Pohatcong School

This small school, also known as the Shimer School, was built in Pohatcong Township in 1939. H. P. Everett and associates designed the school, which was built with funding from the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. 

The program was part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal", which sought to help rebuild the nation after the Great Depression. Franklin Goldsmith and Sons were the general contractors tasked with construction of the building.

In 1999 the building was closed, and sold by the board of education to the township. The town continued to use the building but it was vacant by 2005. The utilities remained on and the structure remained in remarkable shape. Fifteen years later the school was put up for auction by the town.

The school may not be the most impressive educational facility in the state, but it would still be nice to see it used again for something instead of demolished like so many other schools before it. Hopefully the new owners find a good new life for the old structure.

Mercer Hospital

Back in the late 1800s, the need for medical care in the city of Trenton was growing. In 1892 the Fisk family offered up some land on the west side of the city to to the board of directors for the new hospital, dubbed the Mercer Hospital. Much like the Muhlenberg Hospital, The formation of the hospital was largely thanks to a local Women's Auxiliary who petitioned, fundraised, and helped plan the facility. Three years later the hospital was operational, and had its very own nursing school. At the time, medical care was being offered out out of old  Fisk mansion on the property. This was very common. Elizabeth, Jersey City, Newark, and Orange all had hospitals that began in homes.

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In 1902 the hospital building was expanded with several departments added throughout the new wings. The hospital received several new additions over the next few decades, largely funded by private donors. A new power plant opened on the property in 1922, and by the 1930's the hospital was a large, tight cluster of buildings. 

The hospital maintained this size for several decades, but in 1958 a large new wing was constructed on the east side of the complex. Several houses on Rutherford Ave. were demolished to accommodate the construction. This was the tallest section that would ever rise at the complex.

In the mid 1970's a massive demolition project took place around the hospital. All the homes on both Rutherford and Bellevue Avenues were demolished the whole way down to Prospect St. the only building spared was a single old home on the corner of Prospect & Bellevue. A small office building was built on the land where the homes once stood, leaving a giant parking lot all around the buildings.

Construction on the campus finally ceased shortly afterwards. The completed building had a total of 650,000 square feet of building space, making it one of the largest hospital buildings in the state. By the turn of the century the building had expanded all it could but was rapidly becoming functionally obsolete. In 2005 plans were announced that operations were going to move to new building in Hamilton.

The community was not pleased to hear this. Hamilton was quite a distance from the neighborhood where Mercer Hospital stood. Residents were concerned that an ambulance dispatched from the new hospital would take far too long to reach them and then get back, whereas now they had medical care at their doorsteps. As always these concerns were largely ignored. By 2011 the hospital was closed its doors. They shuttered everything but their satellite emergency room, which was kept open in order to appease the angry citizens. However two years later the ER had closed as well.

In 2013 the complex was sold to a developer. The complex wasn't completely forgotten however. A security guard was hired to sit inside and scare off trespassers. He had all sorts of noise traps set up, and chains around several interior doors. Even if one managed to get inside, it was a pain to navigate. 

Unfortunately at some point security responsibilities shifted and the man was only inside for a few years. We weren't sure if he was still there the first time I visited the complex. It was clear on my second visit that he was indeed gone. Scrapping and other vandalism had significantly increased, all but ensuring the building will never see life as a hospital again. 

Plans are currently being discussed to return the property back to use for the community. Whether or not that means the entire building will be lost in the process remains to be seen. 

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.

Mt. Paul Monastery

This small mountaintop monastery was established in 1924. The order of Paulists paid $50,000 for 1200 acres of land in the Oak Ridge section of Jefferson. They constructed a small seminary building with a chapel alongside the twelve acre pond on the property. 

The small structure wouldn't last for long. A 30,000sf building was constructed around 1960 with a chapel, gymnasium, and dormitory space next to the original building. The old structure was subsequently demolished.

By 1997 the seminary was closed, but the building continued to be used as a retreat, similar to the St. Paul Monastery in nearby Newton.

Citing roughly $200,000 in yearly upkeep expenses, the Paulists planned to close the retreat at Mt. Paul in 2009. The land was sold to the state for $12 million, which was paid out of the NJ Open Space Trust. The bodies were moved from the cemetary on the property to a nearby catholic cemetary. By June of the following year, the Paulists officially left the property.

For nearly a decade the building remained mostly vacant. When we visited the structure it still had running water and lights on even though the building was completely unattended. There were several smashed windows and other signs that people had been aware that the building was left with no security in the middle of the woods. 

