Walking Downtown Morristown: The Overhead Sidewalks Explained

If you have ever walked Main Street in downtown Morristown and felt like the buildings were doing something strange overhead, you were right. Morristown's Skymart — the elevated second-story sidewalks running above the storefronts — is genuinely unique. No other downtown in the country has anything quite like it.

Where it came from

The overhead walkways went up in the 1960s as an urban renewal project, an attempt to double downtown's retail frontage by putting a second street in the air. The idea was ambitious and, for a while, it worked exactly as intended: shops on two levels, connected by bridges and stairs, sheltered from the weather.

What it is now

Downtown has been through the same cycles every American small-town main street went through, and the Skymart went with it. What has happened over the last decade is more interesting than the decline that preceded it. Storefronts have filled back in. There are places to eat that people drive in for. The walkways are being treated as the asset they always were rather than an awkward inheritance.

How to walk it

Start at the west end and take the ground level east, then come back on the upper deck. It takes about forty minutes if you do not stop, and about three hours if you do — which is the point. The view from the upper level down onto Main Street is the photograph everyone takes and nobody regrets.

Make a morning of it

Coffee first, the walk second, lunch downtown third. Park once and leave the car. Downtown Morristown is small enough that walking it is faster than driving it, and it is the only way to actually see the thing that makes it unusual.