Old train station soon to become nostalgia express Tuesday, July 3, 2007 By ANDREW VANACORE STAFF WRITER CHRIS PEDOTA / THE RECORD The Pompton Plains train station is on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and is trying to be included on the national register. PEQUANNOCK -- The tracks are ripped up, the trains absent for decades, but the historic Pompton Plains railroad station is getting ready for a new generation of customers with the help of a $157,000 grant from the county. The money, for restoring the rare 19th-century building to its original condition, highlights the growing importance of the Morris County Preservation Trust in preserving historic buildings countywide. The county has spent progressively more money on historic preservation each year since the trust was established in 2003, this year approving 29 of 32 projects totaling $2 million. It is also putting together a county register of historic buildings. "The funding really is right on par with the amount of requests we're getting," said Frank Pinto, director of the Preservation Trust, which also gives money to protect farmland and open spaces. Most counties in New Jersey don't use open space trusts for historic preservation, according to Pinto, but he said the ones that do have found them to be a boon to the small projects that often get overlooked by the state. RELATED LINK - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Pequannock Historic District Commission June 13, 2007 Passaic County bike trail on track In the case of Pequannock, the town put forward a modest 20 percent of the project allocation -- or $39,000 -- from its open space trust to have the station restored to look as it did in a photograph from 1910. "We want to make this station look like it did at the turn of the 20th century," said Township Councilman Edward Engelbart, a member of the Pequannock Historic District Commission and retired high school history teacher. "It'll be a place where people can come to learn about town history." The station is already a museum of sorts, housing among other displays a collection of model historic buildings from around town. Pequannock resident William Burns donated the models after attending an open house at the station this spring. A resident long enough to remember taking the train into New York City in the 1960s, Burns started building the detailed plywood models a decade ago, beginning with the station itself. He has finished 19 in his basement workshop and is still going. Burns works from photographs, so the model station doesn't look much like the real one today. Asphalt has crept up to the foundations where the platform stood, the wood floors are rotting in places and the edge of the awning is chewed up from tall trucks clipping the corner of the building. The station was built in 1872, part of the fledgling Montclair Railroad. It eventually passed to the Erie Railroad along the route bringing vacationers to Greenwood Lake from New York and Jersey City. As the lake became more accessible to cars, passenger service declined and was halted in 1966. Freight traffic ended in 1982. The town bought the property in 2005 for $150,000, with $75,000 from the open space trust and matching funds from the county. The historic district commission has gotten the station listed on the state historic registry and is in the process of having it added to the national registry. That qualified the building for county funding, which Engelbart said the town will put toward recreating the original station in detail. The platform will be rebuilt and a paint chip analysis performed to match the original paint job. Everything down to the window locks and advertisements will be replicated. It might not have been possible to restore the Pompton Plains station without the county. The town raises roughly $280,000 a year though its open space tax, but has such other priorities as buying up houses along the flood-prone Pompton River for a planned walkway. The meticulous work involved in preservation is one reason, Pinto said that counties tend to be shy about historic preservation. "It's a lot of money for relatively small projects," he said. "Doing things to historical standards takes a lot of dollars." E-mail: vanacore_@_northjersey.com * * * Open-space taxes Bergen Tax: 1 cent per $100 Total: $15,390,000 Spends roughly 4 percent on historic preservation Passaic Tax: 1 cent per $100 Total: $4,078,000 Spends none on historic preservation Morris Tax: 5.25 cents per $100 Total: $35,940,000 Spends up to 5 percent on historic preservation Source: Department of Environmental Protection Green Acres Program; Department of Community Affairs, Division of Local Government Services; Bergen County, Passaic County Planning Department, Morris County Preservation Trust Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc. Copyright Infringement Notice User Agreement & Privacy Policy The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org To Unsubscribe: http://lists.elhts.org/erielackunsub.html ------------------------------
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