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Paterson has been a place of comings and goings for generations. Images of America: Paterson explores the city's past with vintage photographs and interesting history and folklore. Some notables associated with the Silk City include Larry Doby, who broke the color barrier in the American League; shuttle astronaut Kathryn Sullivan; and actress Sue Ann Langdon. An industrial giant envisioned by Alexander Hamilton, Paterson gave birth to the famed Colt revolver, the modern-day submarine, the locomotives that linked America's coasts, and the engine that powered Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. Also included are historic buildings such as the Fabian, the theater that Lou Costello frequented for premieres, and Paterson's Danforth Library, designed by architect Henry Bacon, creator of the Lincoln Memorial.

It was a corporate experiment--an experiment that would later be known as Paterson, New Jersey. Home of the Great Falls, Paterson holds the distinction of being the first planned industrial center of the United States. The land of the Lenape and a few Dutch settlers would be forever changed when politicians and wealthy investors founded Paterson as a corporation, as opposed to chartering it as a city, in 1792. At a crucial turning point in our young, agrarian-based nation, the struggles and triumphs of individuals from diverse ethnic groups would be set into historic motion. Over 100 photographs of Paterson's rich past and complicated present have been woven together with text from noted historians and poets, focusing on the downtown historic area. Downtown Paterson takes us on a journey from the beginnings of the proverbial Silk City through its radical labor past and days of pre-mall grandeur with a thriving Main Street abundant with elegant stores, vaudeville houses, and movie theaters. This volume ends with a probing look at the city's present-day people and places.

Something unique happened when Jews immigrated to Paterson in the early 20th century. Instead of sewing shirtwaists and schmattahs in sweatshops, they came as skilled weavers from the Russian Polish textile centers of Lodz and Bialystok. They brought strong notions of social justice and living righteously; ideas that came alive during the 1913 Industrial Workers of the World silk strike then animated the social life in their Jewish neighborhoods. They raised families, became Americans, and reluctantly moved when the economic base collapsed. Despite this, Paterson Jews defend the aging, gritty city as a wonderful place, and they never left it spiritually or emotionally. Former and current residents recall the Hamilton Avenue bagel bakery, Purity Cooperative rye bread, candy stores, delicatessens, the YMHA, bar mitzvah coaches, rabbis, the baby doctor, pediatricians, schoolteachers, and even the synagogue shammes. They remember and honor the past as a bridge between the present and the future. Jews of Paterson is more than just nostalgia it is the remarkable story of how a particular group built a community and made it into a special place."

Fred Wesley Wentworth and the Wentworth era span from the 1890s to the 1940s. Starting out as a local architect designing homes, commercial buildings and institutions for leading citizens in Paterson, New Jersey, his career quickly transformed by way of a Jewish entrepreneur, Jacob Fabian, into the archetect of grand movie palaces throughout New Jersey and the movie palace prototype nationwide. In addition, he was well know of his designs of institituions of Jewish life. These buildings shaped generations of immigrants and their chidlren and created a place that offered a sophisticated urban life.