New Jersey History (NJH - E-Journal)

Abstract: As Montclair began to develop from a small town into a prosperous suburb in the late 19th Century, an outbreak of typhoid swept through the community, killing as many as fifty people. An investigation uncovered evidence of carelessness if not outright incompetence, but no officials were held accountable for the tragedy

Capriotti, Dan

English

The Morality of Carelessness: The Montclair Typhoid Epidemic of 1894

The Golden Age of Bicycle Racing in New Jersey. By Michael C. Gabriele. (Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2011), 126 pp., illustrations, bibliography, $19.99. 

Golway, Terry

     Book Review 
 
The Golden Age of Bicycle Racing in New Jersey. By Michael C. Gabriele. (Charleston, S.C.: 
The History Press, 2011), 126 pp., illustrations, bibliography, $19.99. 
 
If you associate competitive bicycle races exclusively with scary Alpine roads, victory laps along 
the Champ-Elysees, and chemically-enhanced leg muscles, well, you might be surprised to learn 
that in the early 20
th
 Century, New Jersey was a world-class cycling capital. The sport’s top 
performers flocked to Newark and Nutley, students at Rutgers and Princeton organized cycling 
clubs (no doubt figuring that football players shouldn’t have all the fun), and a young rider from 
East Orange was one of the international circuit’s hottest riders. 
Like most of his fellow Garden Staters, journalist Michael C. Gabriele knew nothing of New 
Jersey’s place in the history of bicycle racing. That changed in 1980, when, as a reporter for the 
Nutley Sun, he researched and wrote a series of stories about the old Nutley Velodrome, site of 
some of New Jersey’s most-memorable bicycle races. Decades later, Gabriele has produced a 
small, useful narrative of a truly forgotten era in the state’s sports history. 
The author has done a fine job in recreating the excitement and hype of cycling not only in 
Nutley but in the Vailsburg section of Newark, home of a first-class velodrome on South Orange 
Avenue, as well as in Asbury Park, Plainfield, Irvington, Millburn, and many other cities and 
towns.  
Gabriele take note of races like the Newark-to-Princeton affair in 1893 and the tri-state relay race 
in 1894 which attracted some of New Jersey’s greatest cyclers. He also brings to life some of the 
larger narratives of the sport’s history in New Jersey, noting, for example, that in 1898, an 
African-American cyclist from Indiana, Marshall Walter Taylor, won a major race in Asbury 
Park in 1898. Cycling, then, was integrated nearly a half-century before Jackie Robinson broke 
baseball’s color line, the author notes. 
Other wonderful characters spring to life in Gabriele’s well-illustrated volume. Frank Kramer of 
East Orange won 32 races in Europe in the first decade of the 20
th
 Century, a remarkable 
achievement. Camden-born Arthur Augustus Zimmerman competed in Australia as well as 
Europe in the late 19
th
 Century. Vintage pictures of the two men and their bicycles bring to life a 
truly bygone era. 
Cycling, of course, isn’t what it used to be. The velodromes are gone and barely remembered. 
But Gabriele does a good job explaining why historians of the state should know more about this 
athletic obsession, and why it mattered. 
Terry Golway is the  editor of New Jersey History and is the director of the Kean University 
Center for History, Politics, and Policy. 


Book Review

The following is an expanded and footnoted version of the twenty-fourth annual Louis Faugères Bishop III lecture, held Monday, February 23, 2009 at the Alexander Library of Rutgers University in New Brunswick

Crew, Spencer

The Saga of Peter Still

Cargill, a classic professor at Rutgers-New Brunswick, gave this address at the memorial service at the Kirkpatrick Chapel in November 1986. He enumerates Finley&rsquo;s many contributions to classical scholarship

Cargill, Jack

A Memorial Address for Moses Finley

The article provides some early history of Rutgers song "On the Banks" and other songs associated with the College

Westling, Oliver Kip

"On the Banks"--1873

Kraus, Janice

Rare Book Acquisitions

Schlatter, Richard

The World's Most Famous Press

Nicolosi, Anthony S.

Gifts and Acquisitions in Volume 29:1

Kirk, the first editor of the Journal, writes about the founding of the Journal and the Associated Friends of the Library. He mentions how Juniors and Seniors in one of his classes helped him determine the color the the Journal cover

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