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Point Breeze, continued from Page 2 covery Center from 4 to 6 p.m. Be ready to browse the historic vegetable and herb garden they restored last year, which grows 27 heritage varieties reflective of what was planted in the 1820s.

Johan Firmenich is set to be awarded the 2023 Donald B. Jones Conservation Award for his leadership on Mountain View Road in Montgomery Township during the program. For tickets or more information, see the D&R Greenway website at drgreenway.org

The celebration at Point Breeze will recognize the region as part of the ancestral home of the Lenni Lenape, known as “Lenapehoking,” first stewarded 13,000 years ago.

Named after the upward winds that rise from where Crosswicks Creek flows into and joins the Delaware River, this site sits at the confluence of the two waterways and is the southern access point to the Abbott Marshlands, a central New Jersey expanse of wetlands, woods, and diverse wildlife. As the grand unveiling of Point Breeze approaches on Saturday, May 20, the Discovery Center looks to reestablish the “spiritual connection” between the earth’s resources and its inhabitants, just as the “original people” (a literal translation for Leni Lenape) once did.

During the program, guests can enter the Discovery Center for a recommended yet voluntary $10 donation from 1 to 5 p.m. and attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony with key figures in the restoration saga, including a Native blessing by Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania storyteller Barbara “Bluejay” Michalski. Summer hours will then be on subsequent Thursdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.

Mead suggested typing “Divine Word Missionaries” into the GPS rather than the address to avoid being sent downtown, then entering the estate at 101 Park Street and following the dirt road to the right. Bordentown has relocated its new municipal building complex with administrative offices and a city hall in the heart of the huge property, which will also be the site of the new police station.

As part of this evolution of civic engagement that culminated in the $4.6 million joint sale, the remaining state-owned land will continue serving as a public park that Mead hopes to see flourish and instruct visitors on exactly what the project protects.

Trained as a lawyer and diplomat, Joseph Bonaparte became the King of Naples when his younger sibling Napoleon, the ruthless French military commander who would declare himself the First Consul of France and emperor, rose to power.

In Naples, Joseph was relatively respected and admired, but Napoleon soon grew disappointed in his performance. He was deposed in favor of his younger sister Caroline’s husband, Joachim Murat, and made to govern Spain in the aftermath of the French invasion. Although Joseph ended the Spanish Inquisition, he failed to reclaim any semblance of his former popularity and would later abdicate the position—after making multiple offers of his own to do so—just before his brother’s Waterloo 1815 defeat.

As the allied troops encroached on Paris, Joseph left his French residence at the Château de Mortefontaine and escaped from Europe in the hull of a ship without his wife, Marie Julie Clary, surrounded by casks of wine and with papers designating him as an “M. Bouchard.” Joseph renamed himself “Comte de Survilliers,” or “Count of Survilliers,” after the title of a petite property near his Mortefontaine residence, but he was swiftly recognized and encouraged to seek political asylum from President James Madison; while Madison rejected an official meeting with him, he permitted Joseph to stay as long as he did so discreetly.

Joseph settled in Bordentown the following year and purchased Point Breeze from Stephen Sayre, a merchant and the former High Sheriff of London.

Napoleon had personally recommended that Joseph find an area between Philadel- phia and New York to settle, which made Point Breeze an optimal spot for him to live a lavish lifestyle away from prying eyes; he did so by building an enormous, three-story mansion of palatial grandeur that made any initial secrecy somewhat of a moot point for the ex-monarch.

He would ultimately own more than 1,800 acres in the surrounding area, which included the estate where he lived from 1816 to 1832 before returning to London and then splitting his time between the two until 1839, when he left Point Breeze for the last time before his death.

The home touted what was regarded as both the earliest and most expansive major art gallery, including a copy of the oil painting “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” by Jacques-Louis David, as well as one of the first to implement landscape design. He was also known to have the largest collection of books in the country in his private library, which comprised over 8,000 volumes—even more than the Library of Con- gress did.

