TheMaxfield
Engine House
Being a full and illustrated account of a civic structure of brick and iron, erected upon Main Street in the manner of its age.
Before there was a building, there was a waterfall — a violent twenty-five-foot drop in the Rockaway River that turned a quiet bluff into one of New Jersey's first industrial engines. The town climbed the gorge; the iron made it rich; and in 1893, at the high-water mark of that prosperity, Boonton built itself a firehouse handsome enough to double as a courthouse. The pages following set forth its origin, its specification, and its several lives, illustrated from the principal plate.
The Town & Its Iron
Wherein is shown how falling water, molten iron, and a mountain canal conspired to raise a town upon a cliff.
The iron came first. As early as the 1770s, Samuel Ogden's family had bought a tract along the Rockaway River and set furnaces working — but it was geography that decided everything. When engineers routed the Morris Canal along the Rockaway in the 1820s, the water power of the falls and the steep gorge below became the reason a company of New York businessmen chose this exact spot to raise the New Jersey Iron Company.
They brought machinery and skilled ironworkers from England, and a new community rose upon the cliff above the "Hollow." Its main street was laid along the bluff — upon a ridge said to follow an old Native American trail — which is precisely why Boonton's downtown still teeters on sharp inclines to this day. The grid was draped over the topography rather than eased around it; that single decision is the origin of the town's "mini San Francisco" character.
The canal made the iron profitable; the river made it possible. Coal moved up from Pennsylvania, finished iron moved out to Newark and New York, and the population swelled with foundry wages. By the Civil War, Boonton's mills were turning out nails, munitions, pails, and building materials for a growing nation.
— Harper's Weekly, A.D. 1860
| Iron Works Founded | c. 1770, by Samuel Ogden |
| Morris Canal Opened | 1831, along the Rockaway |
| Power of the Falls | 25 feet of descent |
| Incorporated | 1867, fully independent |
| Works Closed | 1911; only ruins remain |
Prosperity, however, rested upon a single industry — and single-industry towns are fragile. When the New Jersey Iron Company failed in 1876, Boonton faced its first reckoning, and the works limped on under various owners until closing for good in 1911. But the town had learned. It diversified deliberately — a silk mill, a knife factory, a paper mill, a brass and iron foundry, a carriage works — while the Lackawanna Railroad's 1875 branch added both jobs and commuter trains to New York. By the time the iron era ended, Boonton was no longer a company town. It was a real town. And a real town requires civic institutions.
The Engine House Illustrated
A full elevation, with plan, section, and detail studies, drawn from the photographic record.
Description & Specification
A house built for public service — engine company below, the seat of local government above.
The building exists because of a gift. At the founding meetings of the Boonton Fire Department in 1891, resident John Maxfield offered the town property enough to erect a two-story building — twenty-four feet by seventy-two — in the alleyway beside his own house on Main Street. The town accepted, and resolved that Maxfield be entered upon the rolls as its first Honorary Member. The engine house would carry his name.
Construction was directed by Esli B. Dawson, then president of the Common Council, and the building was completed early in 1894 at a projected cost of some $3,000 to $4,500. From the first it served two purposes: the ground floor held the fire apparatus and the town lockup; the second floor held police headquarters, meeting rooms, and the Justice Court Room. Fire suppression, law enforcement, and the municipal judiciary, all beneath one slate roof.
It speaks in the Romanesque Revival dialect that small American towns reserved for buildings meant to last: pressed brick over rusticated sandstone, round arches springing from stone, a corbeled brick cornice, and the corner turret with its conical slate roof and open belfry — a lookout and alarm post that announced, plainly, that this was no ordinary shed. The "MAXFIELD ENGINE HOUSE" stone set into the gable is original, and is the reason the name has outlived every tenant since.
| Erected | 1893–1894 |
| Donor of Land | John Maxfield, 1st Hon. Member |
| Directed By | Esli B. Dawson, Council Pres't |
| Dimensions | 24 ft. × 72 ft., two stories |
| Projected Cost | $3,000–$4,500 |
| Lower Floor | Apparatus storage & lockup |
| Upper Floor | Police, jail & Justice Court Room |
| Manner | Romanesque Revival |
| Pumping Engine | Gleason & Bailey, Seneca Falls N.Y. — $642.00 |
| Hose Reel | $90.00 |
| Hose | 500 feet, Eureka Mfg. Co. |
| Alarm | Cast-iron bell, mounted at street |
The Several Figures
The Corner Turret
A conical slate roof crowns an open belfry of turned columns — lookout and alarm post, and the building's chief gesture of civic pride.
