We've Nailed It...

“We’ve Nailed It!” says Bridgeton’s Preservationist Team at CHABA, as they ready to reopen the historic Nail House at the entrance to Bridgeton’s massive City Park....All the members of Bridgeton’s nonprofit Center for Historic American Building Arts are feeling the excitement as they prep the so-called “Nail House,” the storied little building at the entrance to the park, for reopening and hosting regular visitors and small public or semi-private events again....

Alan Maier, a CHABA engineer, describes it as “our first major hands-on project with both the City and the NJ State Historic Trust. “And one of the bigger stories it tells,” he adds, “is that this park probably wouldn’t be here without it.” 

Built over 200 years ago, the Nail House launched the once-mighty Cumberland Nail & Iron Works, becoming command center for a growing metalworks industry for the rest of the 19th century, and then a museum of industrial Bridgeton.  “Mill-wheels were water-powered in the early days of this upstart industry,” says Maggie DeMarco, another CHABA engineer, “so the Works originally brought water from Sunset Lake via a mile-long mill-race.” The two project managers describe this water-filled 'raceway’ as both an engineering marvel and one of the most beloved features of what is now the 1000-acre Bridgeton City Park.

CHABA founder Dr Flavia Alaya adds that both the building and the water-course are among the first structures built during the wave of industrial development that defined South Jersey for a century. But what she really loves, she says, is the longer story it tells--because when the Iron Works left Bridgeton in 1899, they also left the popular green watershed intact, and “the City wisely bought it, preserved it, and made this jewel of a park possible.”

She likes to call it “Bridgeton’s Best Idea,” an allusion to the National Park System, created about the same time. 

“You might say the entire area went from grunge to green,” she adds—a theme CHABA has made a local mantra for historic preservation itself, and captured in their ‘intergenerational children’s book’ that tells the Nail House backstory: “This little building is HUGE.” The book, published in hardback and paper as well as both English and Spanish, was adopted for third-graders by the Bridgeton Schools in 2018, and not only helped fund the restoration, but won a statewide award from Preservation New Jersey.*

CHABA’s repairs have included new steel supports for the interior floor as well as restoring the front door and windows. The last replacement clapboards have now been primed and installed by a master carpenter. What's left are repainting the exterior and rehanging the already-repaired and refinished shutters. But there's also what she called "the glory bit we can hardly wait for"--a gala repositioning of the lovingly-restored famous two-faced Nail House clock in its west-facing facade.

The project--all told--has been a test of CHABA's capacity as volunteer professionals with a mission to protect and celebrate Bridgeton’s entire vast historic district, largest in the state. “We wanted to rebuild a commitment to private and public reinvestment in the district’s healthy future,” she says, “but while the pandemic set us back, we weren’t about to just sit around, so this joint CHABA-City-State project was a great investment while we waited it out.”

Has it been worth it? Ask any CHABA partner in preservation and they'll say YES! Alaya adds: “People in the community have really stepped up to help, not just because they remember the glory daysm but because they know it--This little building IS huge! Set strategically at the boundary between Bridgeton’s historic downtown and its vast and beautiful park—you might say at the margin between nature and culture--it’s become a symbol of both the birth of Bridgeton in industry and of its survival, for centuries, as a place where working people could make a healthy home.” 

And that, they say, is an idea well worth preserving.

September 2025

*Actually this is CHABA's second such award, having received one in 2014 for their Spanish translation of the Bridgeton District's official guidelines.