Summer with the merchant class at the Strauss Mansion

When summer finally gets its grip on New Jersey, the idea of whiling away a warm afternoon on the expansive porch of a rambling shoreside Victorian home starts to sound pretty good.

That was the thought that came to mind a few weeks ago, during the Weekend in Old Monmouth when I found my way up a steep hill to the Strauss Mansion, home of the Atlantic Highlands Historical Society. I'm a sucker for Queen Anne-style Victorian homes, and this one is the only mansion of its kind in Monmouth County that's open to the public. The closer I got, the more I could see the wear and tear on the house, but its pleasantly jumbled arrangement of turrets and gables drew me up onto the broad wrap-around porch and inside. The prospect of walking into one of these homes brings out the little kid in me: how awesome would it be to play hide and seek there?

I was just as awed when I got inside as I was when I saw the house on the drive up. Welcoming me into the expansive entry hall, a Historical Society member shared a brief history of the home, which was just one of several "cottages" built in the neighborhood by prominent New Yorkers seeking a respite from steamy Manhattan summers. Built in 1893 for the family of importer and merchant Adolph Strauss, the 21-room mansion was designed by Solomon Cohen and built by Adolph Hutera. Strauss himself would stay in the home only on the weekends, returning to the city by ferry during the week for work while his wife Jeannette and seven children would remain in Atlantic Highlands. They were part of a Monmouth County summer enclave known to some as the Jewish Newport on the Jersey Shore, with their specific group known as the "49ers" after their 49th Street neighborhood in New York. Other homes in the neighborhood of similar vintage are still well maintained, and a nice drive around Prospect Circle will give you a good idea of the community where the Strausses relaxed during the warmer months.

Following Mr. Strauss' death in 1905, the house was sold, eventually becoming a rooming house in the 1960s. By 1980 conditions in the building had become so dire that the town condemned it for code violations, leading the Historical Society to wage a campaign to raise funds to purchase and save it. The house by that point was a shadow of its former self: asbestos shingles covered the original cedar shakes on the exterior, the roof was in serious need of repair, wall-to-wall carpet covered its floors.

Some of the original flooring. Wow!

The house's current stewards are candid about the limitations of their preservation work to date, and as you walk through the rooms on the first and second floor the need for new plaster work and paint are evident. That said, the potential is enormous. You can't help but be impressed by the craftsmanship of the Victorian-era builders, hidden for many years. The hardwood floors are laid in intricate patterns not seen in homes built these days, and the original stained glass has been returned to its rightful place after having been sold by a previous owner.

Much of the house is curated to reflect the Strauss era of ownership, with beautiful furnishings and clothes representing the 1890s and early 1900s, but a good portion of the second floor is dedicated to local history. Everything from Sandy Hook's lifesaving history to 19th century tools and hardware to the old 20th century White Crystal diner is represented in the Historical Society's varied collection. They've also assembled an impressive reference library and archive that's open for those interested in researching aspects of the town's history (yearbooks and maps are always fun to peruse!).

And for those like me who'd love to while away a summer evening on the porch, the Historical Society hosts a series of concerts, suppers and other gatherings. With such an amazing asset to help them raise restoration funds, they're taking a creative - and fun - approach to bring people to the house.

Back to shul on Garton Road: vestiges of South Jersey's Jewish agricultural past

Drive around rural Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties, and you'll be struck with the number of small yet vibrant churches you'll pass on the road. One I saw on a recent visit actually had "garden angels" in its front yard: scarecrows of a sort that were dressed in pretty, almost angelic garb.

If you drive slowly enough down one particular two-lane road in Deerfield Township, you'll see another small house of worship. This tiny white box of a sanctuary is different from the others: instead of a cross, its simple facade is adorned with a blue Mogen David, or Star of David. Its official name is Beth Israel, but it's better known as the Garton Road Shul.

