The Passaic Sections We Cover

Passaic is a small city by area and a dense one by rooftop count, and it did not all go up at once. The first homes took hold near Prospect Street and Main Avenue, close to the old river landing. As the mills along the river drew workers, the Eastside, long known as the Dundee section, filled in fast right against the Passaic River. The Hill Section rose later in the 1870s, and the wards spread out from there. We cover all of it. A house on the Eastside near the water carries different problems than one up on the Hill, and a roofer who treats the whole city as one block misses what each section actually does to a roof.

Most of what stands here was built before 1939, packed shoulder to shoulder for working families, which is why so much of Passaic is two and three-family with a pitched front roof dumping onto a flat rear roof. That transition is the signature local detail, the spot where two materials meet exactly where the water concentrates, and it is where a large share of this city's leaks start. Down through the First and Fourth Ward blocks and the older stock around downtown, lots sit close enough that water off one roof ends up in the neighbor's plaster. We document which building a failure belongs to before anyone has to argue about it.