The Stone House on Dunkerhook Road Is Getting Restored. Its Most Famous Story Didn't Hold Up.

"Research conducted for their Preservation Plan debunked this history." That sentence comes from the New Jersey Historic Trust's project page for the Naugle-Vanderbeck House at 42-49 Dunkerhook Road. The history it refers to is the one most people in Fair Lawn know. According to the historical marker outside the house and local lore, one of the Marquis de Lafayette's paymasters once lived there, and the Marquis is believed to have visited in 1824.

The Trust's page also lists a $537,509 state grant awarded to the Borough of Fair Lawn to restore the house inside and out. The same research that removed the Lafayette connection did not reduce the case for saving the building. The house is being restored for its age, its construction and the people who fought to keep it standing. The marker's story is not part of that case.

What the Building Has Without the Legend

According to the Trust, the house was built "either in 1740 or 1762" by the Vanderbeck family. It is an example of mid-18th century Dutch Colonial architecture and one of the few stone houses of its style still standing in Bergen County.

The detail that sets it apart is how it sits on its lot. The house is built into a bank, so the basement is a full story that opens at ground level on one side. That lower level is where the cooking was done. The Trust calls this arrangement unusual. It is also the kind of feature a lot of passersby never notice from Dunkerhook Road.

The house has been documented for a long time. The Historic American Buildings Survey recorded it in 1939 as the Jacob Vanderbeck House. Preservation New Jersey's endangered-sites list includes a property called the Jacob Vanderbeck Jr. House, which is a separate building. Keep the two apart when you search for either one.

How Close It Came

The house was a private home for well over two centuries. Then it nearly came down:

1. 1939: The Historic American Buildings Survey documents the house under the name Jacob Vanderbeck House.
2. 2003: The house stops being a private residence and is sold to a developer who planned to demolish it and build townhomes.
3. 2007: Preservation New Jersey adds the Naugle House to its endangered list.
4. 2011: After a local grassroots campaign, the Borough of Fair Lawn buys the house with help from Bergen County.
5. 2024: The borough asks residents to take a survey on preserving and restoring the house, as part of its application to the Historic Trust. Later that year, the $537,509 capital grant is awarded.
6. September 29, 2026: Ordinance 2817-2026, which accepts and appropriates the grant, was on the borough council agenda for final passage and adoption.

Some older local coverage puts the purchase in 2010 at $1.7 million. That figure was attributed to Wikipedia. The state's 2011 date is the stronger record.

The townhomes were eventually built anyway, just not on top of the house. TAPinto's September 28 report says the property now sits next to the Barrister Court Townhomes at Dunkerhook, a 23-unit townhouse community built around 2019. The development came to Dunkerhook Road and the stone house is still standing beside it.

Where the Money Stands Right Now

There are two state funding items with the Naugle-Vanderbeck name on them. They are at very different stages.

The matching requirement means half of the roughly $1.08 million comes from the borough. The state's grant program requires a match from every recipient. The video of the September 29 council meeting marks a segment at 1:01:47 for ordinances on final passage and adoption. The agenda materials reviewed for this post don't record the vote, and the grant coverage reviewed here gives no restoration start date or completion target.

The October 1 recommendation came in a statewide round of $15,227,208 across 77 projects. In that announcement, NJHT Executive Director Glenn Ceponis tied the year's grants to "recent celebrations associated with America's 250th anniversary." The Revolutionary-era story on the Naugle House marker would have fit that theme well. The state funded the house without it.

What the Borough Wants the House to Become

The future-use plan relies on the house's documented history. In 2024, NorthJersey.com reported that officials wanted to turn the house into a community meeting space that would educate the public about the American Revolution and about underserved communities that once lived in the area. The headline also mentioned a cafe and a bike stop.

Those are proposals. The 2024 survey's questions and results haven't been made public, so it isn't clear how residents weighed in. The bike-stop idea does match the location. The Dunkerhook area of Saddle River County Park spans Dunkerhook Road in Fair Lawn and Paramus Road in Paramus. The county describes the full park as 577 acres with a multi-use path of about six miles.

Seeing the Naugle Story This Fall

None of the borough and state pages reviewed for this post list public hours or tours for the house itself, so plan on seeing it from Dunkerhook Road for now.

The closest look at the family is at the Cadmus House Museum on Pollitt Drive, next to the Radburn railroad station. It is a Dutch-style stone building and serves as the borough's official museum. Its collection includes items from the estate of the late Melvin Naugle and early photographs of the Naugle family outside their stone house on Dunkerhook Road. The museum's own page still describes the house as "now threatened by new housing." That no longer matches where the house stands after the 2011 purchase and the restoration grant.

Cadmus House is open on the third Sunday of the month. In October that falls on October 18. The November opening is listed as cancelled, so the next date after that is in December. You can also call (201) 796-7692 and request a tour. October 18 is also the day of the Fair Lawn Chamber's River Road Street Fair, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on River Road.

For a Dutch Colonial interior you can actually walk through, Garretson Forge & Farm is on the National and New Jersey registers. Settled in 1719, it housed six generations of the Garretson family. Upcoming dates:

• Sunday, October 11, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.: The Fall Harvest Festival of Farm Life in the 1800s, with costumed docents, food preparation and preservation demonstrations, and farm-grown jam, hot peppers, herbs and hardneck garlic for sale.
• Sunday, October 25, 1 to 4 p.m.: Open house with guided tours of the homestead and gardens.
• Sunday, November 8, 1 to 4 p.m.: The last open house of the year.

Back on Dunkerhook Road, the county's Dunkerhook area has Easton Tower, a waterfall, picnic pavilions, tennis courts, a playground, athletic fields, fishing, and connections to the park's multi-use path. A walk from the park to the stone house and then to the photographs at Cadmus House covers more of the Naugle family's documented history than the marker does.

Older homes in Fair Lawn often come with stories like this one, some documented and some not. If you're weighing a house where the history matters to you, MONIQUE BELGRAVE can help you sort the records from the lore. Work with Monique.