A street sign for Brakeshoe Place, a residential street on the edge of West Mahwah. This street is within view of the Brake Shoe Lab building and would've housed many workers since its construction.

The American Brake Shoe and Foundry Company was founded in 1902 as a conglomeration of several smaller companies. The plant in Mahwah, then Hohokus Township, had been built a year earlier and was administered by Ramapo Iron Works before the merger. In the early years of the plant, many among the administration and management came from local land-owning families. Some members of the American Brake Shoe executive board in New York City had connections with Mahwah and the Mahwah plant throughout its operation. Immediately the plant proved to be a profitable venture, employing approximately 500 workers in the first year. As operations expanded, and more workers employed, the company began to purchase and develop the surrounding land near the railroad. The residential portion of this acquisition was developed and leased out as housing for the workers. This neighborhood would become known as West Mahwah, and would continue to grow steadily for the first half of the twentieth century.

Initially, workers came other industrial plants in the surrounding area, as layoffs were common and travel infrastructure was somewhat limited. Eventually, workers would come from places as far as Paterson, New York City. Demand for labor continued to grow, and American Brake Shoe soon faced a massive influx in immigrant labor. According to census records, the population of Hohokus Township had grown to include enough Eastern European Immigrants to comprise over twenty percent of its population by 1915. Brake Shoe, and the town with it, would continue to grow until the Great Depression. It was commonplace for a worker to come alone initially, with the intent to save enough to eventually bring the rest of their family to the area. Demand for housing continued to grow, and other private developers bought up land to lease out to the influx of workers. Most of these modest homes would’ve housed multiple families at the time. In its infancy, the West Mahwah neighborhood suffered from overcrowding and serious lack of urban amenities, but by the late 1920s and 30s had grown to include more basic services as the entire region became more developed. More churches of varying denominations were built as more and more workers came into the area, and prohibition-era speakeasies were in operation as well. Immigrants, especially those of a Slavic background, would contribute to a significant increase in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Don Bosco, a Catholic school still in operation today, was founded by Silesian Priests from Poland back in 1915.

In the early years the plots in West Mahwah belonged to the American Brake Shoe corporation, and would lease the land directly to its workers. In many cases, workers would save enough to purchase their own plot of land and build their own houses for themselves and their families. Blocks and addresses were often separated into enclaves based on the language spoken and the birth country of the residents. Due to decades of layoffs hirings at Brake Shoe for almost the entirety of its existence, the residents of West Mahwah and their families at times had to find employment from other factories in the area. The majority of the West Mahwah was close enough to Brake Shoe that the workers would often bring home the daily meal provided by the company in their cafeteria to share with their families. Unfortunately, when management realized this was happening, the employee cafeteria and its complimentary meals for workers were done away with.

During the Depression, temporary and seasonal layoffs were common throughout the country, and Brake Shoe at Mahwah was no different. It was not uncommon for a worker at a factory like Brake Shoe to split his time as a farmhand or at other factories in the area.  Schools in the area only held classes in English, and as was the case in many working-class immigrant communities, the children of the laborers generally had a much better opportunity than their parents to learn the language and customs.

West Mahwah and the surrounding region would also continue to grow into the 1950 with the construction of the Ford plant, which in its heyday would also employ thousands of workers. Suffern was another town in the region with its own share of textile mills and industry in the early twentieth century, and many employees of Brake Shoe throughout the years would also live there.

Ernest Busch

Ernest Busch was a worker prominently featured in the Mahwah History Museum's Abex collection. Born in Germany in 1906, Census records show that Ernest Hermann Busch emigrated to the United States in 1922, residing in New York City and working as an auto mechanic until he married his wife Clara and moved his family to Suffern, NY in the late 1930's. Despite only having an 8th grade education, Busch became employed as a mechanic for the Abex plant in Mahwah, NJ. As one of the many immigrants who found work at Brake Shoe, Busch was featured on the cover of a mid 1940's edition of Private Wire, the company magazine. This is particularly remarkable given that he only emigrated from Germany recently, and the Second World War had been in full swing. Tragically, records also show that his son, Ernest Busch Jr, took his own life in 1947 while he was working for the company.

Busch was just one of the many European immigrants to work at Brake Shoe in Mahwah. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, an influx of workers from Central and Eastern Europe had begun to move into the area in search of work. Though often collectively and erroneously referred to as "Polish" by the natives, workers of Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian descent formed a sizeable enclave in the West Mahwah neighborhood near the Abex complex. According available records, Ernest Busch did not reside in West Mahwah. He opted instead to raise his family in Suffern, right over the border in Rockland County, New York, and only a short car or train ride from the plant.