Bonaparte erected numerous buildings and fixtures, both scenic and functional, on the bluff, such as a large belvedere observation tower to take in the view, bridges, a temple, and a massive European-style garden. To take care of everything and execute Joseph’s vision, the “picturesque” Point Breeze required an exorbitant number of laborers and maintenance workers, many of whom also lived on the grounds.

Gorgeous statuaries, fountains, and Etruscan vases populated Point Breeze in as much abundance as the diverse ani-

See Point Breeze, Page 4

Point Breeze, continued from Page 5 mal and plant life did, demonstrating how deeply Joseph, who was often hands-on and wore a coating of dirt he thought mightier than any crown, preferred his pastimes of “beautification” above all else.

Napoleon astutely predicted his brother’s American lifestyle in a quote that would prove true even in spite of setbacks: “He will be a bourgeois American and spend his fortune in making gardens.”

On January 4, 1820, the first mansion caught fire as Joseph returned from New York, with neighbors rushing to retrieve his belongings and nearly securing all the valuables that could be safely saved.

Richard F. Veit, Ph.D., a Monmouth University professor, historian, and archaeologist, has overseen the onsite excavations in 2007 where the first mansion was and in 2021 near the Gardener’s House, which resulted in the recovery of at least 20,000 artifacts.

This loss, according to Veit and Michael J. Gall’s 2011 “Archaeological Examination of Joseph Bonaparte’s Point Breeze Estate” report via the Abbott Marshlands website, led Joseph to start the process of building his second home. He then converted the estate’s preexisting horse stables closer to Park Street into an aesthetic resembling an “Italian villa,” a contrast to the other mansion’s neoclassical design.

Another addition was that Bonaparte also devised a system of underground tunnels to better maneuver across the vast estate, which connected to the waterway for commerce and transportation as well as to provide a potential escape route.

Yet, because of Julie Clary’s poor health, Joseph’s wife never came to live at Point Breeze and remained in Europe, while his daughters, Zénaïde and Charlotte, arrived a few years later—the former with naturalist Charles Lucien, a collaborator of John James Audubon who would become known as the “father of American descriptive ornithology.”

The son of Joseph and Napoleon’s younger brother, Lucien Bonaparte, Charles Lucien married his cousin, Zénaïde, which made him Joseph’s nephew and son-in-law. The couple lived in the “Lake House,” a new abode by the second mansion.

During this time, Joseph added more lodging for guests in the “Wash House,” as well as a residence for his gardener on the eastern side of the property, the “Gardener’s House.” Although the latter building’s exterior was initially a combination of brick and wood with a smooth white stucco that matched Joseph’s second home, the textured design was added during Divine Word’s ownership of the site.

From the garden at the rear of what will now be the Discovery Center, the vestiges of the great orchard can be seen in the distance, leaving only a few trees in their place.

After officially opening in October of last year, the space will be used for varieties of plants from Bonaparte’s era, including several indigenous crops that the Lenape cultivated.

Gardener and land steward Lara Periard, who will also be the manager of the Discovery Center, researched the plants and aligned the plots according to the original ones from the historic 1847 map of the site with oversight from an advisory committee.

D&R’s Land and Property Steward, David Seiler, is also a carpenter with experience in historic renovations who designed and built the wooden fence to keep any animals, such as deer, from perusing the plants inside.

They began planting what they could in the fall of 2022, but being prepared at the start of the growing season this time around has enabled them to use more of the space for spring produce, Mead added, and she is especially looking forward to the squash and corn.

An arch indicates where the Gardener’s House’s back door and a flight of steps, one of which was discovered underground, would have been. Divine Word Missionaries donated a statue of St. Joseph, the patron saint of workers, families, travelers, and others who represent the diversity of individuals linked with Point Breeze, that presides over the native plants and French lavender growing nearby.

