I was looking across the North River at the lovely condo townhouses and walking path arrayed below the 1976 vintage Galaxy Towers in tiny Guttenberg, NJ as I photographed the Coast Guard Cutter Katherine Walker passing by this morning. I found myself thinking about what the area must have been like in its industrial heyday and subsequent decline. I stumbled upon a January 1973 NY Times article on the town by the novelist Norman Kotker, written not long after my fifth birthday.

It’s of course meant as an exploration and travelogue, but winds up being an incredible time capsule of the town still in a different era, filled with small embroidery factories run by the descendants and in at least one case the actual still living Swiss immigrants who established the place half a century before. Surely none of these remain today, 50 years later. Kotker’s description of the area by the river where the condos now sit is really vivid, and I have included it below. I found an obituary that indicates he died in 1999, around the same time that the Bull’s Ferry townhouses began construction, so I don’t believe he would have seen how the space was reinvented.

From the article:

“Three blocks wide and 12 blocks long, “Gut (rhymes with mutt) faces the 79th St. Boat Basin.

“The Mayor, the three commissioners and the burghers of the township of Guttenberg govern 200 feet of the Hudson shore. Maybe some day, when the Hudson is cleaned up, they’ll work up a little ceremony in celebration: a procession, led by the Mayor in velvet robes, walking along the river bank, reaffirming‐the town’s ancient riparian rights. A swan could be let loose to swim in the river, a fish taken out, and then everyone, including the Mayor, could jump into the Hudson for a little swim. But today 175 feet of the riverfront is taken up by the oil depot, leaving only 25 open to the public, and that’s the unused marina, almost all of its area covered with junk. It is nice junk, however, homey: an old playpen, the remnants of a scooter, a rusty port‐a‐crib, a baby’s bouncing chair. The child who scooted, bounced and slept on them is probably a sophomore at Princeton now. There is an old stove or two among the weeds, an upholstered chair, a pile of good‐sized rocks. But mostly abandoned boats.”

The full article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/28/archives/guttenberg-on-hudson-terra-made-cognita-if-grunjy-nondescript.html