Party Bus and Limo Service in Livingston Township, NJ: Party Buses, Weddings and Airport Runs 20 Miles From Manhattan

By GEOFF CAPLAN

Livingston sits in a sweet spot that most New Jersey towns would trade a lot for. Twenty miles from Manhattan. Roughly twenty-five minutes from EWR Newark Liberty. Wrapped around by Route 10, Interstate 280 and the Eisenhower Parkway, with the Garden State Parkway a short hop east. Around 31,000 people spread across 14 square miles of Essex County, in the foothills below the Watchung ridge.

That location cuts both ways. Getting out of Livingston is easy. Getting a full wedding party, a corporate group or a family of seven with luggage out of Livingston on a schedule, in one vehicle, without somebody circling for parking at the airport, is a different assignment. That is the one Action Limos has been handling for New Jersey since 1979, going on 50 years now.

Seven Hamlets With Names You Would Never Guess

The story starts in 1702, when settlers out of Newark paid 130 English pounds to the Lenni Lenape for the Horseneck Tract, a stretch of land that covers what is now Livingston, the Caldwells and much of West Essex. Farming country. Lumber, mostly, and later dairy.

By 1811 the area had grown into seven scattered hamlets, and the names are the best part. Teedtown. Morehousetown. Cheapside. Squiertown. Northfield. Washington Place. The residents petitioned to consolidate, and on February 5, 1813, the first town meeting of the Township of Livingston was held. About 100 people lived there. Almost all of them farmed.

Modern Livingston has quietly kept those old hamlets in place, just under different labels. Teedtown became Livingston Center. Morehousetown is the Livingston Circle. Cheapside is where the Livingston Mall went up. Squiertown is the Route 10 Circle. Drivers who work this township learn those landmarks fast, because half the pickup instructions in town are given in terms of which circle you are near.

Named for a Founding Father Most People Have Never Heard Of

The township carries the name of William Livingston, born in Albany in 1723, New Jersey’s first governor, and a signer of the United States Constitution. He was not the fiery-speech type. His influence ran through committee work, through the arguments over the Electoral College and the assumption of state debts, through the unglamorous mechanics of assembling a republic. Hence the township’s seal, which borrows the Livingston family coat of arms.

Growth came slowly at first. Mt. Pleasant Avenue was one of New Jersey’s earliest turnpikes and, for a long stretch, the only real way into town by stagecoach. Shoemaking took off during the Civil War. Dairy took over afterward and held the top spot deep into the 20th century. Then cars arrived in the 1920s, the postwar housing boom hit, and the farms turned into subdivisions. The township government today runs on the Faulkner Act council-manager model. More is posted at livingstonnj.org.

Dinosaurs, a Rumored Witch and a Cold War Missile Base

Riker Hill deserves its own paragraph, or four. The hill got its name in the mid-1700s from Peter Riker, a squatter whose mother was locally rumored to be a witch. Whether any of that happened is anyone’s guess. The name stuck regardless.

Two hundred million years earlier, small dinosaurs had walked across the mud nearby. In 1968 quarry workers turned up their tracks. A 14-year-old Livingston kid named Paul Olsen started visiting the site with a friend, and over the next few years the two of them documented more than a thousand tracks from the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. Olsen went on to become a professional paleontologist. The 16-acre site was protected in 1970 and named a National Natural Landmark in June 1971. It is known today as the Walter Kidde Dinosaur Park.

Between 1954 and 1974, the same hill hosted Nike Battery NY-80, a radar installation in the anti-aircraft ring built to defend the New York metro area. Riker Hill’s elevation gave it the clear sightlines the system needed. The Army shut it down and sold the 42-acre parcel to Essex County in 1974 for one dollar. The barracks now hold roughly 40 artist studios, with painters, potters, glassblowers, printmakers and sculptors working where missile technicians once did. Outdoor sculpture sits along the trails, including three twenty-foot stainless steel “Whale Tail” pieces donated by the Livingston Mall in 1991. Details are with Essex County Parks.

Nearly 50 Years, and the Only Indoor Showroom in New Jersey

Action Limos opened in 1979 and is the oldest limousine service in New Jersey. It was founded by John Garrabrant, who owns the company to this day. That kind of run is unusual in this trade. Operators appear, undercut everybody for two seasons, then vanish when a transmission goes. Five decades means five decades of maintenance logs, chauffeur training and families booking their second and third generation of proms and weddings.

Then there is the showroom, which is the part Livingston customers tend to appreciate most. Action Limos runs the only indoor limousine showroom in New Jersey, at 261 Monroe Ave. in Kenilworth. Customers walk the floor, open the doors, sit in the seats, check the headroom in a stretch, compare a vintage car against a 20-passenger party bus and test the sound system before signing anything. From Livingston it is about a 20 to 25 minute drive. Few towns in the service area sit closer, which makes a walkthrough almost too easy to skip.

What Livingston Actually Books

Weddings and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs

Livingston keeps a full calendar of simchas and weddings, and the transportation piece is rarely simple. Guests scatter across hotels in Short Hills, Whippany and Parsippany. Photos happen at one location and the reception at another. A shuttle loop in a party bus beats twenty cars hunting for valet. Action Limos has specialized in wedding transportation for decades, with vintage and antique cars for the couple and larger coaches for everybody else.

Airport Transfers

EWR Newark Liberty is roughly 25 minutes down 280 and the Parkway, which is the shortest airport hop in most of this service area. Morristown Municipal handles private aviation about 20 minutes west. (JFK) JFK and LGA LaGuardia run longer but are perfectly manageable with a scheduled car and an early departure. Philadelphia International is the outlier at around 90 minutes.

Cruise Port Runs

Cape Liberty in Bayonne sits about 35 minutes east. Long-term parking there adds up quickly across a week, and luggage for a family of six does not fit in a sedan. One van or bus handles the group and both legs of the trip.

Business and Medical Center Work

The Eisenhower Parkway corridor is thick with offices, and Saint Barnabas Medical Center brings a steady stream of visiting physicians, conference attendees and out-of-town families into the township. Executive sedan service, client pickups from Newark, and shuttles between hotels and meeting sites are routine bookings here.

Nights Out, Proms and Concerts

Broadway shows, Yankees and Giants games, PNC Bank Arts Center, Prudential Center, Livingston High School proms, birthdays, bachelor and bachelorette parties, brewery and winery tours west into Morris and Hunterdon. Manhattan is 20 miles east. A party bus turns the commute into part of the night rather than the chore attached to it.

A Township That Produces Famous People at an Odd Rate

For a suburb of 31,000, Livingston has an outsized alumni list. Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza. Chelsea Handler. Wendy Williams. Filmmakers Joe Dante and Todd Solondz. Tony winner Nikki M. James. Actor Adam Pally. Modern Family writer Danny Zuker. Sportscaster Bruce Beck. Nobel laureate chemist Roger Tsien. Paul Olsen, the kid with the dinosaur tracks. Something in the water, apparently, or more likely in the school district.

Frequently Asked Questions