Fall 2003 HISTORIC IN THIS Preservation ISSUE: BULLETIN Spring Conference Update ......9 New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection • Natural & Historic Resources Historic Preservation Office Rehabilitation Tax CreditWorkshop........................10 We Are Back! After a brief hiatus the Department of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office is pleased to provide the Fall Issue of the Historic New Jersey and National Register Of Preservation Bulletin. As many of our constituents are aware the bulletin has Historic Places ........................11 been published quarterly and distributed statewide since July of 1992. For the foreseeable future the Historic Preservation Office has elected to web publish A century of the bulletin three times a year. All future issues of the bulletin will reside at Stewardship ..............................16 www.state.nj.us/dep/hpo or you may call (609) 984-0543 for a copy. Mission The Department of Environmental Protection, Historic Preservation Office is committed to enhancing the Centuries quality of life for the residents of New Jersey through preservation of Historic and appreciation of our collective past. 2 Our mission is to assist the residents Preservation in of New Jersey in identifying, preserving, protecting and sustaining our historic and archaeological resources through implementation of Connecticut Farms the state's historic preservation Presbyterian Church, EW program. HABS N We provide assistance through our annual conference, consultation with JERSEY professionals, training workshops, co- sponsorship of history and historic A CHRONOLOGY OF SOME preservation related activities, the Historic Preservation Bulletin and SIGNIFICANT EVENTS other free publications. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of New Jersey’s Division of Parks and Forestry, which began with the purchase of a historic James E . McGreevey building, it is worth taking a look back at how Governor historic preservation has come to play an Bradley M. Campbell Commissioner important role in New Jersey. Marc A. Matsil It is a long story. Assistant Commissioner Department of Environmental By Robert W. Craig Protection A Principal Historic Preservation Specialist The appreciation of old and historic buildings in New Jersey is not a new phenomenon. Indeed as the following chronology shows, the movement for historic preservation has been gathering steady momentum in New Jersey for the past two hundred years. n the nineteenth century, also, perhaps, when preservation historic preservation was not began to be understood as an Ithe specialized field that it is environmental, not just a cultural, today, but interest in old buildings movement. for their associations with people That sense was further and events of the American strengthened on the Federal level Revolution or the colonial period in the 1930s when historic was generally a part of many preservation activities were p e o p l e ’s interest in the past. centralized in the National Park Indeed, William A. Whitehead, S e r v i c e . Congress created the who was one of the founders of the n a t i o n ’s first “national historical New Jersey Historical Society, was park” at Morristown in 1933. The among the first to give historic Historic American Buildings buildings their due in his early Survey (HABS) was also founded studies of Perth Amboy in the that year, and many historic 1830s. William Whitehead’s 1832 sketch ofbuildings in New Jersey would be As the nineteenth century Perth Amboy City Hall as found HABS recorded during the advanced, historic preservation in Contributions to the decade. benefited both directly and History of Perth Amboy (1856) Like many other things in indirectly from the emergence of civilian life, historic preservation other parts of New Jersey’s “history activities were set aside during community.” By the Centennial of American independence World War II, and built up slowly during the return to in 1876, avocational local historians had emerged in almost postwar normalcy. By the 1960s, however, themes in every community. Their work was summarized in the series American life were having a major impact on the built of County histories that were brought out during the decade environment and causing severe losses of historic buildings, following the Centennial. At about the same time, the first including the decay of cities, the consequent Urban Renewal county-wide historical societies began to be formed. Of still and public housing programs, the mushrooming of suburbs further importance, hereditary societies such as the and the Interstate Highway Program, and a Federal program Daughters of the American Revolution began to be to construct reservoirs. These factors led to the passage of established that would be organized on the basis of chapters the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which that would acquire historic buildings and save them for their established the National Register of Historic Places as the