Architect Clifford C. Wendehack

Architect Clifford C. Wendehack (1884-1948) lived in Upper Montclair, NJ, and practiced in New York City. His early architecture training was in Europe and New York and as a draftsman at the studio of Donn Barber, a New York proponent of Beaux-Arts architecture.

Wendehack became known as a master designer of country club buildings and impressive houses, including one on Hickory Drive in Maplewood, built for Mrs. George Otis in 1927, and several in Montclair that have been named to the National and State Registers of Historic Places.

His 1929 book on how to build clubhouses served as the primer in the field for eighty years. He designed clubhouses for some of the top golf and country clubs in the Northeast, including Rock Spring, Ridgewood, Forsgate and North Jersey Country Clubs in New Jersey; and Winged Foot, Bethpage and North Hills clubs in Westchester and Long Island, New York.

Most of Wendehack’s work was derived from historical influences, primarily Tudor/Norman and Colonial and Spanish Revival styles, using prominent gables, chimneys and stonework to conveying permanence and solidity while evoking an approachable hominess through gracious entryways and gathering spaces and large, welcoming fireplaces. Yet he strongly believed that historical characteristics should be tempered by modifying those ideas to modern purposes. An article about his Maplewood house in The American Architect of June 5, 1928 noted that “In every way this house serves as a capable example of modern adaptation.”

Catching the Spirit

In a 220-year-old house, it is not unreasonable to think (hope?) that someone’s ghost is still wandering about the place. Does the Spirit of Susannah Hedden mind that we cook soup at her open hearth? Do any of the eight children of Henry and Electa Durand still flit about the loft space on the second floor in their nightshirts?

Ghost hunting today has moved from divining rods and crystal balls – at least in part -- to an array of electronic equipment, including electromagnetic field meters, digital voice recorders, and digital still and video cameras.

A group called Free Spirit Paranormal Investigators (FSPI) came to Durand-Hedden one hot night in August 2010, when the moon was waxing gibbous and 93% full (according to their report), and set up cameras and sensors for a three-hour session of observation and sensation.

Frank Cassidy, whose business card reads “psychic medium”, and his crew of 13 have been together for two years. FSPI has a particular expertise in historic properties and the team was excited about the opportunity to explore the Durand-Hedden House.

They stayed from 9 pm to almost 1 am, taking 500 photos and making a combined total of almost 17 hours of audio recordings and 3 hours of infrared video recordings, some made in almost complete darkness.

Sifting the Evidence

They spent six weeks reviewing their evidence, examining the recordings for electronic voice phenomena (EVPs) and data that would indicate a disruption in the electromagnetic field that is all around us. If a phenomenon can’t be documented and confirmed, FSPI will not determine it to be a valid paranormal event.

On October 17, the FSPI team came back to Durand-Hedden (in daylight) to explain to almost 100 visitors how they work, what they are looking for, and how rigorous they are about their standards.

Some in the audience -- of all ages – expressed confidence that they had experienced some sort of spirit phenomenon, and many said they saw no reason to think it was not possible.

Cassidy and his colleagues showed slides of strange effects recorded on digital cameras in a cemetery in Pennsylvania, and played odd audio recordings that truly sounded like voices saying words.

The Durand-Hedden Report

Their night at Durand-Hedden, unfortunately, did not reveal any documentable phenomena. Some interesting tidbits, however: A small bedroom on the second floor (part of the original 1790 house) contains a c. 1810 rope bed and a cradle, probably from the same period.

In his report, Cassidy describes the scene: “As I moved closer to the cradle and placed my hands over it I was met with some sort of force pushing me back.”

Using digital voice recorders and dowsing rods, Cassidy asked questions and received monosyllabic answers that seemed to be from someone named Emily who said it was her cradle and that she had died before the age of 3 sometime before the Civil War.

The tall mirror in the Victorian Parlor was a source of odd sensations to several team members. One said that when she looked into the mirror she saw a clear reflection of her body from the shoulders down, but could barely make out the outline of her head.

However, they could not document these sensations with any of their equipment, so they concluded that there was no paranormal activity in the house. At this time, anyway.

The American Four Square

A practical, adaptable and livable home-grown original

Four-squares are the “little black dress” of American residential architecture – “an all-occasion favorite that’s appropriate in almost any setting” – and always managing to look stylish, according to a 2006 article in Old House Journal by architectural historians James Massey and Shirley Maxwell.

The typical four-square house had four rooms on the first floor and four on the second, and a generally cube-like overall structure. The entrance, reached through a generous projecting front porch, was often to one side, opening into a corner hall or room, from which the other rooms opened up. The corner hall avoided the darkness inherent in some center-hall layouts.

As a type, not a style (and not even given a name until the late 20th century), the foursquare could be rendered in Arts and Crafts, Prairie or Colonial Revival style, depending on the application of eave lines, window styles and patterns, and use of gables or dormers, and the type of exterior construction — brick, wood, stucco or even concrete block.