PARK RIDGE—The photograph at top was snapped on Pascack Road (or Main Street as it was called then) in Park Ridge on a winter’s day more than a century ago. The unpaved road is covered by the thin tracks left behind by wagon wheels and early automobile tires.
The viewer looks south from the intersection with Park Avenue, which goes off to the left. On the left edge of the image a portion of Park Ridge High School is visible. This gives us a definitive range for the age of this photo: it was taken between 1908 and 1920.
Pictured above as it looked back then, this is not the same school that stands at Park Avenue and Pascack Road today. Built with 12 rooms at a cost of $40,000, this earlier school was constructed in 1908 and was sadly destroyed in a massive conflagration in 1920.
A year later, the current school was built in the same location. Additions over the years have enabled it to remain in use more than a century after its construction.
The corner in front of the high school has since been rounded and moved back to allow for a widening of the intersection. And, of course, we no longer have a fire gong located there. In the days before radio systems and sirens, fire gongs—locomotive wheel rims mounted on wooden frames—were struck repeatedly with a hammer to signal a fire.