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Julia Peterson, a member of the Parsippany-Troy Hills Historic Preservation Advisory Committee, takes a look each week at what helped shape Parsippany into the town it is today. Peterson and her husband take care of a 250-year-old National Register house where Gov. William Livingston once lived.In Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, there is a common complaint: Where is the center of our community? Why isn’t there one? On a recent trip south, I spent many hours in the car thinking about this. Actually, Parsippany-Troy Hills is several communities, and almost all of them have a center, although only a few have commercial centers. Lake Hiawatha, developed in the 1930s, has an early 20th-century streetscape that serves as a commercial center, with sidewalks, restaurants, offices, and shops. (Lake Hiawatha, formerly a dammed section of the Rockaway River, has been replaced with a …
All this year, the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms is celebrating its 100th birthday. The Community of Mountain Lakes is also 100 years old this year. Both Gustav Stickley (Craftsman Farms) and Herbert Hapgood (Mountain Lakes) purchased land to build a dream community. Although they worked about three miles from each other, there is no record of whether they even knew each other. But they had the same dream: to build a community. Today, Stickley’s Craftsman Farms is a museum national historic site that showcases the log house he built on Manor Lane, near Route 10 west of Route 53. At …
How did Troy became Troy Hills? The town of Troy was centered on Beverwyck Road at the intersection of Troy Meadow Road and Troy Road. There is still a cluster of very old houses there, as well as the archaeological remnants of a water-driven industrial area that contained a grain mill and a saw mill in the 1800s, when water power was the only source of energy for industry. The small house at the corner of Troy Road dates to 1723. There was a town jail in Troy and a post office. That is how Troy became Troy Hills: The U.S. Postal Service wanted to reduce confusion between Troy, N.Y., and …
Where is Parsippany? When people ask me where I live, and I say Parsippany, they ask, “But where...Lake Parsippany?” After this happened a number of times, I realized that most of the historic town of Parsippany is not visible as a town. If you had come to Parsippany in the 1940s, you would have seen a different streetscape, one with an actual town center. Cobb’s Corner, at the intersection of routes 46 and 202, had a building on each corner, plus the Parsippany Methodist Church, the old orphanage and the old schoolhouse. Single-family homes lined Littleton Road and Parsippany Boulevard. This…
The Morristown Council on Tourism celebrates each April Morris County’s role in the American Revolution with Revolutionary Times, a weekend of activities that reflect the importance of the early history of our area. The annual celebration will be held this weekend with activities that include reenactments, museum activities, lectures and other events. In Parsippany, Livingston Benedict House, the refuge home of Gov. William Livingston, will be open on Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. A blacksmith and a weaver will be on site to demonstrate their crafts, children can make small candles, …
Living in a 250-year-old house is like living with an ancient person. The house has wisdom, memories, is a great teacher and can be difficult. My husband and I live in the Livingston Benedict House on Old Parsippany Road. It is one of Parsippany’s few surviving pre-Revolutionary War houses, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The house has special meaning to me, since I have been in and out of it since I was born. When I was brought home from the hospital, I came home this house. Six months later, my parents and I moved to the little house (originally the …
