Mary Jo Kopechne in East Orange

Mary Jo Kopechne was born in Pennsylvania but lived in East Orange* during most of her childhood years  and attended Our Lady of the Valley High School in Orange from 1954 to 1958. Her younger cousin, Georgetta Potoski of Pennsylvania, recalled in a 2009 interview that "she spent many summers [with Mary Jo] at the Kopechne home in East Orange, N.J."

Above: from the 1957 Our Lady of the Valley High School yearbook; It was Miss Kopechne's junior year

Below: from the 1962 yearbook for Caldwell College, Miss Kopechne's graduation photo

The Wikipedia entry for Miss Kopechne

*Exactly where in East Orange has not been verified, but possibly the Elmwood Park area.

The Orange Club

The house below was the home of The Orange Club on the east side of Prospect Street between William Street and Carleton Street (now Carlton);

                                 below: the house can be seen on an 1895 Sanborn map

Brick Church Railroad Station

                                           
                                            Below: from a 1911 Sanborn insurance map

Below: Brick Church station, 1952

Miss Ethel Louise Stewart's 1954/55 Afternoon Kindergarten Class

Back row starting at left: Robin, Karen, Rosemary, John Tindall, Christine, Kathy Moran, Barbara, Annette.
Middle Row starting at left: Patricia, Patricia, Phyllis, Brian, ? , ? , Rebecca.
Bottom Row starting at left: Linda, Caroline, ? , Ronnie, Larry.

photo courtesy of Kathy (Moran) Engram

Above: Miss Ethel Louise Stewart, kindergarten teacher; from a 1951/52 class photo courtesy of John Hoagland

Entry for East Orange in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

East Orange

A city of Essex county, New Jersey, U.S.A., in the north-eastern part of the state, adjoining the city of Newark, and about 12 m. W. of New York city. Pop. (1890) 13,282; (1900) 21,506, of whom 3950 were foreign-born and 1420 were negroes; (1906 estimate) 25,909. It is served by the Morris & Essex division of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railway and by the Orange branch of the Erie (the former having three stations in the city - Grove Street, East Orange and Brick Church), and is connected with Newark, Orange and West Orange by electric line. The city covers an area of about 4 sq. m., and has broad, well-paved streets, bordered with fine shade trees (under the jurisdiction of a "Shade Tree Commission"). It is primarily a residential suburb of New York and Newark, and has many beautiful homes; with Orange, West Orange and South Orange it forms virtually one community, popularly known as "the Oranges." The public school system is excellent, and the city has a Carnegie library (1903), with more than 22,000 volumes in 1907. Among the principal buildings are several attractive churches, the city hall, and the club-house of the Woman's Club of Orange. The principal manufactures of East Orange are electrical machinery, apparatus, and supplies (the factory of the Crocker-Wheeler Co. being here - in a part of the city known as "Ampere") and pharmaceutical materials. The total value of the city's factory products in 1905 was $2,326,552. East Orange has a fine water-works system, which it owns and operates; the water supply is obtained from artesian wells at White Oaks Ridge, in the township of Milburn (about 10 m. from the city hall); thence the water is pumped to a steel reinforced reservoir (capacity 5,000,000 gallons) on the mountain back of South Orange. In 1863 the township of East Orange was separated from the township of Orange, which, in turn, had been separated from the township of Newark in 1806. An act of the New Jersey legislature in 1895 created the office of township president, with power of appointment and veto. Four years later East Orange was chartered as a city.

Note: The "pharmaceutical materials" referred to in the Britannica were the products of Seabury and Johnson in the Doddtown area of East Orange.

Riding and Driving Club

"The Orange Riding and Driving Club was incorporated June 8, 1892 and rented a riding academy on North Clinton Street for its meetings and for horse riding classes. In February of 1895, the building shown in the photo was constructed at 9 Halsted Street and it then became known as the East Orange Riding and Driving Club. It was an "L" shaped building with a rear outlet onto Prospect Place (which was cut into by the #280 Freeway and the grounds are now the Shop Rite Parking Lot). In its glory days, the club held annual autumn horse shows, races, and offered a place for residents to exercise and stable their horses (which were owned by most residents during that era). By 1918, the automobile was competing with horses for the streets and winning, so the club closed its doors." 

(text from http://www.eohistory.info/EOTimeLine/1895/RidingAndDrivingClub.htm)

The club was next door to the Orange Athletic Club building for a number of years.

Below: a story about the Essex Troop which had its quarters in Roseville:

October 30, 1907 – Last drill in the old armory; the same day the building was razed to make room for the new facility. Construction would take a little more than three years to complete. Temporary arrangements were made at the Orange Riding and Driving Club, on Halstead Street in East Orange. The club’s quarters were much smaller than the armory. Drills were held on Wednesday and Fridays nights, with the First and Second Platoons drilling respectfully.

(My father was in the Essex Troop, formally known as the 102nd Cavalry, in the late 1930's and was in it when the troop was activated in late 1940 to train for what became WW2.)

More photos of the Riding and Driving Club and some personal connections to it from another former resident

Crocker-Wheeler

In 1893 the Crocker-Wheeler Electric Company Works was built at the intersection of Springdale Avenue and the Montclair branch of the Lackawanna Railroad in what would soon be called Ampere. A train station had been built there in 1890 anticipating the influx of workers and residents. There were few businesses or houses in the area in 1895 (4th Avenue didn't even exist yet) but development was rapid between 1895 and 1905.

The factory in the 1897 photo below was built after the original factory was destroyed by fire in 1895.