Two Highways and Two Eras in New Jersey
The drive into Newark, Jersey, shows you two very different approaches to land use and transportation
If you want to get to Newark or New York City from central New Jersey, you have two options. Well, four. One is NJ Transit’s Raritan Valley rail line, and one is Interstate 78. But the two I’m interested in here involve long drives, and they give you a chance to observe two very different approaches to land use and transportation.
I’m talking about New Jersey Route 28, a state highway that tracks a NJ Transit line and which serves as Main Street for over a dozen small towns and cities; and U.S. 22, which by the 1960s was already known as a premier example of American commercial roadside development, in all its neon-lit, exaggerated-modern glory. (An outpost of a regional electronics chain, one of the last of its kind, inhabits the third ship-shaped building to stand on a tenuous strip of commercial land, islanded by 22’s east- and west-bound lanes.)
The development along 28 is small to medium in scale and fine-grained, and the road itself is no more than two lanes at many stretches. Along 22, things are larger and more spread out, with a handful of mid-century roadside buildings still intact. The giant Channel Lumber man no longer lights up 22, and a small amusement park, first opened in the 1940s, recently gave up the ghost and became a modern apartment complex. Some modern apartment buildings are going up amid smaller, older neighbors along 28. Bits and pieces of these two landscapes come and go and get remade, but nothing in the last 60-odd years has really changed their fundamental characters.
What’s more, highways 22 and 28 run parallel and very close to each other, at times less than a mile apart north–south. Within basically the same place, they’re two incredibly contrasting corridors. Of course, many places have a traditional core with car-oriented development along the edges. But what’s interesting and less common about the contrast here is that these are both long, linear places, and so traveling both of them allows a sustained view of two different development approaches.
Let’s Take a Road Trip
One of the first things I noticed was some evidence of the difficulty traditional retail is facing. And that’s notable, because in addition to a New York-bound access highway, 22 is also a major shopping corridor (such that rather than knowing what town along 22 you’re in, you’d mostly refer to “driving down” or “shopping on” it).
A modern entertainment concept occupies a building that was once a lighting showroom.
A relatively unusual two-story strip plaza, one of whose spaces is now an escape room venue.
In Green Brook, an old lamp store is now an ax-throwing venue, and a double-decker strip plaza houses an escape room. (Next door sits a faux-Japanese hibachi restaurant building, which began life as a pizza restaurant with a plaster Leaning Tower of Pisa replica above the entrance.) Further down, in Watchung, a freestanding Sears department store from the 1960s was recently torn down for an upscale movie theater.
It would be possible to reach this theater by bike or foot, if you happen to live in the old residential neighborhood behind it.
There’s also far more than enough parking along here, which looks welcoming from behind a windshield, but can also look like dead space. There’s a large postwar shopping center, now anchored by a Costco, all its buildings set back behind the parking lot. And there’s a massive “power center,” a shopping center where a large percentage of the tenants are big-box stores. The size of one of these can be difficult to wrap your head around; it’s so large that you barely even think of walking from one store to another, rather than simply driving to and parking in front of each one you plan to visit.
A small part of the parking lot at the Watchung Square Mall, a large shopping mall known in the trade as a “power center.”
I haven’t even gotten to the stretch where 22’s eastbound and westbound lanes split apart and surround a narrow strip of land with stores on each side. This is where Union, New Jersey’s, famous ship-shaped building resides, and if asphalt were water, it would sail away. Pictures cannot do that stretch of highway justice.
This is, to some eyes, unplanned, suburban-sprawl chaos. But it’s all, in its own way, brought together by the connective tissue of the highway. And it’s important to remember that it is, in fact, exquisitely planned—just in an inefficient, inhospitable, and costly manner.
The trade areas of these large stores and shopping centers are meant to be large, meaning that while they certainly serve locals, they are not neighborhood businesses; the parking requirements are meant to be overly generous; and the highway itself is designed for fast driving. This is not a scale or a built environment that is particularly conducive to thriving small businesses or close-knit communities.
