A Resident's Summer 2026 in Wyckoff: A Centennial Year, a Franklin Avenue Reopening, and the 81-Acre Walk Most Drivers Miss

Wyckoff's summer usually reads as three separate towns. The farm crowd goes to Lawlins Road. The Franklin Avenue crowd goes downtown for dinner. The trail crowd drives to Ramapo Valley in Mahwah. In most years those three publics never meet.

2026 has quietly stitched them together. The township is 100 years old, and the centennial has produced something Wyckoff has never really had before: a single civic calendar that a resident can actually follow week by week without leaving the borough line.

What the Centennial Actually Changed

Wyckoff was renamed from Franklin Township on November 2, 1926, and the township is marking the anniversary with a full year of programming rather than a single day. Three signature public events — a formal gala in March, a Main Street street fair and fireworks in June, and a historic cemetery tour in October — anchor Wyckoff's year-long centennial celebration.

The June anchor has come and gone. Centennial Day on June 27 opened with a street fair at 11 AM on Main Street and closed with a commemorative fireworks display at Memorial Field. The drone show originally planned for that Saturday was canceled due to scheduling issues on the township's end, and the fireworks carried the evening on their own.

What matters for the rest of the summer is that the centennial has done more than add events. It has rescheduled existing ones. The recycling and shredding days that Wyckoff normally holds on a Saturday in September were moved forward to Saturday, June 27 for the centennial year, folded into the fair. Ordinary municipal life has been pulled into the celebration, which means the fall calendar has an unusual amount of open space for a town this size, and the summer gaps between the marquee dates are being filled by the private operators who normally sit in the background.

The Franklin Avenue Reopening

The most consequential summer change to Wyckoff's dinner geography happened before the season started, and residents are still absorbing it. Cafe Amici, a farm-to-table fixture at 315 Franklin Avenue for 23 years, closed at the end of June 2025 and reopened in the fall as Wyckoff Tavern under the same ownership.

The change is more than a name. The new menu includes lunch, brunch, and dinner, featuring dishes like chicken dumplings, a variety of pizzas, fettuccine with fresh rock shrimp in a white wine sauce, burgers, steak and eggs, and salads. Brunch runs on Sundays at 10 AM with a few drink specials like $12 mimosas and Bloody Marys. The drink menu includes eight beers on tap, specialty cocktails, signature whiskey cocktails, seasonal cocktails, and wine. Cafe Amici had a full bar for years, but the emphasis has shifted from Italian-inflected American plates to a broader tavern format.

Two other Franklin Avenue neighbors give the block real depth this summer. La Cambusa is a full-service, BYO restaurant specializing in authentic Southern Italian cuisine, with a menu inspired by the Amalfi Coast that includes fresh seafood, handmade pasta, and various meats and poultry, all made in-house. With previous locations in Fair Lawn, Ridgewood, and Garfield, and a reputation for serving top-quality Italian food for over 25 years, it now extends its hospitality to Wyckoff and the surrounding areas. Dinner is served Wednesday through Sunday.

Farther down at 674 Wyckoff Avenue, Taste of Cuba appeared before the Wyckoff Planning Board on March 11, 2026 requesting approval for the remodeling of the restaurant to accommodate sit-down service. The application was carried to the April 8th meeting at the applicant's request. A takeout counter transitioning to a dining room is the kind of change residents notice slowly and then all at once.

Above the tavern-and-BYO layer, the anchor holds. The Brick House at 179 Godwin Avenue has been a Bergen County steakhouse under chef-owner Aldo Cascio for fifty years, and the building dates back to 1851 as one of Bergen County's few examples of a Federal Greek Revival farmhouse. A centennial summer sits comfortably in a room that is older than the township itself.

Abma's July Calendar

Abma's Farm is a 28-acre working farm where visitors can shop fresh poultry, eggs, and locally grown produce sold in a 200-year-old barn, with an on-site petting zoo for children. That is the daytime version. The July calendar is doing something different: turning the farm into an after-hours venue for adults.

• July 9, Candle Making Workshop. The class begins at 6:30 PM. Guests are guided step by step through creating one custom candle and one room spray, choosing from a curated selection of seasonal summer scents including citrus, florals, and sun-soaked favorites. While the candle wax cools, a complimentary glass of wine and a personal charcuterie box are included.
• July 25, CornFest. A summer event dedicated to corn, with a friendly game of cornhole, live summer music, and a menu of smoky grilled street corn, sweet corn muffins, chilled corn bisque, corn succotash, buttery cornbread, and fresh popcorn. No tickets required.
• Herbal Skin Care Workshop with Shannon Mulligan-Mayernik. The owner of Mayernik Kitchen leads a workshop exploring gentle herbal remedies traditionally used for sun care, bug bites, dry skin, and everyday summer wellness, covering calendula, lavender, plantain, chamomile, and rose, with practical demonstrations of infused oils, herbal sprays, and salves.

The reason to note the workshops rather than only CornFest is that they answer the question residents actually ask each summer, which is not what to do on a Saturday but what to do on a Tuesday. Abma's is filling the weekday evenings that Franklin Avenue has never really filled.

The 81-Acre Walk Most Drivers Miss

The James A. McFaul Environmental Center is an 81-acre wildlife sanctuary with nature exhibits, seasonal activities like apple cidering and maple sugaring, and wooded walking trails that lead to a small pond dotted with lily pads, a fragrant herb garden, and flower gardens with blooming roses. A gazebo sits tucked in the forest. It is one of the few places in northwest Bergen County where a resident can walk into a real trail system without getting in a car and driving to Mahwah.

The reason to name it here rather than in a generic parks paragraph is timing. The centennial year has drawn regional attention to Wyckoff's civic side and away from its quiet quarters. The McFaul trails and the 200-year-old Abma's barn and the 1730 Zabriskie House, the oldest building in Wyckoff, which was built around 1730, are all versions of the same offer: places to walk through the story the centennial is telling, on a Tuesday morning when nobody else is there.

What Is Still on the Calendar

The public centennial arc is not finished. The October historic cemetery tour is the closing signature event, and it is the one most residents have not yet penciled in. It sits alongside the private summer additions in a way that makes the second half of the year feel unusually full for a town whose calendar is normally driven by school schedules and the Ridgewood downtown across the border.

Practical notes for the rest of July and August:

• Wyckoff Tavern's restaurant hours run Monday through Wednesday for lunch 11 AM to 5 PM and dinner 5 PM to 11 PM, Thursday through Saturday for lunch until 5 PM and dinner until midnight, and Sunday brunch 10 AM to 4 PM followed by dinner 4 PM to 10 PM. The late-week midnight close is unusual for downtown Wyckoff and worth knowing.
• The Brick House keeps a seven-day schedule, Monday through Thursday noon to 10 PM, Friday noon to 11 PM, Saturday 5 PM to 11 PM, and Sunday 1 PM to 9 PM.
• La Cambusa is dinner only, Wednesday through Sunday, and BYO. Plan the bottle before you leave the house.

The through-line, if you want one, is that the centennial has turned a scattered summer into a season with a spine. New tables on Franklin, a farm running Tuesday-night workshops, a wildlife sanctuary quietly holding down the western edge of town, and a cemetery tour waiting in October to close the year. A resident can string all of it together on foot or with a single short drive, which is not something Wyckoff has always allowed.

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