In 1909, the Bergen County Standard described Calvin Gardenier’s livery stable as “one of the largest and most successful business enterprises in Hillsdale.” In 2026, the majority of people have never even heard of a livery stable.
This week, we take a look at this once thriving establishment that stood right in the center of downtown Hillsdale.
John Calvin “Cal” Gardenier was born in what is now Woodcliff Lake in 1868. When he was young, his parents moved to Hillsdale and he received a grammar school education at the one-room schoolhouse at Pascack Road and Hillsdale Avenue. At the age of 18, he started his livery stable business.
The livery played a very important role in the days of horse-drawn travel. Imagine you have stepped off the train in Hillsdale in 1900. Perhaps you are one of the hundreds of summer visitors who have come for a week in the country. Or, maybe you have come here from New York City to look at a suburban home. Either way, you have to figure out how to get from the station to your destination.
This is where the livery stable comes in. At this establishment you could rent a horse and carriage for a period of time; you could leave your horse to be tended and fed if you were going out of town; you could buy or sell a horse; and if you were traveling a long distance, you could swap an animal in need of a break for a fresh one. The livery stable was basically a rental garage and horse hotel.
Gardenier’s livery stable was well placed to serve those coming and going at the Hillsdale station. It stood on Park Avenue next to the railroad tracks, now the location of the Bank of America’s back parking lot. For those newly arrived in Hillsdale, there was no missing this large wooden structure with the word LIVERY emblazoned high above the stable door.
Hillsdale’s year-round residents made use of the livery stable, too. New York City-bound commuters would leave their horses and wagons with Gardenier before taking the train from the Hillsdale station. The animals would be fed and cared for during the day, and they would be retrieved once the men stepped off the train for the return trip home.
Gardenier’s had one of the first public telephones in Hillsdale. At a time before there was a phone in every household, the people of Hillsdale would sometimes receive calls via the livery stable. If it was urgent, Gardenier would ride to the person’s house to let them know they had someone waiting on the line.
The livery stable supplied the fire department with horses to pull their apparatus in the days before motorized vehicles. When the fire alarm was raised, the stable doors would be thrown open. Two white horses, which were for the hose wagon, and two black horses, which were for the ladder wagon, would trot out of their stalls.
The animals would be taken across Broadway, and up Park Avenue to the firehouse, which stood at the corner of Central Avenue where the borough hall parking lot is today. They would be backed in, attached to their harnesses, and then the teams would race to the fire. The Hillsdale Fire Association paid $5 for this horse power each time it was utilized.
By 1909, the fleet at Gardenier’s had grown to include 12 livery horses, two coaches, various open and closed carriages, sleighs, and baggage wagons. There was also a stagecoach that would meet travelers coming off each train that pulled into the Hillsdale station.
That same year, the Bergen County Standard newspaper had high praise for the establishment Gardenier was running.
“A first visitor to Hillsdale is usually surprised to find here such a large and well-equipped livery, boarding, sales and exchange stables as that conducted by Calvin Gardenier,” the paper wrote. “Within the last two or three years a large addition has been built, cement floors laid, electric lights and running water put in, as well as new vehicles and horses, until today it is one of the best equipped public stables in Bergen County.”
In 1893, Mr. Gardenier married Clara Ottignon of Westwood. She was the daughter of Genest M. Ottignon, a Civil War veteran who served as second corporal of Company D of the New Jersey Infantry Regiment. Mr. Ottignon became Westwood’s first fire chief and was revered in the community. The wedding took place in the Ottignon home, with Rev. Talmage of the Westwood Reformed Church (now Parkside Community Church) performing the ceremony.
In the wedding announcement, the Hackensack Republican newspaper described 18-year-old Clara as “a young lady of attractive personal charms and gracious social qualities.” The couple had a son, Harold, the following year.
The Hackensack Republican reported on June 14, 1894, “Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Gardenier gave their first born his first airing on Monday by driving him down to Westwood, to grandpa and grandma Ottignon’s. The little fellow is the boss of the two families.”
(As an aside, Harold, who would be their only child, grew up to become quite successful. A veteran of The Great War, Dr. Gardenier returned home and opened his dental surgery office in downtown Westwood in 1920. He and his wife, Dorothy, raised a family in Montvale and they had a full and interesting life.)
As the automobile climbed in popularity, the livery stable became obsolete. Gardenier diversified his business in the 1910s, using his teams for road grading, heavy hauling, concrete work, and macadam road building before retiring.
By the 1930s what remained of the defunct livery stable was an eyesore and widely regarded as a fire hazard. After the passing of the stable, the structure had been sold and was used as a garage and storage space. It was filled with oil-soaked rags and lumber, and its owner seemed in no hurry to clean things up, despite surrounding residents petitioning the mayor and council to have it torn down.
On May 9, 1930, the stable mysteriously went up in flames and was destroyed. With that, a relic of old Hillsdale was wiped from the landscape.