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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
MAPLEWOOD and the four ORANGES (Orange, East Orange, West Orange, and South Orange) are not governmentally a unified city, but all
together they constitute a homogeneous community. Rising gradually from the lowlands around Newark upward along the slopes of the Watchungs to the west, the five municipalities pride themselves upon a mountain-plain
relationship with the nearby metropolis. The large percentage of well-to-do residents among the 262,000 population gives this relationship a sociological as well as a geographical reality.
These municipalities do not resent their title of "typical American suburbs." It is grounded in civic independence, a high proportion of one- and
two-family homes, and a paucity of grimy manufacturing plants. Residents, however, refine this distinction yet another stage by referring officially to the Oranges and Maplewood as "New York's most beautiful suburbs."
The justice of these two designations helps to define the Oranges and Maplewood. The typical achievements are the efforts largely of the older citizens, Jerseymen for several generations. This stock has combined with
that of the 15,000 commuters of more recent origin to create a cultural atmosphere that has produced the Art Center of the Oranges, the South Orange-Maplewood Adult Education Center, homes which are show-places of the State, exceptional transportation facilities, and branches of smart Fifth Avenue shops.
Men of wealth and position from New York and Newark, among them many educational and religious leaders, have built handsome estates on the hills and in the valleys alongside those of financial and commercial
tycoons. While the 442,337 people of Newark are represented in Who's
Who in America by 77 names, 130 are listed from the 162,000 population of the Oranges and Maplewood.
Indicative also of the personality of the composite community is its politics. The Republican-Democratic division follows almost precisely the economic cleavage. Thus, wealthy and conservative South Orange annually returns a 5-2 Republican victory, while the large working-class population of Orange votes Democratic, 8-5. An almost even split usually results in West Orange, where fashionable Llewellyn Park elbows the Edison plant. Maplewood's slightly larger upper middle-class group explains its 2-1 Republicanism over East Orange's 5-3.
These non-Republican islands are in many senses the obstacle to complete homogeneity. In full view of the mountain castles lie rows of squalid homes in Orange and West Orange, and close by the superb East Orange apartment houses are Negro and poor-white tenements. The community has done handsomely in providing traditional public benefits, although it has not experimented far in economic reconstruction.
Bankers and brokers willingly support a splendid school system, to which most of them send their children in preference to private schools. Parks and playgrounds have been developed extensively for those who cannot stroll on their own greensward nor play on their own tennis courts. Health standards in most of the towns are high.
The Oranges and Maplewood have been markedly progressive in public consideration of family problems. A mock-trial in 1935 in which youth convicted its elders of neglect and mismanagement resulted in an Institute of Marriage and the Home, part of the Institute of Family Relations sponsored by the five towns' Council of Social Agencies and Welfare.
The desire to nurture these urban advantages without incurring the disadvantages of large urbanization perhaps best explains the community's faint disdain for Newark, the neighboring manufacturing center. This superiority is underlain with a constant fear of governmental absorption by the metropolis of Essex County. No less than the corporation executive on the hill, the Italian truck farmer in the valley glowers at the thought of union with Newark; to each, the suburban city represents the triumph of his individuality. Thus it follows that the Oranges and Maplewood agree wholeheartedly, even too wholeheartedly, with Mark Twain's roguish remark: "There's something nice about Newark. I think it's the suburbs."
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