Triple Arched Bays
Three round-arched apparatus doors with glazed transoms — the working face, restored in 2012 with carriage doors after the 1896 originals.
Rusticated Springers
Rough-faced sandstone springers and trim anchor the brick in the Romanesque tradition — weight and permanence made visible.
The Upper Court
Behind the second-story windows sat police headquarters, the jail, and the Justice Court Room — the building's quiet civic double life.
Corbeled Cornice
Stepped brick corbeling forms a strong projecting cornice, with a stone belt course dividing the stories — ornament that is also structure.
The Alarm Bell
A cast-iron bell mounted at the sidewalk, rung to summon the volunteer company and warn the town — the firehouse's voice, preserved.
One Address, Many Lives
The Gift
John Maxfield donates property on Main Street for a fire house; named the department's first Honorary Member.
Construction
Built under Esli B. Dawson, Common Council president. Town authorizes a hand pumping engine, hose reel, and hose.
Completed
Finished early in the year and named for Mr. Maxfield. Engine company below; police, jail, and court above.
The War Years
The first auxiliary fire department forms and drills here — surviving today as the Boonton Junior Fire Department.
Outgrown
Apparatus grows too large for the bays; the department moved to Boonton Avenue. A long retail second life begins.
Restored
New owners restore the building with carriage doors after its 1896 appearance, reopening as a music house and kitchen.
Full Circle
Reused as gallery space by the Center for the Study of Cities and Small Towns — led by descendants of Esli B. Dawson, who built it.
The land was gifted to the town by John Maxfield — the engine company below, and the police, jail, and courtroom above. A century later, it returned to the hands of the founding family's descendants.From the history of the Maxfield Hose & Engine Co. No. 1
The Town at Present
From foundry town to creative capital — positioned, as ever, at the edge of the metropolis.
Somewhere along the way, a hamlet built for ironworkers was discovered by artists. To-day the sloped, curving Main Street that once overlooked the foundry holds galleries, studios, independent coffee houses, and a remarkable density of restaurants — Uzbek, Mediterranean, Thai, Jamaican, Italian, and more — within a single walkable stretch. The 1919 Darress Theatre, among the few surviving vaudeville stages in the country, still hosts films, plays, and music.
The setting did the heavy lifting. The same gorge that powered the iron works is now Grace Lord Park — the falls, the canal remains, and the iron-works ruins preserved as a National Register historic district, a wooded world a few yards below the bustle of Main Street. To the west, the 550-acre Tourne offers a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. The industrial-era streetscape that makes the town photogenic is the same that makes it walkable, distinctive, and loved.
And it is positioned almost ideally — at the convergence of Interstates 287, 80, and 46, some thirty road miles (about forty-five minutes) from Manhattan, with NJ Transit's Montclair-Boonton Line and an express bus to the Port Authority for those who would rather not drive. Close enough to commute; far enough to feel an escape. That balance is precisely what makes a small town durable in the present century.
This page is set in the manner of a nineteenth-century iron-foundry trade catalogue — the very sort from which Boonton purchased its pumping engine in 1893. Aged stock, ironwork-black ink, a single brick-red, slab Egyptian display type, ruled specification tables, and figure plates: the design is drawn from the town's own industrial moment rather than applied from a template. That is what a locally-made page can do that a stock theme cannot.
| Founded | Grew c.1829; inc. 1867 |
| County | Morris, New Jersey |
| Origins | Iron works & Morris Canal |
| Setting | Cliff-side, above the gorge |
| To New York | ~30 mi · ~45 min |
| Highways | I-287 · I-80 · US-46 · US-202 |
| Rail | Montclair-Boonton Line |
| At Present | Arts & dining district |
Firehouse, jail, courtroom, pool store, video store, music house, and gallery — through all of it, the name carved in the gable never changed. It is the whole story of Boonton in a single building: raised by iron-age confidence, outgrown by its own success, and given new life by a town that refused to let its history be torn down.