HILLSDALE—Happy Halloween, Pascack Valley! We hope we didn’t startle you too badly with this spooky bunch.
In this photograph snapped in 1948, kindergartners at the Hillsdale Public School are all ready for Halloween fun in their homemade getups. Popular costumes were clowns, cowboys, pirates, and witches—or a hodgepodge of whatever Mother could find lying around the house.
The teacher was Mrs. Hazel Brown Ewald, a Westwood native who grew up on Fairview Avenue. You can see her in this picture between the third and fourth kids from right in the back row. The Hillsdale Public School would be renamed a few years later in honor of its late principal, George G. White.
For an added dose of nostalgia, we have included a photograph of downtown Hillsdale that was taken just around that time, in October 1948. The photographer must have climbed the water tower that stood along the tracks to get this elevated shot, which looks north up Broadway from Washington Avenue. The building on the right is now The Cornerstone. You can also see the train station on the left, and the historic building at Hillsdale Avenue and Broadway, the former Hillsdale House Hotel (circa 1870), which is now Salon 100 and Chicken Delight.
In 1948 the building was painted red and it was Smith’s Department Store.