The bucolic grounds of this small park only opened to the public in 2014 after years in the care of the adjacent Augustinian Recollect monastery (which is now a Buddhist monastery). This cache (until recently a multi-cache, but the oft-muggled early stages have now been removed) only shows you part of the grounds behind the monastery itself (don’t worry, only on public land) -- it's well worth a few minutes to stroll a bit more to see the rest of this small but beautiful park and get up close and personal with what may be the oldest tree in West Orange.
But this cache is really in honor of West Orange’s original philanthropist, John Crosby Brown. A partner in the investment bank founded by his grandfather (today known as Brown Brothers and Harriman), Brown came to West Orange in the 1870s to create his own quiet country estate. He eventually built his Brighthurst summer home on 40 acres on the top of the ridge (just on the other side of today’s Prospect Avenue), as nextdoor neighbor to Union General and former presidential nominee George McClellan.
Beyond the main house, the estate included seven greenhouses (including special houses for roses and orchids), cow barns, a carriage house, an ice house, deer house and a log cabin playhouse. Although Brown enjoyed commanding views from the top of the ridge East to New York City, the land just down the steep hill from Brighthurst had been purchased and turned into the Spottiswoode Quarry (you can see the marks of quarry work on the cliffs along Northfield Avenue on your drive up to the top of the ridge), with quarrymen blasting away the mountain beneath him. (The rock from this quarry was actually used to build the Pilgrim’s Cross monument, as well as St. Mark’s Church on Main Street — for info on that church and its fire, see the nearby Stairway to Heaven cache.)
More than $50,000 later (a small fortune in those days), Brown had purchased the quarry to put it out of business and preserve his ridge. He even built a small gazebo with a spring-fed fountain there for travelers coming up Northfield Ave. to have a rest. The gazebo and spring are long gone, but the metal plaque welcoming travelers still stands, now in someone's front yard, cemented into rock next to the sidewalk but still anachronistically bearing the phrase: "Stay weary traveler rest awhile, no banquet this nor merry feast. But here will flow at thy desire pure water for both man and beast."
Brown’s daughter, Mary Magoun Brown, was a nurse, and she convinced her father to donate a large, fully furnished house on their property to be used as a convalescent home for other hard-working nurses in desperate need to rest and relaxation from their difficult jobs. The result, a sort of nursing home for nurses called The Brownery, opened in 1907 and was so successful that by 1914 it had to move to much larger quarters in Nyack, NY, where it became known as The Haven Country Club. The old Brownery still stands today as a private home, just down the street at the corner of Fairview Avenue.
John Crosby Brown died in 1909, and although many of his estate’s buildings were lost to a fire in 1925 and his Brighthurst house was eventually torn down, the old carriage house today still stands as a pub (for more on this building, see the nearby George McClellan cache), and his Pilgrim’s Path cross monument still stands in front of the Presbyterian Church down the block (for more on its history, see the nearby Of Pilgrims Past cache).
Now on to the cache: You are looking for a small pill bottle wrapped in black duct tape. Muggles abound here, so please rehide each stage carefully!
Congrats to jrd814 for the FTF!