Historical Society Slide Presentation Notes

Bob thanks the ladies for coming and announces that there will be a short slide presentation.

I have been requested by Marie to tell a little of the history of the square and the town itself.

Believe it or not, it all began in 1720. Now Nat Conti was a little young at that time so his concept of the square wasn't quite born yet but that is when Peter Wilcox trecked over the mountain from Elizabethtown and surveyed the area - 424 acres and called it Turkey.

That's the area we now know as New Providence and part of Berkeley Heights and Murray Hill.

The town changed its name to New Providence several years latter when the balcony of the church fell during a particular service and fell with people on it and it fell onto the people underneath and no one was hurt and so our ancestors decided that a good name for the town would be Providence and thats how it got it's name.

As it grew in popularity the area became a vacation spot for people from Manhattan, the rather wealthy ones. One of them was a Mr. Carl Schultz. He had his apartment or apartments in the "Murray Hill" section of New York. He bought several hundred acres in New Providence and changed that name to Murray Hill in honor of his place in New York. So that is how you got that section.

Now currently Murray Hill is in two towns because of various subdivisions. New Providence which is where we are and there is another section of it up on the top of the hill which is part of Berkeley Heights. Now it is not a town in itself, it is just a section of New Providence.

Now the enterprising Mr. Schultz who was by the way "The Mineral Water King" of his age decided that he would like to have the railroad, which was then The Delaware & Passaic stop at Murray Hill for his convenience and the convenience of his friends. He offered to build the railrad station if the railroad would make that a stop on its way from Bernardsville. Well that became a reality and the Murray Hill station put Murray Hill on the map as attested to. The earliest map we could find was 1882 that actually had the Murray Hill station on it as a permanent record.

From that time on the commerce of New Providence and the Murray Hill section grew and Mr. Edmund Wilcox who was a descendant of Peter the original surveyor build a graim and storage area for the farmers to off load and unload unto the railroad. That was Waividuals in turn sold to the Crane Bros., three young enterprising individuals who operated it as a food and grain and grist mill for several years in the late 1800's, until it was bought in 1916 by Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin operated it as a hardware, general store kind of operation until most recently when it was bought by Mr. Conti. And now we are up to date as to the history of what we have right here.

That building, The Crane Bros. Feed and Grain Mill we now call the barn complex. It is the big series of buildings on the other side of Floral Avenue. That was the first project of "Historic Murray Hill Square". That was completely gutted, new foundations put in underneath and completely refurbished. That is a reconstruction, a restoration.

The Gallo-Thompson House, the one that houses the "Historic Murray Hill Square" offices and the Art Craft House is a restoration. That building was there.

All the other buildings on this side of the street are reconstructions, there brand new buildings, but they are replicas of buildings that once existed in and around New Providence with the exception of three. The two brick buildings are based on designs from Williamsburg and one from Pennsylvania. Now the reason for the brick buildings is because of the compactness of the "Square". We have to have fire breaks and because of the the availability of wood in the post-colonial period in New Providence there were very few brick buildings in this particular area so therefore we brought some imports in from another area for safety and it adds to the architectural decor also.

The ground was broken on everything with the exception of where our office is The Gallo-Thompson House on January 16, 1975. Everything you see here on this side of the street has been built from nothing since then. You can get some idea of the construction schedule and the way we have been working. It is scheduled for completion and occupancy and so forth next year in time for our bicentennial. Mr. Conti sears it has nothing to do with any of that, but I think his timing is pretty terrific.

So with no further comment on that let me introduce the owner, the conceiver and very much the life blood of "Historic Murray Hill Square" Mr. Nat Conti.

Thank you Bob. I want to thank you all for coming here today. It's a great pleasure to see a group this size at "Historic Murray Hill Square". The only problem I have is after the meeting we don't have any place where you can sit down and have lunch. We hope that by spring of this coming year we will have our first eating facility for you.

I am not going to bore you with alot of details. I would like to get into the slide presentation and point out different construction details to you and show you some of the areas we re- searched and also talk on as I show the slides bringing up some points of control that we have here. The sound control may not please you too well but that is what makes it possible to maintain or to make anything successful.

We are very careful how we control the businesses, landscaping and decor. Now we will start on the slide presentation.

First of all this is our logo. It is a "pineapple". We chose the "pineapple" for "Historic Murray Hill Square" because it is a very old colonial sign of hospitality. In colonial days if you were offered pineapple when you visited with friends thats a real special thing because they had to import the pineapples into the country. We chose the "pineapple" and we have a style of lettering that we use on our shopping bags and all of our stationery.

This is what we refer to as the barn complex. Unfortunately we did not have pictures that showed what it looked like before we even stated. This is where we had already made major changes. The section where you see brick now with just the overhang was just a cement block building that was stuck between a series of old barns and sheds over the course of years so now we are in the process of redoing them.

