update on Coytesville cemetery

This information came in an update from Weird NJ

Did you know that before a single frame of celluloid was ever shot in Hollywood, Fort Lee was the film making capital of the world? That’s right, as far back as the early days of Thomas Edison’s movies, Fort Lee was the place to go if you wanted to make a motion picture. Even the term “cliff-hanger,” which is used to describe a suspenseful scene, was first coined in Fort Lee during the making of the silent “Perils of Pauline” films, which were shot at the precipice of the NJ Palisades.

Say Goodbye to Hollywood…er, I Mean Coytesville

Most of the early western films were shot in the northern part of Fort Lee known as Coytesville. The area at the time actually looked very much like an old west town, with its unpaved roads, clapboard buildings and even a roadhouse saloon called Rambo’s. Silver screen stars of the day such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, and Lillian Gish all worked regularly in the tiny community. Today not much remains of Coytesville’s golden age of film making. The last remnants of the Coytesville studios were destroyed during construction of the entryway to the George Washington Bridge. These days most New Jerseyans have never even heard of the town of Coytesville, but ask any Fort Lee old-timer and they’re sure to remember.

From the Bergen Record, March 1, 1999:

Most of Coytesville’s wide-open spaces have since disappeared, save for a few pocket parks. Taken together with all the new construction of the past 15 years, it can be easy to overlook the neighborhood’s rich history. But hidden behind fences, sandwiched between new homes, and tucked into memories, is the story of days gone by. The earliest piece of the puzzle sits, fittingly, on a dead-end street where Coytesville’s early boundaries overlap Fort Lee’s border with Englewood Cliffs. There, out of sight behind a stockade fence, is a tiny cemetery. On most days, the only witnesses to history are a few crows and squirrels. But the writing on most of the headstones is still clear, including that on a large black granite obelisk over the grave of Benjamin Coyte, “native of Devonshire, England. Founder of Coytesville, N.J.”

When Coyte died in 1887, Coytesville was a village in its own right. The settlement gave up its independence only when Fort Lee was incorporated in 1904. But the neighborhood stayed on the map as a capital of the nation’s fledgling film industry. When they weren’t in front of the cameras, the film stars gathered at neighborhood watering holes, such as the Rambo Hotel and Schmidt’s Corner. The latter has been gone for years. But the Rambo, once run by Limone’s grandfather, with its old oaken bar and bentwood chairs, was perfectly preserved until a fire gutted the place last summer. Limone and her husband still live in the rear portion of the building, which was untouched by the blaze.

The neighborhood is dotted with other relics, such as the house on Hammett Street garbed in tarpaper siding. It was once a summer cottage for the acting Barrymores. Nearby, on Westview Street — which drops down toward Route 4 like a bobsled run — smaller wooden homes with bits of stained glass and turned wood banisters are tucked in between the proliferating duplexes. Many of the older homes have vanished gradually over the past 15 years, often sold to developers as the neighborhood’s oldest residents have died…Coytesville maintained a strong sense of its own identity up until the 1960s, when it still had its own post office. Even today, Verizon lists some residents’ phone numbers as being in “Coytville.” But the name means little, if anything, to newer arrivals (who are predominantly of Asian descent).

“If you ask people who have lived here all their lives, they know it as Coytesville,” says John Caputo, the principal at School No. 3, whose wife is a native of the neighborhood. “But to the new people, if you say, ‘Oh, you live in Coytesville,’ they just stare at you. They wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”