Autumn Years Fall 2024

Prostitution A number of our county’s historic Jersey Dutch stone houses have been turned into restaurants. One of the best known was the Hackensack homestead of John I. Hopper, which you may remember as the Stony Hill Inn . However, did you know the building was once a brothel? Located on Polifly Road (adjacent to Route 80), the Stony Hill Inn was a leg endary high-class restaurant and long time events venue. Prior to 1982, it was the well-known Guido’s restaurant. Guido Travaini took over his father’s restaurant, New Venice, which opened in 1937. Earlier, in 1935, a restaurant known as The Hopper Farm operated in the house. In 1929, a restaurant called the Spinning Wheel opened there. And it offered more than food. The Spinning Wheel promoted itself as “the deluxe restaurant with the an tique touch.” Except the “touch” was not the décor, but rather the eight or so pros titutes who worked in the house on any given night. A Bergen Evening Record exposé noted that the women served their house special to multiple patrons, with one woman making about 40 trips upstairs with various men to one of the many bedrooms. The newspaper re ported that “three or four hundred men and boys” visited every Satur

Pioneer Baseball Club of Englewood.

one in the engine room. As this was the 1970s “Disco Era,” there was also a disco lounge on the upper deck, with an enor mous bar and dance floor. With views of Manhattan, this restaurant—which specialized in seafood and steaks—was very popular. Swanky with its Victorian décor, jackets were required. Replete with historic significance, the Bingham ton was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The owner, Nelson Gross, was a for mer New Jersey Assembly Speaker. His

day night. There were also charges that the Spinning Wheel was a gambling den. The Hackensack police eventually closed the place down. The very legiti mate Stony Hill Inn was closed in Au gust 2021 due to Covid, and the historic building’s fate is uncertain. Murder Few restaurants can boast having wel comed 125 million people inside. How ever, Binghamton’s was a ferryboat that transported passengers across the Hudson River between Manhat tan and Hoboken from 1905 to 1967. Having traveled 200,000 miles, back and forth, it took its last trip in 1971 to Edge water (725 River Road), where it was moored to become a floating restaurant. It took four years for the ship-turned restaurant to finally open in 1975. Binghamton’s had two dining rooms: one on the main deck, and

38 AUTUMN YEARS I FALL 2024