Blawenburg Historic District

Montgomery Twp, Somerset County, NJ

Home | Whats New | Site Index | Contact


James Van Zandt Mansion

Photo: James Van Zandt Mansion, circa 1860-1865, located on the Georgetown-Franklin Turnpike, Blawenburg Historic District. The District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. Photographed by User:Zeete (own work), 2021, [cc-4.0], via Wikimedia Commons, accessed November, 2021.



Situated in a rural section of Montgomery Township, the Village of Blawenburg is one of two surviving community centers that came into being in the first half of the 19th century; by 1873, it had stabilized with one church, one school, a blacksmith and wheelwright shop, general store, post office, 12 houses and a cemetery. The village core consists of a series of relatively stylish houses—Greek Revival and Italianate in detail*,dash;that were erected along one side of the Georgetown-Franklin Turnpike (begun 1816) during the period 1830-1870, following the earlier construction of a fashionable tavern house and a neighborhood church in Federal style on the opposite side of the road; the village was rounded out and brought to its present size during a second small wave of development, 1920-1939, with a final infill of vacant lots between 1940 and the present.

The Blawenburg District [†] encompasses the linear Village of Blawenburg including one farm field historically related to village life and portions of the two large farm tracts that flank its southern and western boundaries. The village matrix, composed of small building lots, lies along County Route 518, the former Georgetown‑Franklin Turnpike, between Mountain View Road and Great Road/County Route 601, the latter double-named road representing a crossroad dating back to the 1740s. There are a few structures, as well as the community cemetery, on the latter road. These are also considered part of the village. The early singling out of the two east corners of the intersection for tavern and store locations (1815‑1844) reserved the crossroads for future public and commercial use, and housing did not spill over to this side road. There are also a few sites along Mountain View Road.

The village's outer edges are defined by tracts of land surviving from two 18th century farms: the Nevius/Van Zandt farm to the west of the intersection, lying on both sides of the highway, and the homestead portion of the Covenhoven/Stout farm fronting on Mountain View Road. The village was carved out of the latter farm.

Blawenburg came into existence within a single decade—the 1830s—but the Covenhoven Family, settled 1753, was largely responsible for advancing its formation. In 1802, Catherine Covenhoven's husband, James Lake, first''sought permission for the neighborhood to have its own church building but was refused. Years later, in 1830, when permission was finally granted, Catherine, with her next husband John Stout, Esq., then provided the land from their homestead farm. Catherine's daughter and her husband, William M. Griggs, built the house, c. 1815, which became the tavern on a portion of the home farm they had obtained from her mother, and in 1832, they divided a portion of their farm into village lots, including one for the church parsonage. Grigg's sale of his roadside frontage in acre lots from the intersection to the parsonage tract triggered the rise of the village. His lots were bought largely by members of the well-to-do Voorhees, Whitenack, and Nevius families, who were much intertwined by marriage, and somewhat later by the Van Zandts. All these families already owned farms within the vicinity. On these lots they erected houses of some sophistication in terms of architectural merit, more in character with a town street than a country roadside. Inasmuch as the entranceway of the Judge Stryker House recalls a style of entrance used by the builder-architect Charles Steadman in his development of new streets in Princeton at just this time, there may well have been an intention on the part of these affluent families to emulate the comfortable gentility of this taste-minded town.' Since Steadman was personally known in the area, and at work on the Abraham Cruser House on Bedens Brook Road a short distance away in the 1830s, it seems a reasonable possibility that his Princeton structures were looked at for inspiration. Even the lesser houses built by young marrieds and widows aspired to some architectural presence despite smaller scale. Of all the structures of note, the Federal-style church and the Italian villa are the most outstanding for the sophistication they display in a rural setting.

Blawenburg is a small village—in essence, a streetscape—aligned on both sides of a county highway of colonial origins for a distance of about a half mile. It is in a rural setting that has evolved from the 18th century, being surrounded by open farm fields which formerly related to the houses within the district.

Historically, the community of Blawenburg spans over two centuries, its nucleus being found in the neighborliness that developed among families living side by side on farms first settled in the 1740s and 1750s. A study of the "founding" of the village and the quality of architectural design chosen from its origins reveals that this village differs from the typical 19th-century villages that evolved from early crossroads to a concentration of modest buildings and service industries. Blawenburg evolved by intent and design, with the few leading farm families of the area, affluent descendants of the original settlers, primarily responsible. Transportation, religion, and education were all factors used in the press for a community center, but at the heart of the matter may well have been a desire for prestige. One might even discern a little rivalry among peers, as this neighborhood watched other communities build.