I first heard about the shul during a search for information on several Jewish agricultural communities that had been settled in the region in the early 1880s. Prompted by the pogroms of the time, Russian Jews fled Europe for America to avoid persecution and possible death. In a situation that's still often experienced by immigrants today, many of the refugees were educated professionals but arrived to find themselves relegated to sub-par living conditions and jobs far below their capabilities. Some took up the call to return to the soil and moved to rural areas to become farmers, aided by charitable organizations like the Alliance Israelite Universelle. (We've seen similar back-to-basics approaches taken, for different reasons, in communities like Roosevelt and Fellowship Farm.)

Unlike many similar colonies in other parts of the United States, the South Jersey Jewish farming collectives met with a degree of success. Decent soil and rail access to Philadelphia and New York meant the farmers could easily get their products to market while attracting funding and visits from benefactors from the cities. Urban "pleasurenikers" flocked to the farms during the summer to escape city heat, boarding at the farms and bringing additional income to the settlers.

The names of these once-flourishing colonies still dot maps of the region today - Alliance, Brotmanville, Norma, Zion, Mizpah, Rosenhayn - though the villages themselves have become more secular in nature, if they still exist at all. I drove through Norma to find it's pretty much a cluster of homes and a post office, and I suspect that I passed through Brotmanville and Rosenhayn though I didn't notice any real signs of towns.

If the communities are hard to locate and generally mentioned in history books as a collective group, Garton Road is both the easiest and most difficult to find. The road itself is shown on maps, but there's very little written about the colony that shared its name. Fortunately, the Cumberland County Cultural and Heritage Commission has posted a small sign at the location, with a link to more information. Between that and a few other sources, the story started to come together.

What I discovered was this: a handful of immigrant Jewish men settled on 20 acres along the road in 1888, naming their community Garton Road for local lumber merchant Henry Garton. After clearing sites for small houses and a farm, the men sent for their families, and together the community learned how to grow vegetables like corn, strawberries and beans. One of the defining characteristics of the group was their devotion to agriculture, continuing to work the farm when many in the neighboring communities turned to other ways of making a living.

Religion, of course, was an important factor of life at Garton Road, and the devout Orthodox residents walked to the Rosenhayn synagogue to attend sabbath and holiday services. The arrangement lasted only a few years; older members found the three mile trek taxing, leading the group to form its own congregation in 1890.

According to the Jewish Federation of Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem Counties, Garton Road's Beth Israel congregation met in a member's home as they saved funds to build a shul of their own. The owner of New York's Yiddish Theatre loaned them the rest of the necessary money and the building was erected. Still, though, the congregation had no rabbi of its own, counting on the wisdom of some of its more learned members for guidance.

When I stopped by to see the shul, I was awed by the fact that an entire community of devout worshipers could make do with such a small synagogue. It's hard to believe there's a balcony in there, where women attended services hidden from view by a curtain, per the Orthodox tradition. As many as 20 children at a time crowded into the building's entryway for religious instruction, and attendance swelled when the pleasurenikers stayed for the summer. Somehow, more than 150 congregants were able to worship in the structure each Sabbath.

The small building has seen highs and lows along with the community it serves, with farm foreclosures and the Great Depression reducing the population in the 30s and the influx of German Jews fleeing for the safety of New Jersey enlarging the group during World War II. By the 1970's, however, the early congregants had died and their children had moved away to build lives in more developed areas. Better road systems and transportation made it easier for those who remained to attend services in larger temples in Bridgeton and elsewhere. The little shul opened only during the High Holidays.

Today, the Garton Road Shul is cared for by members of the Ostroff family, descendants of a family that came to the community from Russia in 1898. While I was only able to see the outside of the building when I visited, I can safely say they're doing a wonderful job. The white doors and clapboard walls look fresh, clean and unweathered, as if they were recently painted, and I could easily imagine that congregants had been there just hours before for Shabbat services. Surely, if the community's founders could see it, they'd be kvelling.

Fellowship Farm: a social experiment in the exurbia of Piscataway

Over the past couple of years, we've found a host of planned communities and colonies that were built around New Jersey. They're usually pretty well defined geographically, off on their own in places where land was once inexpensive, and clear signs of them are evident.

