7th avenue for sure, I'm going with 7th ave on the left. The curve of the street on the right is too severe. I remember a gas station Esso I think, at the bottom of the curve.They had a German shepard dog that would eat lit cigerette butts people threw on the ground. Seems that the viaduct took you to Orange st or West Market street up by the car barnes?
I have to go with 7th Ave. on the left. I lived on N. 12th Street, just a few houses down from 7th Avenue and "the ramp." I don't think that this is that ramp though. I seem to recall it being steeper and I don't remember it having that big of a curve. My memory is not to be trusted though since it has been 50 years since I was in the neighborhood.
Yes, it's the famous ramp or viaduct that spanned the tracks at 14th Street. The photo is dated May 1924 and describes the "14th Street Crossing Elimination" under construction. 14th used to cross the old Delaware & Lackawanna (later to merge with the Erie) tracks here.
Interestingly, at this point the improvements made on this line met, so to speak. It all used to run at grade (street level), but in an effort to eliminate dangerous street crossings, east of 14th the line was lowered into the "Roseville cut," and west of here the tracks were elevated through East Orange and beyond. I believe a block west of here, on 15th Street, there was a pedestrian tunnel under the tracks.
I remember that once you arrived via the ramp at 14th and Main Street, you found yourself at Newcombe's Liquors, owned by baseball great Don Newcombe. I recall that his nephew Stevie Newcombe was in our class ('65) for a while.
I'm confused. The ramp I remember best was what we called Indian Hill and it ran parallel to 7th Ave and ended at No. 12th St. Then there was a pedestrian underpass on, I think, No. 13th (?14th) St. It always smelled of urine. I do remember some curvey street that went from someplace on Orange or Main St and curved around to end on Eaton Place and 17th or 18th street (about 2 blocks from Greenwood Ave). Is that what this photo represents? Maybe the gas station mentioned was Sol's on Greenwood Avenue in East Orange. Sol used to sit out in front of the service station in a rickety chair with his big old dog sitting right next to him. The gas station was just a small place in a row of other stores, including a "doll hospital." Across the street on the corner of Greenwood Avenue and Eaton Place was Sabloffs, a soda fountain and stationery store. And around the corner was the East Orange Oval, a really great city park, where we spent our summers from dawn to dusk...
No, this is the same "hill" you remember. On Seventh Avenue it started near 12th Street and ended near 14th; at the top it curved over the tracks and ended at 14th and Main streets, East Orange. There was a pedestrian tunnel under the tracks at 15th or 16th street and an auto underpass a block further down. If memory serves.
I'm still a bit disoriented myself John. Am I correct in assuming that the intersection in the distance on the left in the photo is the corner of 12th or 13th Streets and 7th Avenue?
Yes, 13th Street. Just beyond it you can see the pedestrian bridge over Seventh Avenue that brought you up to the top of the ramp. From there on you were on your own, as traffic really flew around up there.
OK. I had the streets wrong. Steve Matlaga wrote and helped me re-orient myself. I was thinking that 14th St was 12th St. Now I remember that 12th St was (whadaya know!) 2 blocks from 14th. I think that two of my classmates,Mickey Mullarkey and Christine Kiery lived on N. 12th. Maybe my sister's classmate, Louise Lowery, too. John, the pedestrian overpass that crossed Indian Hill and ended on 7th Ave is not yet built in that picture, right? What was the name of the street that led up to the overpass from the Orange Street side? I seem to remember (back in the 50's) a chicken slaughterhouse on that short street. Sometimes, when the warehouse door was up we could peek inside and see chickens loose, and (was it just my imagination?) some were running around without their heads. There was also a house on Eaton Place between 14th and 15th that kept chickens in their backyard. That seems like another century - oh, wait a second - it was....
Thanks for pointing out that stairway on the left. It's perfectly clear to me now. Louise Loughery, Louise Sanford and I did a bustling Kool Aid stand business by those stairs one summer way back in the 40's. As I recall, there was a small Mom & Pop grocery store on the corner of 13th Street and 7th Avenue.
