Montclair

For a century and a half, Montclair has been known as one of America's most attractive residential suburbs. Yet for an equally long period, it was a simple, rural settlement. As one historian put it, when the trains came in 1856 they "completely changed the character of our town from a sparsely settled agricultural region to a community of elegant suburban homes." Elegant homes remain, and at the opening of the latest century, they lured a new surge of refugees from Gotham. Some of the finest homes are shown in these pages. This history meanwhile reflects the rich mix of race, ethnicity, and opportunity that went into the making of the town. Montclair presents various aspects of the town, from Washington's Headquarters, to Italian immigrants laying pipes, to the No. 29 trolley climbing past the Food Fair.

Elizabeth Shepard, assistant archivist at the NewYork Weill Cornell Medical Center, was the Montclair Public Library's local history archivist from 1995 to 2001. Her father, Royal F. Shepard Jr., has served as Montclair's official historian since 1996.