Houses in the Historic District on the Candelight House Tour
Six of the houses on this year’s Candlelight House Tour, sponsored by the Friends of the Riverton Library, are in the National Register of Historic Places area of Riverton. The tour will be held on Saturday, December 10th this year. Please visit the display by the Historical Society of Riverton in the Porch Club, Fourth and Howard Streets, between 4:00 PM and 9:00 PM on the night of the tour. This will be a chance to see some of the articles from our extensive archives of paper, photographs and clothing while enjoying punch and refreshments furnished by the Library.
402 Main Street – Circa 1855. This is a Second Empire style house with a concave mansard roof, scrolled dormers, floor-to-ceiling front windows, and paneled shutters. It was built for E. H. Pancoast, a realtor and census taker. The house has fish-scale slates, round headed dormers, a bracketed cornice, and the original wood shutters. There is a handsome flat, metal-roofed portico over the left side entrance with chamfered posts, and a double-leafed door and transom. There is also a flat-roofed addition at the rear. The date “1852” is carved into a beam in the cellar.
200 Main Street – Circa 1858. This house is a Victorian home of indeterminate style. The land was purchased from the Riverton Improvement Company in 1854 and the building shows on an 1858 map. It is a gable roofed, bracketed, frame cottage with a double-leafed front door off center to the left with a transom. There is a wood porch on the front and right sides with Doric columns. Two story rear additions and a shed-roofed rear porch with turned posts have been added.
207 Howard Street – Built 1914. This two and a half story Arts and Crafts style home has a stone foundation and probably was originally shingled. The house has an asymetrical façade with a two story angled bay at the right and a porch at the left with wood box columns on stone piers. It has a shallow pitched gable.
300 Howard Street – Built 1868-1874. This house is a two story frame Downing wall-gabled cottage. There are brick chimneys left and right with two terra-cotta chimney pots each. In front is a twentieth century wood-framed porch on brick piers. There is a five bay symmetrical façade with centered double-leaf front door with sidelights and a transom and four pairs of narrow French doors that lead onto the front porch, which also wraps left. The house was originally constructed at Fourth and Main Streets for Robert Knight on the grounds purchased for Christ Episcopal Church. It was moved to this location and altered in 1888 for the recently widowed Mrs. Weld. The Rev. Dr. H. H. Weld had been a visiting rector at Christ Episcopal Church when it was founded and then Rector from 1870 to 1888.
205 Second Street – Built 1885. This is an elongated one and a half story frame former tenant house. The main part of the house is at left, with three parts of diminishing size towards the right. It has slate gable roofs, pole gutters, exposed rafter tails and gable dormers penetrating the eaves. There is a bracketed gable over the center entrance on oldest part of the house. A large stone chimney on the Second Street side of the house has a date stone up high reading “1885”. This house was originally a barn and cottage that were part of the large Hollingshead estate at 201 Linden Avenue. Circa 1935, Stewart Hollingshead had the buildings joined and renovated for his residence.
204 Broad Street – Circa 1875. This house is a mansarded, “L” plan, three story frame house with gabled dormers, a denticulated cornice, and a hexagonal slate roof, now poly-chrome painted. A wood porch wraps the Broad and Lippincott sides, with replaced wood posts. There is a one story “L” at the rear with an entrance on brick steps. Facing Broad Street, there is a double-leafed door with a transom and two brick chimneys at the center. A one story modern addition with an entrance and skylight faces Maple alley. The 1876 Stewart Book of Maps shows a residence here, with a carriage house at the rear. Between 1895 and 1908, it was the residence of Edwin and Mary VanMeter Grice. Mrs. Grice made significant contributions to children’s education at the local and state levels. She was one of the founding members of The Porch Club, a woman’s club that has been involved in many social and educational undertakings since 1890. In 1897, Mrs. Grice was elected the first female member of the Riverton School Board. She was also elected the first president of the New Jersey State Congress of Mothers, which was founded in Riverton in 1900 and eventually became the state PTA. The house has recently been converted into The Riverline Inn, a bed and breakfast.
article by Pat Brunker, Vice President of the Historical Society of Riverton
