When Tom and Avril Moore first saw Tusculum, the 18th-century fieldstone farmhouse on Cherry Hill Road in Princeton was on its way to being ruined.
By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
When Tom and Avril Moore first saw Tusculum, the 18th-century fieldstone farmhouse on Cherry Hill Road in Princeton was on its way to being ruined.
The house was built in 1773 by John Witherspoon — the sixth president of Princeton University and a signer of the Declaration of Independence — and had not been lived in for several years.
”It was unloved. It was really desolate. Tom fell madly in love with the house and he said, ‘I want to live here forever.’ I said, ‘You’re nuts,’” Ms. Moore said.
But nuts or not, the couple bought the house in 1996 and set about restoring it and bringing it into the 21st century. They had looked at 34 properties before settling on Tusculum, which sits at the end of a long driveway lined with trees.
With the help of architect T. Jeffrey Clarke, the Moores spent nearly three years on the project. They restored the yellow pine floors on the first floor. The flooring that could not be restored was replaced with pumpkin pine floors from the second floor and other boards from an old Maryland wharf of the same vintage.
The original portion of the house consists of a study that had been Rev. Witherspoon’s study and where he taught French to a young James Madison, a smaller room behind it, a dining room and a parlor/sitting room on the first floor. On the second floor, there is a large drawing room and two smaller rooms. There are nine fireplaces.
The Moores also built an addition that wraps around the original house and which accommodates a new kitchen, a family room, an entertaining space, five bedrooms, two offices, a powder room and four new bathrooms. There is a wine cellar and tasting room, with a 10th fireplace.
Now, Tusculum is set to be sold on Nov. 7 by a specialty real estate auction house. The minimum bid is $2.5 million. The house, which sits on 23 acres, had been offered for sale for six years with an asking price of $12 million.
Why is Tusculum being sold after the couple put so much effort into restoring and revitalizing it?
”It’s time for another family to fill the house with children and laughter and to bring stories of their own to the house. I don’t ever want to see it looking as lonely as when we first found it,” Ms. Moore said. The couple’s three children are grown and have left home.
The Moore family moved many times as Mr. Moore’s career in marketing and advertising dictated. When he accepted a job in New York City, the couple set a radius around the city where they would consider living. It came down to Greenwich, Conn., or Princeton.
The couple, who graduated from Princeton University in 1973, chose Princeton — fulfilling a dream that many Princeton alumni hold, which is to return to the college town to live.
The Moores looked at many properties, but what drew them to Tusculum was the sense of peace, history and beauty all wrapped up in one package, Ms. Moore recalled. The house sat in the middle of 83 acres, which has now been reduced to 23 acres. The rest is permanently preserved as open space.
Ms. Moore also was attracted to the challenge of bringing Tusculum back to life. She had restored a Victorian house that was built in 1871 when the family lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. She said she learned much about Victorian architecture and now, she had to learn about early American architecture.
One of the challenges of restoring a house is to choose the era to which it will be restored, Ms. Moore said. Houses are remodeled and updated over time, and one has to make choices. A house that was built in the 1700s or early 1800s could have been “updated” in the late 1800s to the Victorian era. Choosing an era was a dilemma.
On the exterior, Tusculum was restored to its roots as an 18th-century Georgian farmhouse. Inside, Ms. Moore took a room-by-room approach — the second floor drawing room has Greek Revival trim around the doors and windows, so she settled on decorating the room in the style of the 1830s, for example.
When Rev. Witherspoon lived at Tusculum — he was a Scottish Presbyterian minister as well as the college president — he planted apple trees and cherry trees. Along the entrance lane to the house, he planted elm trees. Over time, the trees that lined the driveway died and the Moores replaced them with new trees.
Whoever purchases Tusculum next month, Ms. Moore said, will become the 15th owner of the property since it was built in 1773. The house was built on 283 acres of land that had belonged to the Stockton family and was part of their large land holdings, she said.
The Stockton family never lived on the property, which they acquired in 1702. Some of the earliest structures on the land date to 1705. A farmhouse was built in the 1720s for a tenant farmer, but it burned down, Ms. Moore said.
Richard Stockton was among the group of prominent colonists who convinced Rev. Witherspoon to leave Scotland and take the presidency of The College of New Jersey, as Princeton University was then known. He arrived in Princeton in 1768 and served as the college’s president until 1794.
To induce Rev. Witherspoon to come to Princeton, the trustees offered to build a house for him. The house was eventually built in 1773 — to Rev. Witherspoon’s specifications — on land that had belonged to the Stockton family. He lived on campus in the President’s House, until he moved full time to Tusculum in 1779.
Rev. Witherspoon entertained Gen. George Washington and his wife, Martha, at Tusculum when the Continental Congress met at Nassau Hall in Princeton in 1783.
The property was put up for sheriff’s sale after his death in 1794 to pay debts, but his widow bought it back. She sold it to French immigrants. In 1811, a subsequent owner sold it to Richard Stockton. Although the Stockton family did not live at Tusculum, it stayed in their ownership for about 30 years.
Tusculum changed hands several times. Over the years, it was modified to suit each owner’s needs and to reflect the current architectural styles, such as a full front verandah during the Victorian era. Those details were removed by later owners.
Looking back, Ms. Moore said she enjoyed living at Tusculum and will miss the chance to entertain guests — in the house or in the restored stone barn, which was built by Commodore Robert Field Stockton in the late 1830s.
There was the joy of entertaining small crowds and big crowds alike, she said — whether it was a party for the families of the contractors who restored the house, a wine-tasting dinner for the Delaware and Raritan Greenway, or dinner with bluegrass music for the alumni of Tusculum College in Tennessee, which was named by students of Rev. Witherspoon.
”I feel a sense of history (in) that other people have walked in these rooms. The rooms seem to be filled with conversations that I can’t quite hear. There have been 14 owners and their guests, and they have each left behind the fragrance of their conversations,” Ms. Moore said.
The auction is being run by Concierge Auctions.For more information, visit www.conciergeauctions.com or call 1-888-966-4759.