For House Telling Paramus’s History, End May Be Near

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Paramus, N.J.

Along Dunkerhook Road, things look much as they do in many other American suburbs. Neat beds of flowers and mulch punctuate green lawns. Cars sit idle in the driveways. Children play in a cul-de-sac, and adults jog down to the river nearby.

But amid the large tan-and-brown homes of stucco and stone and the older ranches is something older still: two houses built around the nation’s birth, remnants of a Paramus that existed long before it became home to the vast malls that have made it one of the country’s leading retail destinations.

The two houses, at 273 and 263 Dunkerhook, and a third one down the road and just over the line in Fair Lawn, were originally built, historians say, by one of the founding families of Bergen County, the Zabriskies. (The house at 273 Dunkerhook dates to around 1790, the one at 263 Dunkerhook to 1803.) As the Paramus houses passed from the Zabriskies to black farmers believed to be former Zabriskie slaves, they helped seed a thriving black settlement of several houses and a church that lasted into the 1930s.

No. 263, a frame house with a 19th-century addition, has been significantly modified over the years, but No. 273 is considered to be important because, according to a Bergen historic sites survey from 1983, it is the best of a few remaining examples of early Dutch stone houses, with an intact facade.

But after a battle that has pitted the interests of a property owner against the desire to preserve a historic building, No. 273 may not stand much longer. Though the building is listed on national and state registers of historic places and is part of the Paramus historic preservation zone, the local planning board has granted permission to the developer who is buying the property to tear it down to make room for a new subdivision with two houses there.

A historic designation means “apparently, in Paramus, nothing,” said Joseph Suplicki, a Zabriskie descendant and area preservationist.

“There is no protection from private owners,” Mr. Suplicki continued.

But the developer, Sal Petruzzella, who is buying the property with his two brothers and a brother-in-law, says the house, which was expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries, is an eyesore in disrepair, with a cracked foundation and mold everywhere. He also said that because of alterations, it was no longer worth saving.

“The old original structure is encased with new structures, so the way I look at it, it’s not the original, original house,” said Mr. Petruzzella, who has built three large houses in the Dunkerhook area, including his own. “They did knock the old Yankee Stadium down. The old grandfather does die eventually, one day.”

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Those who support saving the house, a group that includes neighbors, descendants of the Zabriskies and Dunkerhook’s black residents, historians and preservationists, say the 19th-century addition is part of the story of what happened there, and dispute the dire assessment of the house’s condition. But their arguments appear to be beside the point, now that the planning board has approved the demolition, citing an unwillingness to interfere with the rights of the owner, Margaret Horton, to sell.

Ms. Horton, who did not respond to a request for comment made through her lawyer, is elderly and needs the income to help support herself in an assisted-living facility, Mr. Petruzzella and the neighbors said.

Being on a state or national historic register brings recognition to a property but generally does not provide any protection from private alteration or demolition. Local governments have the power to preserve buildings, but in Paramus, the historic preservation zone simply requires a six-month waiting period before proposed demolitions, so the borough can explore options to preserve or move the buildings.

In New York City, by contrast, preservation can trump an owner’s plans. A landmark designation, which can be made over an owner’s objection, gives the city the right to regulate a building, which generally means it will not be demolished, said Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. And historically pristine conditions are not a prerequisite for protection. Earlier this year, the commission designated as landmarks three 19th-century buildings in Sandy Ground, on Staten Island, even though they “didn’t look so hot,” she said, because they had been part of a settlement of black oystermen who had moved from Maryland when they could not make a living there.

“They were constructed in this vernacular style that was common then, and you don’t see many examples of that style, so they did have some architectural significance,” Ms. de Bourbon said. “But, more so, it was the historical and cultural associations that tipped things into the ‘let’s designate’ column.”

On Dunkerhook Road, meanwhile, Mr. Petruzzella says he is looking to close this week on a sale that began more than a year ago with an offer to Ms. Horton. He said that he had followed all the procedures governing historic properties, and that it was time for the sale to go through. “She has rights too,” he said, referring to Ms. Horton.

The preservationists continue to rally, hoping to find a way to stop the destruction of the house and its original windows, sashes and hand-hewn beams.

But some are preparing for the end of the Zabriskie Tenant House. Ms. Horton’s grandson, Kenny Meyerdierks, who grew up in the house and still lives there, said he was looking for a new place. “I’m moving on,” he said.

Ted Manvell, a history teacher who owns No. 263 and brings his students there to show them its two-feet-thick stone foundation and other historic features, said he hoped that the house at No. 273 could be moved somewhere, perhaps to his property, or, at the least, that someone could salvage the windows and doors.

“We just don’t have any way to protect from demolition these properties, which is a shame,” Mr. Manvell said. “How many areas, if there’s any, in northern New Jersey can you have direct descendants of people who owned the slaves, and then the slaves themselves and then the freed men and women that lived in a property, and the buildings are still here?”