PARK RIDGE, N.J.—The Woodcliff Reservoir was a recent addition to the landscape when our featured photograph was captured 120 years ago this week: June 10, 1905. The rooftops in the foreground belonged to the Mittag & Volger factory in Park Ridge. Broadway, which is on the left parallel to the railroad tracks, was a small dirt lane.
Mittag & Volger fronted Park Avenue in Park Ridge where Veterans Park is now. The massive factory stretched south along the train tracks, about where the Park Ridge Crossing condominiums are today. In the early 20th century this firm was the world’s largest manufacturer of typewriter ribbon. While their home base was in the little borough of Park Ridge, Mittag & Volger had offices in New York, Chicago, London, and Paris. Later the company merged with Burroughs Adding Machine Co., which closed in 1986.
The image below, which shows the Mittag & Volger factory from ground level, provides some additional perspective. One can see the cupola atop the building, which must have been where the photographer was standing to capture the 1905 landscape. This was a favorite spot for taking photographs, and the Pascack Historical Society’s collection includes a number of early 1900s views of downtown Park Ridge from there.
The reservoir, seen in the distance, had just been created in 1904 by damming the Pascack Brook that flowed through the farmland in this section. A few years later, the borough originally called Woodcliff would become Woodcliff Lake.
In the background on the right, rolling hills of open land and forest show just how undeveloped Woodcliff was at the time. In 1905, approximately 400 people lived in the borough.