Morsemere, New Jersey | |
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Coordinates: 40°50′34″N 74°00′17″W / 40.84278°N 74.00472°W | |
Country | United States |
State | New Jersey |
County | Bergen |
Borough | Palisades Park and Ridgefield |
Elevation | 33 ft (10 m) |
Time zone | UTC−05:00 ( Eastern (EST)) |
• Summer ( DST) | UTC−04:00 (EDT) |
GNIS feature ID | 878502 [1] |
Morsemere | |||||||||||
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General information | |||||||||||
Location | Ridgefield, New Jersey | ||||||||||
Owned by |
Northern Railroad of New Jersey (1859–1942) Erie Railroad (1942–1960) Erie Lackawanna Railway (1960–1976) | ||||||||||
Line(s) | Erie Railroad Northern Branch | ||||||||||
Construction | |||||||||||
Platform levels | 1 | ||||||||||
Other information | |||||||||||
Station code | 1913 [2] | ||||||||||
History | |||||||||||
Opened | 1870s | ||||||||||
Closed | September 30, 1966 [3] | ||||||||||
Rebuilt | 1872 | ||||||||||
Former services | |||||||||||
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Morsemere is a neighborhood in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, largely in the northern part of Ridgefield and straddling the border of Palisades Park south of start of U.S. Route 46. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Morsemere is named for Samuel Morse, [5] who had bought property with the intention of building a home there, but died before doing so. His estate was subdivided [10] and laid out from 1899 to 1902. [11] It underwent massive expansion around 1910. [12] [13]
The eponymous Morsemere Church was completed in 1928. [7] [14] The locally founded Morsemere Trust Company was eventually subsumed by MetroCorp Bancshares.
Until the 1950s when dial telephone service arrived, the local exchange was MOrsemere 6.[ citation needed]
The Erie Railroad Northern Branch had a station in the neighborhood as well as at Ridgefield. [10] [15] The station house, built when the community was developed, burn down in 1928. [16] It was also accessible by trolley form the 130th Ferry Terminal in Edgewater. [17]
Map of the Morsemere section of Ridgefield, Bergen County, N.J. with insets of Palisades Park, Ridgefield and Teaneck, showing properties for sale at public auction by the State of New York Banking Department.
Morsemere was never an incorporated entity, but is a neighborhood that straddles the northern border of Ridgefield and the southern border of Palisades Park.
Among the noted people who owned property in the new borough was Samuel F. B. Morse. He owned property running from Morse Avenue east to Dallytown Road (Bergen Boulevard). Morse bought the property with the intention of building a home here. A barn was the only structure completed when the inventor died in 1872. The barn was later converted into a house on Morse Avenue. The Morse Estate was subdivided into 66 lots at 25-feet wide, plus about 72 lots of over 50-feet and a strip of smaller lots on the northside of development, running east and west, and sold. This venture proved extremely successful and paved the way for future real estate speculation and development.
Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor, lived in Ridgefield, and by 1891 a sub-development was planned on the Morse Estate between Edgewater Avenue and Clark Avenue, east of Morse Avenue. Between 1899 and 1902, the streets of Morsemere Park had been built in the northern section of the borough. This development, which had its own railroad depot, was named in honor of Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and the Morse code.