The Summit Playhouse is the longest running community theatre in New Jersey and one of the oldest continuously operating community theaters in the United States, Although it is an amateur theatre it is described and known as a theatre with professional standards.

On Sunday afternoon, February 18, 1917 there was a memorial service at the Lyric Theatre in Summit for one of the community's foremost residents, Hamilton Wright Mabie. It was a widely attended service with international luminaries too numerous to fully mention in this short space.

Dr. John L. Meeker, a man who was born just after the Civil War, came back to Summit after service in World War I and served the community for nearly a half century. Early in his career he went about the city by horse and buggy, charged a dollar or two for a house visit and seventy-five cents for an office visit, eventually graduated to a gold Cadillac and became a beloved legend in his own city.

The next time you drive past Whittredge Avenue at the juncture of Summit Avenue you might think of Thomas Worthington Whittredge. His property and original home studio (later torn down and replaced by Whittredge Gardens and Worthington Court apartments in 1928) was where this important artist of the 19th century Hudson River School of painters lived for thirty years until 1910 just three months shy of his 90th birthday.

It was the spring of 1917 and, as war raged across Europe, the small town of Summit (population about 9,000) was feeling the surge of patriotism and pride. Soon many of its young men would be going to Europe to take their part in what was to be called The Great War.

Reverend Dr. Florence Spearing Randolph, pastor of Wallace Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church in Summit, New Jersey from 1925 -1946 was also a leader of the women's suffrage movement in New Jersey. She was recently included in an exhibit at the Morris County Historical Society. Her involvement in American religion, society and politics in the first half of the 20th century place her among the elite women in New Jersey and local Summit history.

Through the end of the Second World War, New Jersey's coast and the entrances to the ports of Elizabeth, Newark , and New York City were defended by seacoast fortifications at sites such as Fort Hancock and Highlands in New Jersey and Fort Tilden in New York. By late 1945, however, the ability of a long-range aircraft to deliver an atomic bomb across oceans and continents had already been twice demonstrated with devastating results. Accordingly, as postwar tensions between the United Stats and the Soviet Union increased, the need to deploy anti-bomber defenses capable of defending American cities against a growing Russian bomber threat became increasingly acute.

Read the full article (pdf)