From its development as a village a high level of architectural taste was expressed. The first building was a tavern; the next to come—the Reformed Church—paid for in advance by the community—exceeded it in architectural aspirations. The third building—the parsonage—took four years to construct, and additional mortgage money was required in order to complete it in all its called-for finery of details. These set the tone. Those that followed in rapid succession, even to the new district school house, employed elements of style within and without, with extensive copying from one another, and apparently other communities as well, to match the standard established.

In that Blawenburg history covers the first half century after the Dutch community abandoned its folkways and attempted to become mainstream America, the village's array of architectural styles in its matrix—1815-1870—becomes a showcase for local taste, a measure of the impact of the use of architecture as social statement even in rural areas.

Blawenburg is unusual, however, in that it developed in two stages; the second occurred between 1920-1940. The village had rested between stages but continued to be viable as a community, which it remains to this day. Its early 20th-century accretions merely met new housing needs of the native population, particularly employees of the newly established State Village for Epileptics (now the North Princeton Development Center) a mile's distance north on Route 601, and updated services to meet changing times. The later additions illustrate national popular taste in building styles of that era as adopted for use on streetside building lots. Brought to completion and maturity by this increment, the two periods have totally integrated to become a compact village. Blawenburg 1 s character remained basically unchanged until the 1960s. Up to that time, its economic basis was still agricultural, although some dairy operations were conducted on a larger scale. J. Percy Van Zandt's farm equipment and supplies center served a wide region. The village has adjusted to this change, too, with new residents as well as old, who never left, pleased with the old-time flavor of life in an historic community, enjoying the setting, the vistas, the church events, and continuing sense of neighborliness.

In the 18th century, Montgomery Township was a hinterland, composed of farms ranging from 200 to 300 acres, as a rule. The pioneer families were Lowlanders who had come chiefly from the New York City area, buying their homestead tracts from earlier land investors, many of whom were also Dutch. The present Princeton Township was then a part of the municipality; however, long before it was separated as part of Mercer County (1838) it had been settled by a population of English extraction. Despite the cultural influence of these neighbors to the south and like neighbors to the west on the other side of the Province (Keith's) Line in Hopewell Township, the character of Montgomery remained overwhelmingly "Dutch."

Settlers began to arrive as early as the second decade of the 18th century before roads existed. The entire southern portion of the township, some 6700 acres, was held by one family, the Van Homes, who had purchased it in 1705 and divided it into seven numbered tracts apportioned among themselves. It was the leasing of and eventual sale of portions of those tracts that led to the establishment of farms across the southern sector from Province Line to the Millstone River. Garret Van Home's tract was offered for sale in 1740, shortly after his death, but was already in occupancy according to the real estate advertisement. Peter Nevius bought into this tract. Between 1738 and 1740, Michael Blaw bought two tracts, totalling 500 acres, and John Blaw bought another 100 acres adjacent to him, out of another Van Home tract, south and east of Nevius' farm. The Blaw properties lay on both sides of the present-day Great Road. On September 11, 1743, the county road commissioners recorded their approval of a 4-rod road to begin in a road from Hopewell and end at "Blau's land." The following January 28, a road was approved to begin "at Michael Blau's Mill" thence continue over the mill dam and end in the road from Princeton to Trenton. The road from Hopewell had been opened in March 1723 by Hunterdon County commissioners and began "at ye division line of,East & West Jersey, at, or near, the division line of John & Abraham Van Home." Another roadlaying, approved October 1749, ran along the land of Peter Nevius to the land-,of John Blaw, Michael Blaw, and Frederick Blaw "joining to a pond or brook." The Blaws, as great landowners and local millers, gave their name to the neighborhood. Michael Blaw was buried on his home farm in 1751, his tombstone being the earliest in the cemetery now know as Blaw/Nevius burial ground.

In 1753, a 700-acre tract belonging to Abraham Van Home was put on the market and sold as three homestead farms. One of these—of 233 acres—was purchased by John Covenhoven and his wife Catherine Voorhees. Its northern boundary was Rock Brook (a northern branch of Beden's Brook) and its western boundary the Peter Nevius farm, later delineated by laying of County Route 601/Great Road. The other two farms were taken up by Joost Duryea (known today as "Washington Well Farm"), lying to the east of Covenhoven, and by John Van Voorhees (state-owned today) north of Rock Brook. These five families—Blaw, Nevius, Voorhees, Covenhoven, and Duryea—were chiefly responsible for the opening up and development of the area. The Village of Blawenburg was later carved out of the Covenhoven farm.

