"Stone House" referred to a rock formation known as the stone house or great rock, supposedly once suitable as a shelter, just north of the present-day intersection of Bellevue Avenue and Newell Drive.

[13] Within a decade or so of the turn of the 18th century, settlers, possibly including Abraham Van Giesen, had begun to populate the area along Bellevue Avenue.

[12] By about 1750, two brothers, Garrabrant and Teunis Garrabrant, born in 1723 and 1726, respectively, to Cornelius and Jannetje (Pier) Gerbrandsen in Bergen (now Jersey City), owned sizeable tracts in the vicinity of Brookdale Park, Bellevue Avenue, and Broad Street.

[14] Circa 1730, Alexander Cockefair, born about 1696 in Bushwick, purchased a "plantation" roughly bounded by the Yantacaw Brook, and modern-day Broad Street and Watchung Avenue.

In 1873, on the eve of US mail delivery service, the community voted to change the name to Brookdale.

In 1968, the petrochemical engineering firm Lummus Company set up in northern Brookdale.

[23][24] The 2010 United States census counted 9,239 people, 3,445 households, and 2,580 families in the CDP.