The seventh largest and second most populous municipality in Bergen County, Teaneck has a unique blend of cultures, languages, and ethnicities. Originally inhabited by Hackensack Indians, it was settled by Dutch Colonists in the 1600's and incorporated as a township in 1895. It claims some of the oldest homes in America and gained national notoriety in the 1960's when it became the first community in the country to vote for integrated schools. Teaneck was created on February 19, 1895 by an act of the New Jersey Legislature from portions of Englewood Township and Ridgefield Township, both of which are now defunct (despite existing municipalities with similar names), along with portions of Bogota and Leonia. Independence followed the result of a referendum held on January 14, 1895, in which voters favored incorporation by a 46–7 margin. To address the concerns of Englewood Township's leaders, the new municipality was formed as a township, rather than succumbing to the borough craze sweeping across Bergen County at the time. On May 3, 1921, and June 1, 1926, portions of what had been Teaneck were transferred to Overpeck Township.
Teaneck lies at the junction of Interstate 95 and the eastern terminus of Interstate 80. The township is bisected into north and south portions by Route 4 and east and west. Commercial development is concentrated in four main shopping areas, on Cedar Lane, Teaneck Road, DeGraw Avenue, West Englewood Avenue and Queen Anne Road, more commonly known as "The Plaza".
Teaneck's location at the crossroads of river, road, train and other geographical features has made it a site of many momentous events across the centuries. After the American defeat at the Battle of Fort Washington, George Washington and the troops of the Continental Army retreated across New Jersey from the British Army, traveling through Teaneck and crossing the Hackensack River at New Bridge Landing, which has since been turned into a state park and historic site commemorating the events of 1776.
Arts and Culture
The Puffin Foundation and its Puffin Cultural Forum have been leading supporters and producers of art in Teaneck, sponsoring plays and art exhibitions at its location on Puffin Way. Teaneck is home to the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, founded in 1953. The Bergen Society is a member organization of the American Ethical Union. The Teaneck Community Band presents a series of outdoor band concerts at the Votee Park Bandshell each summer. The 69th annual series, in 2013, was sponsored by the Puffin Foundation.
2013–14 will mark the 78th season of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, which performs in the auditorium of Benjamin Franklin Middle School, having been founded in 1938 as the Teaneck Symphony Orchestra.The Garage Theatre Group, Bergen County's first non-profit, professional theatre company, stages fully professional productions, with members of Actors Equity, as well as youth conservatory productions at the Becton Theatre on the campus of Farleigh Dickinson University. Teaneck New Theatre, founded in 1986, performs productions at St. Mark's Church in Teaneck and at the Hackensack Cultural Arts Center.
Black Box Studios is a theater group based in Congregation Beth Shalom, that has a relationship with the Bergen PAC in Englewood. The actors are mostly children and teens ages 10–16, with a 7–9 year old workshop, and an adult workshop. There are two to three performances presented in the first two or three weeks of January, and the first two weeks of June. Drama and musical theatre summer camps are offered.
Teaneck Cinemas had been the township's lone movie theater, and had also hosted live performances on its stage by local performance groups, until it closed its doors in November 2012, with theater operator Majestic Entertainment citing costs that could run to as much as $500,000 to modernize the projection systems on all four screens to use digital technology rather than 35mm reels of film. New owner Matthew Latten signed a lease in April 2013 and undertook extensive renovations that included new seating, modern digital projection systems and digital signage. After hosting the Teaneck International Film Festival in November, the reopening of the renamed Teaneck Cinemas was delayed until December 2013, with added time needed to complete the work needed to add modern features and conveniences while retaining the Art Deco character of a theater first constructed in 1937.
Teaneck has been the site of many films, including The Family Man, the 2000 film starring Nicolas Cage. The Teaneck Armory has been used for films including Sweet and Lowdown, and for interior scenes of You've Got Mail.
In 2007, two non-fiction volumes appeared dealing, inter alia, with Teaneck's Orthodox Jewish community. In Foreskin's Lament, writer Shalom Auslander describes living in Teaneck and finding the Jewish community stifling and claustrophobic. In contrast, Rifka Rosenwein, in Life in the Present Tense, describes the close-knit community as a gift she could not imagine when living in Manhattan.
Parks and Recreation
Teaneck has 24 municipal parks, of which 14 are developed. Votee Park, the township's largest, covers 40.51 acres (16.39 ha), surrounded by Queen Ann Road, Palisade Avenue, Court Street and Colonial Court. Including baseball fields, soccer fields, playgrounds and the township's inground swimming facility, the park was renamed in honor of former mayor Milton Votee in 1958. A Sportsplex was opened at the southern end of Votee Park in 2014, which includes two synthetic turf full-size soccer fields, one of which is also lined for use for football.
The Friends of the Hackensack River Greenway Through Teaneck work to preserve and develop the 3.5 miles (5.6 km) greenway along the Hackensack River from Terhune Park at the Bogota border in the south north to Brett Park on the New Milford border, encouraging the growth of native plants and providing a verdant area along the river for residents and visitors. A series of 16 laminated signs were created by Teaneck artist Richard Mills along the Greenway, depicting details of history and the flora and fauna of the river in a series called "Hackensack River Stories" that was installed in 2000. The Greenway in Teaneck became the fourth National Recreation Trail in the state when it received the designation by the United States Department of the Interior at ceremonies held in Brett Park in June 2009.
Established in 2001 in conjunction with the Puffin Foundation, the Teaneck Creek Conservancy has restored a plot of degraded land east of Teaneck Road near the intersection of Interstates 80 and 95, removing decades of debris and creating a network of 1.3 miles (2.1 km) of trails. Overpeck County Park, along the shores of Overpeck Creek, a tributary of the Hackensack River, is more than 800 acres (3.2 km2) in size, of which about 500 were donated by Teaneck, and which is also in portions of Englewood, Leonia, Ridgefield Park and Palisades Park.
