My father was one of the vast number of
veterans who returned home from the war about 1946 and had trouble
finding housing for his family. The government took old army barracks,
cut them up into four room apartments and rented them to vets with
families.
We lived in "VA housing" for nine years on Tiffany Blvd
in the Forest Hill section of North Newark. It was "the last
block in Newark" before the Belleville park extension of Branch
Brook Park and the city line, which was the Second River. There
were two VA housing sites on Tiffany Blvd, we lived in the one at
the top of the street next to the Tiffany factory, across the RR
tracks from Heller Bros. steel works.
There were 36 families on that square block. It was a great place
to grow up. People were very close and watched out for one another.
We spent a lot of time in the park. Most of us went to Ridge St.
School or St. Peter's school in Belleville. We walked to the Elwood
theater or the Kent on Saturday to see a double feature and 10 cartoons
for a quarter, stopping at Liss's drug store where they sold three
nickel bars of candy for a dime.
It all came to an end when "the barracks" were torn
down in 1957 and we were all dispersed. My family moved to Vailsburg,
but that's another story.
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