by the more resistant rocks of the Highlands on both sides that are 400 to 500 feet higher in elevation. Well yields are generally very favorable in the valley.
Lopatcong. 7.45-square-mile township in Warren County. Lopatcong separated from Phillipsburg Township and was incorporated in 1863.
An original deed, dated 1712, documents the purchase of land from the Lenapes for an assortment of blankets, knives, guns, and tools. Formerly agricultural, the township was noted for its peach orchards and a limited mining operation of fine-quality soapstone. Delaware Park, a residential suburb of the town of Phillipsburg, was once advertised as an ideal location for health and beauty. Uniontown, also known as Stumptown, lies on the Harmony border. The township remains predominately residential with farmland turned into single-family and condominium developments. The population in 2000 of 5,765 was 96 percent white. Median family income in 2000 was $50,918. For complete census figures, see chart, 133.
Loudenslager, Henry Clay (b. May 22, 1852; d. Aug. 12, 1911). Businessman and politician. Born in Maurice town, Cumberland County, Henry Clay Loudenslager attended public schools in Paulsboro. From 1872 to 1882 he assumed interests in the produce commission business in Philadelphia. County clerk of Gloucester County from 1882 to 1892, Loudenslager was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New Jersey’s First Congressional District from 1893 until his death at his home in Paulsboro. During the political contests of 1906, 1908, and 1910, he served as secretary of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Loudenslager, a party regular who supported House Speaker Joseph G. Cannon, devoted most of his attention to pension legislation. He chaired the Committee on Pensions in the Fifty-fourth through Sixty-first Congresses. Loudenslager also maintained a strong personal and political association with President William Howard Taft.
Lovelace, John (b. 1672; d. May 6, 1709). Military officer and governor. The son of William and Mary (King) Lovelace, John Lovelace married Charlotte Clayton on October 20,1702. They had five children, three of whom died in infancy. A member of an aristocratic family, which included his grandfather Francis Lovelace, who served as governor of New York from 1668 to 1673, John Lovelace succeeded to the family peerage in 1693. Despite his distinguished lineage, however, his inheritance of the title Baron Lovelace of Hurley brought with it little wealth and significant debt. After holding a series of minor military appointments in England, Lovelace was appointed governor of New York and New Jersey in March 1708; he sailed from Southampton in September of that year, arriving in New York on December 18. He succeeded the highly unpopular Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury, as governor. Lovelace gave early indications of wanting to win the support of the lower house of the New Jersey legislature by repudiating the corrupt Cornbury faction of the council. His death following a stroke, however, brought to an abrupt end Lovelace’s early efforts at implementing a conciliatory political strategy.
Lowell, William (b. Oct. 1, 1862; d. June 23, 1954). Dentist, concert violinist, and inventor. A dentist and concert violinist based in Maplewood, William Lowell took up golf at the age of sixty at the Maplewood Country Club. He found that he disliked the sand tee that had been common for several centuries. Lowell created a substitute in the form of a wooden peg with concave top to hold the ball. At the urgings of his sons, Lowell patented the tee, marketing it through the Reddy Tee Company and enlisting golf professionals Walter Hagen and Joe Kirkwood to endorse the tee while on tour. Although Lowell eventually lost the patent, his original design remains the standard form for the golf tee today.
Lowenstein, Sandler. Lowenstein, Sandler, P.C., is New Jersey’s second largest law firm and among the largest two hundred in the nation, employing around two hundred lawyers. The firm is known for its pro bono program of free legal services to meritorious causes. The firm was founded in Newark in 1961 by Alan V. Lowenstein, a renowned corporate lawyer. It was deliberately modeled to be a credible alternative to New York City for New Jersey-based businesses and institutions that required complex and sophisticated corporate and financial representation. Later, the firm expanded its litigation department to handle difficult suits relating to securities, employment, the environment, insurance, consumer class action, mass tort, and health care issues. Its bankruptcy and environmental practices are among the largest in the state. The firm maintains law offices in Roseland, Somerville, and New York City, and owns a public issues management subsidiary (Issues Management) located in Princeton. It is ranked first among all New Jersey firms with the largest number of corporate and tax attorneys listed in The Best Lawyers in America.
