by John Paquin
Posted first on Vintage Ridgewood Facebook Page
Ridgewood NJ, Separated at Birth — and by about a half a mile. Are these the coolest door knobs you’ve ever seen? The one on the left is in the Ackerman-Naugle House on East Saddle River Road — that cool Jersey Dutch stone house discussed earlier right across 17 from the church, and the other is from what else but the Zabriskie Schedler House we’ve been talking about on West Saddle River Rd. Both these houses were part of the original settlement of “Pyramus”, and both are still with us. They look positively ancient and really bring that period to life when you see and touch something like that. Might, say, someone like Alexander Hamilton have turned one of those knobs? Or Mr. Burr?
Actually, yes. I asked noted Jersey Dutch Architecture expert Tim Adrience about these and he explained: “The latch….is called an iron plate spring latch. That type of latch is found in a number of houses in Bergen County, and it is better than a thumb latch in operation. This type of latch was made from roughly the 1740’s to the 1830’s, and is only found on interior doors”.
