ABOVE: Glen Ridge Station, 1905. Built in 1887, the Queen Anne-style building was constructed thanks to the vision and effort of local developer A.G. Darwin, who proposed a deal with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad – he would fund most of the station's construction if the railroad promised always to stop at Glen Ridge.

Built of "rubble" stone from the nearby Orange Mountains, the Ridgewood Avenue Station became one of the first on the Morris and Essex Line. Now the second oldest public building in Glen Ridge, the station was the first gathering place of the Glen Ridge Congregational Church in the late 1880s. In 1930, the station hosted Thomas Alva Edison as he pulled the lever for the first regular electrically-operated train on the line. In the 1970s, New Jersey Transit assumed ownership of the Ridgewood Avenue Train Station. The building is listed on both the National and NJ Registers of Historic Places. See http://www.glenridge.org/ourtown/loco2000.html for more on this historic building.

Photography: George Peirce