19 Marie Major Dr

The home at 19 Marie Major Dr was built on a three acre lot in 1974.

Well manicured lanscaping surrounded the home itself. The owners also installed a pool and tennis courts on the edge of the property.

In the decades since the home was built Alpine became home to some of the richest people in the state. By 2016 the property was assessed to be valued at $6 million. 

When I was growing up my father always had a skill of delivering some sort of complex, practical knowledge with a single sentence.  One of his classics was the phrase "something is only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. 19 Marie Major is a great example. The property was sold in June of 2019 for just $3 Million.

The home sat vacant for a number of years. During this time a new trend developed in the Urban Exploring community, particularly on Tik Tok. It was the era of the "clout mansion".

A "clout mansion" is any large home, usually a fairly recent real estate listing, which has some distinctive feature that drives the algorithm wild. It may be an interior pool, a famous former resident, or in some cases even just the list price. People who seek attention visit these places and immediately share them with other people who had broken into similar mansions, creating this weird trend in the moment. 

I had been putting off visiting these mansions even though a couple were in NJ. I did eventually check them out though. 19 Marie Major was known as the "Basketball Court Mansion" because the last owner installed a single hoop inside on the second floor.

The home was finally torn down in 2025, and a new home built on the same spot. Hopefully the new owners dont disturb the property too much, as it really is a fantastic piece of land. 

First Presbyterian Church of Atlantic City

As someone who grew up in North Jersey, Atlantic City might as well have been Las Vegas. None of my travels as a kid ever took me past it, so I didnt see it in person until I was grown. They were both known to have a gruff reputation, corrupt history, and gambling. Despite that, the city actually holds several really distinctive civic buildings. The subject of this article is one such space that has unfortunately been lost. 

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

The original First Presbyterian Church complex was built on the same site between 1856 and 1857. The main building was a handsome carpenter gothic structure with a tall, distinctive spire above it's bell tower. It also had a detached secondary chapel along S. Presbyterian Avenue. Corrupt crime boss and republican politician Nucky Johnson married in the old building in 1906. Johnson is ficticously portrayed by Steve Buschemi in the hit HBO series "Boardwalk Empire". 

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The church was stripped back to its frame and almost entirely rebuilt in 1909. This was likely done due to the fire hazard the original church building posed. Seneca Red sandstone replaced the old wooden clapboard. The bell tower was moved from the center of the building to the right corner, while the enormous spire was never rebuilt. 

The interior floor plan was dramatically changed as well to accomidate the growing congregation. Seating in the nave was reoriented to face the left wall, which had been opened up and rebuilt to serve as the pulpit.  This allowed the a much more significant balcony to be constructed, nearly doubling the capacity of the sanctuary. Three gorgeous windows were purchased from Tiffany Studios and installed behind the choir loft. 

Atlantic City experienced a significant population decline in the decades after WWII. Eventually the First Presbyterian congregation had become so small they didn't need such a large building anymore. Victory Deliverence Church moved into the space in 1989, making very few changes.

A charity food program known as Sister Jean's Kitchen moved into the building in 1997. Sister Jean was a former chef at several of the large casinos along the shore. One night a decade prior she saw a man digging through the trash for some food. She decided to take the man to a nearby pizzeria and get him something substantial instead. She invited the man to her house the next day for a proper home-cooked meal. This selfless act eventually grew into one of the most substantial charity meal programs in the history of Atlantic City. 

Sister Jean Webster passed away in 2011. The kitchen continued on in her honor, although it wouldnt be long before the program experienced another setback. 

Hurricane Sandy devastated the First Presbyterian building just a year later, forcing the kitchen out. Victory Deliverence came up with a plan to renovate the space, but it never came to fruition, and by 2018 the building was officially vacant. 

The building continued to languish over the years. The Tiffany stained glass was removed from the choir loft, and a number of pews were smashed up and discarded. The doors and windows were replaced by steel VPS panels to prevent further break ins. By 2024, plans were approved to have a cannabis dispensary replace the old church building. 

Demolition began in 2025. Usually thats the end of the story, but this one has a pretty wild twist. I mentioned earlier that the exterior was clad with Seneca Red Sandstone. That wasn't just a filler detail. The geological formation that produces that specific stone is part of a thin network that spans from northern Connecticut to southern North Carolina. The largest band streches from northern Virginia to the southern tip of New York, right across New Jersey. This band produced the stone for our church, as well as several prominent buildings in our nation's capital. Perhaps most notably was the original building of the Smithsonian Museum, known as "The Castle". The quarry that produced the Smithsonian's stone had been out of production for over a century, so they thought they were going to have to make an unflattering compromise duringtheir ongoing renovation. A member of the design team happened to be from Atlantic City thiigh, and knew of the old First Presbyterian Church. They brought a spalled piece of the museum to the old church and held it up; it was a near-perfect match. 