By 1760, the whole of Montgomery Township (then called the Western Precinct) was settled, and large farms well established. Indication of slave ownership in wills suggests the level of prosperity of the farmers. Theological struggles between residents and the first Dutch Reformed minister assigned to Somerset County, Theodorus Frelinghuysen, which had led to the formation of a dissident congregation, were over, and the reunited parties had agreed to build a new church on a lot provided at "Sourland" (Harlingen) in 1751. The "neighbors of Blawinburk," however, found this site too distant, and in 1760 requested a new road "to the Meeting House," though it was less than five miles away. This resulted in the opening up of present-day Burnt Hill Road across Duryea's, and Van Voorhees' land from the main thoroughfare, today's Route 518. Its intersection is about a quarter mile east of the village. Interestingly, this crossroad played no part in the siting of the future village, despite the fact that the first school house was placed at its corner. In fact, as later events show, the residents of Blawenburg found even this corner too far removed for their children.

That the name Blawenburg was in general use at this time is apparent from various records, such as the will of Peter Nevius, 1767, an advertisement for a stolen horse placed by David Covenhoven, Esq., son of John, the pioneer, in 1771, and an inquisition against Jacobus Voorhees of "Blowenborough," as a Loyalist, in 1780. One might even detect in their request for a road to the meeting house an implied complaint about the location chosen for the community's sole church. By the time of the Revolution, the highway that cut through the farms was known as a major artery, which offered an alternate route from New York to the Delaware River and to Philadelphia. It was along this highway that Washington led the Continental Army in June 1778 on his way from Valley Forge to Monmouth Court House. Blawenburg men, under the leadership of Joost Duryea's son, made up a battalion in the Continental Army.

The records indicate no community services at the crossroads until the end of the century, though in 1788, a tavern keeper requested a license to open an establishment at about halfway point,between the Rocky Hill Tavern and a tavern in Baptist Meeting House (Hopewell). He may actually have had in mind a site on Cherry Valley Road, where taverns were listed in the 1790s or perhaps at Stoutsburg further west on Route 518, at Province Line Road, where a tavern was opened c. 1800, as the signers of the licensee's petition represent residents of that vicinity.

A mounting sentiment for an identity of its own is first detected in 1802, when James Lake, a man whose family had first come to Montgomery in 1739, and who had married Susannah Covenhoven, the granddaughter of the pioneer, petitioned the Harlingen Church consistory for permission for Blawenburg residents to form their own congregation. He was turned down. The Harlingen Church was about to replace its old meeting house with a new building of Federal style and probably wanted to retain the financial support of all its members. It may also have enjoyed its role as sole Reformed Church in the township. The frustration of these residents was partly overcome by their decision in 1817 to hold prayer meetings in their homes, and this was followed a few years later by conducting Sunday School classes as well. The Rev. Peter Labagh, minister at Harlingen Church, had been one of the leaders in the new Sunday School movement in America within the church at large. Another seeming indication of community loyalty came with the deeding of thj^vBlaw/Nevius Cemetery by Blaw heirs "to all the people of Blawenburg" in 1814.

Another impetus to the creation of a community center for the neighborhood of Blawenburg came with the announcement that the colonial highway which intersected their farms was to become a turnpike. In 1816, the Georgetown (Lambertville) Franklin (Township) Turnpike Company was formed as part of the great movement for improved roads in early 19th-century America. Within a year, Susannah Lake, now a widow and heir to the original Covenhoven plantation, sold 100 acres adjacent to the crossroads to her daughter Catherine and son-in-law William M. Griggs. The invitation to open a tavern must have been irresistible. The Griggs House on the northeast corner of the intersection reflected their social status and more: it marked a shift from the conventional Dutch vernacular, squat and deep structures that typified this area from its origins to an English type, tall and narrow, of single depth, with wing tucked in back, and stylish in the new Federal mode. By the 1820s it was known as the Blawenburg Tavern, run by professional bonifaces. One such was Peter Hortman, whose name is known only because the Minutes of Township Committee meetings record their annual sessions held at his tavern. By 1833, Hortman had departed to operate the so-called Woods Tavern in Hillsborough and was succeeded by Amos Wyckoff. The Blawenburg Tavern, so identified, is illustrated on the map of Montgomery's segment of the turnpike drafted in 1829 by William Lytle, a sometime County Commissioner of Deeds.