Originally founded as a center of camaraderie and study for anyone looking to pursue a religious profession, Divine Word changed courses to a high school seminary in the 1940s, expanding over the years with more facilities until Harris Hays Hammond’s mansion—which the prior owner had opulently transformed from the estate of Henry Beckett—caught fire in 1983.

This damage to the chapel and residence area marked the school’s closure, but thanks to its insurance policy, Divine Word was reimbursed for the losses and, following some litigation, was able to remodel the former classroom building and turn it into a residence for active and semiretired missionaries.

On the way into the house, there is a walkway made of recycled bluestone recovered from the second Joseph Bonaparte mansion, which has since been integrated into the patio and path as a starting point for tours, Mead said. This way, she added, those coming to the estate can “walk in the footsteps of history.”

The two bronze sturgeon statues by Kate Graves, Mead explained, gesturing to the rocks around the signature sycamore tree, remind her of Hammond, the investor and wealthy financier who owned the prop- erty from 1911 until he lost it in the 1929 stock market crash—at which point the bank repossessed it and it remained empty for more than a decade.

Hammond hired stonemasons to erect a Chinese water garden at the end of the property with waterfalls and a tunnel system that called to mind Bonaparte’s own, as the exhibit materials explain. The magical, almost fairylike aesthetics of the grotto area once encircled the perimeter of a swimming pool that Harris’ brother, inventor John Hays Hammond Jr., made his own history in.

Hammond Jr. was a torpedo of a force renowned as the “Father of Radio Control,” whose pioneering work became the basis for contemporary radio remote con- trols. He acquired “over 400 patents” in his career, expanding science, communication, and even naval warfare equipment with missile guidance systems that are still in use today—and, according to Mead, he tested that very technology in the Point Breeze rock garden swimming pool.

When they lowered Graves’ sturgeon sculptures onto the ground using a crane and remote control, Mead said, it felt like a full-circle moment.

D&R Greenway began working on the Gardener’s House in the summer of 2021, and while the current structure is not an exact recreation of the original house, according to Mead, they hoped to instead “create a historical interpretation of the building” that will tell stories about the lay- ers of land through a design evoking the period of its creation.

The main entrance was outfitted with paneled mahogany double doors based on historic drawings, which also showed two trees where the solitary sycamore now is.

Two flags will adorn the outside pole, with the first being specially made for the estate and representing the three Lenape clans—turtle, wolf, and turkey—designed by Eric Labacz. Truesdell is working on the other, which will have a crest symbolizing Joseph Bonaparte’s role at Point Breeze.

Mead emphasized that this project would not have been possible without the work of former mayor James “Jim” Lynch, whose spirited involvement helped safeguard the open space from turning into housing complexes or warehouses.

Lynch was concerned about severing this connection to local history and the potential health dangers these facilities posed, as the Delaware River supplies clean drinking water to approximately 15 million people.

Thanks to care from those such as director-manager Father Poole and Rev. Martin H. Padovani, the latter of whom spent 60 years at Point Breeze and holds the record for the longest assignment there, Divine Word shared the same vision D&R Greenway had and approved the sale.

Through the “People of Point Breeze” room is the “Gardener’s Kitchen,” which has only been lightly updated with a deep sink perfect for washing produce. Hanging next to an 1830 Morris Tasker iron bake oven on the wall is a still life of vegetables by artist Paulette Z. Hill. She used the same list compiled by Val Sassaman and the Bordentown Historical Society’s vice president, Doug Kiovsky, to scout farmers’ markets for uncommon crops like white eggplants.

When they started work on the Gardener’s House, Mead noted that most of the building was outdated, with drop ceilings, shag carpeting, and dusty drapes, as a result of changes Divine Word made in the

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1960s.

These also carried over to the left room, now known as the “Crown Jewels Gallery,” where non-bearing walls separated a path to the bathroom and the living spaces for the retired priests, four of whom were still living at Point Breeze until 2020.

