In search of S.B. history

In search of S.B. history

Researchers busy inventorying town’s

historic sites

By MARILYN DUFF

Don’t be alarmed if you come across a stranger tilting at chimneys and roof structures in your South Brunswick neighborhood.

More than likely, it will be Damon Tvaryanas searching for clues to historic structures.

Tvaryanas (with a silent v) works for Hunter Research Inc., a Trenton historic resource consulting firm which is conducting a South Brunswick historic sites inventory. The project started in February and will continue until around July 2001.

"We’re primarily here in a professional capacity to gather together historical and archeological information about the township," then to digest it and return it to the township in a form they can use, company President Richard W. Hunter explained in a recent interview.

The firm was awarded a $61,000 contract in December and recently submitted its first progress report to the township’s Historic Preservation Ordinance Advisory Task Force, which is co-chaired by Glenn Davis and Dennis Farrelly.

The Task Force, as its name implies, is simultaneously developing a proposed historic preservation ordinance, which it hopes to present to the Planning Board this fall and have in place by the time the inventory is completed, Davis said.

The 12-member advisory body to the Township Council and Planning Board, which meets about twice a month, includes Township Manager Matt Watkins, Deputy Mayor Frank Gambatese, Planning Board Chairman Frank Antisell, township historian Ceil Leedom and residents from a cross section of the township.

"They’re very enthusiastic," Hunter said of the task force, making it a pleasure to work in the sprawling 40-square-mile township.

The research compilation involves gathering a variety of materials from various places — historic maps, court documents, manuscripts and just about anything that gives a hint of the early landscape, said Hunter, who has more than 20 years’ experience directing archaeological and historical studies in the northeast, including Hopewell, where he resides.

The level of historic information "has steadily risen over the years," he said, so "there’s a tremendous amount of information available." The "most critical place in terms of paper work" is the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office, part of the state Department of Environmental Protection Department in Trenton, which maintain files and maps.

Key maps include 1850 and 1861 wall maps of Middlesex County, the first by J.W. Otley and J. Keily and the latter by H. F. Walling. These mid-19th There is also a Middlesex County historic site inventory done in the late 1980s or 1970s, which includes South Brunswick.

Another important part of research gathering is talking to people, Hunter noted.

"The hardest thing is separating myth from true, accurate historical information. That takes a certain skill," he said, adding "You wind up with some quite curious stories.

While compiling a data base of historical information, Hunter’s firm expects to inventory several hundred structures, together with historic landscapes and scenic vistas and potential archaeological sites.

A fact-finding document

The inventory is a fact-finding document, which will describe "what resources we have," said Davis. Once it is complete and if the township decides to establish a Historic Preservation Commission, the data will be used to prioritize historic resources and decide how to protect them

Because of time constraints, Hunter said, "We’re not doing very much in the way of going into the houses." There is "a certain amount you can do from the road. If it is a difficult property that requires a lot of recording," the surveyor "would speak with the owner."

"You look at the overall form," he explained, the size, chimney placement, windows, doors, etc. The old maps and other historical documentation also help researchers sniff out significant historic structures.

"It’s quite possible to miss things if you’re not going in houses. That’s why interaction with homeowners is important," Hunter said.

As of late June, Hunter’s researchers had physically looked at less than a quarter of the potential historic sites. "We have a tremendous amount left to do," Hunter said, adding that he expects to complete the survey work in the fall.

His firm has not met with any resistance from local residents, he said, but added that "most people are not aware of what’s going on."

The field workers, including Tvaryanas, who serves as project director, and Nadine Sergejeff, a historical researcher, have been working in Monmouth Junction, which is a potential historic district, along with Kingston and possibly Dayton and Deans.

They will be working on "different fronts simultaneously," Hunter said.

Tvaryanas, a senior architectural historian, and Hunter "are the super-qualified people," he said. Various staff assistants are also involved with the project.

The township has relatively few 18th century buildings still standing, according to Hunter. Kingston is the earliest "nucleated" settlement because of Kings Highway, today’s Route 27 along the western edge of the township.

Another very early road along the eastern border was Lawrie’s Road, a large part of which forms today’s Route 535. Lawrie’s Road, along which Rhodes Hall grew up and which is named for a late 17th century governor, ran from Perth Amboy to Burlington through Cranbury, linking the colonial capitals of East and West Jersey. Georges Road (Route 130) was also an important early road.

"All the movement was north-south," Hunter said. "The evolution of travel has always had a very strong north-south strain to it because of wanting to get from "Perth Amboy to Burlington."

Because of this historical north-south movement, it was always difficult to establish east-west routes, he noted.

Two levels of work

"There’s sort of two levels of work going on," said Tvaryanas, 31, who has an undergraduate degree in fine arts with an emphasis on architectural history from New York University and a master’s degree in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. A resident of West Ampton near Mount Holly, he has been working in the field for approximately eight years and with Hunter Research for four and a half years.

