Montville Historic Districts
Morris Canal Historic District
The Morris Canal extended through Montville Township for 3.5 miles. In addition to the canal bed and towpath, features located within the Township included three inclined planes, #8 East, #9 East, and #10 East. Planes had numerous related features, including powerhouses, tender's houses, and other support structures. Twelve bridges were constructed to carry roadways over the canal, and several basins were located along the route. These features survive to varying degrees along the canal route. In 1988, the Montville Township Historic Preservation Review Commission (MTHPRC) sponsored a study of the Morris Canal in the Township. These resources are also enumerated in the Township's Master Plan Historic Preservation Element (2014).
The Morris Canal was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 under Criterion A, for its associations with engineering, industry and transportation in New Jersey. Locally, the canal spurred the development of a limited amount of industry along its route and growth of the villages of Montville and Towaco.
Capstick Historic District
Montville Township's early economy was agrarian, with most commercial enterprises in
the form of either farm or orchards or closely related activities such as feed and
cider mills, tanneries and saw mills. Many of the Township's early farm homesteads
remain today and have been included in the survey of historic structures conducted by
the Montville Historic Preservation Commission (MHPC)
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While neighboring settlements such as Boonton developed manufacturing industries, Montville’s economy remained closely linked to agriculture through the first half of the 19th Century. Even with the opening of the Morris Canal through Montville the subject of another extensive MHPC survey, the Township's economy remained highly agrarian through much of the 19th Century. However, in the last quarter of the Century the Industrial Revolution reached Montville in the form of a textile complex built and operated by the Capstick family. A thorough survey of the historic sites within Montville would not be complete without inclusion of the Capstick complex as it forms the Township's only historic industrial site.
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The district includes the sites and/or remains of The Montville Finishing Company and The Globe & Columbia Print Works, the two textile finishing companies built and operated, or leased, by John B. Capstick & Sons. In addition, the district includes the two mill ponds essential to the textile operations of both plants. The original lock-cut stone dams are no longer in place at both ponds. The dam and mill pond serving The Globe & Columbia Print Works are particularly significant as the lock, raceway, turbine pit and tailrace are also no longer evident today. These structures date from the earliest period of mill operation (c.1880) when the complex was dependent upon water for both power as well as cloth finishing processes.
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Related Structures within the District
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A brick furnace stack of obelisk shape remains along the northern boundary of .The Globe & Columbia Print Works site and is a statement to that complex's later dependence upon coal as a source of power. This structure also marks the area where the company coal yard was located during the period when John B. Capstick & Sons sold excess coal to Montville residents for home heating use.
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The textile complex had close association with The Excelsior Fire Company, a volunteer fire company sponsored by John B. Capstick & Sons as a precaution against fire in the cloth rooms as well as in neighboring residences. Ironically, fire would eventually' destroy The Globe & Columbia Print Works in early 1914. The original Excelsior fire house remains today along the east side of Taylortown Road.
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A mill store, located near the intersection of Taylortown Road and Main Road served the personal needs of employees well as those of the general population. The structure remains today in the form of a private residence.
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Private residences along the southside of the present-day NJ Transit right of way are believed to have been original mill houses built to provide housing for company superintendents.
North of the NJ Transit right-of-way and west of Taylortown Road the Capstick family built a storage barn-and ice house. Ice was sold to the general public by the Capsfick family and the two structures as well as the ice pond remain today.
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North of the barns and to the west of Taylortown Road is the former William J. Coles residence. Mr. Coles had been employed by a British textile firm in Bristol, England when he was approached by John Capstick to travel to America and become managing director of the Montville Finishing Company and The Globe & Columbia Print Works.
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Opposite the Wm. J. Coles residence, to the east of Taylortown Road, stand the three residences built and occupied by members of the Capstick family. These homes overlooked both textile complexes and, along with other structures mentioned previously, are evident in the architectural drawing of The Globe & Columbia Print Works.
Dutch Stone Houses District
A discontinuous cluster of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses built by Dutch settlers like the Doremuses and Van Duynes. They were primarily constructed in the second half of the eighteenth century, though some have nineteenth-century modifications.
The typical Dutch stone house in Montville is a one-story dwelling, with steeply pitched gable roof allowing for an attic or loft space. The walls are generally of random fieldstones, with corners and facades of roughly squared or at least evenly sized
sandstones. A notable characteristic is the use of a small stone between the larger ones in the wall, which "evens up" the uncoursed wall. Wooden sash windows and board-and-batten doors were standard. Molding and other finish carpentry was simple. All the Montville examples were built with asymmetrical entry placement; most of them with even numbers of doors and windows. Windows are generally smaller and sparely placed on the rear elevations, and generally not at all on the gable ends. Although a few houses have been modified over the years to create a symmetrical façade with a single, centered doorway, the English Georgian style which influenced so much vernacular architecture in America made little impact in Montville on the traditional Dutch Builder.
Vernacular eighteenth-century domestic architecture built for early Dutch residents of present-day Montville Township is characterized by a long, low form of one-and-one-half-story stone walls, a steep gable roof with flared eaves, and a façade incorporating a balanced number of windows and doors rather than an arrangement based upon axial symmetry. The houses typically face south, and often are embanked into low hills to provide an on-grade basement entry. Two-room plans were dominant, with some one-room dwellings modified within a generation to the two-room plan. Although built as the center of
prosperous farms, none remains on any significant amount of land, or is associated with any important outbuildings.
Jersey City Water Works Historic District (Montville/Boonton)
Excerpt from a New Jersey Historic Preservation Office survey form for the Jersey City Water Works Historic District, completed by the RBA Group Cultural Resources Unit in 2002:
"The Jersey City Water Works originated in 1851 with the formation (by an act of the State Legislature) of a municipal Board of Water Commissioners. The first works, completed in 1854, pumped water from the Passaic River opposite Belleville. Water was carried through a pipeline across the meadowlands and the Hackensack to a distributing reservoir (Reservoir No. 2) on the Bergen Ridge above Jersey City. Subsequent improvements included second and third pipelines parallel to the first, a series of new pumping engines, construction of Reservoir No. 3 adjacent to No. 2 (1871-1881), and construction of a new High Service pumping station at the Jersey City reservoir complex (1870-1872). By the 1880s, however, it was clear that the system would not meet the needs of the growing city, due to the inadequacy of the source. Increased intake from the Passaic was not feasible, the river having become too polluted for drinking. A clean water supply was now considered essential for public health. A temporary supply from the Pequannock watershed was purchased from the East Jersey Water Company beginning in 1896, and in 1899 contracting began for construction of a new system to supply Jersey City with water from the Rockaway River at Boonton. The new works, including a dam and reservoir at Boonton and a 22.78 mile pipeline to Jersey City, were completed in 1904. In 1908, a water purification facility was added in order to address concerns about contamination of the source, and in 1910 the works were purchased by the city of Jersey City. Elements of the older works remained in use, including the Jersey City reservoirs and the old pipelines, which tapped the new aqueduct. In 1919-21 a second pipeline from Boonton to Jersey City was added parallel to the first. The two pipelines are currently in use, supplying Jersey City and neighboring communities through distribution mains. The Jersey City reservoirs were abandoned in the late twentieth century."
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For more information on the Jersey City Water Works Pipeline, click here
