40 Fun Facts About Essex County, New Jersey

Where in Newark does America's largest collection of cherry blossom trees bloom each April?

Branch Brook Park owes its blossoms to a 1927 gift from Caroline Bamberger Fuld, sister of a Newark department store founder. The trees now number more than 5,000 in over eighteen varieties.

Which inventor built a laboratory complex in West Orange in 1887 that turned out the motion picture camera?

Thomas Edison ran the West Orange laboratories for more than 40 years, and they also produced improved phonographs and the nickel-iron storage battery.

Holsten's ice cream parlor in Bloomfield was the filming location for the final scene of which HBO drama?

The Sopranos filmed the scene there in March 2007, after Bloomfield's council voted to deny a filming permit that it had no power to refuse.

Which sport was invented in 1968 by students at Columbia High School in Maplewood?

Ultimate Frisbee has a plaque marking its birthplace in the school's student parking lot. The game is now called simply Ultimate.

Which pop star, born in Newark in 1963, attended an East Orange school now named for the singer?

Whitney Houston lived on Newark's Wainwright Street before the family moved to East Orange, where the Franklin School was renamed for its former pupil in 1997.

Which US president was born in a Presbyterian manse in Caldwell that is now a museum?

Grover Cleveland lived in the borough for only his first four years, while his father was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church.

Which moonwalker was born in Glen Ridge and played center for Montclair High School's 1946 football team?

Buzz Aldrin had a mother whose maiden name was Moon, and his hometown middle school in Montclair was renamed for him in 2016.

What word joined the name of Newark International Airport in 2002 as a tribute to September 11 victims?

Liberty was chosen to honor the victims and to salute the famous statue that stands seven miles east of the airport.

What nickname stuck to the world's first film studio, a tar-papered West Orange building of 1893?

Black Maria was slang for the cramped police vans the studio resembled, and it sat on a turntable so its roof window could follow the sun.

Glen Ridge is one of the few New Jersey boroughs that still lights its streets with what?

Gas lamps are so prized there that utility poles are banned on gaslit streets, with electric lines routed behind the homes instead.

Which NHL team has played home games at Newark's Prudential Center since the arena opened in 2007?

The New Jersey Devils moved in from the Meadowlands, and fans call their arena The Rock after the Rock of Gibraltar in Prudential's logo.

Which basketball Hall of Famer, born in Newark in 1972, later backed development projects there?

Shaquille O'Neal wrote that he still considers Newark home, and he credits its Boys & Girls Club with keeping him off the streets.

Essex County was the first US county to create what, to keep its land from being developed?

A park system grew from the commission that Essex set up in 1895, and it still runs the county's reservations and zoo.

Which sharpshooter, a star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, lived in Nutley from 1892 to 1904?

Annie Oakley shared the Nutley home with her husband, Frank Butler, and earned more than anyone in the troupe except Buffalo Bill himself.

Which lifestyle entrepreneur moved to Nutley at age three and later graduated from Nutley High School?

Martha Stewart, born Martha Kostyra, grew up there as the second of six children in a family of Polish heritage.

Which Oscar-winning actor was born in Newark in 1943 and graduated from Belleville High School?

Joe Pesci won his Oscar as Goodfellas gangster Tommy DeVito, the same name as his Belleville friend who played guitar in The Four Seasons.

What did researchers uncover more than a thousand of at a Roseland stone quarry after a 1968 discovery?

Dinosaur tracks from the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic turned up in the quarry, a site also known as Walter Kidde Dinosaur Park.

The sculptor of Newark's Seated Lincoln and Wars of America monument went on to carve which national landmark?

Mount Rushmore was the work of Gutzon Borglum, who saw former President Theodore Roosevelt dedicate his Seated Lincoln on Memorial Day in 1911.

Which South Orange university, founded in 1856, is named for the first American-born Catholic saint?

Seton Hall was founded by Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, who named it for his aunt, Elizabeth Ann Seton. He was a cousin of Franklin Roosevelt's father.

Essex County, formed in 1683 within East Jersey, was named after a county in which country?

