In
relation to what you typically find with urban exploration, an abandoned house
is more or less common. One lone,
standing building in the middle of nowhere is fun, but what about what you come
across an entire town? This is just the
case in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey where a village from the 1800s still can
be seen today.
In the
mid 1800s, businessman David Felt realized he could not keep up with the demand
from his merchants with the mill he had already built in New York. He looked for land in New Jersey and bought
up some property from the Willcox family.
Peter Willcox was the first settler in area that David Felt was looking
at who had built a sawmill in that area in the late 1730s.
After
Felt bought the land and built his mill and a couple dams, he built a town for
the workers. This town became known as “Feltville”. The town housed 175 people by 1850, and that
usually meant about four families per large house, and two per small house.
In the
late 1860s when David Felt sold the property, many other businesses came and
went such as in 1882 when it was turned into a summer resort called Glenside
Park. That failed when the Jersey shore
(not the show) gained more popularity.
As time
went on, the Union Country Park Commission purchased the location, and it was
added as a historic location.
The location
is open to the public. When I went there
(many years ago), some buildings were in the process of being refurbished. Some building had people living in them. Some buildings were tourist buildings. I, of course, was more interested in none of
the above, and instead the ones you were not supposed to enter.
Some
of those buildings were in rough shape. I
could tell they were used for storage for building “parts”. I even went down in a creepy basement. There were some really historic things to
see. Even the architecture of the building
was something to experience such the brick chimney poking through the plaster
and paint in the upper bedroom.
When
I went, there was an occasional police car.
The houses had plenty of windows, but of course that goes both ways, so I
would place myself against a wall to remain out of sight, and all was good.
I could continue writing, but since a picture is worth a thousand words,
enjoy some of the pictures I took while I was there. If you want to see more stuff like this, keep
coming back as there is plenty more to come! Thanks for stopping by.