After taking those down, the curatorial team discovered the antique, hand-printed wallpaper underneath and restored the picture rails in every room.

erect a “modern” residence of his own; the Vincentian Fathers of Philadelphia, an all-male Roman Catholic society of apostolic life who used it as a short-lived summer retreat; Hammond; and finally, Divine Word from 1940 to 2020.

• Patio and walkway repairs: sunken, uneven areas re-leveled and pitch corrected…patios and walkways cleaned and re-sanded.

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In the exhibit materials, Veit wrote that the title of the space comes from the legend of when the former king, before coming to America, fled to and secretly buried crown jewels in Switzerland—as well as solitaire diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, fashionable items of value like collars and epaulets, swords, belts, and more—then sent Louis Mailliard, his secretary, personal assistant, and “closest confidant,” to fetch them.

Those riches financed Joseph’s lavish lifestyle; he spent time in Hamilton’s Bow Hill mansion, rented a townhouse in Philadelphia, and purchased 150,000 acres in upstate New York around what is now called Bonaparte Lake.

The inaugural set of revolving exhibits will be displayed at least through the end of 2023 and showcase paintings of prominent spots, or “the Jewels of Point Breeze,” that align with D&R Greenway’s interpretation that “the land and the resources,” such as the fruit orchards, rock garden, carriage bridge, and the view from atop the Bordentown bluffs, hold the true value.

D&R trustee Wendy Kvalheim has donated the display cases that house wooden duck decoys, ceramic panels celebrating Divine Word’s annual gala, and archaeological finds.

Enhanced interior features highlight the historic components that culminate at Point Breeze. The house’s windows, for example, are now sporting Empire-style curtains from Nancy Robinson-Long and Bert Kerstetter of Calico Corners in Yardley, which were based on photographs of 1820s French drapes.

An American brass chandelier greets guests at the entrance, along with an Italian blown glass piece named “Vento” (“wind”) that floats over the staircase like the grass at Point Breeze and complements the Spanish fixture on the top floor.

These chronicle the chapters of Bonaparte’s life on the way to the “Walk Through Time” room, which delves into the other owners that succeeded him: Thomas Richards and his wife Anna Bartram, the granddaughter of botanist John Bartram; Beckett, the British Consul at Philadelphia, described as “a fervent Francophobe” who destroyed Bonaparte’s second mansion to

Another figure of focus here is Mailliard, Joseph’s “right hand man” for 36 years. In a Community News Service exclusive, Mead shared that the room’s mantel, the only original one left in the entire home, will be reunited with the visage of its most famous former tenant and display a neverbefore-seen 1819 French portrait of Joseph Bonaparte above the fireplace.

This 19th-century art piece (see cover) by Louis Goubaud was recently restored and had been privately held for years until the William S. Mailliard family learned of D&R Greenway’s work at Point Breeze and offered to loan it for a three-year period.

The “Natural World” room on the upper right will be home to a small library and display case with types of Native American patterned pottery fragments, an arrowhead collection, and stone tools. There is also contemporary work by Jane “Walkingstick” Roop, a member of the Lenape tribe of Pennsylvania and a Cape Maybased artist who creates wood carvings and animal beadwork.

Truesdell, a Pennington native who has lived in Mercer County his entire life, said learning about the full history of Point Breeze was an “eye opener” for him. In his perspective, the most challenging aspect of the exhibit process has been tying all of the elements together in a cohesive way that marries the global and local connections within Point Breeze’s legacy.

But Bonaparte is only one brushstroke of the Point Breeze portrait, with years of community-wide conservation converting each structure, whether debris or salvaged, into a synthesis of historic and natural knowledge.

Mead shared that a conversation with her Lenape advisors crystallized this important takeaway for her, which is that the land has been here before us and will be here after us, and with every generation come new stewards who will shape its future.

Humans have survived by cherishing this relationship, Mead noted, and so she has always felt a similarly strong pull towards preservation—and to do her part in layering these stories against the landscape of the Discovery Center at Point Breeze. ***