During this same quarter century, Montgomery Township as a whole, being an affluent community, entered upon a fairly expansive building program, perhaps partly dictated by property damages inflicted by passing armies in the Revolutionary War, but also, it would appear, by a new American outlook thatxput them into the mainstream regarding architectural display as status symbol.

At the Blawenburg crossroads, where stood the 1740s farmhouse of original settler Peter Nevius, a new family—the Van Zandts—made their appearance, a family which would become a leading force in the community. Bernardus Van Zandt, related to Peter Nevius' son James by marriage, inherited the farm in 1811 on condition that he made monthly payments for it. Bernardus had grown up on a farm purchased by his father about 1760 just a short distance north of Blawenburg. Sometime after the Van Zandts took possession of the house extensive remodeling if not total replacement occurred, bringing the structure to almost mansion proportions, with two-story, 4-bay central block flanked on either side with two-story wings, if this representation of it on Lytle's 1829 map is accurate. Farther along the turnpike, to the east of the future village, the 1^-story Dutch dwelling of settler Joost Duryea was converted during this period to a two-story house and adorned with a Federal-style entrance and roof cornice.

By 1829, as registered on Lytle's map, the Blawenburg area had its own school house. This was located near the "Road to Harlingen" as previously noted. Between the school house and Van Zandt's dwelling only one other house is depicted, shown as 1-1/2 story. This probably represents the home of Susannah Covenhoven Lake, (now remarried to John Stout of Stoutsburg,) on the remaining 133 acres of her ancestral farm. The same site appears on the 1850 map of Somerset County as the dwelling house of her daughter Catherine Griggs.

In 1829, 54 long-time families of the neighborhood raised $2791 by subscription, and with money in hand—and a promise that they could easily increase it to $3,000—advanced upon the Harlingen consistory with another request for permission to build their own church. This time approval was granted, but the church was to be an adjunct of the mother consistory. Once again it was Susannah Covenhoven who took the lead in advancing a community focal point by offering an acre lot near the tavern for the edifice, accepting the right to a pew as payment. Construction began at once, under the overall supervision of Richard Brown, a hired local carpenter, with a team of paid artisans and laborers and a corps of volunteers who were reimbursed only for their expenses. Accounts kept by Martin Nevius for the year 1830 indicate the extent to which the congregation went to erect an edifice that would measure up to the best of the period in architectural terms. The church may have been modeled after the Hillsborough Reformed Church, erected 1828, as a replacement building for its meeting house of 1766, and this new church had been copied from the recently built Six-Mile-Run Reformed Church, which was also a replacement for their colonial structure. It was a common enough practice to borrow plans one from another, as primary records of churches and governmental bodies indicate. Although a small structure in original dimensions when compared with its probable model, it far surpassed in design what might be expected for a first church building paid out of pocket by a newly formed congregation. Not of Dutch vernacular meeting house form, it was in the traditional Wren-Gibbsian style to the degree that it had a gable-fronted entrance, a staged steeple, and classical facade. The building was completed in 1831.

The individuals dedicated to this task—signers of the petition, subscribers to the building fund, and volunteer construction team—then pushed in 1832 for entire independence, with right to form their own consistory, and it was granted. Among their names are found the descendants of the early settlers, names such as Voorhees, Nevius, Duryea, Van Zandt, Skillman, and Terhune, some of whom subsequently bought up the village lots. The roster of members in 1832 adds Widow Catharine Whitenack, William Cruser, and several members of the Stryker family.

The affluence of the community is again evidenced in its immediately assuming the costs of erecting a parsonage to the apparent requirements of its first minister, Herman Heermance, who refused a rental allowance, demanding a house and 10 acres. Turning down available building lots which they regarded as too far removed from the church, they turned to Susannah Stout's son-in-law William Griggs to purchase five acres opposite the church from his 100-acre farm. They proceeded to build during a four-year period a residence in the latest and still new Greek Revival mode, having to take out a second mortgage to complete it. Ironically, after its completion, Heermance accepted another church's call and departed.

