After The Hickories: The Ackerson Company Houses

The Ackerson Company offered prospective buyers at least six pre-designed house models, as seen by these renderings from their brochure. Three were actually built on Curtiss Place and further research may uncover variants of others. Architect James L. Burley, who is mentioned in the specifications for House Pattern # 5, probably was the company architect for Roosevelt Park. He began his career in town planning and later was widely known for his work on schools, such as Lehigh University.

The house at 18 Curtiss Place incorporates elements typical of the Colonial Revival, such as the symmetrical placement of window openings, the prominent, centrally placed entrance and the Chippendale railing of the front porch, with Craftsman style elements, such as the wide over-hanging eaves and exposed rafters of the main hipped roof, the porch and the dormer roof. The asymmetrical porch wrapped along the side is somewhat unusual.

The side-facing gambrel roof of the house at 31 Curtiss Place is commonly associated with a sub-type of the Colonial Revival, the “Dutch Colonial,” so called primarily for the use of the gambrel roof form. In this example, however, the design is strongly influenced by the Craftsman style, particularly in the use of the roof as the dominant feature of the house. The roof extends to incorporate a porch at the main façade, and features paired, gabled dormers set into the gambrel roof. The solid, shingled balustrade, and paired columns with shingle-covered piers at either end, is typical of the Craftsman style. The entrance is on the side.

The intersecting gambrel roofs of 34 Curtiss Place indicate a continued popularity of elements from the Shingle Style, a pre-cursor to the Colonial Revival, popular in the last decades of the 19th century. The Palladian window and broken pediment are typical elements of the Colonial Revival. The side-facing gambrel roof of the house extends to cover a colonnaded porch.

(Unbuilt 1) This exuberant example of a Tudor Revival design includes the use of multiple materials for the wall surfaces. The picturesque “half-timbering” of the walls express an interest in medieval forms. The intersecting, steeply pitched gable roofs have prominent bargeboards. The Tudor arch is used in the recessed central entrance and in the openings of the porch. The base of the house is brick.

(Unbuilt 2) This is essentially a Four Square house, with an eclectic combination of Craftsman elements, such as the low-pitched roof, wide, over-hanging eaves and exposed rafters. The stucco covered walls and grouping of windows within blind arches is vaguely Mediterranean.

(Unbuilt 3) This is a variant of the Tudor Revival Style. The steeply pitched roof, with intersecting parapeted gables, has no projecting eaves. The flat surfaces of the stucco-covered walls, with label molding over the windows, give the appearance of a stone building. The side porch has Tudor arch openings.

The Hickories: Cornelius V.S. Roosevelt Jr.: A Generous Man – With Some Limits

At his death at 59 in 1887, the estate of Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, Jr. was valued at between one and two million dollars, and included his Maplewood country residence as well as investments and property in New York City. He had inherited a fortune from his father, an investor in real estate, importer of plate-glass, founder of Chemical Bank and one of the richest men in New York City.

Like his brother, Theodore, the father of the future President Theodore Roosevelt, who was a well-known philanthropist, Cornelius Jr. was much beloved and recognized for his charitable disposition. A local newspaper said that Cornelius tipped well and was a great friend of the laboring classes. In 1869, he generously purchased the old schoolhouse on the edge of his estate for $2,000 so those funds could be used in building the new unified district school in Maplewood Village. The old schoolhouse was moved and attached to the back of his estate superintendent's house on the corner of Ridgewood Road and Curtiss Place.

His generous nature was also revealed in his Last Will and Testament. Cornelius, who was childless, provided well for ten of his nieces and nephews, leaving the bulk of his estate to them in equal shares. Nephew Teddy Roosevelt, then President, was reported in 1901 to have received a fortune of $100,000 -$150,000, a current value of $2,650,000 - $3,970,000. The Will’s good intentions were challenged by his brother, former Congressman Robert B. Roosevelt, who contested the omission of his children, Emma and Robert B. Jr., but the court found this to be invalid.

In 1901, the court also confirmed that the Will specifically disinherited nephew Cornelius Roosevelt. It is likely Cornelius the uncle did not approve of Cornelius the nephew, who was said to be a hedonist and an expatriate living in France. In 1902, a claim against the Estate was filed by Mrs. Gertrude Motley for $25,000 as a creditor of the disinherited Roosevelt. It was rumored that Mrs. Motley was an adventuress and possibly his mistress.

The Hickories: A Budding Naturalist

The extended Roosevelt family were great believers in the benefits of summer vacations in the country and outdoor pursuits. Teddy, as a frail boy who suffered from severe asthma, was urged by his father to do all he could to strengthen his body. He embarked on a program of vigorous exercise, which he continued throughout his life. Adding on to his interest in natural history and zoology (which began at age seven), he welcomed family excursions up the Hudson River, to the New Jersey shore, the Adirondacks and other locations reachable by train from New York City, including the estate of his Uncle Cornelius in Maplewood.

Teddy kept scores of notebooks and diaries on Natural History and the family’s travels in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. (Most of these notebooks have now been digitized and are available online in libraries at Harvard and at Dickinson State University.) They show a keen interest in nature and a delight in the workings of the animal kingdom. He and his brother Elliott and sister Corinne, who called themselves “We Three,” established the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History” in their New York City townhouse, its holdings expanded by Teddy’s growing collection of field specimens bagged during trips to the country.

In one notebook entry of 1872, referring to his Uncle Cornelius’s estate in Maplewood, he writes,

Mr. C. Roosevelt informed me that a goshawk once swooped down on a rooster that was right by his house, seized it by the back and carried it up about fifty feet in the air, when he shot at it. It then dropped the cock (who was not seriously injured) and made off.

Goshawks are still found in areas like the Great Swamp, although they are not very visible because they do not tend to sit on branches or soar. One former Maplewood birder, Joe Zellers, recalled that in November 1996 he happened to see a goshawk on Springfield Avenue near the Hilton Branch Library. “It swooped down out of nowhere, grabbed a pigeon in mid-air and took off to a tree in Maplecrest Park.”