Then & Now

Photo (left) courtesy Kearny Museum Photo (right) by Karen Zautyk
Photo courtesy Kearny Museum                           Photo by Karen Zautyk

 

 

Finally, a photo with a date — or at least a “circa.” According to the caption, this is a picture of a Mr. John W. Jones driving his buggy at Hickory St. and Oakwood Ave., Kearny, circa 1905. (You can’t see it without a magnifying glass, but Mr. Jones has a magnifi cent handlebar mustache.) The building in the back at the left was Public School No. 7, just two years old. Constructed in 1903 at the corner of Schuyler Ave. and Spruce St., it was renamed Emerson School in 1919. Emerson was closed in 1965 and then demolished after Lincoln School was rebuilt. Today, the Spruce Terrace senior citizen apartments occupy the site. The Hickory St. Playground is now at the far corner of the intersection. And that massive leafy tree is gone, although a pile of fresh-cut timber, obviously from a large, old tree, was piled curbside earlier this week. Could it have been the remnants?

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