WESTWOOD—More than eight decades after our featured photo was snapped in downtown Westwood, this section has hardly changed at all.
Showing the point where Westwood Avenue meets Broadway, this view returns us to December 1938. While tenants have come and gone over the years, the building housing them is largely unchanged except for some minor storefront alterations.
If you examine the lampposts, you can see that that downtown Westwood was already decorated for Christmas. In 1938, the main storefront shown was Brent Service Store. The chain had nine locations in Bergen County, where they offered dry cleaning, tailoring, and dyeing of garments. We cannot determine which service the signs in the window were trying to sell, but whatever it was cost just 14 cents. That location today is Westwood Gallery.
We thought it would be interesting to check up on what was happening in and around Westwood at the time, so we consulted their weekly newspaper (they are always the best source, in our opinion). From the Dec. 1, 1938 edition of The Westwood News, we gleaned the following:
- Final preparations were being made to break ground for the new Westwood Library building. The project was made possible by a $23,000 grant from the Works Project Administration.
- A neighboring town’s police chief and his wife were granted a divorce, and it was featured on the newspaper’s front page—along with their grievances, his salary, and how much alimony he would be paying! We won’t tell you their names, but we will say that the chief ended up paying $12 per week—about one-third of his salary.
- Tragedy struck days earlier when a 22-year-old man was killed, and two young women (ages 18 and 19) were injured, when their sleigh riding party came down the hill on Washington Avenue and crashed into a car being driven by a Hillside Avenue man.
- More than 125 people attended the Westwood Junior Women’s Club’s dance at the White Beeches Country Club in Haworth. Music was furnished by the Deauville Club Orchestra.
- That evening would be the Ladies’ Auxiliary dessert card party at the Westwood Elks. Card parties were incredibly popular with women’s organizations in those days. There was one almost every night of the week.
- The Westwood VFW Auxiliary held theirs several days earlier, and one lucky lady from Hillsdale won the $2 cash prize.
- The Stitch & Chatter Club was entertained at a home on Washington Avenue.
- A group enjoyed a horse-drawn sleigh party, followed by drinks and dancing at Koenig’s Hofbrau, now the location of Kings and Walgreens, in Hillsdale. It had already snowed a good deal by late November.
- Durie Motor Sales on Broadway in Hillsdale had a selection of Oldsmobiles, Studebakers, Cadillacs, and LaSalles. Telephone Westwood 750 for more information.
- Perfume bracelets were the latest novelty. They featured hollow, perforated gold charms dangling from a bracelet chain. One would saturate a bit of cotton in her favorite scent and stuff it inside the charm.
- At the A&P at Westwood and Fairview avenues, a dozen eggs cost 27 cents. Oranges cost a penny each. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes were 10 cents a box and three rolls of paper towels cost a quarter. According to the store, it was National Potato Week. Shoppers couldn’t go wrong with 15 pounds of potatoes for 25 cents.
- The Hillsdale Board of Health met and heard complaints about a resident who was raising fowl of various kinds on his property. The ducks kept flying to the rooftops of the neighboring dwellings. At the same meeting, the clerk asked if it would be possible to obtain a less-ancient typewriter for his use, pointing out that the current machine was second-hand when purchased many years earlier.
- The freshman dance the Frosh Hop would be held the following night in the Westwood High School gym. Music was by Russ Rutlidge’s Orchestra, which the Westwood News described as “one of those rare sweet and swing bands.”
- Home for sale: Six rooms plus bath, steam heat, oil burner. Lot 50×150. Choice residential section of Westwood. Three blocks to stores. Four blocks to public school. Price $4,500.