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It took several weeks to pry off all the stone, but the team got it done. The stone was loaded onto trucks and hauled down to the museum. The rest of the structure was torn down, leaving the lot bare for the first time in 168 years. It won't be for long though. A new dispensary means that lot will be on the tax rolls for that same period. City leaders have to be excited about that. 

Thanks for learning with me.

Collingswood Presbyterian Church

Collingswood is a small, quaint suburb of Camden founded on 1888. Despite being mostly farmland at the time, the township experienced rapid population growth around the turn of the century. These new residents had a diverse range of religious beliefs, and the building stock of the town reflects that. One such congregation was the Presbyterian church, founded in Collingswood in 1903. 

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The congregation first met in a building elsewhere in the town. It wasn't long before they outgrew that space, so a new church was planned at the corner of Fern & Maple. 

The new church was completed in 1929. It featured a large worship space with a full wraparound balcony as well as a school building attached to the south side of the building. 

The congregation used the space until 2023, when it was announced they were leaving their historic home. They sold the structure to a developer, who immediately submitted plans to the town to convert the church into twenty five apartments.

The pre-school which used the school building finally left the building in June of 2024. By that time some preliminary work had already been done in the main church. The submitted plans show that the exterior of the building will be relatively unchanged, with most of the stained glass windows remaining in place. 

By 2025 construction was well underway. I'm grateful I was able to take a brief walk around the space before the interior was split up. And honestly, more housing is always a good thing. All things considered, this is a pretty good win for the town.

Holmes-Tallman House

New Jersey has always been packed with people, but that density was largely relegated to the cities and surrounding areas in its early history. However, the last few decades have seen an unprecedented level of residential and commercial development on once quiet farmlands. These changes have come at a tremendous ecological cost, and constant blows to our stock of historic buildings. One recent example comes to us from the small town of Jamesburg. 

The large home at the corner of Rhode Hall (formerly Browns Corners) and Cranbury-South River roads was built in 1860 by a man named Francis Holmes. Holmes purchased the property from Aaron Gulick, whose family are some of the earliest colonizers of New Jersey. 

The home was a gorgeous three story Carpenter Italianate presence. It boasted a corbel-studded wraparound porch on the first floor and was crowned by a large square cupula. From the moment it was finished, it stood as one of the finest examples of the architecture style in New Jersey. 

Francis Holmes sold the property with the home on it back to the Gulick family in 1869. James Gulick sold the property again just a year later, this time to a man named Jacob Tallman.

The construction of the NJ Turnpike in 1951 changed the landscape of Jamesburg forever. What was once a small, out of the way farm town was now the site of one of the busiest traffic corridors in the nation. The beautiful old home continued to defy time thanks to the meticulous care of the Tallman family. 

In 1979 the home was nominated to be on the National Register of Historic Places. It was an easy decision for the committee; the home was listed on the register that same year. 

The Tallman family loved and maintained the home for well over 100 years. During that time, the Turnpike continued to widen to accomidate the booming population it served. It didn't dramatically change things much in the small town of Jamesburg until 1991. That's when exit 8a was finished. The following decades saw massive warehouse and residential development. The population increased by roughly 150% between 1980 and 2000.

By the 2020's the lovely home had fallen into severe disrepair. I would drive past and look at the home whenever I was in the area, slowly watching it fall apart. One day I noticed the back door sitting open, so of course I had to pop inside. I didn't have my camera with me, just my cell phone and a light panel. The house was in remarkable shape inside. It seemed like the Tallman's took as much care to preserve the interior as possible. 

I shut the door behind me and vowed to return as soon as possible to document it property. I ended up driving right past the building on a productive morning of exploring, so I parked out back and walked through the still-open back door. What I found inside was devastating. The entire interior of the home had been ripped apart. This was beyond just scrapping metal; they sawed through the beautiful pine floors, ripped apart the fireplace mantels, and stole the entire wraparound staircase railing. The home had essentially been demolished inside. 

The home will inevitably be demolished since it is now "too far gone" to save. Demolition by neglect claims another one. 

Passaic County Jail

The first half of the ninteenth century was quite an interesting time for New Jersey. Boundry lines were being redrawn, as townships and counties were being carved out of established ones. In 1837 two new counties were establisted on opposite ends of the state, Atlantic County and Passaic County. This article is focusing on the latter, and more specifically their jail building. 

