Where WAS the Brookdale Soda Plant?

Hi, Anthony!

It's Barbara - I have written to you before. And I have a question.

Anthony, exactly where was the old Brookdale Soda factory located? I can remember going there a lot of times to pick up soda for parties, etc. - but I'll be darned if I can remember where it was????

Also, what is there now? Just curious.

I revisited your website today after a long time - it is still great and continues to bring back all the GOOD memories, not the BAD ones. LOL Keep up the good work.

Barbara

Anyone out there know the answer to this?

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Support this web site, shop at Amazon through this link, thanks

Brookdale Soda .... In Verse

Who could wait to drive
the family sedan or wagon
To the Brookdale soda depot
on 6th Street or Sylvan?
Empty cases in the trunk.
Scooting through tree-lined streets
to the back yard driveway off
Sylvan Avenue in Bloomfield
or the Allwood Circle cross town,
or off to downtown at Heller/Heller.

Continue Reading

We Get Email

POST SCRIPT - We get a random email every so often from some transplanted Brookdale Soda drinker who wants to know if the beverage is still available. WE welcome your emails. In fact, someone offered us two cases of empties whether or not there's a deposit available.

The last time this story - Memories of Brookdale Soda - was published, in 1996, for the second time in The Independent Press of Bloomfield, the soda pop distributor had been shuttered for several years. Brookdale was also the name of a neighborhood bordering Bloomfield and Clifton.

The site of the Brookdale soda depot at the Allwood Circle in Clifton is now a car parts store. The depot site on No. Sixth Street in Newark has been abandoned. In fact, you can see the back of the building from the Newark City Subway. The Home Liquors and Heller/Heller stores don't carry it either.

The Sinisi depot on Montgomery Street in Bloomfield has no sodas. And lastly, the Brookdale soda depot in Bloomfield near High Street and East Passaic Avenue has been converted to housing.

Anyway, 28 years ago, who would have conceived of a world without Brookdale Soda?

-- (July 16, 2004)