Drawing on rarely seen photographs and other materials from the Teaneck Public Library and private collections, author Jay Levin chronicles the intriguing history of Teaneck.
Originally inhabited by the Lenni-Lenape Indians and settled by the Dutch, Teaneck has come to embody the American experience. Created in 1895 from the vast, wooded estate of its most eminent citizen, William Walter Phelps, the bucolic township along the Hackensack River boomed in the 1920s, its population quadrupling during construction of the nearby George Washington Bridge to New York City. Developers could not put up homes fast enough in a suburb offering beauty, location, and every convenience. It is a community of myriad distinctions: exemplar of successful municipal management, "model town" deemed worthy of emulation, college town, and, in the 1960s, the first majority-white community in the United States to voluntarily integrate its school system.