(Open letter to members of the Rumson Planning Board)
As you enter Rumson, signs proudly declare “Rumson Settled 1665.” But, where is the evidence to support this? The house and property most significant and vital to the earliest settlement of Rumson is slated for demolition at the hands of its owners, Arthur and Leslie Parent. The Saltar-Morris-Hartshorne-Tredwell house, c. 1710, is the oldest house in Rumson and is of extraordinary importance to Rumson, Monmouth County, and the states of New Jersey and New York.
Richard Saltar Jr., Lewis Morris, of Passage Point, John Hartshorne and Seabury Tredwell are key people in its history. Because of its sheltered water access to the Navesink River, it was a Native American site of seasonal prehistoric occupation, dating back 4,000 years by the Lenni Lenape tribe. Christopher Almy, of Rhode Island — who was an original settler of Rumson — acquired land on this site in 1665. He ran a sloop from here to Rhode Island, carrying goods and people. How can the Borough of Rumson and its Planning Board allow the demolition of the site where Rumson’s history began?
In 1999, when this application came before the Planning Board, the Parents asked to demolish the house to build a five-lot subdivision. It was listed by Preservation New Jersey on its “Ten Most Endangered Sites of 2000.” Now, five years later, it is still about demolition, but now disgracefully it is about demolition by neglect. The home inspection report prepared for the Parents in 1999 stated, “Much of the structural condition is relatively good considering the age and construction method and materials used.”
During the past five years, the grass was seldom mowed, the doors to the kitchen and cellar left open for vandals, and the house and outbuildings left to rot. Now, the 18th century barn has sadly collapsed, and the Tredwell gardener’s cottage has multiple broken windows. Only after residents’ complaints of danger to public safety were the owners compelled recently to board up the windows.
In a cynical attempt to appear magnanimous, the applicant’s lawyer offered the house to any group who would move it to another site. However, their architect Robert Gorski contradicted this approach when he said the house would not survive the move because of its loss of integrity. And, how did it lose its integrity? Because there is a persistent active strategy to demolish by neglect so the owners can redevelop the property with five trophy mansions. Ironically, Mr. Parent was party to a resolution passed in 1988 when he was a member of the Planning Board, along with Mr. Gorski. He voted for the inclusion of the historic preservation element in the master plan, which says, “Sites of historical, archaeological, cultural, scenic or architectural significance should be identified, maintained and conserved.” The Tredwell house is designated as site No. 14 on the landmark preservation map, and by Rumson ordinance as “historically significant structure” that shall be maintained.
The benefits of the preservation of the Tredwell house far outweigh any negative criteria. How can the owner be rewarded with a demolition permit for persistent neglect? Courts have recognized that buildings with exceptional historical and architectural significance serve the public welfare. In regulating land, use the maximum possible enrichment of a particular landowner should not be a controlling purpose.
I urge the Planning Board to deny the request for a demolition permit, and I further urge other concerned residents to attend the next meeting of the Planning Board on Nov. 1 at borough hall. In recent years, we have seen so many tear downs in all our communities without adequate consideration of either the values represented or the possibility of preserving the destroyed properties for use in economically productive ways.
Are there feasible or alternative uses that should be considered for the Tredwell house? The Tredwell house — with its spectacular history as the site of the original settlement of Rumson — embodies precious features of our heritage, both above the ground and in the ground, which enhance the quality of life for all. It is too important to let it go.
Mary Lou Strong
Navesink section of Middletown