"The first level is reconnaissance to identify potential resources," Tvaryanas explained, and "the second level is going back and documenting what the historical resources are. We have pretty much finished the reconnaissance level and are starting the intensive level."

As part of the first level, they drove every road in the township to get an idea of where potential resources are, and since their task includes identifying archaeological resources, they used old maps to identify where historic buildings existed. "A lot of those could be gone and could end up in the survey as potential archeological site," he said.

So far he has not encountered any problems, said Tvaryanas, who has been interested in historic buildings and objects since he was a child.

Phase one of his work is "conceptually difficult," he said, requiring a lot of detail and planning, while phase two is more labor intensive since it "requires a lot of filling out of forms and getting paper work completed."

South Brunswick has "a large number of buildings that have been reworked repeatedly over the years," he said, "but there are usually some little clues that stick out no matter how hard a building has been reworked."

In South Brunswick, he has found that "there are pockets of really strong areas of historic resources, especially in Kingston and Monmouth Junction … also important crossroads areas," like Dayton, Deans and Little Rocky Hill."

Little Rocky Hill, an early settlement along colonial Kings Highway, could end up being an archaeological district, he said, because, "while there are early buildings, most of what’s interesting is archaeological. Rhodes Hall and Fresh Ponds also are "largely archaeological in nature."

"The biggest surprise I had was the Deans Pond area," he said, a "remarkable little area," which includes a large tract of farmland and woodland, as well as the remains of a late 18th Century mill pond and old brick and stone arched supports for the 1830s Camden and Amboy railroad

Once the work is complete, there will be a single volume text document with maps and tables and a body of computerized information. The inventory will be tied into a data base and mapped.

"It’s stuff the township needs to know," said Hunter. "This information is of tremendous value to the local government."

The information will also be used to create a historic site element in the township’s master plan, according to Davis.

By the time the inventory is completed, Tvaryanas expects to have a couple hundred historic resources, including archeological sites, "two definitely and probably more."

"Kingston is by far the largest and most difficult and most historic of these communities," Hunter said, but it is also difficult to inventory because of its "long and complicated history."

A National Register of Historic Places nomination prepared by Constance Greiff of Rocky Hill for a 10-mile stretch of Kings Highway, which includes Route 27 through Kingston, has been helpful, Hunter said.

Getting sidetracked

The firm did get sidetracked preparing a preliminary report on South Brunswick’s possible inclusion in a Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area because of Revolutionary War activity in the township and a journal reference to a brief encampment of Washington’s Army at Longbridge (Monmouth Junction], en route to the Battle of Monmouth.

When the task force became aware of the Crossroads initiative, the township decided it wanted to be part of it, Davis said, and asked Hunter to accelerate his research on that particular subject.

On July 3, Gov. Whitman unveiled a driving guide and map to New Jersey’s Revolutionary War trail titled "The Crossroads of the American Revolution," and issued an executive order establishing a 225th Anniversary of the American Revolution Celebration Commission which will plan, promote and coordinate state-sponsored commemorative programs and activities honoring all pivotal events leading up to and including the anniversary of the Revolution’s end in 2008.

Hunter said, for the inventory, they have spent a lot of time working with maps and old aerial photographs from the early 1920s. "You’d be staggered at the change since then," he said.

Since South Brunswick is looking at creating a local historic designation level, the requirements would not be as stringent as those for the National Register of Historic Places, Tvaryanas said. It will be up to whatever body the township establishes to determine what those requirements will be up.

He estimated that only a "fairly small percentage" of the inventory sites would be eligible for the national register

South Brunswick currently has four historic districts on the National Register, Tvaryanas said.

The include the Delaware & Raritan Canal District, which was listed in 1973; the Kingston Mill Historic District, 1986; Kingston Village, including the Franklin Township section, 1990; and the Lake Carnegie Historic District, also 1990.

Only two individual properties are listed, Red Maple Farm (Gulick House) on Raymond Road between route 1 and 27, which was listed in 1979, and the Withington Estate (also known as Heathcote Farm) in Kingston, which was listed in 1984.

Other properties were nominated in the early 1980s and that information is useful in preparing the inventory, T said.

There are four criteria for evaluating whether a property might be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and the period of significance must have occurred more than 50 years ago.

The U.S. Department of Interior requires that "districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association, and A. are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or B. are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or C. that embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or D. that have yielded, or may be likely to yield information important to prehistory or history.

Hunter said the Longbridge Revolutionary War Encampment site in the Monmouth Junction area might meet criteria A. and D. They may do a field visit, although Hunter noted that the area is "pretty developed." Criteria D "is an interesting one because it is a "lot vaguer than the other three, he said. It is generally used for archeological sites, and if Longbridge is a real archeological site, it could meet that criteria, he said.

Structures associated with the Wetherill family and the Higgins family in the Kingston area might qualify under category B, he said, and the Wetherill-Mount House just outside of Dayton is a good example of early 19th century architecture, meeting requirements of category C.