ENGLEWOOD—It was August 1900 when the first shovels hit the dirt at Engle and Bergen streets, marking the beginning of the Bergen Building. A three-story brick structure would soon rise from the heart of downtown. Now, 125 years later, the building still stands as a quiet witness to Englewood’s transformation through the 20th century and beyond.
The Bergen Building was constructed by F.W. Phelps for the Bergen County Gas & Electric company, which occupied the corner store as an office and salesroom. The lower level also held smaller businesses, including a plate glass and mirror shop, an electrician, and a dentist. On the Bergen Street side there were offices for both the local telephone exchange and Public Service Corporation. It was Englewood’s first modern apartment building, with six apartments located upstairs.
A decade after it opened, on March 10, 1911, the building was damaged by a fire. News outlets reported that the blaze was compounded by low water pressure and high winds.
“The fire started in the cellar and the sulfur-like fumes drove everyone out of the Public Service office when the flames found an opening in the floor,” the Paterson Morning Call wrote. “Miss Julia O’Brien and Miss Katherine Zaremba prevented a panic among the 12 telephone operators who remained at the switchboard until well nigh suffocated by the smoke.”
As the flames spread, the switchboard operators remained at their posts, calling around the city to alert the various offices of the fire. This was an era in which a phone call meant speaking with an operator, who would manually connect you via a switchboard with the person you were trying to reach.
Telephone service eventually went down, the switchboard having been destroyed by the water used to subdue the fire. A new switchboard, obtained from the main office in New York, was set up in a vacant storefront on Palisade Avenue. The linemen worked nonstop, all through the night. Remarkably, service was restored starting the following day, and within three days, every subscriber was reconnected.
“Twelve telephone girls who worked at their switchboard while flames ate and crackled their way through the building are heroines today of the largest fire that Englewood has known for a decade. The young women fled at the last moment, and five minutes later were helping linemen to install a new switchboard,” wrote the Star-Ledger. “Telephone service was resumed before the fire smoldered.”
At the height of the fire, the wind carried glowing embers hundreds of feet and threatened to start a dozen other blazes in downtown Englewood. Low water pressure added to the problem, and the firemen were unable to get two good streams on the tall structure.
“For two hours the business section of Englewood was threatened because of the poor water service,” The New York Times reported. “Not until Hackensack sent help were the flames subdued.”
In the days that followed, people from all over Bergen County visited Englewood to see the charred building.
The structure was repaired following the fire. Today, just as in the past, it has commercial space on the bottom and residences on the floors above.
Many of the old architectural elements have been retained, and the Bergen Building looks much the same as it did 125 years ago.
