13 September 2007

A Tale of Two Developments

At my daughter's first day of dance class yesterday I got to talking with one of the moms about "Harry Potter". She also has a daughter in third grade, and she told me that her daughter had read nearly all of the Harry Potter books, and loved them. What's more, she was a big Harry Potter fan herself. She and her daughter had even attended two book parties when the final installment of the series was released this summer.

Now, I must admit that I know next to nothing about Harry Potter. I haven't read any of the books, or seen the movies. But that doesn't mean that I am not a fan of the fantasy genre when it comes to literature. In fact there are some books in this category that I have read over and over. It's just that I tend to be a bit "old-school" - I'm really not up on the new stuff like Potter.

There is one series of books that I have enjoyed since I was about ten or eleven years old. And I can say with near certainty that I am not the only Hillsborough resident who appreciates this author's work. That's because there are TWO developments in Hillsborough with street names based on elements from this famous trilogy.

The first development is at the corner of Beekman Lane and Triangle Road and has six relevant street names. The second is the townhouse development that straddles Raider Boulevard between Amwell Road and Route 206. This development uses four place names from the book as street names.

Do you know the street names and the author who made them famous? Give me your best guesses. And if anyone knows how and why these streets were named as they were, I'd love to hear that story too!

4 comments:

  1. I'll give it a stab - J.K. Tolken

    Street names - can't find any fitting ones, but then again, I also can't find a decent map ....

    Oh well, at least I tried.

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  2. That is J.R.R. Tolkien to you, maam.

    Can't get all the streets but definately bree, shire, greenfields (I think but not sure), bywater ct & way, rivendell, silverlode. Amerman seems vaguely familiar but I'm not sure.

    However I must say that I have always considered it to be a tetralogy and not a triology. You lose a significant piece without incorporating The Hobbit

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  3. Spokey, you are correct. The development at Beekman and Triangle contains the street names Bywater Ct., Bywater Way, Rivendell, Silverlode, Dunedain, Snowbourn, and Lorien - all straight out of Lord of the Rings.

    The townhouses on Raider use the names Crickhollow, Chetwood, Bree and Shire - all from the Hobbit, and LOTR as well.

    Now does anyone know how we ended with TWO Tolkien developments in Hillsborough?

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  4. I don't know why we have these two - did Tolken ever stay here? Bob Dylan vacationed on the Sourlands, and Rockefella's (sp) daughter used to keep her horse here and take riding lessons at Brookhaven Horse Farm.

    Re Amerman, it is an old family name - there is an Amerman farm a little further out west, off Woodfern Rd.

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