Thankfully before the damage got too bad, Kean University stepped in and purchased 40 acres of the property. They renovated the main building while demolishing the caretakers home from the 1920s. The campus is now called "Kean Skylands", and offers a number of unique amenities that honor the character of the land. Hopefully the building will survive under their stewardship for many more decades to come.

St Bridget's Church

Source

The Parish was founded 1869. However. It wasn't until 1882 that construction began on the current church. It took eight years to complete, and in 1890 parishioners filled the pews. The structure was designed by Patrick Charles Keeley, the premier Roman Catholic church architect in North America.

St. Bridgets had a long, albeit uneventful history. In 1997 the archdiocese merged 4 other parishes into the St. Bridgets Parish; St Peters, St Boniface, St Marys and St Michaels. Bridget's was left a worship site, rarely being used over the next two decades. The building recieved a facelift in 2011, but unfortunately it wouldn't stave off its inevitable closure. The convent, school, and rectory were converted into housing in 2014. The church building was listed for sale, and was used to host flea markets and other ceremonies from 2014 to 2017. I even attended one of the flea markets, marveling the entire time at the gorgeous building it was set in. However, the structure was converted to apartments in 2019.

The crew got right to work stripping out the balcony and gutting the plaster from the nave. They tore up the hardwood floor, leaving very little of the original interior undisturbed. Renderings for the apartment spaces show vaulted plaster ceilings in some of the units, which actually look quite nice. Hopefully the nearby St Lucy's Church will recieve a similar treatment, as it is also due to be renovated in the coming months. Only time will tell.

Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing

Mountainside Hospital has been my local hospital my entire life. The large hospital building has several wings of different architectural styles, some dating back a century or more. This article is not about the hospital however. Instead, I will be focusing on the school building that was constructed across Bay Street.

The Mountainside Hospital School of Nursing was established in 1892, just one year after Mountainside Hospital opened its doors. This made the school one of the oldest in the state. York and Sawyer completed a new wing of the hospital in 1923. I believe this is around the time the largest portion of the Student Nurses Building was constructed, leading me to believe this building was also drafted by the pair. 

In 1966 a new wing was added to the right side of the existing building. This was the last major building upgrade the school would see. In 2009 it was announced that the school was not accepting any more applications, much to everyone's surprise.

Two years later the school merged with a program at Caldwell College, The class of 2011 was the last group of students to graduate, and the building was left mostly vacant. A few years later, while at the hospital as a visitor, I decided to take a shortcut to get back to my car. I discovered a back door had been left ajar, so I took a quick poke around the building.

I was surprised how much medical equipment had been left in the former school. It was almost as if the school building was a small hospital itself. The power was on, but the local police had been training inside and had made a huge mess of the place. They wrote all over the walls, smashed asbestos containing doors open, all the damage one might expect after being used to roleplay the pseudo-military fantasies of law enforcement.

I only visited the building once more before it was announced that demolition was set to begin in 2018. As fate would have it I also needed to have some emergency surgery at the same time, and my room overlooked the demolition site. I spent time over the span of several watching the crews rip apart the structure, feeling glad that I had the opportunity to document it.

Finally by January 2020 a new building opened on the site of the old school. Passing by now one would not even realize such a handsome structure ever graced the land. Hopefully this post serves as a decent reminder of what once was.

The Union Waxed Paper Mill

One of the most iconic abandoned locations in New Jersey has to be the old Wheatsworth Mill building. However, few people know that behind the Wheatsworth complex along the old NJ Midland Railroad lies another piece of Hamburg's industrial past; the old Union Waxed and Parchment Paper Mill.

Source: TFPNJ Historic Postcard Collection

What is now little more than a collection of crumbling ruins along the Walkill River was once a bustling paper producer. Paper production had historically been one of New Jersey's lesser know big industries. Most only know of Marcal, which tragically burned down in 2019. However there also existed large paper mills in Milford, Warren Glen, and Hughesville. Before any of these were operating, there was the Hamburg Paper Mill. 

The facility was constructed in 1874. At the time there existed a dam on the river for the iron furnace on the site, which was another popular industry in the state at the time. The dam was raised in order to be able to increase its power potential.

Unfortunately the land on which the mill say on was flood prone, causing issues for production. Ironically it was a series of fires that eventually put the mill out of production in the 1950s. Shortly afterwards the train line that runs alongside the mill was de-tracked and subsequently abandoned. 

The mill was left to rot, and after decades of neglect very little remains of the complex. What is left, however, is quite a sight to behold.