Montclair Historical Society

Yesterday, October 26, 2013, I decided to try the walking tour for the Upper Montclair business area. Started at 10:30 AM. There was a $ 5.00 donation if you would like to give one. Was not sure what to expect with how many people would show up. To my surprise, there were over 100 people, and they were expecting only 30. Because of this situation, the historical society was not prepared. They did not have enough pass-​out sheets for everyone and we had to be broken into 2 groups, which was fine, but each group was very large. The pass-​out sheets told us every stop we were making and a photo corresponding to the stop, which was extremely helpful. It also gave information on each historical stop. Most of the time, you could not hear the historical person speak. The information was very interesting, but I felt I was missing out on alot because we couldn’t hear if we weren’t close enough to the speaker. We made a stop at the Woman’s Club on Cooper Avenue. They were so kind to make snacks for all of us! We also stopped at St. James church. We were allowed to climb up to the bell tower and watch the music director play the bells with the manual carillon. Found this extremely interesting! Hopefully, next time there will be more speakers and smaller groups. Hope to see more of these walking tours in the future for different areas in Montclair.