Historic Herbertsville landmark slated for upgrade BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer The paint is peeling from the battered white clapboards of the old Hulse homestead on Herbertsville Road. PATRICIA A. MILLER A pink dogwood frames the front of the historic Hulse House on Herbertsville Road. Paint peels from the clapboards on the back of the house. The house is slated for a renovation and will eventually become the home of the Brick Township Historic and Preservation Commission. The wooden floors in the barn-red pheasant houses in the back of the property near Sawmill Creek sag with age. But that will change over the next fewmonths, asmembers of the township Historic and Preservation Commission start work on the two-story landmark that will eventually serve as their headquarters and as a tourism center. Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis recently signed a contract to start the renovation of the farmhouse, portions of which date back to 1890. Township officials decided to funnel $58,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds into the project. It marks the first time in township history that CDBG funds will be used for a historical project. "The Hulse House represents Brick township's past, and these renovations willmake sure that this historic home is here for generations," the mayor said. The Hulse House didn't always sit at the intersection of Maple Avenue and Herbertsville Road. It began as the home of Benjamin and Mary Catherine Hulse, as a two-story, two-room farmhouse somewhere in the Bushy Neck section of Brick, said town historian Eugene Donatiello. The couple had four children, two daughters and two sons. Son Elwood and his wife, Lena, had the original home moved to its present location in 1930. Their son Stanley and his wife, Matilda, purchased the house in 1950 and built a one-story addition with a kitchen and dining area, and a bathroom upstairs. Matilda raised pheasants for profit. She sold live birds to gunning clubs and processed birds to people who considered them a delicacy. Elmer Havens, who donated the nearby Havens Homestead Farm to the Brick Township Historical Society, once told Donatiello that the Hulse family hired him as a boy to keep watch over the pheasants' corn and feed supplies. Havens would sit up nights with a .22- guage rifle to shoot hungry rats and mice that came to feed, Donatiello said. "He was paid a penny for a rat or a mouse," he said. "They would devastate the corn supply." The Hulse House is not on the National Register of Historic Places, and Donatiello is happy it isn't. Structures listed on the Register are muchmore difficult to renovate because they must be built to current codes, which can be extremely costly, Donatiello said. The backyard has huge oak, maple and holly trees on the perimeter.Afaded wooden swing with vines poking through its thick rope sways gently in the breeze, near an emerald-green patch of lilies of the valley and lilac bushes. And somewhere in the townshipowned woods behind the property are the remnants of a long-ago Leni Lenape encampment. But Donatiello doesn't reveal exactly where the site is. "We kind of keep that low-key," he said with a smile. "We know it's back there somewhere." The upgrade of the house will begin with the outside, with repairs to clapboards and the installation of new windows and gutters, Donatiello said. "It's a big job," he said. "I have a feeling the $58,000 will be eaten up by the outside of the building." The building will also be made more accessible to people with handicaps. Donatiello will take one of the tiny upstairs rooms to use as his office, and the other upstairs room will be used for storage. The downstairs will be used for historical commission meetings and as a tourism center. Donatiello eventually hopes to erect a sign near the house that will read "Welcome to the historic village of Herbertsville." The Historic Preservation Commission was created in 1998 to advise the Planning Board, the Board of Adjustment and the Township Council about designated township landmarks.