“I’ve become the mayor of New Street now,” Mr. Wernik, 92, said, referring to his current address and the crowd of acquaintances who continued to drop by long after he sold his family pharmacy and retired from politics. He is a little wistful about the days before World War II, when Metuchen was “a big field with a Main Street, just about.” (His family moved there from Brooklyn, in 1926, and his grandfather helped found the first synagogue.) But he is hopeful for a future that will soon include a Whole Foods. The supermarket is scheduled to open in October, just steps from his door, across from another complex under construction with 80 housing units.

Commonly described as a “doughnut hole” surrounded by Edison, N.J., Metuchen basks in its exceptionalism. It has been called the “brainy borough” ever since 1915, when a local weekly newspaper won a competition with a paper that backed Glen Ridge, N.J., for the title, each naming a prominent citizen every week until the Glen Ridge list was exhausted. That was long before a young resident named David Kotkin (later David Copperfield) entertained neighbors with magic tricks and before the poet John Ciardi translated Dante while living on Graham Avenue (he later moved to Middlesex Avenue).

But though Metuchen is a commuter town, with a rail station that accommodates 178,000 riders each month, its soul is on Main Street. The businesses, housed in time-roughened brick buildings, are small and unique. They include the Metuchen Savings Bank (established 1897), the Jewel Shop (established 1945) and a barbershop out of Norman Rockwell called Luigi’s.

Peter Cammarano, the current mayor, said the large infusion of retail a couple of blocks away from this district alarmed some business owners, but will bring stability. “We’re starting to see more foot traffic on Main Street,” he said. “We’re down to one vacancy; a couple of years ago, it was five or six.”