headquarters. centerpiece of the federal historic preservation program , and The State of New Jersey was brought formally into the for the first time explicitly made it national policy to protect historic preservation movement in 1903 with its purchase of historic places that were of local significance. the Indian King Tavern in Haddonfield, the building where New Jersey renewed its commitment to historic the New Jersey legislature sat in 1777, when it declared that preservation by creating the New Jersey Historic Trust in New Jersey would be a state, not a British colony, and where 1967 and by establishing the New Jersey Register of Historic it adopted the great seal of New Jersey.To manage its new Places in 1970. During the Earth Day celebration that was acquisition, the governor appointed an advisory board, a step held for the first time that year, New Jersey also created the that was taken with each of the more than a dozen historic Department of Environmental Protection, bringing with it buildings that New Jersey bought during the next three the Division of Parks and Forestry that included what would decades. come (by 1992) to be called the Historic Preservation Office. The widespread appeal of our built legacy gained another Throughout the evolution of the historic preservation major boost in the 1920s when the automobile first became movement its goals have remained constant: to encourage the dominant mode of transportation. The emergence of through both public policy and private action the appropriate state and county highway systems made many rural historic management of our built environment so that its important places accessible to city dwellers for the first time. In the elements are preserved for tomorrow. There is much to be 1930s, New Jersey placed its first roadside historical markers proud of in our pursuit of historic preservation, but there is to inform motorists about what they were seeing. This was also much work left to be done. 2 1 8 0 2 : Nassau Hall at the Over time its collections would 1855: A faction within the College of New Jersey in have a major impact on New congregation of the Old Tennent Princeton was gutted by fire. Jersey’s ability to document the Church desired to tear down the Afterward, the trustees decided history of its many historic places. church and construct a new not to demolish and start over, building. 1850: Benson Lossing in his but instead to rebuild within the Field Book of the American 1856: Whitehead published existing walls. When another R e v o l u t i o n noted that the old Contributions to the Early History disastrous fire again gutted the parsonage of William Tennent at of Perth Amboy, a remarkable building in 1855, the trustees the Monmouth battlefield site departure from typical American again made the same decision. was being used by its then owner, historical writing of the Thus this important historic William T. Sutphen, as p e r i o d . This book contained building has kept its original a “depository of grain reproductions of Whitehead’s 1750s outer walls intact. and agricultural implements.” 1832 sketches of Perth Amboy’s 1 8 2 7 : William Adee Lossing declared that the historic buildings. Whitehead, who would be among “careless neglect which permits a 1 8 5 9 : The Burlington the first to express a sensitivity to mansion so hallowed by religion County Lyceum of History and historic buildings and a desire to and patriotic events to fall into Natural Science was organized. preserve them and their ruin is actual desecration.” Among its standing committees likenesses, carefully drew a 1853: The state legislature were those on “History and realistic image of the oldest stone adopted a statewide mechanic Antiquities” and “Numismatics.” in St. Peter’s churchyard at Perth lien law, calling on county clerks The Lyceum became an early Amboy. His drawing is evidence to record and file building e ffort in the collection of that he sought in that pre- contracts and claims for unpaid materials related to Burlington photography era, not merely to monies on construction projects. County history and archeology. record the text on the stone, but In time, the records gathered also to capture what the stone 1865: New Jersey placed a under this law would hold the looked like and to preserve a monument honoring John Hart, a promise – still largely unrealized– record of it. signer of the Declaration of to help document the Independence, in the Baptist 1 8 2 8 : To mark the 50th construction of tens of thousands cemetery in Hopewell, the first anniversary of the Battle of of New Jersey buildings. time the State so honored a Monmouth, a re-enactment was 1 8 5 4: A large-scale historic figure. staged in front of approximately re-enactment of the Battle of one thousand spectators. It was Monmouth, to be carried out by the earliest known effort to re- New Jersey militia personnel, enact the battle, and it was was planned to coincide with the witnessed by some who had battle’s 76th anniversary, but was fought in it, fifty years before.