That's a more up-dated shot of the barn complex.

This was the original building, the Crane building. We excavated the basement under it so you have storage area and also we were able to put our electrical services and everything else. The Yarn Peddler is on the first floor. Another shot. This section of the building was an old shed for fertilizer, grain, cement and lime. It was actually falling off the main barn. We jacked it up 14 inches and built a new foundation under it and then revamped the whole building. On this roof we hand cut 6700 shingles.

This is a shot of some of the Christmas decorations from last - no its this years. We use all the natural fruits and greens. We do not have anything that is artificial and we do everything ourselves.

This is the interior of the foyer to the barn complex. We have taken down 13 buildings in the state of New Jersey to salvage old rough lumber, hand hewn beams, hardware and other parts of the buildings where it would comply to our new construction. This is all barn siding and some of the boards measure 20 inches wide. There is a flagstone floor in the foyer entrance way. The chair rail right here is made from corn cribs. If you go into the Plant Shop you'll see the trim around the ceiling between the beams is all done in the same wood from corn cribs. Most of the floors inside are original floors. We worked very hard to restore them. Thre are sections where we had to start from scratch.

This is an interior shot of our dress shop. This is still part of the barn complex. The slate shingles on this display unit are from an old building that is in South Brunswick.

This is a shot of one of our signs. We are responsible for all the signs. Our shops are not allowed to buy or maintain this signs. When we enter into a lease we come up with a design. We build it, paint it, and maintain it. That is so a year from now if the sign starts to fall apart we don't have to wait six months to get it repaired, we will have the responsibility.

Another sign. This particular sign is a copy from one that is in The Smithsonian Institute. We try to use as much old information to reproduce an historic sign.

The chimney from Williamsburg, Va. and here is a closer look at the hand cut shingles. That building houses our jewelery shop Biava-Larson.

There is a shot of the back of the barn complex. This building is still in existance but we reproduced it over here on the stone foundation.

The freight building. We are waiting for the railroad to make a decision whether we could have it. Its been condemned and they were supposed to tear it down but as soon as I asked for it it became a very long drawn out legal hassle. They were going to rip it down and now it's automatically worth something. Although the real reason is that they cannot sell it even for a dollar because they are in bankruptcy and there are many liens against the property so it is a complicated process. But we will end up with it someday and we will restore it. We are going to do everything along the railroad embankment, landscape it and restore the railroad station back to the original, hopefully next spring.

There is another shot of the barn complex. And this is before we were complete. There not finished with our curbing, paving, drainage, fencing and shrubbery.

Without boring you with all the details this stuff is re-searched and we are writing a book on the details and where it came from.

This is the interior of the same building where the jewelery shop is located. This was an old cement shed and these are the original floors.

That's a shot of the Crane building. It is where the doctor's offices are housed on the second floor and our florist and Country Clothier are on the first floor. That's on the other side of Floral Avenue next to the barn complex. That's what it looks like now.

That's the interior of the Crane building where the doctor's reception offices are. We do all the interior decorating. They bought all the furniture, rugs and draperys from us direct. That's one of the doctor's offices. That also stands true for all of our shops. We do all of their interior decorating.

And this is the Murray Hill train station. We will restore it back to the original. We will get a slate roof, wooden platforms. Then we will go around and repair any of the damaged woodwork on it. We will put in an up to date heating system in it but will retain the pot belly stoves that are in the building right now. Structurally its in bad shape. We will also completely landscape it.

This is a shot of the property we are now sitting on. Our office is upstairs over the Art Craft shop. This is after we already started to take it apart. It looks better there than it did when I started it. This was just an open field that was kind of a dumping ground.

This is the Milinery building. It now houses our art gallery, The Hadley Gallery. That is authentic post and beam construction. When you walk in that building and you see the big beams in the walls and ceilings, its not for looks because that is the structure of the building. It is the only one that was built as an authentic post and beam construction on this site. We had alot of difficulties getting that approved first from the town not understanding this kind of construction also our mortgage architectural department was quite concerned. After sitting down and spending a few hours it resolved that it is the strong- est building on this site.

That is another shot showing the cutting in that is over the fireplaces.

That's the building complete now. These dresses are made by my sister-in-law. We now have six of them. We are making more also men's outfits. We use them at various times during the year. They also have been on show.

This is one of the Williamsburg buildings, the Milinery building, in Williamsburg, Va. That is an interior shot.

This is a shot showing of the using of clay tiles for that particular roof. That building houses Brown-Fowler Realtors. We use three different materials for our roofs clay tiles, slate and fire-retardant wood shingles. Believe it or not the most expensive of them all is the fire-retardant wood shingles.  I don't have an explanation for this and it bothers me.

This building is from Pennsylvania. Its on Route 202. It stands now kind of leaning is occupied by a few hippies. We were a little worried when we went up to take the photographs of some of the details on the building. We have done a lot of research on this particular building.

