A historic gem shines again

IF FICTIONAL TIME travel entices you, you can get a reality-based dose of it by traveling on Cedar Road in Pompton Plains onto the driveway of the Martin Berry House.

“When you come off of Cedar Road, it’s 2025, but when you drive onto the property, it’s 1835,” says Martin Williams, curator of the Pequannock Historical Society, which has been working on rehabilitating one of the oldest homes in New Jersey.

Restoration of Martin Berry House, known as the quintessential representation of a Northern New Jersey Dutch farmstead, is almost finished, and historical society members are looking toward a September official opening date when the building will initially be open one Sunday per month to visitors. It will serve as home to the historical society (a surprisingly young, 10-year-old organization), a local history research center, and as a meeting place, event site and museum, says Catherine Winterfield, historical society secretary.

Earlier this year, the changes to the inside of the house, which was built around 1720, were unveiled at a Pathways To History Tour sponsored by the Morris County Historical Society. Another such tour is slated for Oct. 5, 2025.

Improvements and rehab continue and to date have included updating the electrical and HVAC systems, refinishing floors, installing a new roof, repairing chimneys and ensuring that the first level and cellar of the building are ADA compliant.

The committee members are also working with the township to create a historic landscape plan for the property.

As property owner, Pequannock Township and the township’s manager Adam Brewer worked closely with HMR Architects of Princeton, New Jersey after the property’s purchase in 2018. They made all final decisions regarding the project but provided historical society members the opportunity to provide input as to the decisions made.

Of course, those efforts were interrupted by the pandemic, but Winterfield says the interruption and slow-down of the project was both a blessing and a curse.

“If it weren’t for COVID, we might have rushed through things and not learned as much as we did about the structure of the house,” Winterfield says.

“While it was frustrating that it was taking us longer than we wanted it to, we really got a good look at how the house was built,” adds Williams. “If it had been rushed, we would not have had that option.” An example of this was the discovery of the precise location of one of the additions to the house.

Williams says he is pleased that each of the families’ additions and improvements to the house are preserved in the final rehab. “We were able to preserve a lot of the features of the house and the families’ contributions to it.”

PRESERVING HISTORY

One of the key goals, society members say, is to preserve what these original and subsequent owners had in mind for the house. 12 families have owned the property, and according to Paul Havemann, who chairs the historical society, each family was “mindful of the historical nature of the home.”

Original builders of the home were Martin and Maria (Roome) Berry who were married in 1720 and raised their nine children in the home. That year, they built the first two sections of the building and supported a 400-acre farm. The Berry family and Martin’s stepfather were instrumental in founding the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains as well.

As various new owners purchased the home, they made changes to it. In the early 1920s, the Meeks family sold a portion of the property to the State of New Jersey which is now Route 23; in the 1930s during the Depression, those same owners opened The Stone House Inn, a restaurant that they hoped would forestall foreclosure of the property. Those efforts failed, however, and a bank assumed ownership of the property in 1938.

Subsequent owners moved the kitchen from the basement to the first floor and opened a gift and antiques shop. They also sold off all but 2.75 acres to the state once again, land which now houses stores along Route 23.

It was the Bogert family—Charles and Eleanor—who dedicated themselves to preserving the home, saving it from demolition and ensuring the house was listed as a historic building. Eleanor Bogert sold the property to Pequannock Township in 2017, and the rest is, as they say, history.

In addition to the upcoming Pathways tour, other events planned by the Pequannock Historical Society at Martin Berry House are a Holiday Open House and the Dedication of the Local and Family History and Reference Center.

The local historic committee members are pleased with the results of the project.

“To me it is beyond expectations,” says Winterfield. “I think knowing what the home looked like before—it looks very much the same—but it looks polished. It still feels like a beautiful historic home.”

“A lot of care and attention was paid to the details,” Havemann says. “We were consulted at every step.” Still, future fundraising efforts should target updating the minimalist kitchen in the house, he says, thereby adding an attractive selling point for future local events.

BY DONNA DEL MORO