PASCACK VALLEY—This week in 1925, the Park Ridge Local newspaper published a front page story with the the following headline: “Farm property is being bought for development.”
In 2022 those words would be ominous. With so little open space left in the area, every time we see a tract cleared for development it feels like a tragedy. Not so a century ago. In the 1920s there was still a lot of open space in the Pascack Valley, and there were farms that stretched for acres.
The Local’s Oct. 17, 1925 article exudes excitement about prospects for the region, where big development was coming and the price of land was on the rise — over $100,000 paid for 200 acres: a new record!
“Speaking of real estate, its rising value, and this community’s prospects in this line … There is a wonderful future ahead for this section, and we are on the verge of a healthy permanent activity,” the newspaper informs its audience. “Read the following, and try to draw a mental picture of what is soon to be the growth of our community.”
At the time, a single company — the Park Ridge Construction Co. — had been busy buying up farmland all over the area.
“All of the former Dr. Kutcher farm north of Rock Avenue and extending west as far as Rivervale Road, with a frontage of about 900 feet on that highway, has been sold. It is probable that it will a little later be cut up into small building lots, a plan to which it is admirably adapted,” the reporter wrote.
Congressman Randolph Perkins, who lived in Woodcliff Lake, sold the Park Ridge Construction Co. a 40-acre tract on Summit Avenue in Montvale, part of the former Chestnut Ridge Farms.
“Another sale by Mr. Perkins was 70 acres adjoining his residence on Werimus Road, Woodcliff Lake. It is located to the south of his home and there is a road frontage of 900 feet to this property,” the Local explains.
It adds, “From the high point it is possible to see New York City, and to the north and east to look over wide stretches of wonderfully lovely country. It may easily be imagined that this tract will eventually be divided into millionaire country estates.”
A little way north, the firm also bought a 53-acre plot adjoining the New York state line. Several smaller farms also changed hands, with each destined to be subdivided.
All that land sold for more than $100,000, which was a new record in the local area at the time. Even figuring for inflation, those nearly 200 acres went for an unimaginably low $1.7 million in today’s money.
Due to the region’s proximity to New York, the value of real estate in the Pascack Valley outpaced inflation decades ago.
Park Ridge Construction Co. sold the land as new home sites, with prices ranging $550 to $1,500 per acre.
— Kristin Beuscher, a former editor of Pascack Press, is president of Pascack Historical Society in Park Ridge and edits its quarterly members’ newsletter, Relics.
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