A double arched chimney on this same building. We were being accused for a short time of moving a colonial MacDonald's into the square. I can joke about it now but it was a real sore spot in the Borough's eyes because they are fighting MacDonald's so we had to quick print something in one of our brochures explaining the reasons for this. It went like wild fire, real quick. 

This shot is showing the Freight building as we reproduced it on the stone foundation.

That is a shot of the Ingram house and that is the Totten house, a New Providence home with all the filagree on the porch.

All the stone and brick work are done by our own men. In this shot we are looking down on this courtyeard as it was being built about five months ago.

This is the Werner house and attached to it is the Becker Hörner house.

In this shot we are setting the foundation for the Tarpley building which will hopefully house our first restaurant.

Now we start on the courtyard. These bricks for the most part came from Spring Street in Morristown. I excavated Spring Street as an urban renewal project. It was very fortunate for myself. I was awarded the contract and was paid to dig the bricks out and dump them away. It so happened that I needed them. People have questioned how can you build this way and still afford to stay in business.

There are many, many reasons for this. We are proud to say we feel we have a quality look but we have not blown it with a crazy price. We can build what you see here for the same price or less than what these malls are thrown up to be with flat roofs and a very cold feeling be- cause of the organization that we have and the attention to the detail and use of materials and use of the trades. Every tradesman here is proud of his job. They live this job, where on these other jobs they could care less their not putting their best into the jobs. And also nothing walks off this job. The materials stay and the doors stay wide open. So you see our building costs are kept down for a number of reasons.

We built this courtyard through - well there was a week of very heavy rains a couple of months ago and we never missed a day or a moment out there as hard as it poured laying those bricks. This brick has a little bevel to it. The beveelled bricks were used on the hill so the horses hoofs would grip as they went up the hill.

This is a shot looking down on the courtyard when we were building the fountain. The fountain serves other purposes. It is now a Christmas tree stand. There is a pipe that goes down four feet in the center. It is embedded in the concrete and it holds the tree stand. In good weather it is a fountain and we also use it for a center pier for a big portable stage that is built in and covers the entire circle out to here. It will be an octagon shaped stage. It will have a roof if you want it or just a flat form with a railing. 

This is a shot of the lower courtyard was taken looking up towards the Christmas tree.

On the Tarpley building which is going to house our restaurant we hand cut 18,000 shingles. This was done by high school help. We had all high school kids. A lot of our work done here is by high school boys. All our priming of the paints, sealing of the knots, cleaning of the windows, hand cutting the shingles, laying of the bricks or whatever has been done by these kids, boys and girls alike. To bring up an important point right now about the high school kids. Down town its known that there is a tremendous vandalism problem and they don't know how to cope with it. Here in the past three years of construction and I'm talking about leaving these buildings wide open we have not had one nickels worth of damage. The reason for this, and we know this because we hear it come out of their mouths also we feel it on a day to day basis. They have respected this property because we have respected their concern. We spend the same time I am talking to you talking to kids from that grade right on up. Their concern is a legitimate concern. If they want to know you explain to them, or take them up to the office and show them the model whichever it may be. In turn they have spread the word among their friends. We have had kids come and they have been just a little rambunctious going through the buildings but we have stopped and talked to them and told them the reasons why at certain times they shouldn't be doing these things and in a way that they understand it not that their being chased or as you know don't touch this because its too good for you to be associated with it. We try to associate them with everything we do, in fact at our yuletide celebration last Friday we had over 8,000 people here. It was run by high school kids. The clean up was done by high school kids, the serving of the food was done by high school kids. The whole operation as it was cleaned up in the end was all high school kids. They appreciate that and they are doing a tremendous job for us. We wish that this was spread into other areas in the use of the schools, whether it be special programs or just calling up now and then and asking for help. They are paid. There are loads that would do it on a volunteer basis but they are paid.

A view of the Elkwood Avenue train station. We have an old bell in the bell tower.up in the building that we will ring from The first floor shop. There are three levels to this building.

There is another shop down on the center courtyeard. We call this the first floor level which is in the center courtyard.

We do just about all of the special carpentry work and millwork on the sites Most of our tradesmen are not skilled in that profession believe it or not. We call by fun and jokes Conti Tech. We have had more fun learning what to do with the materials. I would say the average age of the people working here on these buildings is 28 years. Some of them have never put up a slate roof before or a clay tile roof so off to the library we go to read or whatever and figure out the best way they did things years ago and I think they are doing a job that far surpasses the so called craftsmen because really that have being building for the last 30 years. They are really interested in what they are doing, if you talk to them they may pretend that they know.

That is the Grist/Mill building that you are sitting in right now. It was a cider mill, saw mill, grist mill and rug cleaning, operation on Maple Street and Springfield Avenue in New Providence. 

(handwritten portion begins here - to be transcribed)