Bordentown: The City at Dusk

As you may know, I live in an actual city on the physical face of the Earth. I say 'city' because it's incorporated as a city, but in reality it has 3,953 people, covers only one square mile, and in general bears more resemblance to either an East-Coast St Petersburg or a less screwed-up Arkham than to Boston, Philadelphia, or New York. It's called Bordentown and it's in central New Jersey, on the Delaware River just south of Trenton, the state capital, facing a very beautiful part of Pennsylvania called Bucks County.

For those whose experience of New Jersey is limited to the Chemical Coast or the shore points where hypodermic needles come in with the tide, it may surprise you to know that the 'Garden State' nickname is not entirely a lie. While I am a New England boy born and bred, and will be returning to college in New England soon if all goes well, I do have to stick up for, if not New Jersey, at least Bordentown, which I really do love living in. If only it could be magically moved from beside the Delaware River to beside the Connecticut--say, where Turners Falls is now--I could quite contentedly spend the rest of my life here.

Here are some pictures, a series tentatively titled 'The City at Dusk'.

 

This is the street facing my house--my house is the white building in the distance, where the perspective points converge.

 

Our war memorial, which has only been up for a few years. There were a surprising number of Marmadukes and Zebulons in the War of 1812.

 

The street facing my house from the opposite direction--i.e. looking away from my front stoop.

   

The dormer of a building with a used bookstore and a low-rent flat in it.

 

Another street of Bordentown, with the volunteer fire department on the left.

The old town hall, with a post-Civil War-era clock tower whose bell still chimes the hours to this day. I was not born in Bordentown but based on where I currently live I'm this city's equivalent of a cockney: well within earshot of the old town hall bells!

 

Our Masonic Temple and what appears to be a store of some kind, possibly specialising in service, perhaps involving factories. All I know is that one of their signs is dangerously low-hanging and more than once has hit me in the head on my walks.

Here we have the centre of town, dominated by Jester's Cafe, a monument commemorating the pioneers of the Bordentown Women's College, Tsukasa Japanese Restaurant, and something that used to be a bank and was subsequently a bookstore and an ice cream parlour. Yes, the geographic centre of Bordentown is next to a soda fountain. Yes, we went for Obama by a whopping margin. God bless you, Mr Rosewater.

Christ Episcopal Church. How I love it!

 

Our main street, Farnsworth Avenue. The founder of Bordentown, before the Borden family bought it all up, was a Quaker trader named Thomas Farnsworth.

The signs, gables, dormers, and fire escapes of Farnsworth Avenue.