How old is Wyckoff, really?
The township spent 2026 marking its centennial with a proper calendar of events: a formal gala in March, fireworks in June, a historic cemetery tour still to come this fall. Somewhere in that celebration, though, the math gets interesting. What turned 100 this year was a name and a government. What was already sitting under Main Street when that name was chosen goes back nearly two centuries further, and knowing the difference changes how the rest of the centennial calendar reads.
What the Vote Actually Changed
Wyckoff didn't spring into existence in 1926. For most of the 1800s and early 1900s, this area was part of a much larger Franklin Township, and Franklin Township kept losing ground. Ho-Ho-Kus broke away and incorporated on its own in 1849. Ridgewood followed in 1876, Midland Park in 1894, Oakland in 1902, and Franklin Lakes in 1922. Each time a piece seceded, Franklin Township got smaller, until by 1922 what remained was only the area locals already called Wyckoff.
On November 2, 1926, residents voted to make that informal name official, renaming Franklin Township the Township of Wyckoff. That's the anniversary this year's gala and street fair are actually marking: the day the paperwork caught up to a name people had been using for a while. It's a reasonable thing to celebrate. It's also a much younger story than the one written into the ground the town sits on.
The Ground Under the Party
The June 27 centennial street fair drew crowds to Main Street with live music, a shuttle running attendees in from Pulis Field, food vendors ranging from Cuban fare to pizza, and even a free dairy-free ice cream truck from PETA parked for the occasion. It was the loud, visible version of the anniversary. The quieter version is a short walk away, at Union Cemetery on Franklin Avenue.
Union Cemetery traces to the first half of the 1700s, when Johannes Van Blarcom set aside part of his property as a family burial ground. The oldest legible headstone dates to 1764, which puts a real name (or in this case, an absence of one) on the ground 162 years before the township took the Wyckoff name. That earliest stone is believed to mark the grave of a young girl thought to have been enslaved, and no surname was recorded for her. It's not a comfortable detail, but it's part of the record the Wyckoff Historical Society has chosen to preserve rather than smooth over. Elsewhere in the same plot lies John Van Blarcom, a grandson of the family's Dutch immigrant patriarch, whose grave is marked as that of an officer who served in the Continental Army during the Revolution.
That's the layer under the centennial banners: a burial ground older than the United States itself, sitting inside a township whose current name is younger than most of the houses around it.
A House Two Centuries Ahead of the Charter
A few minutes from Union Cemetery stands the Van Voorhees-Quackenbush-Zabriskie House, believed to be the oldest structure in Wyckoff. William Van Voorhees built the original stone section in 1730, on land his family had purchased in 1720, and his son Albert added a Dutch colonial-style expansion in 1824. Put simply, the house had already stood for 196 years by the time the 1926 vote made "Wyckoff" official on paper.
A smaller, more recent artifact sits nearby at Zabriskie Pond: a former Main Street barbershop built in the 1890s, once run by a barber named John Lawrence who cut hair by night and worked the railroad by day. The building later served as a cobbler shop before returning to barbering, and it eventually moved to its current spot by the pond, where the Historical Society restored it and turned it into a small museum. Inside sits a barber chair that belonged to longtime local barber Frank Muscara, along with Lenape artifacts and farm tools from the area's earlier rural period. It's a modest building next to a modest pond, but it's one more piece of evidence that the town's identity was built up in layers long before anyone voted on what to call it.
What the Fall Anniversary Actually Recovers
The centennial calendar has three signature public events: the March 21 gala at The Brick House, the June 27 Main Street street fair and fireworks, and a historic cemetery tour scheduled for October 24. That third event lands after the loud parts of the celebration are over, and it points toward exactly the older story this piece has been tracing.
The Historical Society already runs a self-guided audio tour of Union Cemetery called Headphones and Headstones, built around QR codes placed at individual graves. Visitors can listen to research on who is buried there and what they did for a living, with new entries added as the society researches more of the people interred on the site. It's the kind of quiet, ongoing project that rarely gets its own headline, but it's exactly the groundwork that makes an October cemetery walk worth attending rather than just a checkbox on a centennial calendar.
"Town days are some of my absolute favorite Jersey traditions."
That's Congressman Josh Gottheimer, who joined local officials at the centennial celebration this year in a town he noted is home to more than 16,000 residents and over 250 small businesses. The line applies just as well to a quiet fall cemetery walk as it does to a June fireworks show.
The Newer Landmarks Are Only a Few Months Old
While the three-century story sits quietly at Union Cemetery and the Zabriskie House, the visible, daily-life version of Wyckoff has been getting a genuine refresh this year. Wyckoff Tavern opened at 315 Franklin Avenue, calling itself the first newly built standalone restaurant downtown in years, serving classic tavern fare with a modern American twist. A few doors down at 319 Franklin Avenue, inside the Boulder Run shopping center across from Stop & Shop, Willow & Whisk opened and quickly built a following for its cacio e pepe scrambled eggs and raspberry coulis pancakes. La Cambusa, which spent more than 25 years building a reputation for Southern Italian cooking in Fair Lawn, Ridgewood, and Garfield, opened its newest location in Wyckoff this year as a full-service BYO restaurant serving Amalfi Coast-inspired dishes.
Against all of that new activity sits The Brick House on Godwin Avenue, the steakhouse that chef-owner Aldo Cascio has run for fifty years and where the township held its formal Centennial Gala back in March. Fifty years is a long run for a restaurant. It's still less than half the age of the headstone a short drive away.
The Summer Ritual With No Anniversary Attached
Not everything worth knowing about this year has a centennial date stamped on it. Behind the Wyckoff Family YMCA, Spring Lake hosts Band on the Sand, a Friday-night summer concert series that's been part of the town's rhythm for years without ever needing its own plaque. This year's lineup included acts like Long Road Home on July 10, following past summers of bands with names like Sicomac Band and Reminisce. Nobody threw a gala for the concert series. It just keeps showing up on Friday nights, which might be the more honest kind of tradition.
A hundred years is a meaningful stretch for a local government. It's a short one for a place. The gala and the fireworks this year marked a vote. The cemetery walk in October will mark something the vote never had the standing to claim credit for: the people who were already here, farming this land, building this house, and burying their families in this ground, long before anyone got around to deciding what to call it.
If you're thinking about what your own piece of that ground might be worth, or just want to talk through what's changed in Wyckoff this year, Max Stokes knows this town well beyond the paperwork. Let's Connect.
