Cedar Lane Commercial Streetscape 1920s-40s

Railroad to Front Street

The opening of the Phelps estate to development in 1922 led to the construction of hundreds of new dwellings in the center of the township. Cedar Lane had long been a prominent east-west thoroughfare linking the old path of Teaneck Road with the West Shore Railroad Station on the other side of the ridge. It was perhaps inevitable that commercial and retail development would concentrate along this wide street. By the middle of the Depression a classic "Main Street" of shops, movie theatres, restaurants, professional offices and other needed establishments had sprung up along Cedar Lane. The streetscape includes 10 eclectic revival buildings, noted for their integrity and significance, located between the bridge spanning the Penn Central Railroad tracks and Front Street. Typical of the two story mixed use buildings familiar in many New Jersey towns is the Teaneck Center Building, with its large shop windows on the ground floor, second floor offices and fine terra cotta cladding. By 1931 the township had established a planning board and master plan to direct growth, and the coherence of this district is indicative of the civic spirit which pervaded that defining era in Teaneck's history.