"Passaic River View" - Newark N.J. - 1905

A passing sailboat takes in the view of the P. Ballentine & Sons Brewery along the Passaic River in Newark, N.J. in 1905. The river extends for 80 miles, meandering through northern New Jersey through the most urbanized and industrial areas of the state, from Newark Bay into the city of Paterson, where it drops over the Great Falls of Passaic.

The brewery opened in 1860, started using the Ballentine name in 1879, and after losing market share in the mid-1960s, subsequently closed in 1972. The complex reflected a small city along Front St. covering 34 acres with multiple buildings, some as high as 9 stories.  Each building was designed for specialized tasks of brewing, fermenting, storage & bottling…to be shipped by rail, trucks or ships.  Newark was the 3^rd largest beer-producing city in the U.S. behind Milwaukee and New York.  By 1890 there were 27 breweries and bottling plants in the Newark area.

A Ballentine subsidiary still owns the property and has leased parts of it to various businesses over the years.  Currently there are plans to demolish the remaining industrial buildings and build a 280-unit 6 story residential building branded “The Ballentine”.

On a personal note, my father worked as a machinist for Ballentine’s in the bottle-house, of the buildings in the distance, from 1951 until he passed in 1967 at age 46.