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What is the oldest house in New Jersey? It’s unclear, but it could be in North Jersey

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What is the oldest house in New Jersey? It’s unclear, but it could be in North Jersey

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New Jersey is home to some of the oldest and most historically significant buildings in the United States.

There are 58 National Historic Landmarks in the Garden State.

The list includes Boxwood Hall in Elizabeth, the Hermitage in Ho-Ho-Kus and Grover Cleveland’s retirement home in Princeton, among others. These buildings may be old compared to most of the state’s housing stock, which has an estimated median age of 55 years, according to U.S. Census Bureau records. Yet they look relatively young compared to the state’s oldest standing buildings.

The title of oldest house in New Jersey is still disputed, but the historical marker on the CA Nothnagle Log House in Greenwich Township says it wins the prize, with a supposed construction date between 1638 and 1643. According to the Gloucester County Resource Directory, the log house is the oldest standing wooden building in North America.

The story continues below the photo gallery.

The house was sold in 2023 for $262,000, less than 10% of the asking price. Its previous owner, Doris Rink, once opened the house for tours. Her late husband, Harry, bought the cabin from his relatives in 1968, removed the modern wall paneling inside and restored the white oak exterior, Harry Rink, who died in 2018, told The New York Times in 2000.

The log cabin is made of 4.5- to 5-inch-thick square logs interlocked in a manner associated with some of the area’s first European settlers, according to the house’s listing in the federal government’s 1938 Historic American Buildings Survey. In the decades after the first ships arrived from Sweden in 1638, settlers named the area along Raccoon Creek in Gloucester County New Stockholm. It was part of the short-lived colony of New Sweden.

The oldest part of the log cabin is about 16 feet by 20 feet and has a low ceiling and a corner fireplace that was also built in the Norse tradition, the study said. Historians have speculated that some of the fittings in the fireplace may have been forged in a Norse country in the late 16th century, Rink told the Times.

The floor was originally dirt. The hardwood added later is still nearly three centuries old, Rink said. According to county records, some historians believe the building style in the Delaware Valley was introduced by the Finns rather than the Swedes. Many of the 17th-century settlers were Finnish, although they arrived via Sweden, as Amandus Johnson detailed in his 1911 book, “The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, 1638-1664.”

In 1637, Swedish, Dutch and German shareholders formed the New Sweden Company to trade furs and tobacco in North America. The company’s first expedition sailed from Sweden with just two ships, arriving in Delaware Bay in March 1638 and leaving only two dozen men in the Wilmington, Delaware, area, Johnson wrote. Over the next 17 years, 11 more expeditions left Europe for New Sweden.

Many did not survive the journey across the Atlantic, Johnson wrote. Some died soon after. In early 1654, the colony had only about 70 inhabitants, Johnson reported. But that same year, about 300 were added, and eventually it consisted of farms and small settlements on both banks of the Delaware River.

The builder of the log cabin is said to have been Benjamin Braman, according to county records, a story told by writer Elmer Garfield Van Name in the mid-20th century. Long before that, the house was associated with Anthony Nelson, who was born in Sweden around 1652, bought property in the area in his mid-20s and died in Gloucester County in his early 40s, Van Name said.

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State records show there was a Braman, also spelled Bramma or Brayman, who served alongside Nelson in the West New Jersey legislature in 1686. Braman lived and sold land on nearby Clonmell Creek around the turn of the 18th century, records show. However, Braman was born around 1660 and died in the early 1730s.

There is further doubt about the early origin of the log cabin, as according to Swedish Colonial Society records, the first Swedes and Finns to settle in what is now Gloucester County did not arrive until 1673. The National Register of Historic Places nomination form, which refers to the 1930s building survey, gives the cabin’s construction date as circa 1685.

There are buildings in New Jersey that some believe are older, including the Swedish Granary, which now stands in the courtyard of the Cumberland County Historical Society’s headquarters in Greenwich Township. The log cabin was brought here in 1975 from a farm in southern Hopewell Township and restored in 1976. According to society records, the log cabin is made of rough-hewn Atlantic white cedar joined with notched and crossed corners. An interior log wall divides the room into two halves. Above one is a loft.

Records show that the building was authenticated as the work of Swedish colonists in 1973 and was probably built around 1650 by architects G. Edwin Brumbaugh and Albert F. Ruthrauff. At the time, American Swedish Historical Museum experts Carl and Alice Lindborg said the grain house was the only surviving example of its kind from the region’s earliest European settlements.

Experts speculated that the building was originally intended for storing threshed grain or animal feed during the New Sweden period, society records say. However, a 2016 dendrochronology report says samples from the granary’s wood indicate that “construction of the building in its present configuration occurred in or shortly after the calendar year 1783, apparently in 1784 or perhaps as late as 1785.”

As far as old houses go, Sip Manor, formerly Jersey City, is considered by many to be the oldest building in North Jersey and possibly the oldest building in New Jersey. It was probably built around 1665 under Dutch colonial rule and moved to Westfield by Arthur H. Rule more than 260 years later.

The house takes its name from the Sip family, who owned it for over two centuries. Although many claim that a member of the Sip family built the house, records from New Jersey City University and other sources show that Jan Arianse Sip was the first owner of the house between 1697 and 1699.

According to these records and several old newspaper accounts, the original lot at the corner of Bergen Avenue and Newkirk Street was first granted to Nicholas Varleth or Varlett and Balthazar Bayard in 1662. Most sources, including the Historic American Buildings Survey from the 1930s, state that Sip Manor was originally built between 1664 and 1666 by Varleth, the New Netherland ambassador to Virginia. Some also call it Varleth-Sip Manor.

From the outside, Sip Manor still has the appearance of a typical Bergen stone house. Although it has been extended, the original part with its stone ground floor has a steep, overhanging roof and small dormer windows. The upper floor and roof are covered with shingles.

The house stood for more than two centuries at the southeast corner of Newkirk Street and Bergen Avenue in Jersey City. Some dubious stories claim that the last Dutch governor of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, walked its halls and that Major General Charles Cornwallis spent a night there in 1776 while pursuing General George Washington.

Whether it was a fabricated story or not, Arthur H. Rule saved the house from demolition in the 1920s, contemporary newspaper accounts say. It was gradually dismantled and rebuilt from 1926 to 1929 under the direction of architect Bernard Miller on Cherry Lane in Westfield, the Jersey Journal reported. To ensure historical accuracy, Miller meticulously studied photographs, paintings and the property’s original landscaping, the Journal reported.

Not everything was transported to Westfield. Lost or damaged elements, including parts of the staircase, had to be reproduced, according to New Jersey City University records. The latticework, windows, chimneys and other parts were either altered or added during reconstruction. On the other hand, components such as the original doors, casement windows, window sills and window frames were reused, records show. The flooring was re-laid using wooden dowels instead of nails. As of 2024, the house is well preserved as a private residence.

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