Young couple find themselves at home running Bordentown funeral home.
By: Scott Morgan
BORDENTOWN CITY Doubt hits and with it comes questions piled as thick as the layers of flooring beneath your feet. Is it worth it? Was this idea just nuts?
Then there’s the history lining you up for a sucker punch. Screw it up and all those watchful eyes, all those suspicious gazes will sting you with a haymaker. And you’ll stay down long after the bell is rung.
But do it right and you shudder. Not with nerves and doubt, but with glee. Get it right and people look at you as an extension of their families because when something’s right, well, you just know it.
When the pacing ended for Robert and Stephanie Pecht last summer, the answer seemed so painfully obvious it wasn’t even worth asking about anymore. He had spent seven years looking for the perfect funeral home and …
Wait a minute. Perfect funeral home?
Oh yes. See Mr. Pecht is a 14-year veteran of funeral services. Most of the past seven years, he has been looking to move from being funeral director at someone else’s business, but my word, the prices of those things. There was one in Hopewell going for $900,000 plus renovations. Then there was the now-vacant state police barracks in East Windsor that would have been enough room for a funeral home, but it was selling for a zillion dollars, plus this problem, pointed out by Mrs. Pecht: "It had a jail in it for God’s sake."
Then came Bordentown. The old Hartmann Funeral Home on Crosswicks Street. Perfect for him as a place of business for two reasons (and we’ll get back to them in a second) and perfect for them for the house that came with it.
At $600,000, the place of business and the home with thick oak banisters and wide, broad-beam floorboards was a steal for them. Mrs. Pecht, in fact, regularly widens her eyes and says, "I just can’t believe it."
So they love the setup. But there is a minor catch or two.
First, there is renovation work. The foundation of the building, according to historic records, actually dates back to the Civil War, but the building itself was raised in 1893. Throughout its life, ostensibly always as a funeral home, the Federal-style structure has been a mainstay of city business. But inside, the 1950s took a small toll.
Buried under layers of linoleum and plywood and art deco retro furniture and enough green to make a Rockefeller blush is the classical house; the wood, the nooks, the passageways. In there somewhere is what the funeral parlor and the house looked like when it was built, but on top of it is what the 50s trend toward modernizing lent to the décor: green rugs, lamps made of patchwork glass.
But this is the second reason Mr. Pecht bought the place in August. There was the itch to be his own boss and the itch to renovate an admittedly stunning interior to its former glory. Mr. Pecht, now 36, spent many of his formative years as his father’s "cheap labor," helping him refurbish homes in Newark; and he grew to love the idea of renovating.
Looking around one of the many (many) rooms of what is now the Bordentown Home for Funerals on Monday, Mr. Pecht summed up why he wants to be here in Bordentown, regenerating a business that had gone unused for two years prior to his buying it. "What better way to become part of something, than to bring it back to what it originally was?" he said.
The place wasn’t neglected far from it, he says. Just changed half a decade ago to fit the times. It is just his perspective that the home and business needs a little TLC.
His other perspective: "You’ll either fall in love with it or run out pulling your hair."
Well, he fell in love with it, and so did 33-year-old Stephanie, who says the place is "exactly what (Robert) wants for a business and exactly what I want for a home."
Mr. Pecht says that the work on the business, including replacing the white wrought iron railings out front with a sleeker, more classically Federal-style black railing and refurbishing the floors and walls, should be done in about a year and a half. He’s already open for business (and has already held three funerals), but as he and Stephanie are the only ones doing the work, it will take a little time, he says.
Now for the second catch, although it is not so much a catch to the Pechts as it is a sense of awareness for what they have. They have what they both consider to be the perfect home, but both understand that is was the Hartmann family’s home for 72 years.
"There are quite a bit of people who felt something for this place," Mrs. Pecht said while sitting at a large wooden table in one of the building’s many (many) rooms Monday. There were 40-something people in the Hartmann family, she says, who lived in this place over the seven decades they owned and operated it. Such history is intimidating.
"There are all these eyes on you," she says, adding that she and her husband plan to stay in touch with the Hartmanns and continue that family’s tradition of being good neighbors.
"This was their home," she says. "We want to pick up right where they left off."
And if they can, the Pechts are certain they will become as much a part of the city as the Hartmanns were and for all the right reasons. In essence, that means taking care of Bordentown the way Bordentown already seems to be taking care of them.
"It’s a whole different New Jersey here," Mrs. Pecht says. "It’s like you’re walking into Mayberry."
She pauses. "When something is right … ."