July 3, 2018 The Roots and Origin of the Hansen House Oakland, New Jersey 1938 – 1973 The Portobello Banquet Facility as a Time Capsule Summary and Conclusion The core of the Hansen House is believed to originally be a farmhouse built at or before 1861 and greatly expanded by Mrs. Florence Vernam in the early 1890s. The Case for Its Origins as a Simple Farmhouse 1. The original foundation is crude stone rubble typically deployed by farmers building their own farmhouses. 2. There is evidence of late 19th Century masonry in the basement of Portobello’s Banquet facility indicating a significant expansion of the building during that period. 3. A…
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Vernam Spring – Kanouse Spring Water Co
Vernam Spring – Kanouse Spring Water Co. ….another business giving employment to more than a dozen people was the Knouse Water Supply and Bottling Co. In 1912 Andrew Spear (Drew) as he was often called, leased his sawmill property to the Kanouse Spring Water Co. The old sawmill which was located off present day Long Hill Road had originally been built before the Civil War era by Henry I. Spear, Andrew’s great grandfather. The mill which was located approximately a quarter mile below the natural spring, known then as the Remington Vernam Spring, was situated in such a way that the water would run by gravity down the grade and…
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Oakland’s Stream House
The Vygeberg Farm Office Building (Oakland’s “Stream House”) A Brief History Built in 1902 as the office building for the dairy farm operations of Edward Day Page, a millionaire businessman whose Oakland estate at its height was variously described as either 600 or 700 acres in size. Page was a founding member of the Sons of the American Revolution. Three of his ancestors fought at Concord Bridge, and some two-dozen others served in the Revolution in state militias or in the Continental Army. Page served at various times as councilman and mayor (1909 – 1911) in Oakland, and was at the time of his death (Christmas Day, 1918) a member…
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Some History about Muller’s Farm
History of Muller’s Farm in Oakland Emilie Grootendorst Barry, Evanston, Illinois – for 61 years (March 19, 2018) Well, I am the youngest, and the last of the six grandchildren of Katie Pfeiffer and William Muller, who came to Oakland in the 1890’s. They were married in Manhattan in 1887, when both were 23. My grandmother had no premonition she was to leave her mother’s high-stooped brownstone at 502 West 43rd Street neighborhood on New York’s West Side to spend the rest of her life in Oakland, Bergen County, NJ! But someone put the bug in grandfather’s ear about the countryside in Oakland. And he acquired the property with the…
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Charles Kohler Residence
Charles Kohler Just south of Darlington the 235-acre estate and farm of the bankrupt Countess Seckendorff was bought by Charles Kohler in April 1909. He was a native of New Jersey, having been born in Newark in 1868. Kohler attended Princeton, and after marriage to Veronica Byrnes of New Rochelle, learned about the piano business from his wife’s brother. In 1896, he formed, with a partner, the Kohler and Campbell Piano Company in New York City. An original $6,000 investment was worth $4000,000 by 1904. He then formed a network of piano, autopiano, and musical instrument sales companies. Despite his active business life, Charles Kohler was able to become a…
