|
One of Jersey City's oldest and most historic houses is the well-known "Apple Tree House." It dates back to the Dutch settlement of Bergen Township , near present-day Bergen Avenue, and has been associated with the long-standing but unproved legend of General George Washington and Major General Marquis de Lafayette who reportedly met under the "apple tree" during the American Revolutionary War. The house was built on the Harman Van Wagenen Homestead. The property was specified in a deed signed by Peter Stuyvesant in 1658 with the local Lenape; located on the west bank of the Hudson River, the site extended from above Weehawken to the Kill van Kull and to Constable Hook (now in Bayonne). It was conveyed to Garet Garretson by English Governor Philip Carteret of New Jersey in 1688. Garretson changed his surname to Van Wagenen; it reflected the name of his hometown Wageningen in Holland and began the legacy of one of the first Dutch families who settled in the area. The family property passed to Hartman Van Wagenen and his son Jacob Van Wagenen (1819-1903); he was a member of the Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church on Bergen Avenue where he also served as a deacon. The original homestead grant was approximately 100 acres; however, the house now stands on a much smaller property measuring only 72 feet wide by 184 feet deep. There was an apple orchard and a cider press on the property. The Dutch Colonial house on the site dates back to the 1740s and the adjacent structure to the 1820s. The main two-story, eight-room building of field stone and brick has a gable roof of coursed and random ashlar and brick; it features a brick, three-bay front and a large attic; the wing to the left is a smaller two-story structure with an attic. During the Revolutionary War, the location of the house across the Hudson River from the Loyalist stronghold of New York presented an opportunity for its use as the headquarters of Lafayette. It was the largest and tallest building on the heights, overlooking the river and provided an ideal vantage point for military reconnaissance. The Van Wagenen-Cokelet family owned the property for 279 years until it was sold in April 1947 to Lawrence G. Quinn, a funeral director. The Quinn family owned the house for approximately forty years. During that time they restored the exterior and interior of the historic structure that included new heating and air conditioning systems; they also decorated it with authentic period reproductions of the 1770s. Architect Dicran Levon Gedickian described the house in 1975 when it was owned by the Quinn family: "The expert craftsmanship of the 18th century descendants of the original Dutch is obvious everywhere. This is outstanding in the cherry-wood floors with wide planks and homemade nails, in the majestic staircase and balustrade of the great front entrance hall and in the elegant ceiling scrollwork of all the rooms" (The Apple Tree House," Architecture New Jersey). In May 1944, the Jersey City Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution planted another apple tree to replace the original. Legend claims that Washington met Lafayette here on August 24,1779; they shared dinner under an apple tree in front of the house and discussed war strategy. The tree was felled during a storm on September 3, 1821, and cut up for souvenirs. A walking cane made from a branch of the tree with a band of gold and inscription was given to Lafayette in 1824 when he returned to the United States for July 4th celebrations. Lafayette, accompanied by New Jersey Governor Isaac H. Williamson, entered Jersey City in a carriage drawn by four horses and joined a parade to Five Corners, the center of the community. Here the Dominie John Cornelisen, pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church, presented Lafayette with the cane. It is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris and has the inscription, "Shaded the hero and his friend Washington in 1779; presented by the Corporation of Bergen in 1824." A mural of the 1824 ceremony at Five Corners is at the Hudson County National Bank's branch at Journal Square. As the legend of the Apple Tree House persisted, the house itself started to deteriorate from the 1950s with an uncertain future. Then its fate began to change after a long campaign to save the house. In 1994 when the Hudson County Board of Freeholders approved the purchase of the Apple Tree House for $450,00 with assistance from the Green Acres program and is now leased to Jersey City. It was placed on the national Save America's Treasures list and is awaiting completion of plans by the city for restoration of it as a museum and education center. In 2005 the firm of Holt Morgan Russell Architects of Princeton and the Jersey City Historic Preservation Office were able to crack the code on the legend surrounding the house. The unconfirmed legend was finally set aside and how it came about was uncovered. The legend, it is now believed, began with the writing of a history of Hudson County by Charles Winfield in 1874. His source was a story in the Newark Sentinel about Lafayette's 1824 return to America. The article reports that "the Rev. John Cornelison of the Reformed Dutch Church of Bergen 'presented Lafayette with the cane made from the apple tree which stood at the parsonage at Bergen' "(Gomez). Winfield accepted the information and apparently did not check about the location of the parsonage. There was another reference about the parsonage in the Washington-Lafayette story that Winfield might have checked. In 1857, Benjamin Taylor wrote "Annals of the Classis of Bergen, of the Reformed Dutch Church and the Churches under Its Care." The parsonage referred to was at the time at Bergen and Highland avenues. By 1874, the year of Winfield's publication, a new parsonage at the northwest corner of Academy Street and Bergen Avenue (now a supermarket) was constructed. According to John Gomez of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, "Winfield, who seemed to confuse the newer parsonage with the older one, resolved that the meal occurred behind the parsonage on the adjacent apple tree-lined Van Wagenen property." The legend of the Apple Tree House proved to be a historical fallacy, but it helped conserve the site of the house that may be of greater historical importance. The property mostly untouched from the time of the Bergen settlement of the Dutch holds archeological significance that remains to be investigated. References:
|
| By: Carmela Karnoutsos Project Administrator: Patrick Shalhoub |
 |
 |
