Morgan, New Jersey

In the April 24, 2010 posting on this Morgan-NJ.org web site, we were left with a nagging question regarding where Bay View Manor was located.  Bay View Manor was a three story mansion located in Morgan which was built sometime around 1860 and destroyed as a result of the catastrophic destruction of the nearby T. A. Gillespie Loading Company plant during what was to become the closing phase of World War I.

Thanks – AGAIN – goes to two of my school friends, Frank Ludlow and Joe Grabas.  I’ll cite Frank’s contribution in a bit.  Thanks to Joe for providing me with the 1916 to 1923 Wessco Reality maps which show the planned layout and residential lots for nearly all of the Morgan, NJ streets east of South Pine Avenue between present day Christ Church Cemetery and Midland Avenue.  Joe didn’t realize it at the time but one of these charts clearly showed the exact location and dimensions of the ruins of the “Steuerwald Residence (Main Walls)”, also known as “Bayview Manor”, “Manor Crest”, or the “Conover Homestead”.

I received these maps just before my trip to NJ for our August 27, 2011 Morgan Historical Tour, Visual Presentation and Dinner.  On that morning, before the tour started, I went to that location and did indeed discover that the location continues to be the highest point of land within that 159 acre patch.  While there are no remains of that original structure in the current residential neighborhood, there is a very old and very tall tree at this location right next to where the building would have been located.  While it would make a nice story for that tree to have been there at the time of the mansion’s destruction, 1930’s aerial photography show no trees at that spot.

Portions of these maps were incorporated into my visual presentation and I was all set to reveal the manor’s long ago location at Morgan’s Teddy’s Bar but Hurricane Irene made sure I didn’t have the chance to!

According to testimony from the 1919 & 1920 Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations of the US House of Representatives, there were two significant items of information regarding this mansion located in Morgan:

“It was built by an old sea captain at a place where it commanded a view of a wide sweep of the ocean [he meant bay], clear around to Sandy Hook and all that section of the ocean.”

“There were originally 169 acres, and this old sea captain gave 10 acres to a church for a cemetery, right alongside him, leaving 159 acres.”

The 10 acre cemetery referenced is present day Christ Church Cemetery which was established in 1856 and is located at the very northern boundary of Morgan, where it borders South Amboy, on present day South Pine Avenue.  Logically this would have meant that Bay View Manor would have been contained within the remaining 159 acres, presumably and logically located on the highest point of land.  Ironically, it seems that none of the family of “this old sea captain”, who I believe to have been Thomas Anderson Conover (see May 2, 2010 posting), were buried in Christ Church Cemetery.

While doing research on the T. A. Gillespie Loading Company at the National Archives with Frank Ludlow, another school friend who I hadn’t actually seen since we graduated from Sayreville War Memorial High School (just a few years before), we encountered blueprints and drawings of the mansion.  Descriptive information about the mansion was also found in the minutes of the October 21, 1919 2^nd Gillespie Explosion Claims Board – which occurred just a few days past the first anniversary of the plant’s destruction.  This second claims board appears to have been the result of a request by US Senator Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen, Sr. to the Secretary of War to review and address the amount the government was offering to reimburse Charles L. and Ethel B. Steuerwald for damages to the building.  It appears that the Steuerwald’s did not agree with the amount which was proposed by the first claims board and contacted the senator from nearby Raritan, New Jersey to help get their concerns considered.

In advance of me being able to get to the Archives, I must note here that Frank did an incredible job of locating a lot of info about the Gillespie explosion which will make it to this web site over time.  You probably noticed that postings don’t happen as often as they once used to or as often as any of us would like for them to but we’ve reached the point where every posting takes a lot of research and writing time.  Frank has my enormous gratitude for his efforts on our behalf!

Here are snippets of descriptions of the mansion as [mostly] stated in the testimony from the October 21, 1919 2^nd Gillespie Claims Board.  They are primarily from Mr. Oscar M. Mundy, a Carpenter and builder hired by the Steuerwald’s to make repairs on the mansion; they had moved into it on June 1, 1918, only a few months before.  Ironically Mr. Mundy was nearly complete with finishing up repairs on the building (“… general overhauling, plastering inside, repairing the roof, taking down partitions, straightening up the floors…”) when the Gillespie plant blew itself up:

• …there was some material in that building which cannot be duplicated these days, and the character of the building was such, as is evidenced by the ruins of what is left of it, that although an ancient building, nevertheless it was a better building than we find today.  There was certain trim in that building and there was certain hard woods; there were certain doors and windows which could not be duplicated today for the reason that some have gone out of fashion and the facilities for making them do not exist and if an attempt were made to reproduce them, it would be like reproducing a piece of art work or an antique… For instance, there were expensive floors, hardwood floors, at thicknesses that are not made today…
• Well-built brick building.
• Walls was a double layer of brick composed of an 8 inch brick wall, an air space of 8 inches, then another 8 inch brick wall on the inside.
• The two brick walls were tied together by brick about every four feet.
• Built so that it offered a circulation of air from the basement up to the roof.  This not only allowed for temperature regulation, before the days of modern thermal insulation materials were available, as well as a perfectly dry building on the inside.
• The basement had four (4) finished off rooms and a boiler room that was in the hall.
• There was a cellar attached to the basement for coal and another small cellar.
• Blueprints additionally show a wine cellar.
• The image of the destroyed building shows some type of underground arched bricked roof. Could this have been the coal cellar or the wine cellar?
• There was a porch on all four sides of the building.  Remnants of where it connected to the brick walls can be seen just below the second floor windows in the photo of the ruined building.
• On the 1^st story were 4 rooms and a back stairway going up from the basement.
• House interior trim – called back band trim – was of pine.
• White pine floors.
• Parlor: Decorations or cornice work in the parlor.
• 9” wide white pine trim. It had about 5 members to it built up and was a continuation of the base board. “Member trim”.
• Parlors done up in white enamel.
• Decorations over the windows and doors and attached to these were ornamental heads – they were flower designs of presses brass – very thin.
• In the double parlors, they extended and formed a sort of cornice over each window.
• Wood ornament attached to the ceiling in each parlor – four feet square large design. Matched by smaller one in the dining room.
• Fancy black walnut pole curtain holders built over the windows in the parlor, dining room, bed rooms.
• 4 bedrooms on the 2^nd story.
• Curtains hung right back.
• Lighted by gas during Conover’s time, 12 years before. There were fixtures and a gas plant in the cellar next to the boiler room.
• Heavy 2 ½” thick doors; some were oak, some white pine and some were decorated with black walnut in the panels.
• Very expensive and large black walnut staircase continuing from the 1^st floor to the attic. George A. Shipman said [in 1919], “The staircase could not be replaced today [i.e., 1919] for $3000”.
• Black walnut treads, risers and railing.
• Dining Room: Built on a circle and finished off on a circle. Finished off in hardwood with center piece and cornice. Not paneled.
• Finished in white pine, studded around in a circle and the piece went around the casing.
• Two regular built in closets (not china closets), one in each corner, and the same style trim that was in the other rooms on that story.
• Wall base and so forth was finished in wood.
• Walls were plaster – hard finished wall.
• Studding inside the walls.
• Lathed and plastered.
• White pine base board trim.
• White pine door casings.
• White pine doors, some trimmed with walnut.
• Some were veneered oak “built up door”.
• Small wood ornament attached to the ceiling – matched the four feet square large design ones in the parlor but smaller.
• Front hall was tiled
• Tile floor laid from the front to the rear, 8‘ wide x 5/8” thick on cement floor with boarder around edge.
• Relaid lately [in 1918], some of the tile was loose and had been taken up and relaid.
• 12 fancy fire places
• Some built of marble and some of slate with cast iron backing.
• Parlor one was marble.
• Dining room fire place was replaced with a larger one made of pressed brick.

Here is some of what would have been needed in order to rebuild:

• 375,000 brick in itemized statement, no allowance for reuse of existing brick.
• Need a new foundation.
• The foundation there is practically all gone and is unsafe.
• You would have to take it down (remove all existing brick) and replace with new brick.

 

The following is a portion of the testimony from the May 21, 1920 hearing before the BCommittee of House Committee on appropriations (no, I don’t know what a “BCommittee” is – that isn’t a typo):

One is the case of Ethel B. Steuerwald, where the original claim was $40,900.76.  It was appraised at $21,109.46. Senator Frelinghuysen asked the Secretary of War for a review of that case, and a hearing was held.  They were afraid that this board was not inclined to do them justice and would not give them a proper hearing.  Gen. Williams delegated Col. D. M. King as his personal representative to sit with the board to see that they had a proper hearing. They had a proper hearing, and from all that could be determined at that time, it would cost more than $39,000 to replace that building.  It was a very old brick house…

It was a double-walled house, and very solid.  You could not replace it for anything like that amount in these days.  They did agree to accept $27,500.   There was a $6,000 insurance policy on the house, which being deducted left the amount of $21,500 which they would accept.  There was appropriated $21,500 which they would accept.  There was appropriated $21,109.46, leaving a balance there of $390.54, and the personal losses of Mrs. Steuerwald for her personal property, jewelry, etc., which ran up pretty close to $5,000, but that was not adjudicated at all by the former board.  We have allowed $3,000 for that, so that the total allowance by the board to Mrs. Steuerwald, in addition to the amount already appropriated, was $3,390.54.

 

I believe the illustrations of the building shown in this posting were created specifically for the Gillespie Claims Board.  If they were indeed the ones referenced in the testimony, then they were prepared by Mr. Jensen, an employee in the Ordnance Department prior to the explosion by the request of Mr. North or Major Peasley.  According to the testimony:

• Plan substantially represents the building as it stood before the explosion
• Stairway shows the platform and not the winders.
• On the east end there was one more window than it shows on the plan.
• Does not show the cornice.

This building and the 159 acres of land was reportedly acquired for $49,000 from the executors and heirs of the late Richard Stevens Conover, son of Captain Thomas Anderson Conover (see May 2, 2010 posting). Subsequently, 25 acres were sold to the city of South Amboy for $25,000.  I don’t know at this time which portion of present day South Amboy this corresponds to, perhaps it is the area south of Bordentown Ave, east of South Pine, north of Christ Church Cemetery and west of Raritan Bay?  The remaining acres were eventually all divided up and now make up the neighborhoods surrounding, as well as the land containing, Jesse Selover School.

The images of the mansion, except where otherwise mentioned, and the minutes from the 2^nd Gillespie Claims Board, which described the interior of the mansion, were all provided by the National Archives.

According to the testimony of the 1920 Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations of the US House of Representatives, “the house could not have been more than 300 yeards from where the fire took place, and it is supposed that it was set on fire by a flying shell, because at the time of this explosion the air was filled with those things… There is no question of this being a total loss.”  According to the testimony of Mrs. Steuerwald at the 2^nd Gillespie Explosion Claims Board, the building was destroyed when, “It took fire during the last explosion…between ten and twelve on Saturday morning, Oct 5^th [1918].”