Happy 125th Birthday, Metuchen!

When you reach 125 years old, you would want the ultimate birthday bash.

And that’s what the Borough of Metuchen community did to celebrate the borough’s 125^th anniversary.

The borough was established as an independent municipality and officially incorporated on March 20, 1900 with William Thornall – a descendant of one of the area’s earliest European settlers – as its first mayor.

Named after a local Lenni-Lenape leader, Chief Matouchin, Metuchen has grown around its thriving downtown and train station, according to the borough’s website. Its direct rail access to New York and the Rutgers New Brunswick campus has drawn generations of artists, writers, and professors, giving Metuchen the nickname of “The Brainy Borough” – a moniker supported by its two Blue Ribbon schools. As a donut-hole town surrounded by the larger city of Edison and served by every major highway as well as a county greenway, Metuchen is the rare community that has access to it all.

And if you were in and around the Metuchen Plaza on the evening of June 6, you were met with ultimate excitement. Dawn Mackey, executive director of the Metuchen Downtown Alliance, shared the evening’s itinerary. DJ from RedBull Stadium put on a dance party on the plaza, children played backyard games and jumped in the bounce house for a night filled with fun.

At 6:30 p.m. there was a magic show and at 7:30 p.m. there was a clown entertainer. An artist conducted an interactive project at the corner of New and Pearl streets integrating words of what people love about Metuchen including “support,” “love,” “inclusive,” “colorful,” “fun,” and “everything” to name a few.

Communal party hats were given out and worn throughout the evening, and community members signed a giant birthday card before they gathered for a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Mayor Jonathan Busch did the honors of cutting the custom 125th anniversary birthday cake courtesy of AwesomeYO’s Kitchen.

Metuchen 08840 was there to celebrate and caught up with Tyreen Reuter, who is a 25-year resident of Metuchen, having moved to an 18^th century historic home near Campbell School in the late 1990s. She has volunteered as a director in the Metuchen-Edison Historical Society nearly as long, as has her husband, Steve, according to the website of her other hat, board of the Friends of the Metuchen Library.

As part of Metuchen’s 125^th commemoration, the borough worked with the Metuchen-Edison Historical Society to create a series of historical banners displayed downtown, each with an image relevant to its history.

QR codes on the banners lead to descriptions of persons, places, and events that have impacted and formed its community’s history.

While placement was limited to 57 banners, there are even more stories to tell, and the Metuchen-Edison Historical Society has been working to compile even more for eventual publication.

“From shopkeepers who got their start working with Thomas Edison to the inventor of Sesame Street’s Big Bird, and from one of the nation’s first professional women landscape painters to the first Hindu temple in New Jersey, these banners tell a story, not as a narrative, but in a truer sense as it is the people who lived here who form the history of a place,” Reuter said.

Those familiar with Metuchen’s history know that it actually stretches back much, much longer than those 125 years, she said.

In 1900, Metuchen was already a thriving, dense village, but one that was in need of improved municipal services, which ultimately led to the area’s leaders working to form its own municipality.

“Metuchen’s reputation as the Brainy Borough’ came soon afterwards,” Reuter relays. “Notable intellectual luminaries bought homes here and numerous literary societies formed. A strong case can be made for the Brainy Borough nickname arising from the arrival of author Mary Wilkins Freeman to the Borough in 1902. A household name at the time, she had been a frequent visitor and moved to a home on Lake Avenue upon her marriage to a local man.

There is much more about Wilkins Freeman – and other notable “Brains” – can be found in the “The Brainy Borough” booklet available on the Borough of Metuchen’s website

Metuchen in the 20th century saw the advent of the automobile, dense suburban development, and increased commercial activity along its downtown corridors.

“It is these last 125 years that the Borough currently seeks to commemorate, but as one can see, those years are built upon the foundation of both 350 years of European history as well as the much, much earlier Lenape settlement,” she said.

Reuter urges everyone to take a stroll “along our vibrant downtown or visit the Borough of Metuchen’s website for both the images and histories that go along with them.”

“I guarantee you will find some surprising history!”