
February 16,2018
by John Paquin
originally posted on the Vintage Ridgewood New Jersey Facebook page
Ridgewood NJ, Welcome to Downtown Ridgewood — Circa 1830! (Or what did Zabriskie-Schedler look like, Part II). This view is from the opposite direction from the last one, and what this provides is context — and why this is about more than just “a house”. This is looking SW down West Saddle River Rd toward Paramus Church and what was then known as “Paramus Center”. What you can hopefully get a sense of is the important community that existed here (in Ridgewood!), first settled in the 1690’s as Anthony’s earlier post indicated. Why here? It was the convergence of indian trails that later became an important crossroads connecting the region (much as Rt’s 17, 4 and the parkway do today). As Peggy Norris detailed in her excellent history of the property, John Zabriskie bought just over 9 acres from the church in 1825 to build this house and farm, and incredibly, 7 acres of that purchase remain untouched to this day (the property originally extended across 17 to franklin tpke — those two-plus acres now lie under six lanes). I took license again with that 230 year-old tree — it’s drawn as it appears today — but that is to scale. it dwarfs the house and pre-dates it by some 40 years!