Driving past 143 School St. in Piscataway, it’s easy to ignore the dilapidated, oddly-shaped house on a corner, surrounded by otherwise nondescript neighborhood homes.
But take a closer look.
It's not just another house in disrepair. The silhouettes carved into the stucco façade and the windows of countless individual shards of glass fused into mosaic-like designs tell another story.
The house even has a name − The Goldman House.
It was built by Sam Goldman, an artist, labor activist and leader of the utopian movement in the first decades of the 20th century, who was responsible for the home’s eclectic décor, including the windows and façade, as well as interior features like abstract wood elements, beginning in 1915.
Goldman belonged to the Ferrer Modern School colony of Stelton, the longest-lived of the Modern Schools in the country. The Modern Schools were part of the anarchist, socialist and labor movements, based on the idea of freedom in education and a hope for a utopian society, the latter which resonated strongest with Goldman.
The Piscataway colony and school fell after the Great Depression when members couldn’t afford tuition and interest in the movements declined. The last Modern School, which was in Lakewood, closed in 1958, bringing the movement to an end. But the Piscataway house is the most evocative building that remains of the 125 Stelton colony homes built between 1915 and the 1940s.
Now that house on the National Register of Historic Places is in danger of being destroyed.
The 1,100-square-foot, seven-room home on .82 acres sold for $425,000 on June 28. And due to the home’s poor state, it’s in danger of demolition.
“The buyers are taking it down and putting a new single-family home in its place,” said Victoria Benites, a realtor who represented the buyer in the sale, in June. “The house is in disrepair and isn’t habitable at this point. It needs a ton of work.”
Those committed to preserving the home’s history, including Goldman’s relatives, are doing everything they can to save the home from destruction.
“We are casting a wide net and good people have come to look at the house,” said Suzanne Scara, Sam Goldman's great-niece. “A historic architectural firm has said the home can be relocated, so we just have to keep working on trying to find an organization that is interested in it.”
Scara and other preservation activists have been contacting every organization and person they can think of who might be interested in the home or parts of the home, even musician Daryl Hall (of Hall and Oates), who has relocated historic houses.
Some of their ideas after relocating the Goldman House are to transform it into an office, studio or gallery; or donate it to a museum dedicated to the history of utopian communities.
If no organization is interested in taking the home, the preservation activists hope to take to-scale archival photos or create a video so people could experience what it was like to walk around the house.
“These are all things have been done before and there are lots of possibilities,” Scara said. “We often get good advice, well wishes and support but we need more than that.”
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Those interested in giving the Goldman House a new home can contact Scara at FriendsoftheGH@outlook.com.
Sam’s grandson, Perry Goldman, is helping to save the house, too. His stepmother, Jan Goldman, was the seller of the home.
“It was great that it is a historic site but it was also just too much for the upkeep and we couldn’t get any funds to do that,” Perry said. "We wanted to keep it around as long as we could as a monument to all the people who built that town, but in the end, we couldn’t hold on anymore.”
Perry was the Goldman House’s property manager and also lived there on-and-off for five years. Although he never met Sam, the house inspired Perry when he needed it most – after he returned from Army deployments, one during the Iraq War, when he hoped to live a more “creative life,” he said. Today, Perry works in interactive multimedia, a far cry from when he taught intelligence collection at Army bases.
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“Everywhere you look in that house there’s a creative element,” Perry said. “The house taught me to stop worrying about perfection. You can drop a marble on the floor and it rolls to the back of the house, and it’s always been like that. It was always good enough − it didn’t have to be perfect.”
Sam was born in Russia in 1887 before he immigrated to the U.S. in 1906 to flee persecution for speaking out against the Czarist regime – and even cursing at the judge during his own trial. But over the years he changed, just like his house did as he continuously added to it and changed it through 1936.
“He wasn’t this angry young revolutionary anymore,” said Perry. “It was more about ‘Let me express myself, let me express my feelings about how humanity should be.’ The house grew over time just like the family, the colony and America did, and in his later years, it was about art.”
How to help: If you are part of an organization interested in relocating the Goldman House, contact Suzanne Scara at FriendsoftheGH@outlook.com.
Contact: JIntersimone@MyCentralJersey.com
Jenna Intersimone has been a staff member at the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey since 2014, although she's a lifetime Jersey girl who considers herself an expert in everything from the Jersey Shore to the Garden State's buzzing downtowns. To get unlimited access to her stories about food, drink and fun , please subscribe or activate your digital account today. You can also follow her on Instagram at @seejennaeat and on Twitter at @JIntersimone .
This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: The Goldman House, a piece of utopian history in Piscataway, is in danger of demolition
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