Appellate court judges denied the request Friday afternoon for a continued hold on the demolition of the former home of tobacco heiress Doris Duke.
An order signed Judge Douglas Fasciale denied the motion — which sought to keep the stay in place until an appeal could be heard by the court — “for failure to demonstrate ‘a reasonable probability of ultimate success on the merits.’”
Following a Superior Court decision on March 4, Duke Farms began the demolition the next day, and then was stopped by a court order issued after midnight and delivered early Sunday morning, March 6.
Aerial photos taken by the opposition group on March 13 showed most of the demolition damage to the newer “Hollywood wing” of the house, and not its older core.
Friday’s ruling clears the way for demolition to resume.
David Brook, attorney for the group trying to stop the demolition, said his side would continue to seek an appeal of the October decision of the township Historic Preservation Commission to allow the demolition to proceed. That would take time, and Mr. Brook said he emailed Jeffrey LaRosa, the attorney for Duke Farms, to ask if Duke Farms would postpone further work pending an appeal. Mr. Brook said his side would agree to an expedited schedule on the matter.
The main incentive to accept the offer, Mr. Brook said, was that, if the opponents prevailed, it would demand the house be rebuilt at Duke Farms expense “stone by stone.”
Duke Farms had its right to demolish the former home — which has been closed since the 1994 and mothballed for at least 10 years— upheld March 4 when Judge Ciccone rejected the opposition group’s request for a township commission to rehear the application that allows the demolition of what the opponents claim is a historic structure within the 2,500-acre estate in northern Hillsborough.
Duke Farms applied in June for a demolition permit. After three hearings, the Historic Preservation Commission ruled, 6-1, in October to allow the process to apply for the permit to proceed. Duke Farms was granted the permit in February, but held off the final demolition until the court case was decided. The foundation has contracted with a company that has been “salvaging” items like mantels, fixtures and woodworking and selling them on the Internet.
Mr. Brook, representing the group DORIS, an acronym for Demolition Of Residence Is Senseless,
Duke Farms Foundation wants to raze the 65,000-square-foot building and open that part of the property to the public. Duke Farms maintains the residence doesn’t have a role in its mission of environmental sustainability and preservation.
Michael Catania, the executive director of Duke Farms, has said that Duke Farms intends to erect interpretive signs and “leave some vestiges of the building,” like bluestone terraces and the building’s stone walls that are both part of the foundation and near the house.
The roughly 50 acres around the house will be ultimately be opened to the public, he said, especially from a back entrance off the Raritan Borough side of the property.
Mr. LaRosa told the judge Feb. 26 that the house was not the Duke Mansion that owner James Buchannan Duke (Doris Duke’s father) had envisioned (a larger home was started elsewhere on the property, but was abandoned and its foundation is now a place to visit on the estate).
Mr. Duke had bought a Civil War-era farmhouse in 1893 and expanded and renovated it several times over the decades. Duke Farms’ historical expert Emily Cooperman testified that the overlapping and even contradictory work made the house an architectural “pastiche” with little significance.
