By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Where is the Nassau Estates development? How about the Norgate development, or even the Darramoor development?
Come to the Lawrence Historical Society’s annual meeting Sunday to find out where those housing developments are located, when they were built and who built them. The 2 p.m. meeting will be held in the Commons at Lawrence High School. The free event will conclude with a birthday cake to celebrate the 316th anniversary of the founding of Lawrence Township.
Like many sleepy farming communities in New Jersey, Lawrence Township underwent a profound transformation during the 20th century when large farms were subdivided into smaller housing tracts, said Lawrence Township Historian Dennis Waters.
The details of that transformation from farm community to bedroom community can be found in the hundreds of subdivision site plans stored in the Municipal Engineer’s Office, said Mr. Waters, who will present the results of his research Sunday, along with Michael Siegel of the Rutgers University Geography Department.
Mr. Waters, whose presentations at the Lawrence Historical Society’s annual meetings have touched on topics as diverse as the history of the former AT&T pole farm on Cold Soil Road to the history of Route 206, said the idea for this year’s talk grew out his research on the trolley lines that passed through Lawrence on the way from Trenton to Princeton.
”I wanted to document the trolley lines’ impact on Lawrence and I found some old subdivision site plans in the Lawrence Township archive,” he said. “They were too big to (digitally) scan on any equipment we have, so I contacted Mike Siegel at Rutgers. He has access to a large format high-resolution scanner.”
”After scanning everything we had in the archives, we both realized there was an interesting story emerging,” Mr. Waters said. “At that point, we received permission from Lawrence Township to scan all of the hundreds of plans on file at the township engineer’s office.”
Mr. Waters said the single most important fact about Lawrence is that it is a suburban community. In 1900, however, the population was about 1,500 people and it was a farming community. So, the natural question to ask is, “How did we get from there to here,” he said.
To answer the question, where is Nassau Estates (which is not to be confused with the Estates at Lawrenceville) it is a 52-acre site on the northwest corner of Princeton Pike and Darrah Lane, which was created in 1956. Its most prominent streets are Barnett Road and Merritt Drive.
Darramoor is a subdivision that was created in 1912 by the Darrah family, who owned an 80-acre farm, Mr. Waters said. It includes the modern streets of Birchwood Knoll, Oaklyn Terrace, Berwyn Place, Wayside Lane, Windwood Road, and the frontage along Route 206 and Darrah Lane.
And the Norgate development? Well, come to the Sunday afternoon meeting and find out where that development is located, along with the “fascinating stories” behind some of Lawrence’s better-known neighborhoods such as Eldridge Park and Colonial Heights, Mr. Waters said.

