When West Windsor was only farmland, the first roads were nothing more than enlarged dirt pathways that allowed horse-drawn vehicles to get from one part of the area to another without going across someone’s cultivated field. The first such roads usually connected the population centers that had evolved when more than one or two houses were built near each other in one small area, say in places that became known as Dutch Neck, or Grovers Mill, or Princeton Junction. As the settlements acquired names, the roads leading to them sometimes acquired the same name, so people would know where they were headed on a certain road. Other roads were given names simply to give them an identity, perhaps the name of the nearest farmer, or maybe just some generic name like “village” — “This road goes to the village.” Of course, if the village was not in sight, you had to know whether the village was this way or that way. Then you needed an arrow.
Sometimes the roads were named for the most distant settlement they led to. Clarksville Road is an example. It’s one of the oldest. It starts in Grovers Mill, and 4.1 miles later arrives not too far from what is left of Clarksville. More realistically, Quaker Bridge Mall is now only a stone’s throw farther on. Clarksville Road traverses nearly the whole width of the township, and, until about 50 years ago, it also included what is still known as Everett Drive. Coming the other way, it’s still known as Clarksville Road except when it’s identified on northbound Route 1 as you approach the NJ Motor Vehicle Inspection Station. There it’s called Grovers Mill Road. But nowhere on the road itself is there a sign that calls it that. Where it crosses Route 571 it is referred to as Clarksville-Grovers Mill Road.
The word “road” is one of the most widely used in the names of West Windsor’s main vehicle right-of-ways. There are 53 examples. But, on a more local level, of the hundreds of named streets and roads in West Windsor’s residential developments today, only a few are called “street” or “avenue” — nine and eleven, respectively. Both are very much “city” names, as in 34th Street or Fifth Avenue. Most of the “streets” are in either Princeton Junction or a recent development on Old Trenton Road, and the “avenues” are mostly in the Penns Neck area.
I guess not many in a place like West Windsor, with all its suburban splendor, would want to live on a “street” or an “avenue.” Real estate people and developers who have been naming most of the roads in recent years apparently worry about such things, and almost anything else sounds more high class to them than street or avenue. But, paraphrasing Shakespeare, “A road by any other name is still a road.” Of course, Shakespeare was talking about roses, not roads.
In fact the appellations of West Windsor roads and thoroughfares run the gamut of all the words that have ever been used to name a “street” — sorry — both here and abroad. “Drive” is very popular (112 examples), as is “way” (32). And don’t forget “place” (21).
A recent count of roads in the township reveals that among all the developments and older settlements there are 535 named roads. That’s a lot of names for developers to try to make sound distinctive or unique. On the list you will find words like “court” (154), “lane” (43), “circle” (9), and “terrace” or “close.” The more exotic sounding, the better.
And the names themselves can be just as important sounding, too, including famous writers (how about Melville, Longfellow, Chaucer, or Milton), politicians (among them eight presidents), colleges, birds, flowers, and so on. But gone are the days when a developer is likely to name a street after, for example, his own children, as in Jill Lane.
Back in the 1950s we once considered buying a house on that street in Lawrence Township where the developer told us he named the street for his daughter. He advertised his houses in the New York Times as being “in the shadow of Princeton’s historic Nassau Hall.” Some shadow: only 11 miles long!
Getting back to Hightstown Road. It’s only called that in West Windsor, and even that depends on where you are. Between Lake Carnegie and the railroad it’s officially Washington Road. Many even call it Princeton-Hightstown Road, thus implying that it goes to either place. But if you get to Hightstown and continue on it as Route 571, you can go all the way to Toms River. I don’t think anyone around here would call it Toms River Road. There are easier ways to get there from here.
