
GLEN ROCK HISTORICAL & PRESERVATION SOCIETY

During 1907-1908, the North Jersey Rapid Transit (NJRT) Line was built. This was a high-speed electric trolley. The southern terminus was at Broadway in East Paterson (now Elmwood Park). The northern terminus was at Ridgewood Avenue in Ridgewood for a time; then at Ho-Ho-Kus and later at Suffern, New York. At the East Paterson terminus, one might transfer to the Hudson River Line and ride west into Paterson or east to New York via the Edgewater ferries. The rolling stock of Jewett electric cars was the last word in interurban transport at that time. The car exteriors were painted Pullman green with gold-leaf striping, numbering, and lettering; the roof was grey, the undercarriage fittings black. Interiors had mahogany trim and brass hardware with buff colored ceilings and seats upholstered in green plush. Heating was by hot-air coal-burning stoves in winter. The trolley roadbed was sand-ballasted. The trolley speed was excellent, at times reaching in excess of 45 miles per hour. At a time when many could not afford automobiles, the trolley provided an economical and pleasant means to get from place to place.
There were three stops in Glen Rock: one at Harristown Road, one at Hamilton Avenue, and one at Ackerman Avenue, plus a fourth stop just over the borough line at Grove Street in Ridgewood. The first stop in Fair Lawn, southbound from Glen Rock, was at Fair Lawn Avenue. At Glen Rock's Harristown and Ackerman stops, there were three-sided wooden shelters with benches on the open platforms. The line entered Glen Rock from the south in the Hamilton School area, swung along an easy curve over a fill and trestle, and then a bridge (known as the Glen Rock Viaduct) over the Erie Short Cut (Bergen County Line tracks), then down grade and up a little to Hamilton Avenue. From here, it ran almost due east to Prospect Street, where there was an easy curve to a point on Grove Street just east of the Hohokus Brook in Ridgewood. If you look carefully, you can still find the remains of the footprints for several of the concrete piers that held up the trestle in the PSE&G right-of-way between Wilde Memorial Park and Salem Court.
After operating for about a year, there was a terrible head-on collision on the blind curve between Prospect Street and Grove Street on Friday, July 21, 1911. Car No. 12, southbound, and Car No. 20, northbound, were crushed into a little more than a one-car length. NJRT Superintendent Francis J. Pilgrim, who was operating No. 12, and Motorman William Hutchinson both died that evening at Paterson General Hospital. John Frotaillo, who was flagged on the southbound car, died while being transported to the hospital. In a tragic twist of fate, Motorman Hutchinson had quit his job the day before the accident, but Superintendent Pilgrim had convinced him to work one more day. The accident was attributed to faulty signals on the line, which had been damaged by a severe lightning storm earlier that afternoon. The No. 20 car was the regularly scheduled trolley on the tracks at that time; it is thought that Pilgrim took the No. 12 car to try to do a quick repair to the signals before the No. 20 would arrive. Both cars were traveling at full-speed when they met at the track curve in Glen Rock.