The contrast with the Route 28 corridor is dramatic.
It’s still suburbia, of a sort. but everything is smaller and closer together, and the road is narrower. This road connects the places along its route, rather than running through them. The main street segments feel urban. The more suburban-style commercial strips in between the towns are older and feel less spread out. And many houses and small apartment buildings front Route 28, while any homes that might have once sat directly along 22 are long gone—except for those modern apartment buildings.
Westfield boasts a Trader Joe’s just off main street, filling the same niche that small neighborhood supermarkets did in many towns until the 1960s or 1970s. In suburban Plainfield, an older supermarket directly fronts Route 28, which has sidewalks on each side. Not far away are some new apartments.
With its parking lot off to the side, this older supermarket comes right up to the sidewalk, mimicking an urban street despite being a box store.
A little further down, around the Netherwood NJ Transit station, is this neat little intersection. Take a look at the above picture.
To my right is an apartment building, and behind me, to my right, is a single-family house. To my left is a small commercial building with a convenience store and a (recently closed) daycare center. Further to the left, out of the frame, is the train station. The proximity of all these things feels completely natural and un-self-conscious.
This stretch of Route 28 around Plainfield is mixed-use even where it isn’t strictly urban.
This sort of low-key, low-intensity urbanism continues for miles. Here are some snippets of downtown Plainfield.
In contrast to that modern theater on Route 22, here’s the Dunellen Theater and Cinema Cafe from 1922, which survives today by serving food and offering a mix of movie screenings and live events like comedy shows.
And towards the western end of Route 28 is its portion as Somerville’s Main Street, shown here. To the extent that such a thing as an urban highway can exist, Route 28 is it.
A stretch of Main Street in the town of Somerville.
If some of this corridor looks somewhat lonely or underutilized, given its urban fabric and proximity to transit, well, it probably is. There are some very affluent towns along here, like Westfield, but also a number of less affluent ones, like Plainfield. Read the threads at a site like CityData and you’ll see a narrative that the neighborhoods south of 22 are considered inferior to those north of it, where most of the newer development is. This probably reinforces the conflation of urban with poor or run-down, making these places invisible even to many who live very close by.
But the 28 corridor might end up winning out. A planner in New Jersey, who’s worked in Somerville, one of the towns for which 28 is Main Street, told me that despite their reputation as somewhat disinvested and run-down, many places along the corridor are seeing big investment—and their convenient transit and traditional layout is a big part of their appeal.
There’s a lot of pretty much intact, traditional urban fabric along here, with a lot of potential for new life. The old industrial sites are prime for adaptive reuse, if the money is there. For example, look at the facade of this massive, blocks-long warehouse—it rather resembles rowhouses. If the area continues to see investment, such an adaptive reuse project might pencil out.
Back in Plainfield, old warehouses take up several blocks.
Some people see these towns more or less as bedroom communities. Others view them as full, functioning places in and of themselves. There’s a little of both, but if you commute on the train and live nearby, you might be able to get by on one car, if so inclined. You might be able to walk to the grocery store after stepping off the train on the way home, or walk over for a coffee on your way to work in the morning. These little habits are possible here, and are not possible along Route 22, or, of course, I-78. That makes a difference. There are a lot of fine, subtle, important distinctions here, which disappear if you write off everything that isn’t a perfect city as a single thing called suburban sprawl.
Now, if I’m being honest, I love Route 22, and the smattering of postwar architecture and signage that still remains. But the story of how America came to look like that is mostly not a good one. And if you want a better way into Newark, and better places along the way, stick to 22’s little brother just a tad south.
Addison Del Mastro writes on urbanism and cultural history. He tweets at @ad_mastro and writes daily at Substack.
Redeveloping just 10 percent of strip malls could fill a nine-year supply of housing in the Boston region, a new study finds. What could similar efforts elsewhere do?