History:

The territory comprising Norwood was originally settled about 1670 by a dozen or more families mostly from Holland, who purchased the land from the Indians under the Tappan Patent. About that time a grant was also given by Philip Carteret, Governor of the Province of East Jersey, during the reign of Charles II. The Lenni Lenape Indians roamed the valley. Indian claims to the land were easily settled inasmuch as the legal tender of the Indians was the wampum, in this case a comparatively worthless kind of beads made of sea shells. An occasional arrowhead dug up in the local gardens bears mute evidence of the time the Indians lived on the fertile tablelands of the Palisades in and amongst the “North-Woods”.

In 1905 Norwood seceded from its parent Harrington Township. After erection of the wooden school on Summit Street in 1896, dissension arose over what was considered unfair distribution of tax monies in the township. This feeling mounted in intensity around the turn of the century. Henry Essig, Jr. who was the first Mayor of the incorporated Borough of Norwood was the motivating force leading to Norwood’s becoming a Borough. (In the first minute book, painstaking written in longhand, the initial meeting was conducted in the wooden school on Summit Street on Monday evening, April 3, 1905. Wendell J. Wright, Master in Chancery in the State of New Jersey, administered the oath of office to the officials of the newly incorporated Borough of Norwood.)

According to the boundary lines of the Borough, it occupies 768 acres in Bergen County, northeastern part of New Jersey, about two miles from the New York State line. It is bounded by Northvale, Old Tappan, Harrington Park, Closter, Alpine and Rockleigh