England has its own Essex in the east of the country. The New Jersey namesake began in 1675 as one of four administrative districts of East Jersey.

Which half of a famous singing duo was born in Newark in 1941 to Hungarian-Jewish parents?

Paul Simon left Newark as a small child when his family moved to Queens in 1945, and there he met Art Garfunkel at the age of 11.

Which Seinfeld star was born in Newark and graduated from Livingston High School in 1977?

Jason Alexander grew up in Maplewood and Livingston, then earned seven consecutive Emmy nominations for playing George Costanza.

Which Grammy-winning rapper grew up in South Orange and was a high school classmate of actor Zach Braff?

Lauryn Hill ran track and cheered at Columbia High School, then became the first rapper to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Which early US vice president was born in Newark in 1756?

Aaron Burr is remembered mainly for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and he was not renominated as Jefferson's running mate in 1804.

Which American novelist, born in 1933, grew up in Newark's Weequahic neighborhood and often wrote about it?

Philip Roth graduated from Weequahic High School, which his novel Portnoy's Complaint identifies by name along with other local landmarks.

Which zoo opened in Essex County's South Mountain Reservation in 1963?

Turtle Back Zoo took its name from a nearby rock formation, and it began as a showcase for animals native to the New York area.

Which Essex County overlook facing the Manhattan skyline holds the county's September 11 memorial?

Eagle Rock Reservation drew onlookers on the day of the attacks to watch the aftermath across the river. The victims' names are now inscribed on a memorial wall there.

Which river makes an abrupt bend near downtown Newark before emptying into Newark Bay?

The Passaic also forms the line between Essex and its western neighbor near Chatham, many miles before it reaches the bay.

Which Essex County theater, a Regional Theatre Tony Award winner, is the official State Theater of New Jersey?

Paper Mill Playhouse stands on the Rahway River in Millburn, where a paper mill was built in 1795, and seats about 1,200 people.

The city of Orange was once a leading American center of which trade, employing over 3,700 people by 1892?

Hat making in Orange can be traced to 1792, and a century later 21 local firms were turning out about 4.8 million hats a year.

Which Prohibition-era mobster was fatally shot at the Palace Chop House in Newark in October 1935?

Dutch Schultz had moved his base across the Hudson to Newark, and he handed an ambulance intern $3,000 in cash because he thought he was dying.

Which region's art fills Newark Museum of Art galleries considered among the best in the world?

Tibet is represented by a Buddhist altar that the Dalai Lama consecrated, inside what is New Jersey's largest museum.

Which architectural style shapes Newark's Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, completed in 1954?

French Gothic replaced the design first drawn up, and the towers of North America's fifth-largest cathedral rise higher than those of Notre-Dame in Paris.

Newark's City Subway, opened in 1935, was built along the right-of-way of which defunct waterway?

Morris Canal scenes still decorate the underground stations, painted in Art Deco style by Works Progress Administration artists.

Which gated West Orange enclave, founded in 1853, is thought to be America's first planned community?

Llewellyn Park was designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis for a New York businessman, and it saw the first large-scale naturalizing of crocus bulbs.

Newark inventor Seth Boyden, who also created malleable iron, perfected which glossy material?

Patent leather came from Boyden reverse-engineering a European sample in a Newark shed. He later bred a hybrid strawberry while living in near-poverty.

Robert Treat led Puritans from which colony to settle Newark in 1666?

New Haven Puritans made Newark one of the oldest cities in the United States, and Treat laid out Military Park as a training ground for soldiers.

Bamberger's, the department store founded in Newark in the 1890s, was purchased in 1929 by which larger retailer?

Macy's kept the Bamberger's name on its New Jersey stores until 1986 and ran the Newark flagship until it closed in 1992.

Livingston Township is named for William Livingston, the first person to hold which New Jersey state office?

Governor Livingston's family coat of arms served as the township's seal for many years.

The Pulaski Skyway, opened in 1932, carries traffic between Newark and which Hudson County neighbor?

Jersey City was the goal because the skyway fed the Holland Tunnel. It was among the first super-highways in the United States.