Wow! Thanks for the picture because as I stare into in I am remembering all kinds of wonderful times growing up there.
Thanks Barbara for bringing back memories of Eton Place and Sabloffs. My aunt lived across the street from that soda fountain and I think one of my classmates, Margaret O'Brien, used to trek daily down that street all the way from somewhere by the Oval to St. Rose.
I love this place! Thanks for bringing back memories.
The short street that lead from Orange Street to the Ramp is called Hedden Place. If I remember correctly there was some sort of service station or auto repair shop on the left side as you went up the ramp from Orange Street and on the right was a sheet metal or heat treating metal shop. Haven't been there in awhile, but I know the ramp is gone and most of the buildings are either gone or boarded up.
Barb, that pedestrian bridge had in fact been started in this picture, but apparently not completely finished. I'll include a detail here to make it easier to see; it's right in the middle of this picture:
Thanks, John. I see it now. That overpass holds a special place in my memory.
Once when I was in second or third grade I was walking home to EO with Judy Dowdell, and just before we passed under the iron overpass, my underpants began to slip inexorably towards my knees (the elastic waistband just gave up, I guess). So I stopped under the overpass, glanced quickly around, and, seeing no one, I slipped out of my underpants and stuffed them in my bookbag. Two weeks later, as Judy and I again traversed that very same spot an old woman (probably at least 40) stopped me and said, "Aren't you the little girl who took off her underpants here a few weeks ago?" She had seen us from the window of her home. Of course, I denied EVER doing any such thing! But Judy - ever helpful - reminded me (and the woman)that I certainly had been undressing in public. I was humiliated. (And I would appreciate it if no one makes any wisecracks about me and my underpants on Memory Lane!!!!!)
Hi Mary, Margaret O'Brien is my sister. I keep trying to get her to participate in this great website/message board, but I haven't had much success. Thanks, Dan. Hedden Place does ring a bell, although I didn't remember exactly where it was. My sense of Roseville geography is not nearly as good as some of you folks, partly because I lived in East Orange and moved from NJ in 1967, but mostly because I'm just plain old.
Dan, do you recall a guy building a boat in that sheet metal yard. Seems like he worked on it all the time I was in grammar school, which seemed forever -- but than again the world moved slower in the 1950s -- it's been a lot faster since.
ohhhhh yeah, i remember, heathen pl. lol
i remember there was like a track field
tucked somewhere in the back, and i think
the next train stop after the roseville stop
was grove st. but then it, wait wait, wasn't
there like a spilt one going to grove and the
other to ampere station?
before moving to 5th st. i lived on n.12th.
Mrs. Regan lived a few houses away, she was
my 3rd. grade teacher, she had these beautiful
emerald green eyes and a smile that would tame
a wild mans heart
Barb, One of our classmates from '58, Bob Anderson, lived in an apartment building at the corner of Hedden Place and 15th Street. It was a short distance from his place to the pedestrian underpass leading back to the other side of the tracks.
I had a chance to look at that area again this morning, and can clarify that the auto ramp did exit onto Hedden Place near Main Street. A block westward is 14th Street, where a pedestrian bridge still takes you over to Seventh Avenue and 14th.
One more block westward is 15th Street, where that pedestrian underpass is now boarded up. Cars heading north on 15th from Main jog left here, then right and under the tracks onto Eaton Place, where they can turn left or right.
A lot of guys I knew in grammar school, including Ray Rizzi and Kevin Haran, used to hang out on the corner and steps of that 14th Street pedestrian overpass, and around the store on the corner there. Although I sort of got detached from Roseville in high school and college, I used to visit on occasion. Those visits were always interesting, to say the least. I recall an altercation in which one guy ran into the store, came out with a full (glass) bottle of coke and smacked another guy in the head with it, the smackee dropping like a stone. I went home.
