The Nicolas Gibbon House
960 Great Street
Greenwich, NJ 08323
(856) 455-4055
Nicholas Gibbon House
http://www.co.cumberland.nj.us/gibbonhouse
Open: Sunday 1:00pm-4:00pm/Monday Closed/Tuesday 1:00pm-4:00pm/Wednesday-Saturday Closed
Admission: Free but a donation suggested
My review on TripAdvisor:
The Nicholas Gibbon House
The historic sign of the Gibbon House
The sign that welcomes you to the home.
I was very impressed by the Nicholas Gibbon House when I took a tour one Saturday afternoon. There were no large crowds to deal with and the parking is perfect with plenty of room to move around. The grounds are beautifully landscaped with all sorts of seasonal flowers surrounding the house. When I visited, I thought I was mistaken, and it was someone’s home. There was a lot of care put into both the exterior and interior of this home.
The fields around the Gibbon House.
Nicolas Gibbon was a local merchant who moved to Greenwich in 1730 and continued to live here until the 1760’s. The tour guide explained to me that the townspeople would not let him build a church here (it was a Quaker region) so he and his wife decided to move out of the area. Richard Wood and his family moved into the house in 1760 and lived in the house until the 1920’s. Over that time, parts of the house were modernized and rebuilt. The Wood family later in the generations founded the WaWa store chain.
With the exception of the Nicolas Gibbon’s nephew and his wife’s portraits, all of the furnishings are not originally from the house. The downstairs is set up with a formal dining room and parlor area fully furnished in Victorian era furniture, paintings, rugs and silver. The silver collection of the house is very elaborate and some of the pieces came from the Hershey family of Pennsylvania.
The family portraits of the Gibbon nephew and his wife.
The library and study have rare books that were used for research as well as a working fireplace that was used for both light and heat. Downstairs is the kitchen with a large hearth and all the equipment and serving items for kitchen and dining use for the home.
The Parlor of the Gibbon House.
The Library at the Gibbon House.
The tour guide explained to me that during some of the past fundraisers, the hearth was used to cook foods of the time period that were served for events.
The Kitchen of the Gibbon House was used for cooking fundraisers.
The Kitchen Hearth is quite large.
Upstairs you have an elaborate master bedroom with all sorts of formal furnishings for an upper middle-class family living in the area.
The Upstairs bedroom
The Master Bedroom upstairs at the Gibbon House.
What was the interesting part of the second floor of the home was the “Everything Room”, which contained an extensive collection of toys and dolls, Civil War historic items, period clothing, bonnets, top hats and parasols, an extensive collection of quilts and Hair Art which was a Victorian tradition of making art from the hair of the dead.
The Everything Room at the Gibbon House has all sorts of Victorian artifacts.
There was a collection of ‘Sewing Samplers’, which is how young women learned how to perfect their sewing skills which was part of their domestic training for being a housewife.
The Everything Room on the second floor of the Gibbon House.
The collection of the house really gave a glimpse into the lives of people from the 1840’s until almost WWI. How much life has changed but not too much.
The Everything Room at the Gibbon House.
History of the Gibbon House:
In 1730, Nicholas Gibbon who had inherited more than 3000 acres of land nearby, bought a 16-acre lot in Greenwich on which he built a replica of a London Townhouse he had admired. The brick, fired on the property, was laid in the Flemish Bond pattern brought from Kent, England: this design is achieved by using a red stretcher and blue header producing a definite and attractive pattern. Rubbed brick is a further architectural feature, outlining each door and window opening as well as being used to emphasize the four corners of the house.
The Upstairs bedroom at the Gibbon House
The home, appropriately furnished with products of 18th and 19th century artisans contains a reception hall, a paneled dining room, a formal drawing room and a kitchen dominated by a huge walk-in fireplace in which demonstration of colonial open-fire cooking are conducted.
The walk-in fireplace at the Gibbon House.
There is a small store on the back porch where post cards, gifts and a fine collection of books and pamphlets on the history of the area may be purchased.
The Master Bedroom.
On second floor, in addition to a bedroom, are exhibits of 19th century locally made, rush seated. “Ware” chairs, children’s toys, dolls and clothing as well as Civil War artifacts donated by local families.
Some of the toys in the Children’s Collection.
The Military Collection at the Gibbon House.
The Farming artifacts.
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