In the same year as-the parsonage tract sale, 1832, Griggs offered for sale as building lots all of his road frontage on the south side of the turnpike, which ran from the parsonage lot to the intersection. The corner lot of \\ acres was bought by Cornelius C. Stryker in 1832, a man of considerable local stature, being a Township Committeeman and Commissioner of Deeds, as well as a justice during this period. The judge had also bought a village lot in Harlingen, but he disposed of this and proceeded to build in Blawenburg. His house in Greek Revival style, with special detailing at the entrance to set it apart from the conventional form, at first blush seemed an uncommon building for a village. Why he chose to live in a village is perhaps explained by the fact that he soon afterward established a store and also became postmaster.

John A. Voorhees, a church deacon and also a Township Committeeman, bought up a number of lots, apparently as an investment, as he sold them to others. Some years later, he purchased one with a house upon it, which he willed to his married daughter Sarah Q. Staats. His sister Sarah, along with her husband Matthew Perrine, also decided at a later date (1855) to move into the village and purchased the next lot with house after its original owner offered it for sale. The Whitenack brothers were the next most interested buyers at the time the lots were first offered. Thomas and Abraham obtained adjacent lots near the corner, the latter with the intention of being the village smith. Thomas built the most imposing house the village had yet seen, of two-room-deep, center-hall plan, its spacious interior in Greek Revival idiom, with two-room-deep lateral wing, a novelty at the time locally. It apparently was so costlVx.tQ construct that he took out three mortgages and subsequently went bankrupt. His property and another half acre he owned next to the house of his sister and her husband Cyrenus Voorhees were sold by the sheriff, Cyrenus acquiring the latter. Abraham Whitenack fared better. Having gained additional strips of land next to his lot, 'he operated his blacksmith shop and also wheelwright shop (unless he leased space), as both are indicated on the 1850 county map. Cyrenus Thompson Voorhees, who had helped build the church, bought an acre lot in 1843 outside the village core and adjacent to the east boundary line of Susannah Stout's farm from the next farm owner, Joost Duryea's descendant, at a considerably lower price than village lots, his intention being to erect his bridal house. He had just married Elizabeth Whitenack, the Widow Whitenack's daughter. Although isolated from the hub of activity, he had Susannah Stout herself as neighbor across the road. Additional members of the Voorhees family—two comfortably situated ladies on their own—later (1870) built a small, two-story house, room and hall plan, with rear wing, in the village. Despite its small scale, this house projects dignity with its Italianate trappings.

The Nevius Family, descended from the pioneer settler, had a number of farms in the Blawenburg area, but they too showed an interest in the village and its growth. Martin Nevius—whose father John M. had bought in the 1830s a large farm (originally Blaw's) on the Great Road and later built his residence upon it—obtained Thomas Whitenack's house at sheriff's sale, possibly as real estate investment, later sold it to his sister Sarah, a maiden lady, and then repurchased it. In 1867, he bought the two remaining unsold acres adjacent to this house on the east, holding them until 1870, when he sold off one acre to the Voorhees women mentioned above. At this date, he had come into possession of his father's homestead farm.

Barber and Howe in their Historical Collections (1844) described Blawenburg as having one store, 12. .dwellings, and a church. This assessment of the village bounds is of interest in that there were not yet 12 houses in the matrix and therefore the count included those on its fringes, the homes of Cyrenus Voorhees, Susannah Stout, and Bernardus Van Zandt, as well as others on Great Road/601. The momentum of village formation was in full swing in the decade of the 1840s. The church added horse and carriage sheds for the accommodation of its worshippers. In the previous decade, another road had been opened from Great Road south of the village across the farms of Griggs and Stout for a shorter route to the school house for some children. In 1849, the parents and guardians of the Blawenburg School District met "to take into consideration the expediency and necessity of erecting a new and suitable building to be occupied as a schoolroom and for other lawful and useful purposes," and 11 attendees pledged $150 "to purchase or lease land and build." Four years later, a 2/10th-acre lot next to the church—and therefore in the village—was acquired from the estate of Susannah Stout in accordance with her will for this purpose. The school building erected 1853, is still another manifestation of the scale on which these villagers built. In comparison with the typical one-room rural school, examples of which are at Griggstown, Franklin Township (1847) and in Montgomery Township (Bedensville, 1853; Harlingen, same period), this is a two-story brick structure, with the newly faddish board and batten exterior siding applied to a projecting entry pavilion attached at gable front. It is reminiscent of the academies, often of brick, such as the one at Basking Ridge, which proliferated in the early decades of the century. It might also be compared more pointedly with the new school house built in 1847 at Rocky Hill, also two-storied and gable-fronted. (Rocky Hill, about three miles east on the turnpike, was a rising mill community.)

