Trenton Skyline

Calhoun Street Bridge



State Capitol



"Trenton Makes" Bridge

More of downtown Trenton

  I took advantage of the nice weather on Thursday and got some pictures of the Trenton skyline.  I had been thinking about doing that for a while, and now that the skies were sunny and the humidity low, I decided that this was the time.  There is a levee in Morrisville, Pa with a walkway on top.   It’s an ideal place to take a walk and get the pictures.   It stretched between two older iron bridges, which took travelers directly into stop-and-go city traffic.  On the north end was the Calhoun Street Bridge, and on the south the famous “Trenton Makes” bridge, its big letters visible to travelers on the nearby U.S. 1 and railroad bridges.  As far as I know, they are the last two toll-free bridges spanning the Delaware, which is fairly broad at this point.  The rocks in the river and the low bridges show that it is not navigable here.   A few miles downstream, the river bottom drops off significantly, allowing it to float ocean-going freight ships and thus requiring higher bridge spans which those vessels can clear.

   “Trenton makes, the world takes” was once a literally true statement.  It was the city’s slogan as a manufacturing center in the early 20^th century.   Like most American cities, the manufacturing left as the economy went global.  Since Trenton has been the capital of New Jersey since 1790, that left the state government as the largest employer for the city.  The gold dome in the pictures makes it obvious which building is the capitol.  Other than that, I remember hearing sometime in the 1990s about Trenton possibly becoming “Hollywood East”.  I don’t think anything came of it though, and as far as I know no movie studios were constructed there.  If that came about, I guess that would have also increased tourism in Bucks County, since movie stars would be living not only in Princeton, but also in Yardley and Washington Crossing on our side of the river.

  Personally, I have not been in Trenton much.  I mostly remember seeing it from Morrisville, where my father worked.  It looked similar to these pictures, but this was in the 1980’s, before some of those buildings went up.  I would go through Trenton once in a while when I worked in Princeton, usually if there was a problem with I-95, or if my car was down and I needed to take the train to work.  I have been in the city twice in the last two years.  The company I have been temping at for the last few years has an annual banquet at Katmandu, a little south of where these pictures were taken.  Other than that, it is a layover point whenever I travel to New York City, which is rare.