The Afton

> > Demised < <

Site of a HSBC Bank
2 Hanover Road at Corner of Columbia Turnpike
Florham Park, NJ

Hines: Open all year, except Mondays and Christmas, noon to 8 p.m. Cinnamon buns are good here and so is the pastry. Tea-roomy perhaps, but not too dainty as to portions. Lunch 85¢ to $1.10; Dinner $1.10 to $2.00.

A wee bit of municipal history should first be reviewed. Florham Park was incorporated in 1899. Previously the area had been called Afton, which is why many businesses still bear the Afton name. Prior to that it was known as Columbia since 1802, but when the population reached 350 in 1877, the people changed the named to Afton (from the song "Flo Gently Sweet Afton") so that they could have their own post office.
Note: This makes research a tad muddy… like searching for Collins in Ireland.

Incidentally, the name Florham comes from Florence [Vanderbilt] and her husband Hamilton McKown Twombly who established a sprawling 840 acre English-style country retreat in 1887. The future town was the result of combining this property with that of Dr. Leslie Ward's [a founder of Prudential Insurance] — "Brooklake Park," a slightly less modest 1,000 acre estate.

Regarding the restaurant that was open for roughly a century…
I may have encountered the first case in which it might have been better for the business to quietly slip into the past. The last online reviews for The Afton were in 2000 and were anything but complimentary. Bad Food/Worse Service pretty much sums it up. I suspected something was amiss in finding The Afton has no website of its own and barely any web presence at all. A quick search on the address tells me it is now the site of a bank. It is sad to discover that a Hines listing fell to commercial development by first disgracing its own reputation. But it's a tough industry, especially over 100 years.

Read more about the entertaining history of Florham Park