In the middle years of the Civil War--1863--our First
Presbyterian Church of Rutherford was founded. The essential spirit on which churches are founded was there. Compared
to the many fine churches we now have in Rutherford, the Union Hall must have been a plain and meager building. A woman of
the time wrote in her memoirs, "In either end of this hall was a stove which gave out more smoke than heat. The seats
were pine benches with reversible backs. The walls were bare and there was no carpet." In 1869 the church building, in spite of many improvements, was outgrown.
In 1887 the congregation voted to build a new church on a new site. The choice was so good it can only be described as inspired!
It was the triangular piece of ground at the junction of Ridge Road and Park and Passaic Avenues. At that time it was a family
home-site, surrounded by oak and chestnut trees.
The present church as we know it today, stands on a triangle of nearly an acre of ground
and is at the very heart of what is the center of town. It is within one block of the Rutherford Borough administrative buildings,
Borough Hall, the WPA-built U.S. Post Office and Lincoln Park, with it's summer band shell. This Park Avenue location
posed a problem in 1930 when the Borough Council re-graded Park Avenue in such a way as to lower the street level by 18 inches.
This made it necessary to construct a retaining wall to support the church grounds on that side. For some time this project
was hindered until stones could be found to match those of the church itself. Finally the right type of stone was discovered
in an old house about to be demolished. From these stones our Park Avenue wall was built.