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Construction began for the original Passaic County Jail in 1837, the same year as the original Essex County Jail which still stands in Newark. The basic design included a single cell block as well as a house for the warden. The original building was enlarged in 1854 to accommodate more criminals as the county experienced rapid population growth. 

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In 1937 the buildings were thoroughly documented by a photographer named R. Merrit Lacey. Other citizens measured out and redrew the building's floor plans as Lacey took his pictures. These efforts were submitted to the Historic American Buildings Survey, and are hosted online in high resolution by the Library of Congress. 

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Unfortunately, despite being so thoughtfully documented just two decades prior, the building was entirely demolished and a new jail was built on the site in 1957. The new building was a simple mid century design without much detail or embellishment. It was designed to hold 230 prisoners at maximum capacity. 

It wasn't long before the brand new building was already facing an overcrowding issue. Neighboring Essex County had given up on expanding their Newark Jail nearly 100 years prior. Instead, they developed a huge jail annex complex on land they owned far outside the city, where they could spread out as far as they pleased. Instead of taking that tact, Passaic County just continued to pack bodies in wherever they could inside the Marshall Street building. 

When the jail ran out of cramped cells to fill, beds were packed into the common areas. At times, the building was holding upwards of 1500 people inside its walls, more than six times the population it was designed for.

According to the Star Ledger, the state Office of Inmate Advocacy examined every county jail in New Jersey in 1977. The Passaic County Jail was deemed to be the worst in the state. Not only was it severely overcrowded, it was also overrun with rodents and bugs. Sheriff Edwin J. Englehardt was in charge of managing the jail at the time. Instead of doing some honest self reflection and brainstorming ways to improve the facility like a decent person, Englehardt hung a banner outside the building that said "Welcome to the Passaic Country Jail. This is not a country club. All rules will be followed." As far as my research indicates, there was no effort made to remedy the inhumane conditions. 

A new addition was built in the mid 1980s at the corner of Grand and Marshall. This allowed space inside the cell blocks to be further retrofitted to accommodate more bodies. The recreation facilities were moved into cages that were built on the roof. 

In 1987 the county sought to establish a detention center specifically for youth offenders outside the confines of the Marshall Ave site. They decided to retrofit in a vacant nurses building at the old Valley View Sanitorium which straddled the Wayne/Haledon border. 

Unfortunately the jail was still severely overcrowded. To make things worse, the facility was still making headlines for being filthy and overrun with pests. Officials mulled replacing the rapidly aging building, but the talks never led anywhere. 

Instead in 2001 the new leader of the jail, Jerry Speziale, began taking inmates from other counties as a way to pad the budget. Speziale took over from Englehardt, who fled his position amid investigations into corruption within the county. 

Passaic County continued to subject the inmates at their jail to these same inhumane conditions for decades. It wasn't until 2017 when New Jersey finally answered the cries of activists and passed common sense bail reform. For those unfamiliar, one of the major differences between a "jail" and a "prison" is that the latter is where you go after you've been sentenced, typically for stints longer than 30 days. Jail is where you end up after you've been accused of a crime, but before the "speedy" trial you're entitled to. If you have enough cash or property to give to the County as an incentive to ensure you'll show up at further court dates, you can be released. Your guilt or innocence isn't taken into account, because that hasn't been determined by a judge yet. 

That system is obviously flawed, as a guilty person with money gets to go home while an innocent poor person has to stay locked up. Thankfully we don't do that anymore here. Someone's bail status in New Jersey now depends on an assessment of their likelihood to be violent or to reoffend. The system isn't perfect, as opponents say it still leaves open the possibility for unchecked racial bias. Most advocates agree though, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Five years after the bail reform laws passed in the state, the county worked out an agreement to allow their prisoners to be sent to the sprawling Bergen County Jail in nearby Hackensack. This move allowed Passaic County to finally move to close their Marshall Street Jail. 

The county sheriffs office continued to operate out of their offices within the compound, but by 2024 the jail building was officially closed. It was immediately announced that the building would be demolished and a new county government building would take its place. Before any work was done, the building was used for the filming of the movie"Motor City". Machines moved in shortly after filming wrapped up. 

Crews started by ripping into the walls of the main cellblock, which stretched between Marshall and Main. The plan was essentially to work from the courtyard outwards, allowing the crew to work uninterrupted without affecting traffic around the building. It wasn't long before the iconic, notorious structure was entirely reduced to rubble. I won't be shedding any tears for this compound. Hopefully whatever comes next is much more beneficial than this old eyesore.