Tranquility Farms (Profanity Houses)

This small village of forlorn farmhouses was once part of the historic Rutherford- Stuyvesant estate in Allamuchy. The family were direct descendants of Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch General who controlled the land that would go on to be known as New Jersey. 

The farms operated relatively unremarkably over the years, while the mansion known as "Rutherford Hall" became a well known local landmark. The farmland at the estate once stretched from the grand manor house all the way to the humble farm village of Tranquility, where another more quaint mansion also existed. This mansion burned to the ground in 1959, and the remains were bulldozed.  In the late 1960's Route 80 was constructed in the area. The on ramps were built right on the lawn of the Rutherford mansion, while the main thoroughfare severed the now abandoned farmland from the grand estate. 

There were still roughly a dozen houses and other buildings left abandoned before the state obtained the property in 1960. These buildings were still rotting away in the woods more than half a century later. Due to their "local legend" status their history has been obscured heavily over the years. However what happened here long after they were abandoned is what really makes the buildings interesting. They were covered in obscene grafitti on nearly every inch of every building.

Nobody knows exactly when the awful remarks were painted at the estate, much less who did it. Similar vandalism has been reported at other long abandoned buildings in the county, but it never reached very far and it didn't continue throughout the years. For these reasons I have my own theory about who did it.

I'm guessing it was a group of local kids with too much time on their hands. The crude remarks are painted in several different styles and with all sorts of writing utensils. Local legends like to claim the writings to be that of a single deranged individual, but it just seems to make more sense that it was edgy children. There's no level of depth to the writings, they sound like what a teenager would put together once they started figuring out what all these words were.

Regardless their popularity spread throughout the state and beyond as they became the focus of several Weird NJ articles and other online forum posts. With this popularity unfortunately came waves of vandalism. First it was just taggers who painted over the profanity with their own names and handles. Eventually people started burning the houses down. A string of arson attacks in 2016 and 2017 brought down the last of the significant structures on the property.

Now all that remains of the former farming village are a few foundations and the gates to the old Stuyvesant mansion. 

The land is part of Allamuchy Mountain State park, so the land will likely never be developed. Hopefully one day a small marker can be erected on the land to tell visitors of what once existed there, so the actual history of these buildings can become more clear.