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"Historic treasures get new support from Washington - Tuesday, January 9, 2001"

By JOHN CICHOWSKI
Staff Writer, Bergen Record



The birthplace of telecommunications, a 19th century waterworks, a
Revolutionary battleground, and the art of a beloved Paterson sculptor are among six North Jersey landmarks and collections to gain last-minute White House recognition as national treasures.
The historical sites and collections were recognized last week by the White House Millennium Council's Save America's Treasures historic preservation program, after non-profit agencies in five North Jersey counties rushed applications to Washington to meet a Dec. 6 deadline. Nearly 700 other landmarks and collections throughout the country, including 15 in New Jersey, were designated last year.
"Our hope is that this honor will help us with our multimillion-dollar
rehabilitation," said Robert Griffin, chairman of the agency that runs New Bridge Landing in River Edge, where George Washington and his troops narrowly escaped the British in 1776.

The designation does not guarantee grants, but designees gain access to the program's logo and public relations resources, and are alerted to funding opportunities as they become available.
Officials in Washington said applications for $20 million in Congressional funding will be mailed soon to all 700 designees, including the New Bridge Landing Park Commission and five other recipients from North Jersey:

The studio collection of artist Gaetano Federici, who sculpted the likenesses of Paterson's great and near-great from the 1920s to the 1950s.

The Historic Speedwell factory in Morristown, in which Alfred Vail and Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1837.

The Van Buskirk Island pumping stations of the Hackensack Water Co. in Oradell, which provided the water that triggered North Jersey's growth during the Industrial Revolution.

The 350-year-old Apple Tree House in Jersey City, in which Washington discussed military strategy with the Marquis de Lafayette.
The Allamuchy freight house of the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway, a 1906 example of a railroad's impact on the development of a small Northeastern town.

The designations, made jointly by the Millennium Council, the National Park Service, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, are designed to call attention to crumbling landmarks, run on a non-profit basis, that embody either local or national significance.

The program's grants, however, usually favor nationally known sites, such as the Ellis Island Immigration Center and Liberty Island, both in Jersey City, which won designation last year.

"We've listed about 700 sites and collections, but theoretically, there could easily be 7,000," said Sarah LeVaun Graulty, who processes applications for Save America's Treasures.

Several New Jersey historians cited the unsalaried, volunteer nature of their work for applying at the deadline or failing to apply at all for Treasures status.

"Our staff is very limited and the application requires a fair amount of
work," said Griffin, the New Bridge Landing Commission chairman. "Much of our time is taken by the huge task of maintaining the property."

Officials of the commission, Historic Speedwell, and Passaic County Community College, which owns the Federici collection, said they applied only after learning of the impending deadline from The Record.
"We're delighted that we were named, but I think a lot more could be done by the historians to promote this program," said Maria Gillen, cultural affairs director of the college.

Others agreed.

"I wish I'd been informed in time," said Passaic County Historian Edward Smyk, citing the significance of Wayne's Dey Mansion, in which Washington also plotted wartime strategies.

Neither Morristown's Ford Mansion, Washington's headquarters during the winter of 1779-80, nor the Great Falls National Historic District in
Paterson, birthplace of the nation's first industrial city, applied for a
designation.

"I don't think we knew about this program," said Bob Grant, spokesman for Paterson Mayor Marty Barnes.

A spokeswoman for the New Jersey Historic Trust said it publicized the program on its Web site and alerted historical organizations throughout the state about the application process.

Each of the six recent designees cited serious financial need. Griffin said New Bridge Landing, a 20-acre site that includes the now-closed Steuben House Museum, requires $10 million in repairs. The commission has received more than $2 million in recent state and federal grants. Save America's Treasures funds are given only as matching grants to agencies that have received financial assistance, program officials said.

The Hackensack Water Works Conservancy already has received $1.3 million in state and county funds for an ambitious $15 million plan to convert Van Buskirk Island into an environmental park, museum, and centers for environmental research, education, and culture.

"Between New Bridge Landing and the waterworks," said conservancy president Maggie Harrer, "we can tell the history of two revolutions -- the war for independence and the Industrial Revolution."

The studio sculpture of Federici (1880-1964) will be displayed in the
refurbished Paterson Hamilton Club at 32 Church St. by midyear, said Gillen, of the community college.

"It takes time and money," she said, citing more than 200 pieces -- most of them molds -- in a collection that includes likenesses of two mayors, Christopher Columbus, a beloved local priest, a senator, and Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman who fought in the Revolution. "All these pieces must be cataloged."

The factory at Morristown's Historic Speedwell, built in the late 18th
century, is in grave need of renovation, said Sharon Reider, the museum's executive director.

"Telecommunications began here with the invention of the telegraph," noted Reider, "but we have been overlooked, mainly because this was the home of Alfred Vail, who never gained the national prominence of Samuel Morse. There also has been very little maintenance on these buildings over the years."

The Apple Tree House, the oldest example of Dutch colonial architecture in Jersey City, needs at least $1.5 million in renovations to fulfill the city's plan to convert it into a museum, said Robert Carvalho, executive director of the Jersey City Historical Foundation.
It is on Academy Street, near Journal Square. A huge pre-Revolution apple tree was replaced long ago by a much smaller tree.

"The property had been owned by a bank, but the city bought it for $500,000," said Carvalho. "It's so dilapidated, we're afraid it'll fall down if we don't fix it up."

The Allamuchy freight house would become a town museum to show how rail commerce affected small-town America, under a project of the New Jersey Midland Railroad Historical Society. Timothy Stuy, the group's president, said $60,000 was provided by the Warren County Cultural and Heritage Commission.

"The freight house was the central focus of the town and it's the only one left on the abandoned line," said Stuy, adding that Franklin Delano Roosevelt stopped there in 1944 to visit Lucy Mercer Rutherford.
Noting that the grant process was highly competitive, Joseph Wallis, chief of state, tribal, and local programs for the National Parks Service, said only 48 of 320 applicants were given funds last year.