Campus Town at The College of New Jersey is on the east side of Pennington Road at what was once known as Green Curve near the intersection at Ewingville Road.
By Helen Kull
The ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony of the new Campus Town along Pennington Road at the College just recently happened. I have enjoyed watching the progress of Campus Town over the past 18 months or so, creating a small “crossroads village” of stores, restaurants and student housing where there had previously been empty homes, grassy fields and a parking lot.
This is a big moment for Ewing “now,” but it also provides a moment for us to consider the same area of Ewing “then.” Although I drive past it every day, the four-story Campus Town complex still takes getting used to. While I’m sure that eventually we will all be accustomed to this “new normal,” it’s likely that newcomers and children will not even know what was once there. That begs the question, what was “once there,” before our memories?
Campus Town is on the east side of Pennington Road at what was once known as Green Curve, where northbound Pennington Road takes a big sweeping curve to the east before approaching the intersection at Ewingville Road. The land was originally part of a large 350-acre tract of landed deeded to William Green by Daniel Cox in the early 1700s.
William Green was a very early settler to this area. He came from England in the late 1600s, arriving in Philadelphia, and soon thereafter traveled to an established community at Newtown, Long Island, where he met the Reeder family, and married young Joanna Reeder.
A John Reeder (perhaps the brother of Joanna) then moved from Long Island to West Jersey, and built a homestead (“Rose Hill”) on what is now Bear Tavern Road, at Jones Farm. It is surmised that William Green and his wife Joanna followed him and arrived here about 1700.
There are no records of where they first lived, but by 1717, they built the brick farmhouse which still stands on the grounds of the College, well back from Pennington Road. This is the nationally-registered house which was the subject of this column in June.
The William Green homestead and the surrounding farm stayed in the Green family through many successive generations. Many Green descendants remained in the area and contributed significantly to the history of the area, while others ventured to other parts of the country to make their homes and history there.
The Green farm was divided up at various times for different reasons. Some parcels were given to sons to farm; some were sold or rented to others to farm. According to Robert Reeder Green, author of the definitive history of this area, “The Land Along the Shabakunks,” 20 acres of the old Green farm along Pennington Road was sold to Freeman C. Leaming in 1910, enabling him to start the the first development company in the area, the Green Curve Realty Company.
Prior to this, the east side of Pennington Road was unimproved farm land; there were no buildings on that side from Green Lane up to Carlton Avenue. With the sale to the realty company, the land was divided up into housing lots, 75 to 100 feet wide, and up to 400 feet in depth. Over the next 20 to 30 years, homes were constructed on those lots.
And more “big changes” would be coming, too. Across Pennington Road, construction soon began in a corn field for a new school, soon to be named Lanning School, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. Again, author Green recounts playing baseball as a schoolboy in a field on undeveloped Leaming property across from the Lanning School.
The Trenton Street Railway Company had installed trolley tracks in Pennington Road in 1902 or so, and travel to and from Trenton and on up to Pennington was far easier. The intersection of Pennington Road and Ewingville Road was no longer called “Cross Keys,” but Ewingville. A few shops opened there, and the blacksmith eventually left. Even the hotel there (where the 7-11 is now) was modernized with plumbing!
One wonders what they would think of Campus Town.
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