Then there are the two in Piscataway whose vestiges lay somewhat obscured. Concealed in suburban neighborhoods just a few blocks from Rutgers University's Busch Campus, evidence of the Fellowship Farm cooperative and the Ferrer colony and Modern School is limited to a plaque on a rock, a couple of small homes and an interestingly-named grade school (whose playground sports a rock that seems to have once had a plaque on it).

There might even have been a third community in the town that had once been mostly farmland and undeveloped acreage. About a year ago, Ivan and I found a curious historic marker just off Busch Campus. It memorialized the site of a poultry farm once run by a Jewish community that had settled there courtesy of Baron Moritz von Hirsch, a philanthropist who had set up a trust fund for Jewish immigrants in the U.S. Initial research revealed nothing, and it's been on my long-term "to research" list since then.

Instead of getting to the bottom of the Middlesex County poultry mystery, I've found bits and pieces of information on collective chicken farms that were organized in more southern and remote parts of the state, well worth a visit and future coverage in Hidden New Jersey. In the process I found information on the Ferrer Modern School, a social anarchist educational system that was once the center of a colony organized in Piscataway. Could this be related to the von Hirsch-sponsored chicken farms? I wasn't sure, but it was enough of a lead to warrant a search for the marker Ivan and I had found. The Ferrer group had settled in the North Stelton section, near Busch Campus. It had to be the same place, right?

Maybe, maybe not. The info I had on the Ferrer colony advised that members had built tiny houses in an area just off Stelton Road, and that a few still survived, along with a plaque marking the site of the Modern School. I found the houses, but as I was wandering around, I found something else that got my curiosity up. Very close to those little houses, but on the other side of Stelton Road, was the Fellowship Farm School. That name was just a bit too, well, communal-sounding not to have something to do with a collective of some sort.

It was, indeed. It seems that in 1912, German Socialists living in New York City had seized upon the ideals of Unitarian minister and emerging commune organizer George Littlefield, who had promoted the creation of several Fellowship Farms around the country. Advertisements for the New Jersey outpost encouraged city residents to "get back to the land," and a small group heeded the call. Together, they raised $8000 to buy a total of 162 acres in North Stelton, dividing it between a large communal plot and separate one-acre segments to be purchased by individual members. Plans called for each potential member to purchase a $10,000 subscription and pay a $50 per acre fee for their land, as well as a $5 monthly installment.

In theory, the plan sounds rather nice. Income would come from farming, as well as proceeds from raising poultry, hosting summer tourists and undetermined work that residents would do in their own homes. Members could also choose to take on part-time employment in businesses outside the community.

The reality seems to have been quite different. As is often the case in utopian communities, the founder's dream seems to have downplayed or ignored the fact that the romantic desire to 'work the soil' doesn't automatically convey the skill to raise crops. Rather than farming their land, many of the former city dwellers built small bungalows and continued to work at their jobs in New York, perhaps raising chickens on the side. Even the bus line and market that had been communally operated were transferred to private operators over time as colonists recognized that representative governance isn't the best way to run a business. The one community enterprise that seems to have worked well was a cooperative garment factory that prospered during the Great Depression.

Confusion over the relationship between the Fellowship Farm and Ferrer colonies is evident in much of the reference material I've read, but they were definitely two very distinct groups despite their proximity to each other. The largely German-speaking Fellowship Farm members were described as moralistic and staid, repelling freer-spirited socialists who sought entrance to the community. It seems that the Ferrer group settled nearby merely because the land was available.

I've found very little information on the demise of Fellowship Farm, but I'd venture to guess that life changed greatly in the area during and after World War II. Nearby Camp Kilmer was a major training and embarkation station from 1942 until the end of the war, spurring development in the surrounding area. Increased activity shattered the peace and calm so many community members valued.

In any case, all indications are that Fellowship Farm wasn't, as I'd hoped, the same community memorialized by the blue historic marker Ivan and I found last year. That one remains a mystery to be investigated. And what of the Ferrer Colony? We'll be telling that story in a future installment.