6 Charney Place

6 Charney Place in Alpine was a beautiful wooded lot which had a sinlge modest house on it since the mid 1960s. 

The home dated to a time when development was first booming throughout the town. The newly opened Palisades Interstate Parkway turned Alpine from a small, out of the way town to a NYC suburb. 

Roads were being carved through the mountains for the first time, with small to medium sized contemporary homes popping up alongside them.

The real estate market in Alpine absolutely exploded over the next several decades. Celebrities and other wealthy people snapped up the cheapest homes they could to demolish them and rebuild custom mega mansions. 

By the mid 2020's it wasn't just the smaller houses getting leveled. Several multi million dollar mansions came down during this time, including homes at 19 Marie Major and 14 Autumn Terrace. 

Sure enough the home was demolished in 2025, roughly a year after being sold for $2.25 mil. The new home being built on the property is ugly as sin and the entire lot has been stripped.bare. I'm just glad I got to experience the property as it was. 

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Good Shepherd Church of Faith

 

The Good Shepherd Church of Faith was built in 1866. It was a small wooden building with few ornamental elements used primarily by an Episcopal congregation 

Services stopped being held in the church sometime around 2013. The ancient building had already fallen pretty seriously into disrepair by then. 

The most unique feature of the building was definitely the barrel vaulted pressed tin ceiling. 

It was finally sold in 2024. The new owner promptly got to work repairing the roof and fixing up the exterior. The building is currently being used as storage until the new owner finds a practical use for it. 

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South River Trust Company

 

TFPNJ Postcard Archive

The South River Trust Company was established in 1919 at the junction of Main and Ferry Streets. The building itself is small but lavish. Two large ionic columns flank the front door, supporting a terra cotta pediment with the banks name embossed into it. Though records don't exist online, the terra cotta was almost certainly manufactured at the nearby Sayre - Fisher brickworks. Steel spandrel panels separated the first and second floor windows. The entire rest of the facade was clad in limestone. 

The banking hall was a stunner. A massive stained glass tray ceiling lit the room, supplemented by large chandeliers as well as another large window at the rear of the building. The teller counter was made of beautifully veined white marble. 

The bank managers office had the best view, overlooking the banking floor. 

The bank closed in 1931, right at the start of the Great Depression. The closure was short lived though, as the bank reorganized and reopened in 1933. 

As is the case with many banks SRTC ended up merging into a bunch of other institutions before eventually being functionally  closed. The space was being utilized by Bank of America in the fall of 2013, when it closed for renovations. 

The building never reopened as a bank. Instead it stood vacant for over a decade. I would visit the structure from time to time whenever I was in the area with time to kill. The back door was always open. It blew my mind that there wasnt any vandalism inside, and that it never ended up on the "Urbex" radar. People flocked to Sayreville for years from all over the world to sneak into the old generating station along the river. The only people who ever found out about it were friends of mine who happened to be in the area with me at the time

Work finally began to convert the space into a lobby for a brand new apartment building in 2026. Considering First National Bank just a block away was demolished entirely, I consider this new future for the SRTC building a blessing. As the town continues to grow people like me will still have the opportunity to stop by and appreciate the building.

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St Mary's Greek Catholic School

When most of the population of the United States  thinks of schools and hospitals, we think of them as public institutions that have always existed and always will. The reality is that they both trace their origins back to the Catholic church in early ninteeth century. Nearly 100 years after the first parochial school was founded, St. Mary's Assumption of Trenton established a K-8 facility on a lot across Malone St from their house of worship. 

The school was built in 1921. The facade was made of buff brick with limestone accents, a common design choice for the time. It rose three stories on a linear footprint, with classroom space on the first two floors and a large "gymatorium" on the third. 

Everything about the facility was classic parochial school. It had 11 foot ceilings on every floor. Large transom windows sat above each door in order to encourage air flow on warm days. 

Like so many neighborhood buildings the school operated without much fanfare as the neighborhood evolved around it. A large arson attack destroyed the parish church in 1956, along with nearly a dozen others. It took three years to rebuild. During the rebuild process mass was held inside the gym. 

The school officially closed in 1999. Like many other catholic schools it continued to be maintained and used for parish activities. Since churches don't pay taxes, its easy for them to sit on property rather than immediately selling off or demolishing their empty buildings. This ended up paying off during the demolition and reconstruction of Trenton Central High School in 2015. Some students from that facility were sent to St Mary's until the new high school opened in 2019. 

St. Mary's parish took advantage of the recent refurbishment and ended up putting the building on the market immediately after Trenton Central reopened. It was sold the following year. The new owners immediately replaced the roof, but aside from that nothing happened with the building for another several years. Renovation work finally began in 2026 with the goal of reopening the space as apartments. The entire building was gutted back to bare walls, erasing the well kept 1920s floorplan. 

The building will undoubtedly be more productive as apartments than it has been for the last 5 or so years, so I'll count this as a win. 

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711 Broadway

The incredible Victorian mansion at 711 Broadway dated back to the very late 1800s. It was a three story building with a mansard roof and an 800sf wraparound porch. 

A beautiful elliptical staircase wrapped its way up through the center of the house, connecting all seven bedrooms. 

Each of the bedrooms on the first two stories had floor to ceiling windows and gorgeous pine floors. Most also had large, functional fireplaces. 

Several of the rooms even had large walk in closets between them.

The home was occupied into the 2020s, but had been falling into disrepair for years. 

It was sold in 2025 to an LLC who was granted permission from the town to subdivide the lot into three smaller parcels. 

The plan was contingent on the existing home being demolished.

Demolition began in spring of 2026.  The home wasn't even on my radar, but a random tip on Reddit one Friday morning let me know destruction was imminent. 

I ran up to Norwood after work the same day. Unfortunately the demo crews had already begun stripping the historic fixtures out. 

Thankfully there were still a few rooms in decent enough shape for me to want to take out my camera and give it a proper shoot. 

Im really glad that at least some of the trim and fixtures were stripped before the demoliton. It always kills me to see such a gorgeous house be demolished for some contemporary nonsense though, especially one that hasn't been heavily renovated.

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281 Trenton Lakewood Road

The property at 281 Trenton-Lakewood road held a two story house right on the bank of the Doctors Creek in Cream Ridge. 

The ~2200 square foot home was built in the mid 1970's. It consisted of a standard mid century  cedar clad dwelling atop a concrete pedestal.

Most of the livable space was on the second floor, likely due to the risk of flooding. 

The interior of the home featured two large fireplace made of natural river stone, which I imagine heated the space very effectively.

Combined with the pine ceilings and walls the space echoed its natural surroundings quite well. 

In October of 2016 Monmouth County purchased the property, which had only been empty a short time. 

They let the home sit abandoned for another six or so years before eventually demolishing the building.

I'm grateful to see any effort to restore the overbuilt floodlands of the state, and more free open space is always a win. Still, I'm glad I was able to check out the home while it still stood. 

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