Photo of The Month – Sep 2007

North Main Street

Contributor: Society Archives

One wonders, why did they lay out N. Main Street with a dog leg curve? And then complicate things by running railroad tracks right through it? In any case, we—or our ancestors—had to live with it.

This was taken in the 1910s. In those days this thoroughfare was called Highway 207. The original Baptist church and, below it, Cliffside’s first school building stand at right. Note the Model T, almost hidden behind a phone pole, creeping and sliding down the hill in the snow.

This may seem like a scene from a book on ancient history, but most of these dwellings were still here in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s when many of us were growing up in Cliffside, as were the rock curbs that are visible alongside the roadway.

A Scout cabin was built in the late ’30s in the space where the old school stands in the photo. Between 1924, when a new Baptist church was built closer to town, and 1940, when a gymnasium was built behind the new brick school further up the street, the old church was used for school and community sports activities. It was referred to as Cliffside’s “Playhouse.”