The Deacon Andrew Hetfield House is yet another old house in Union County, built around 1760 (by— SHOCKER— Deacon Andrew Hetfield, who— SHOCKER— was a Presbyterian deacon in Westfield, NJ).
They’ve moved it twice: once to shift it 50 feet back from Route 22, when they were widening the road, and a second relocation in 1985 to save it from bulldozing.
They took pictures the second time.
They had to shut down (part of) Route 22! And you can see in that last picture— because the house couldn’t fit underneath the pedestrian bridge, they had to carefully circumnavigate it through the mud. ADVENTURE TIME!
Reportedly, the house suffered minimal structural damage from the move… specifically, one windowpane was lost. Whoops.
ANYWAYS. The Hetfield House (also known as the “Dutch Oven House,” a name acquired during its stint as an antique store during the 1930s-1980s) has been expanded over the years; by 1830, the simple colonial farmhouse had been transformed “into a center-hall Georgian residence,” which I assume means the owners tried to impose some sort of design on the house after the fact. (I’ve been told that a lot of these old farmhouses were built without any blueprints, and consequently, those farmhouse layouts are often illogical for living.)
It’s been on the National Register of Historic Places and the New Jersey Register of Historic Places since 1989!
That’s all I got.
References:
McNamara, C. (2010). A History of Mountainside, 1945-2007: It Was Only Yesterday. The History Press: Charleston, SC. ISBN 1596298014.
New Jersey Historical Commission. (2011). Four Centuries in a Weekend. “10. Mountainside: Deacon Andrew Hetfield House, Constitution Plaza.” [pamphlet.] http://ucnj.org/parkeventssite/files/2011%20Four%20Centuries%20Online%20version.pdf.
New Providence Daily Photo 