Allentown: Mill Village on Doctors Creek

Allentown, New Jersey, should not be confused with its Pennsylvania namesake. This Allentown is a small Monmouth County borough incorporated in eighteen eighty-nine, built around the grist mills that John Allen established on Doctors Creek in the seventeen seventies. The creek powered the mills, the mills drew the settlers, and the village that grew up around them took the name Allen, though sources differ on which Allen.

During the Revolutionary War, this crossroads was a staging area for Continental Army movements through central New Jersey. The borough never grew beyond about six tenths of a square mile or roughly seventeen hundred residents, and that smallness is part of its charm. Its historic district, centered on Main Street and the millpond, has been carefully preserved, making Allentown one of those rare New Jersey villages where the colonial-era street plan is still legible.