Grantwood is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

straddling the

boroughs A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Cliffside Park Cliffside Park is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 23,594,Ridgefield, just south of Fort Lee, in eastern

Bergen County Bergen County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of New Jersey.New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, United States.

Toponymy

Grantwood Heights Land Company was incorporated on February 16, 1900 by Frank Knox. He bought land in the area, including what would later become

Palisades Amusement Park Palisades Amusement Park was a 38-acre amusement park located in Bergen County, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. It was located atop the New Jersey Palisades lying partly in Cliffside Park and partly in Fort Lee. The par ...

. Grantwood was so dubbed in the beginning of the 20th century and takes its name from its location on the

Hudson Palisades The Palisades, also called the New Jersey Palisades or the Hudson River Palisades, are a line of steep cliffs along the west side of the lower Hudson River in Northeastern New Jersey and Southeastern New York in the United States. The cliffs st ...

across the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

from

Grant's Tomb Grant's Tomb, officially the General Grant National Memorial, is the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States, and his wife, Julia Grant. It is a classical domed mausoleum in the Morningside Heights neighborho ...

() in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

which was reached by 130th Street Ferry at Edgewater.Gargiulo, Vince
''Palisades Amusement Park: A Century of Fond Memories''
p. 8. Lulu.com, 2006. . "Knox was a real-estate developer, widely known around the area, who had named a section of Cliffside Park 'Grantwood' because of its location directly across the Hudson River from Grant's Tomb."

Artists' colony

''Grantwood'' was an artist's colony established in 1913 by

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...

and

Samuel Halpert Samuel Halpert (1884 in Białystok, Russian Empire, Russia – 1930 in Detroit, Michigan) was an American painter. Early days Halpert's family migrated to New York City in 1890. His father's preoccupation with religious devotion necessitate ...

and became the artistic center for a collective known as the "Others" group of artists. The colony consisted of a number of clapboard shacks on a bluff. Some names of the streets in this part of Ridgefield Heights — Sketch Place, Studio Road and Art Lane — pay homage to Grantwood's history. The first issue of

The Glebe The Glebe is a neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is located just south of Ottawa's downtown area in the Capital Ward. According to the Glebe Community Association, the neighbourhood is bounded on the north by the Queensway, on the ...

, a literary magazine, was published at the colony in 1913. In 1915,

Alfred Kreymborg Alfred Francis Kreymborg (December 10, 1883 – August 14, 1966) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, literary editor and anthologist. Early life and associations He was born in New York City to Hermann and Louisa Kreymborg (née Nasher), ...

launched '' Others: A Magazine of the New Verse'' with

Skipwith Cannell Skipwith Cannell (1887–1957) was an American poet associated with the Imagist group. His surname is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. He was a friend of William Carlos Williams, and like Ezra Pound he came from Philadelphia. C ...

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

, and

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

. Along with works of the founders it published work of

Maxwell Bodenheim Maxwell Bodenheim (May 26, 1892 – February 6, 1954) was an American poet and novelist. A literary figure in Chicago, he later went to New York where he became known as the King of Greenwich Village Bohemians. His writing brought him intern ...

Mina Loy Mina Loy (born Mina Gertrude Löwy; 27 December 1882 – 25 September 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first-generation modernists to ...

Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Early life Moore was born in Kirkwood, ...

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

Carl Sandburg Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...

Orrick Johns Orrick Glenday Johns (June 2, 1887 – July 8, 1946) was an American poet and playwright. He was one of the earliest modernist free-verse poets in Greenwich Village in 1913-1915 and associated with the artist's colony at Grantwood, New Jerse ...

among others.Stavitsky, Gail
AFTERWORD: "Artists and Art Colonies of Ridgefield, New Jersey"
Traditional Fine Arts Organization. .

Walter Conrad Arensberg Walter Conrad Arensberg (April 4, 1878 – January 29, 1954) was an American art collector, critic and poet. His father was part owner and president of a crucible steel company. He majored in English and philosophy at Harvard University. With his w ...

was influential in supporting the colony.

Motion picture industry

The

history of cinema The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century. The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. However, the commercial, public scree ...

in the United States can trace its roots to the

East Coast East Coast may refer to: Entertainment * East Coast hip hop, a subgenre of hip hop * East Coast (ASAP Ferg song), "East Coast" (ASAP Ferg song), 2017 * East Coast (Saves the Day song), "East Coast" (Saves the Day song), 2004 * East Coast FM, a ra ...

where, at one time, Fort Lee, just north of Grantwood, was the

motion picture A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

capital of America. The E.K.Lincoln Studio was built in 1915 in Grantwood on Bergen Boulevard and was owned and operated by

E.K. Lincoln Edward Kline Lincoln (August 8, 1884 - January 9, 1958) was an American silent film actor and director. Lincoln appeared in over 65 silent films and was best known for movies like '' For the Freedom of the World'' (1917), '' The Light in the D ...

, who was both an actor and movie maker. Many in the early film world worked out of this studio and used various spots in the area for location work. The first production was '' The Fighting Chance'' in which Lincoln starred alongside

Violet Horner Violet Horner (1892 – 1970) was an American silent film actress. She had several starring roles including in one of the Lena Rivers films (based on the Mary Jane Holmes novel) released in 1914 and a series of films made with Billy Quirk for ...

(who also starred in ''The Girl from Alaska''). Between 1916 and 1917, the studio was rented by

Fox Film The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios) was an American Independent film production studio formed by William Fox (1879–1952) in 1915, by combining his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attractions Film C ...

. In 1920 the United States Photoplay Corporation used it for the film ''Determination''. In 1923, Peter Jones produced the film ''How High Is Up?''.'' Moving Picture World '', June 19, 1915, p. 1922. According to

Film Daily ''The Film Daily'' was a daily publication that existed from 1918 to 1970 in the United States. It was the first daily newspaper published solely for the film industry. It covered the latest trade news, film reviews, financial updates, informatio ...

(June 1926), the first episode of ''

The Leather Pushers ''The Leather Pushers'' is a 1922 American film serial starring Reginald Denny (and Billy Sullivan in the fourth series), and based on boxing stories by H. C. Witwer originally published in ''Collier's Weekly''. The screenplays were written by ...

'' (1922) with Reginald Denny was filmed there. After World War I, many movie makers, including Lincoln, headed out to Hollywood where the climate enable them to film outdoors all year round. After

talkies A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

came into being in 1927, the studio continued to be used to make Italian and Polish language films. By the end of the Depression, the studio was no longer for film production. The building burnt down the 1960s.

References

{{Bergen County, New Jersey Artist colonies Cliffside Park, New Jersey Ridgefield, New Jersey Unincorporated communities in Bergen County, New Jersey Unincorporated communities in New Jersey

Toponymy

Artists' colony

Motion picture industry

See also

References