EMERSON—Longtime Emersonians will recognize this location in a heartbeat. This is a snapshot of Kinderkamack Road captured one autumn day in the mid-1960s. A white Ford Mustang has just made the turn off Locust Avenue. Then, as now, golden color was spreading through Emerson as the leaves were beginning to change.
Elements of the building at Kinderkamack and Locust remain the same nearly 60 years later. In the 1960s the storefront closest to the corner was the Emerson Post Office, which had opened at this location in 1953. That part of the building looks much the same in 2023, down to the doorway, windows, and prominent American flag above the entrance. For years it has been Paint N’ Paper, and recently that old door got a more colorful paint job.
Next to the post office was the Emerson Pharmacy (now Kumon) and then the Glo-Pat realty office (now Full Auto Airsoft). You might remember a restaurant, Ed’s Place, that was located next door; it was owned by Ed Calligan for a decade. Next to that was Mona Lisa Hair Fashions.
Across the street was the liquor store and Sinclair service station, and the signs for those businesses are just visible on the left side of the photograph. In the late ‘60s, the Sinclair became a Texaco station; that, too, is long gone. Nowadays that side of the block is in the midst of a large-scale redevelopment.
— Kristin Beuscher is president of Pascack Historical Society.