At the same time that the villagers were pressing for a "suitable" school house building, the.Turnpike Company was forced to close down because of financial difficulties. The tavern also had closed by 1850, but in fact it may have closed some years earlier, since it is not mentioned by Barber and Howe. It then reverted to a private residence for a member of the Griggs family. The village was still on a course of expansion, and far from being discouraged when another Reformed Church edifice was built at Rocky Hill in Gothic Revival style in the 1850s, to which some of the congregation transferred, it enlarged its own house of worship by another 14 feet in 1860 and made additional improvements such as installation of a furnace in the cellar and the construction of a privy. About that time (1859) John Van Zandt decided to formalize the use by Blawenburg neighbors of the family's burying ground on his father's farm and donated land adjacent to it for the purpose. After this enlargement, it was enclosed with "substantial fencing." Further gifts of land were made by later generations of Van Zandts in 1873, 1910, and 1984.

The original Van Zandt farm lay on both sides of Rock Brook. Bernardus was succeeded in ownership by his son John in 1850. It is imagined that after John and his wife took possession the house was given its Greek Revival facelift. John's son James at about this time came into possession of the portion of the farm north of the brook, which in 1850 had a house upon it. During 1860-1865, the Civil War years, James replaced this dwelling with his own—a picturesque villa in the Italianate style, sited in the dell by the brook and approached by a tree-lined lane with a prospect of nature. It would seem he had imbibed the dictates of Andrew Jackson Downing, though perhaps learned by some indirect means. There is no question, though, that James Van Zandt fully realized that he was building in the grand Victorian manner, and his contemporary, the county historian James Snell, recorded that his estate was held in high regard locally.

During this period of village development, which was paralleled at Harlingen and Rocky Hill, the remainder of the township continued to concentrate on farming. There were surprisingly few mills, and no industry except at Rocky Hill. James Van Zandt was also described by Snell as a leading agriculturist, committed to adva-nced technology, including the laying of underground drains in his fields. The male residents of the village, too, were engaged in farming. Since 1853, the 49-acre field lying behind the village lots had been attached to the corner house property through a purchase made by Judge Stryker from the Grigg's heirs, and was included in subsequent sales of the residence itself. Even the frenetic period of railroad building in the 1870s, when two companies competed to lay their lines across the township on parallel routes, wrought no noticeable changes. The Bound Brook and Delaware Company (Reading; Conrail) won out over the Mercer and Somerset Line (Pennsylvania) and completed its roadwork in time for the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. There were a number of stops in Montgomery, one a short distance northwest of the village given the name Skillman after landowners on whose farm it was located. The station consisted of no more than a vernacular wood structure and a passenger shed, now gone, in contrast to the handsome masonry buildings under mansard roof (Second Empire Style) erected at Hopewell and Pennington, from which it can be inferred that there was not much of an expectation of passenger travel. Farmers, however, saw it as means of extending their produce markets, particularly peaches, which then became a popular crop. It also brought about an eventual shift to dairy farming, with, early milk trains carrying this product daily to New York and Philadelphia. It was on these same milk trains that the community youth who sought a high school education traveled to Bound Brook.

Village growth ceased after 1875 for a quarter century. Historian Snell in 1881 described it as still a small village with but one store, then kept by John N. Van Zandt, who was also postmaster. During this Late Victorian era, some attention was given to landscaping, especially of the church property. Photographs, c. 1900, show other properties with wood fences as street architecture. Some house improvements were made, notably^the doubling of the size of the parsonage, and the addition of a verandah. A number of other houses also spouted piazzas. Iron grillwork inserts appeared in exterior doors of the tavern house and the side entry to wing of the Bernardus Van Zandt house. Sometime after 1907, the cast-iron fence with boxed gateposts was put up alongside the Abraham Whitenack house.

† Ursula C. Brecknell, Historic Home Services, Blawensburg Historic District, nomination document, 1984 & 1986, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C., accessed November, 2021.

Street Names
Route 601 • Soute 518

Models / Floorplans: Braddock


Home | Whats New | Site Index | Contact
Privacy | Disclaimer

Copyright © 1997-2024, The Gombach Group