PARK RIDGE—Pascack Historical Society, gearing up to celebrate its 80th birthday, still has demolition and repairs ahead of it after a water pipe burst in Ellen Berdais Hall — the main venue of the society’s lectures and curiosity sales — on Wednesday, March 16.
The museum will be closed on Sundays until further notice.
PHS president Kristin Beuscher told Pascack Press on Thursday, “The water went through the floor into the basement, soaking hundreds of years of artifacts, collapsing the ceiling tiles, and leaving several inches of water on the ground. I spent yesterday running through the water with irreplaceable artifacts lifted over my head, trying to get them to dry land. There is a lot of work ahead of us as we remediate this.”
On Friday morning, Mayor Keith Misciagna relayed a PHS board message to residents saying the facility, at 19 Ridge Ave., took “severe damage to the hall, office, restrooms and our artifacts storage area in the basement.”
A board member said, “We are relieved that the museum [the John C. Storms Museum] did not incur any direct damage. Our main concern is the damage to artifacts stored in our basement. We are fortunate that the damage did not extend into the textile and ephemera storage areas.”
He added, “We are so thankful to the Park Ridge Fire Department, which responded to our damaged fire alarm system; Drew Breitenbach from Breitenbach Plumbing and Heating in Hillsdale, who responded to our emergency call in record time; and to Servpro, who rapidly arrived to begin the remediation process of our building and to save the damaged artifacts.”
And the board member said, “We hope that you can assist in continuing the mission to preserve the history of Park Ridge and the entire Pascack Valley by becoming a member of the Society. Membership begins at $30 at the single and $40 at the family level. Membership forms can be downloaded at pascackhistoricalsociety.org.
He added, “We are truly indebted to those of you who have already become members as we celebrate our 80th anniversary this October preserving our historical past.”
Misciagna added, “In light of this incident and the fact that the society is still recovering from financial losses due to the pandemic, I hope all our residents will join me in becoming members.”
The society’s board meets on Saturday, March 19. Beuscher said she would have more information following that meeting. Beuscher is a former editor of Pascack Press and still contributes the paper’s popular “Back In Time” column on Pascack Valley history.
Bad, but could have been worse
The John C. Storms Museum at Leach Chapel — home to thousands of objects, artifacts, and ephemera that chronicle life in Pascack Valley from the Lenape Indian days to the present — and Ellen Berdais Hall together make up the headquarters of the Pascack Historical Society.
The society began as a small group of local residents led by John C. Storms (1869–1962) who, with his brother James, “had amassed a large collection of historical items of every nature.”
The society says on its website that it found its permanent home at 19 Ridge Ave. in 1952, in a former chapel that itself is a historic landmark. “Opened in 1873, the museum building was once the First Congregational Church of Park Ridge. One of its primary functions was as a Sunday School. Inside the chapel, a large wooden bookcase held 200 volumes and served as the first circulating library in the area.”
The society says, “We still have that bookcase, as well as the original church organ — a gift from the famous preacher Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who delivered the sermon at the church’s opening.”
Today, it adds, it’s run by an all-volunteer board of trustees “united under a common mission of ‘preserving the past for the future.'” Admission is free and all are welcome.
Pascack Historical Society hosts many free events throughout the year. Exhibitions on for the rest of the year include spotlights on the Union Army’s Irish Brigade (a legendary unit of the U. S. Civil War) and World War II.
Grand reopening in 2019
The museum was graced by a recent renovation, work of approximately two years, designed by museum specialist Bari Falese. It reopened with a large party in 2019. Work included new lighting and signage, new display cases designed and built by George E. Mulhauser of Westwood, and the thousands of pieces in the museum’s archives indexed with cutting-edge museum software, so exhibits can be created around any topic.
One major exhibit, shown off to best effect in the renovation, is the world’s sole surviving wampum hairpipe drilling machine, an artifact sought by the Smithsonian Institution. The device was integral to the success of the Campbell family wampum production business, which was of cultural significance in the Pascack Valley.
Four ledgers from that wampum business, never before seen by the public, were donated to the museum by Campbell descendants Linda Gifford Van Orden of Allendale (now residing in western Massachusetts) and Susan Accardi of Simsbury, Connecticut.
Disclosure: The author was married — to the former Amy Van Orden — at The John C. Storms Museum at Leach Chapel in 2017. The couple were gifted lifetime memberships.