Historic preservation is underway “Down the Brook” at Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Sites for Revolution NJ, the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in New Jersey and New Jersey’s first Constitution!

For this workshop the LRWP will join Paul Soltis, New Jersey State Park Service’s historian for Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Sites in Somerville, George Washington’s winter headquarters during the Revolutionary War’s 1778-79 Middlebrook Cantonment and historic home of the founder and first president of Rutgers.

We will learn about the significance of Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage to New Jersey and the American Revolution, explore the work taking place under the scaffolding as preservation architects and contractors reintroduce traditional techniques and sustainable materials to the historic structures, and contribute your own comments to inform the State of New Jersey and Wallace House and Old Dutch Parsonage Association’s Revitalization of Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Sites as a legacy of Revolution NJ.

The National Park Service has awarded N.J. DEP $200,000 for a cultural landscape report including a feasibility study for daylighting a portion of this buried waterway: https://dep.nj.gov/newsrel/25_0052/

Given overlapping interests between the State Park and the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership, discussion will extend the presentation on the rehabilitation of the historic houses with a walk of the grounds examining the buried waterway at Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage and considering potential environmental and historical benefits of including stream daylighting and green infrastructure as part of the historic landscape rehabilitation of these State Historic Sites in a neighborhood defined as an overburdened community according to New Jersey environmental justice law.

Parking is available at 71 Somerset Street, Somerville, NJ 08876.