Council members Linda Geevers and Kristina Samonte have taken the lead to decide the fate of the Grover Farm. On Saturday, July 14, there will be a meeting and structural tour of the Grover house at 9:30 a.m. All interested individuals are welcome, but participants must sign a waiver for their personal safety as the potential for debris falling inside the home remains. For more information, contact Geevers or Samonte through the township, 609-799-2400, or via E-mail: lgeevers@westwindsortwp.com and ksamonte@westwindsortwp.com.
At the Monday, July 9, Council meeting Samonte said that a newly formed advisory committee has now set its deliverables: to finish July with an execution plan, look at the costs involved, and look into funding mechanisms.
Geevers has already made some progress in this regard. At the July 9 Council meeting she said she had looked in the cost of lumber supplies to protect the house from the weather, noting that she preferred the money to be spent at West Windsor businesses.
After receiving three estimates from building supplies stores, she found that Lowe’s (in The Square at West Windsor off Meadow Road) had a higher price than the other estimates. Geevers then spoke with Frank Gambatese, the manager at Lowe’s and a former West Windsor councilman, and Gambatese agreed to not only match the lowest estimate but lower the price by another 10 percent.
Geevers and Samonte are operating inside a 90-day window, ending in September, in which they must update Council on plans for the Grover house. The first meeting to plan for its possible restoration was held on Thursday, June 28, as 14 members of the public came forward to offer their support and professional experience.
Among those in attendance were building professional Rocky Procaccini; David Parris, curator of natural history for the New Jersey State Museum; residents John Church and James Solloway; and Cindy Randazzo, director of the Office of Local Government Assistance for the DEP.
Geevers says Randazzo should be able to inform the committee about the legal possibilities for use of the Grover house, as DEP consent would be required because the property is part of an 88-acre parcel of protected open space — West Windsor’s first open space purchase, dating back nearly 20 years.
Local teens Ashley Geevers and Aayush Sharma, both students at High School North, also attended the June 28 meeting with interests in volunteering. Absent from the June 28 meeting were former candidate for West Windsor Town Council Lauren Kohn and her two daughters, Sara and Evie, who had expressed an interest in reviving the house in front of Council (WW-P News, June 22).
Marshall Lerner, president of the West Windsor Republican Club, was also unable to attend the first meeting. Lerner volunteered for the project after speaking to Council on May 29 about his experience building homes with Habitat for Humanity (WW-P News, June 8).
On Monday, June 11, Lerner told Council that he would like to see the Grover farmstead restored and turned into an exhibit along the lines of the Howell Living History Farm. Lerner said that such a project had the potential to become “a centerpiece of civic pride” in West Windsor, pointing out landmarks with the Grover namesake, such as Grover’s Mill on the township seal as well as Grover Middle School.
But at the Monday, June 25, Council meeting, Janet Lerner of 67 Rainflower Lane told a crowd of 50 people that the township has honored the Grovers appropriately. “I think we have noted the Grover family and continue to note the Grover family for their contributions to the township — not belittling their legacy but, on the contrary, giving them a great deal of exposure,” she said. Lerner’s suggestion is to preserve the Grover farm and not concentrate on restoration of the house.
Councilman Bryan Maher responded to Lerner’s comments by referencing his family’s experiences picking pumpkins at the farm and the iconic status that Grover farm has compared with the feature he says the Schenck Farm has: anonymity.
On June 25, resident Paul Eland rejected Maher’s notion that the Schenck Farm is not a “well-disbursed” property synonymous with West Windsor. “The Schenck Farm was given to the township for free by farmer Zaitz. Farmer Zaitz is also the namesake of the Zaitz nature preserve, and the Zaitz farm happens to be right across the street from the Grover farm. People need to get more familiar with the township’s farming background,” Eland said. He added that the West Windsor Historical Society does not get enough credit in the discussion of the Grover farm.
Though the tandem of Samonte and Geevers represents cross-party collaboration, the Grover farm issue became a political battleground early on when demolition was proposed by the administration in May and vetoed by Council following residents’ uproar.
Putting the blame on Mayor Hsueh, Maher spelled out the mismanagement of the property since the original owner passed away in late 2008 and his wife vacated the house in February, 2009 (WW-P News, June 8).
At the July 9 Council meeting Maher announced that an inventory of items taken by the West Windsor Historical Society taken from the property in March and April was given to Council the week of July 2.
