LAWRENCE: Trolleys played key role in township’s past

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
If the transcontinental railroads opened the American West to settlement in the 1800s, then it was the trolley car that transformed Lawrence Township from a farming community in 1880 to a suburban community today.
Lawrence Township Historian Dennis Waters outlined the history of housing subdivisions in the township for an audience of more than 60 people last week at the Lawrence Library. The Oct. 22 talk was part of the celebration of Lawrence History Month.
The story behind Lawrence Township and its housing developments "is not that special," Mr. Waters said. It is a story that has been played out in thousands of communities across the nation, driven by the American dream of homeownership.
Lawrence developed in fits and starts, Mr. Waters said. The township originally extended south of the Brunswick Circle, to the area around Olden Avenue. But residents of that part of Lawrence felt they were being ignored by municipal government, which was focused in the northern part of the township.
So in 1882, they seceded and became Millham Township, Mr. Waters said. The fledgling township did not last long, because it was soon annexed by the City of Trenton.
Around the same time, the factories in Trenton began marching northward along the Delaware & Raritan Canal into what is today’s southern Lawrence Township. There weren’t too many homes in the area.
It was also around this time — about 1890 — that the development of Lawrence Township began when Joseph Slack and William Wood, who owned land in southern Lawrence, created the Slackwood development. Located between Brunswick Pike and Princeton Pike, residents could walk to work in the Trenton factories.
But it was the extension of the two trolley lines — the Johnson Trolley Line and the Trenton Street Railway Co. — from Trenton to Lawrence that really paved the way for development in the township, Mr. Waters said.
The trolley lines were the mass transit of the day and made Lawrence Township accessible to the factories and businesses in Trenton, he said. The easy access to Trenton encouraged out-of-town developers to buy farms and carve them into building lots.
One of the earliest subdivisions along the trolley lines was Eldridge Park, Mr. Waters said. Land speculator Jacob Wilbur purchased land from farmer Stephen Eldridge in 1906, and Eldridge Park was born. In quick succession, Mr. Wilbur developed Lawn Park and Trenton Terrace.
Building lots in the Lawn Park development, on the corner of Eldridge Avenue, cost $49 to $79 dollars. The lots in Trenton Terrace, which is now part of the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood, also cost about the same amount of money.
More developers followed in Mr. Wilbur’s footsteps, buying up land along Lawrence Road. Farmers came down with "real estate fever," and began to sell off their farms to developers. In 1911, plans were filed for Lawrenceville Manor — today’s Millerick, Review and Wilson avenues. Wilson has since been renamed Pilla Avenue.
Up the road apiece, the Long Acres development was created in 1927 on 217 acres that had belonged to The Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville, Mr. Waters said. Developer Alfred Robertshaw was going to build a "high class" development, with a clubhouse, riding stables and tennis courts.
But those dreams died with Mr. Robertshaw, who was killed when he was struck by a trolley car in 1931. Development of the Long Acres subdivision, which is located behind the Municipal Building, did not take off until the 1960s.
By the 1920s, cars were more commonplace, Mr. Waters said. That led to development opportunities in other parts of Lawrence that were not near the trolley lines. One such subdivision was Colonial Lake, which was developed by Benjamin Miller.
To set his development apart from the others, Mr. Miller and his Colonial Land Co. built Colonial Lake. He built a 500-plus-foot dam on the Shabakunk Creek to create the lake. He also advertised his development as having "room to park your car," Mr. Waters said.
The Colonial Land Co. was also the developer — a few years earlier, in 1917 — of the Colonial Heights neighborhood, south of Colonial Lake and a short walk to the Trenton factories, he said. It was planned to be a mixed-use development, combining housing with industrial uses along the Delaware & Raritan Canal.
The stock market crash in 1929 that led to the Great Depression, combined with World War II, shut down development in Lawrence for many years. Trenton was also on the economic decline. However, development began to pick up again after World War II.
Contrary to popular conception of developers as homebuilders, that’s not true, Mr. Waters said. Before World War II, developers subdivided lots and sold them to people. It was left to the buyer to build a house, and it often took years for a development to be "built out," he said.
After World War II, new development was sparked by the installation of infrastructure such as sewer lines, but it was not until the mid-1950s that development in Lawrence began in earnest, Mr. Waters said. Although William Levitt — the developer of Levittowns in Pennsylvania and New York — did not build in Lawrence, his example was followed by many would-be William Levitts.
Development began to move northward into central Lawrence Township, and became gradually more upscale as compared to the earlier subdivisions. Homes in the first phase of the Nassau Estates subdivision — whose streets included Barnett, Jill, Lumar, Allwood and Merritt — cost $13,990 to $15,990 in 1960, he said.
With the advertising slogan "Graduate to Higher Living," they were aimed at professors, research engineers and attorneys who wanted to live in Princeton — except that houses in Princeton Borough cost on average $6,000 more than in Nassau Estates, he said.
The lots in the first phase of Nassau Estates were about 7,000 square feet, he said. When the second phase of Nassau Estates was built, lot sizes had increased to 15,000 square feet. Instead of Cape Cod-style houses, the new homes were ranch houses, split-level houses and Colonial houses.
The Pine Knoll development was built in 1962, and featured lots that averaged 15,000 square feet, Mr. Waters said. The houses also were more expensive — in the $25,000 range, he said. The developments of Twin Pond Estates, off Federal City Road, and Academy Manor, off Lawrenceville-Pennington Road, soon followed.
Between 1950 and 1970, the population in Lawrence had just about doubled — from around 8,000 people to about 18,000. The population — and development — stalled in the 1970s. But development picked up again in the 1980s.
Along the Quakerbridge Road corridor, developer K. Hovnanian and Sons build the townhouse development of Lawrence Square Village, which included specially designated affordable housing units, was built — and buyers lined up to purchase one of the first set of units. In one day, 350 units were sold.
But it was the construction of Interstate Highway 95/295 in the 1970s, along with the extension of the Trenton Freeway also in the 1970s, that turned Lawrence from a suburb of Trenton into a "suburb of everywhere," Mr. Waters said.