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is a hamlet (and census-designated place), in the Town of Orangetown Rockland County, New York, United States located north of Nauraushaun; east of the state of New Jersey; south of Nanuet and west of Blauvelt. The population was 15,553 at the 2000 census.
Pearl River is also the site of One Blue Hill Plaza, Rockland County's first commercial skyscraper with 21 stories of office space.
Pearl River is 17 miles north of Manhattan, and north of the New Jersey border and the first (traveling north) of three New York stops on New Jersey Transit's Pascack Valley Line.
In 1906, Ernest Lederle, a former New York City commissioner founded Lederle Laboratories (now Wyeth) on a farm which now encompasses and 40 buildings employing 3,200 workers.
Pearl River was originally called "Muddy Creek". In the early 1870s, the town was divided in five different parts: Naurashaun, Middletown, Sickletown, Pascack and Muddy Brook. According to historians, a resident of the town by the name of Dr. Ves Bogert found pearls in mussels in the Muddy Creek, which runs through the town, thus naming the town Pearl River.
Pearl River was a deserted area purchased by Julius E. Braunsdorf in 1870. It is said that Braunsdorf was the "Father of Pearl River" and designed it to be a company town.
His first act was to donate a long strip of land right through the center of his property to the New Jersey and New York Railroad to enable them to bring an extension of the line from Hillsdale, New Jersey north to Nanuet.
When Braunsdorf designed the street layout, the only existing streets were Pearl Street and Washington Avenue. He drew a wide main street through the middle of town and called it Central Avenue. Parallel to Central Avenue he drew Franklin, after his hero, Benjamin Franklin. To connect Washington, Central, and Franklin he drew three streets and named them William, John and Henry after his three sons.
Pearl River may have remained a small hamlet had it not been for the railroad. The number of daily passenger trains totaled 30 each way in the early 1900's, about 50% more than today.