“Interestingly, I think several items were missing from the list — namely the front door, the radiators, HVAC equipment, and windows. I would like to know where those items are, who has them, and if we can get them back,” Maher said.
Maher questions whether any money was received for the items that are unaccounted for, and where that money has been stored or allocated. Maher also says Ted Grover informed Council that seven to eight mantels were taken, but the historical society’s lists only three mantels.
According to Clifford Reed of the West Windsor Historical Society, Ted Grover contacted Sam Surtees — West Windsor Township’s municipal land use manager — about items from the house that he and his brother would like to have.
Reed passed the message to Grover to come to the historical society and take anything he wanted, if they had anything the Grover brothers had not considered before. “Nothing we took out of the house was damaged in any way. Everything was removed with tender, loving care — if things were damaged it would make it harder for me to barter with somebody and get anything back,” Reed says.
“With the items we took, we could swap items from the barn or the house with the person that we associate with — in return we get things that we’d need for the Schenck Farm,” says Clifford Reed.
“There were no sales — no money, no designated price because, like anything else, today it could be worth five dollars, tomorrow it could be worth four,” he said.
After hearing many of the comments made at Council over items inside the Grover house, Clifford Reed’s wife, Kay Reed, explained that any items with historic value given to the historical society is preserved as part of the town’s history.
Reed says it took him and his wife one day to determine what items inside the Grover house were of value.
Clifford Reed said items had been taken by thieves who broke into the house before the historical society had a chance to create an inventory. “Actually the township had to come and plywood the doors up. I don’t know what happened to the radiators, the heating system, or anything like that,” he said.
“The first misconception is that it’s an historic house — it’s a house that is old in this town, but as far as the age goes, it is not historic. The farm might be historic, but the Grover house dates to 1870. We have other homes in West Windsor that are from the 1750s,” said Kay Reed.
Reed also wants to clarify for the public that whenever West Windsor Township “took down houses in this town when they bought them” the historical society has always been informed and has routinely gone inside to look for anything significant to use for the Schenck Farm.
“That’s how it was always handled because we are part of the township. Some people are just getting the wrong idea,” she said.
Clifford Reed was born and raised in West Windsor, and he is a proud of his ability to preserve many items tracing the town’s history.
“Whenever Clifford sees anything of value that could be used for our history, we consider using it because we have the school kids coming to this museum,” Kay Reed said.
The Reeds say no items have been sold or exchanged yet. “There is no money involved in this at all.”
Surtees says he received a list from the historical society of items that were taken from the house as well as the person who helped them remove the items — Adam Wengryn of Adam Restoration Technologies of New Jersey, based in Belvidere.
“They gave me a list of what they had Adam take out and in return what they were looking for Adam to get for them.”
The items the historical society requested from Adam were a hallway and stairway interior doors, support beams, farm and field tools and equipment, plus “a track and items required for the installation and usage of a hay-mow fork.” Surtees said the farm equipment would probably go for the Schenck Farmstead’s outdoor display.
The plan for the interior of the rebuilt barn at the Schenck Farm is to work with a hay loft that has big doors that have not been opened yet. “Basically the tracking goes for that so that it would be a working hay-haul that they can use to show kids how hay was taken up to the barn,” he said.
Kay Reed says the historical society is looking to finish a hay mound and other configurations in the barn. She said the intent is to use the three fireplace mantels from the Grover house as tradeoffs for materials to build the hay mound.
“That’s kind of how it goes with old houses in different towns — they try to get things of value for something that they need for something else from somewhere else,” she said.
The Reeds say they know the Grover family well, though there were no conversations about items taken from the home. But they did have some advice for Geevers and Samonte.
“What Clifford and I have both told Linda [Geevers] is that as far as the historical society goes, we have all that we can handle at the Schenck Farmstead. We have a barn, a house, a carriage house, a smokehouse, and an outhouse, and we go through each as part of a tour,” she said.
According to Kay Reed, there are not enough willing hands to contribute to preserving the town’s heritage — a problem Mayor Hsueh has touched on as he encourages more residents to become involved in West Windsor’s preservation (WW-P News, June 8).
“A hundred people might belong to our historical society, but we have just half a dozen workers. If more people don;t get involved, we can’t do any more than we are doing,” Kay Reed said.
She sees the Grover group as potential volunteers.
“If there’s a new committee formed, why don’t we take some of those energetic persons and let them help us at the Schenck house too?” Reed asks.
