One of Teaneck's Oldest Homes Stands at its Busiest Corner
By Mildred Taylor
The Sunday Sun, September 1, 1957, p. 6
Under the shade of one of the oldest oak trees in Teaneck stands a brown shingled house that goes far back into the history of this community. The house and the tree which is estimated at between 175 and 200 years old are located at Cedar Lane and Palisade Avenue, one of the busiest corners in town. Also on the property stands the Teaneck Post Office.
Julius P. Richter, who has his plumbing business in part of the rambling house, has owned the property since 1921. It was there long before he came here as a boy in 1907. In the wing to the east live Mr. and Mrs. R. J. Abernethy. It is their love for flowers that makes the corner next to the postoffice a pretty sight at this season of the year. For many years they have planted the terrace with plants that make a gay spot there all summer long – verbena, Heliotrope, lemon and gold dwarf marigolds, Belgian clover, pink petunias geranium and salvia.
There are lilac bushes pruned low, in keeping with the height of the annual plants. The roots of the old lilac keep the soil of the terrace from washing. There is never a weed in that garden. When a tiny blade of grass appears, the Abernethys uproot it. It would seem they use tweezers.
Old timers do not know who built the house that has stood there since Teaneck was a farming community. It was there, a title search showed a hundred years before Mr. Richter’s parents arrived in Teaneck in 1907 and moved into a house built on stilts down on Front Street where they got all their water from the brook. Judging from the red sandstone foundation, the thick walls, the deep fireplaces and the hand hewn beams, the building at Cedar Lane and Palisade Avenue is really old. Before the brown shingles were put on, the house was covered with red clapboards.
Below what is today the plumbing shop is a room that was used as a kitchen by earlier tenants. There is a deep fireplace with a Dutch oven. It was customary for the Dutch farmers to spend much of the time in the kitchen. A narrow stairway led to the parlor above which was used only on special occasions, The family slept in the loft above which is lighted by dormer windows. The quarters to the east were probably added at a later date. Today the Abernethys live in that trim apartment which is all spic and span decorated in excellent taste.
All the back of the house in earlier times was a well covered by picturesque housing. You’d never guess the well is still there when you look up the double driveway between they house and the postoffice, but it is. A stone the size of a soft ball in the middle of the driveway is the only clue. Mr. Richter lifts the stone to let visitors look far down to the water of the well.
Among the long-time residents of Teaneck who are familiar with the old house are Charles Clausen, whose parents came here with William Walter Phelps shortly after the Civil War and Jimmy Limone, the genial citizen who still tends a truck farm across from the postoffice and sells his produce at a little stand. He has lived there for 50 years. Retired Lt. Jesson Witham of the Teaneck Police Dept. also recalls the old home.
Mrs. Gertrude Howe of 320 Hemlock Ter., Teaneck, lived in the apartment now occupied by the Abernethys. At that time she was Mrs. Kraus. She worked in the office of the Teaneck Tax Collector during the twenties and recalls how she and Mrs. Richter used to pick wild strawberries over on Frances Street. She also recalls the clop-clop of the milkman’s horses as they went up and down the cobble stones on Cedar Lane at 4 a.m. One morning she heard a terrible clatter and looked out to see the wagon limping on three wheels. The fourth wheel was careening down toward the railroad tracks. There was no bridge across them then.
Mr. Richter remembers the days when there was a grade crossing on Cedar Lane. There were frequent train accidents and victims were sometimes brought to the house for treatment.
“I remember once a freight train jumped the track,” he said. “The cars that broke open were loaded with sauerkraut, pig’s knuckles and corned beef. What a feast. Hardly anybody around bought coat. The kids would climb into coal cars, push the coal out with their feet and after the train had moved on go back and gather the coal up off the tracks. Horses used to get on the tracks, too. A lot of them got killed that way.
“The station was down at Cherry Lane – got its name because Phelps planted lots of fine Oxford cherry trees there.”
Mr. Clausen recalls that the station agent, George Barnes lived at one time or another in a house near the tracks which was recently torn down, on Cherry Lane and in another house just across from Jimmy Limone.
The Richter home at one time was a part of the Phelps Estate which included about half of present day Teaneck. In the early days Palisade Avenue was a farm road. Later it was called Heasley Avenue. The southern extension of the farm road ran through property owned by the Vandelindas which extended from the Hackensack River to Teaneck Road. The Vandelindas settled in what is now Teaneck when they arrived from Holland around the year 1700.
“Cedar Lane looked a lot different 50 years ago than it does now,” said Mr. Richter. “There used to be bridle paths all around this area. Phelps built them because his daughter, Marion, like to ride. There’d be four rows of trees and then a path about 15 feet wide, then another row of trees and another path. New Yorkers used to love to come out here and drink the water out of our well.”
Many of the meetings that resulted in the adoption by Teaneck of the council-manager form of government were held in the building, Mr. Richter says. Capt. John J. Wilkins, one of the original members of the Taxpayers League, had a real estate office there. League members felt a manager who could devote full time to government was needed. It was a close political fight, but the slate favoring the council-manager plan won with a great deal of help from Capt. Wilkins.
Mr. Richter, who went to the Main Street Grammar School in Bogota, to Hackensack High School and then to the Copper Union in New York to study engineering, has seen Teaneck grow from a population of little more than 800 to its present size of approximately 40,000.
