Stephenville (also called Stephenville Ranch, Stephenville Ranch Homes or Stephenville Village) is an unincorporated community and residential neighborhood located within Edison Township in Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The community is centered around Park Avenue, which borders the south and west ends of the community, Stephenville Parkway, a median strip-street which runs east–west in the center of the community, and Plainfield Road, which borders the east end of the community. An eastern addition to Stephenville was planned in the early 1950s, east of Plainfield Road, but after years of political, residential and township issues, it was ultimately abandoned and portions were sectioned off into different communities during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Stephenville is located between Sutton Hollow to the north, the Oak Tree-Stephenville Park to the northeast, Hampshire Gardens, Carriage Hill and Arrowhead Park to the east, Woodbrook Corners to the south, and Park Gate and New Petrograd to the west.
Stephenville was developed and built by contractor Frank P. Tufaro through his building and development firm Terra-Nova Construction Company, with plans designed by architect Erwin Gerber. The community was named after Tufaro's eldest son, Stephen D. Tufaro. When first developed in the late 1940s, the rural community was unattached to nearby neighborhoods, but by the early 1950s, it was often linked as a sub-section of Oak Tree due to the school and fire districts. The community originally had its mail delivered by the Borough of Metuchen Post Office and its sewer system was connected to the Metuchen Sewer Treatment Plant. Bigger and newer township-wide schools were built, replacing neighborhood-based schools, and the postal service routes were re-organized as more land was developed between existing communities in the 1950s and 1960s, leading formerly distinct communities in Edison Township to blur their dividing lines.
Stephenville was largely responsible for getting Raritan Township to construct a modern sewer system in the northern part of the township. Local neighborhoods up to that point had septic systems installed to each house, but the land had poor seepage due to the proximity of Dismal Swamp and residents experienced frequent raw sewage overflow. The community took up their case with the Raritan Township Board of Commissioners, the Raritan Township Board of Health, the Federal Housing Administration, the New Jersey Department of Health and the Veterans Administration in the early 1950s and successfully pushed for the township to modernize sanitary living conditions.
History
Early building and development (1948–1950) Stephenville was announced in December 1948 as a post-war residential development community by Frank P. Tufaro, President of the development firm Terra-Nova Construction Company. Tufaro, an Italian-American contractor living in Hartsdale, New York, named the company after his place of birth, Terranova di Pollino in Italy. Tufaro applied for approval of building plans from the Raritan Township Planning Board and Zoning Commission on December 13, 1948. In early February 1949, Tufaro purchased 170 acres from Edward C. Dana and his wife Helen E. Dana, executors of Walter Williams' will. The tract of land purchased was at the time known as the "Williams tract" in an area loosely referred to as Oak Tree Park, and had much earlier been used as farming land. The property then only included two small cottages and a barn. A portion of the land had an easement from the Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation, where the Big Inch pipeline had been laid between 1942 and 1943 as a World War II emergency oil-carrying measure.
Tufaro asked the Raritan Township Planning Board and Zoning Commission to designate the land as a Residential Class B Zone, which would allow him to build 400 single-family homes on smaller lots. But on March 15, 1949, the Raritan Township Planning Board and Zoning Commission voted instead to designate the land as a 100% Residential Class A Zone; limiting the amount of dwellings developers could include in allocated lot sizes. This forced the Terra-Nova Construction Company to enlarge each home's plot of land and decrease the amount of dwellings in the tract to 300.
The designated area for the new community was defined as "a 186-acre tract of land between Park Avenue and Plainfield Road, opposite Arrowhead Park", and "between Metuchen and Plainfield, not far from Oak Hills Manor in North Raritan Township". More precisely, it was an area south of Oak Tree and below the Bound Brook stream, north of Pumptown Corners and Woodbrook Farms (a dairy farm), east of Dismal Swamp and New Petrograd, west of Arrowhead Park, and a relative distance west of Grove Avenue in Menlo Park. The land was an unincorporated portion of Raritan Township and the community would be built easterly off of the existing Park Avenue roadway, which connected the Borough of Metuchen, through Raritan Township's Pumptown Corners, Oak Hills, Oak Grove and Arrowhead Park communities with the Oak Tree community farther up north. Terra-Nova Construction Company made a deal with the Borough of Metuchen-based real estate broker and insurance firm Bohlen & Synden Agency, which had also handled Tufaro's purchase of the land, in which Walter Bohlen would be the exclusive real estate sales agent.
Stephenville's 300 dwellings were to be situated in a "parklike community" with 100-foot by 200-foot plots of land and modern ranch-style houses. Each five-room house was to include a complete kitchen with an electric range, Formica sink top, refrigerator, washing machine and exhaust fan, a bathroom with a tile bath and colored fixtures, a 22-foot living room, recessed radiators, a scuttle opening for full attic access, full insulation, hot water heating, a 550-gallon oil tank and a landscaped property-front. Because of its housing style, the community was sometimes advertised as Stephenville Ranch or Stephenville Ranch Homes, and was at times mistakenly written as Stephenville Village in newspapers. The community building plans were designed by Newark-based architect Erwin Gerber.
Stephenville and Stephenville Parkway were named after Tufaro's first son, Stephen D. Tufaro. He also named several of the community's streets after other members of his family: Maida Road after his wife's maiden name, Stephania A. Maida; Richard Road after his second son, Richard Chase Tufaro; David Court after his third son, David F. Tufaro; and Frances Road after his daughter, Frances Tufaro. May years later, David Tufaro went on to form a contracting company named in honor of his father, Terra Nova Ventures, based in Baltimore, Maryland. Williams Road was named in honor of Walter Williams, whose land Stephenville was built on, while Dana Circle was named after Edward C. Dana and his wife Helen E. Dana, who executed Williams will and sold the land.
47 building permits were issued for Stephenville's development in January 1950. By the end of February 1950, the community's first section, which included 35 houses still under construction along Park Avenue, had all been sold. The houses sold for approximately $10,500 a piece, with no down payment required for veterans, and families began moving in as soon as the houses were completed. By May 1950, 50 houses in Stephenville, consisting of the first two sections, had been sold and completed and the construction of an additional 40 was already underway.
By September 1950, residents had begun to move into houses on Hillwood Avenue and Dana Circle and the Terra-Nova Construction Company had 116 houses under construction. Borough of Metuchen real estate brokers Leichner-Timpson & Company took over the closing of sales in place of Bohlen & Synden Agency. In October 1950, another 60 homes were granted building permits. By November 1950, the newly built homes were advertised to include name brand appliances such as Crosley refrigerators, Bendix washing machines, oak floors and attached garages, for a cost ranging between $12,000 and $13,500. That same month, families began moving into Williams Road and Terra-Nova Construction Company announced that 110 houses had so-far been completed, with an additional 192 under construction.
On December 7, 1950, Alphonse Seyfried was appointed section air raid warden for Stephenville, as well as the neighboring communities Oak Hills, Arrowhead Park and Dismal Swamp. In mid-December 1950, Tufaro purchased 16 acres of land east of Plainfield Road and north of the Metuchen Golf and Country Club from Dr. Wilbert Westcott, Jr. Tufaro was already planning to expand Stephenville east-ward, above Arrowhead Park, until it met up with Menlo Park's western addition. 31 new ranch homes were initially scheduled to be built in the new addition, and the building permits were obtained on December 12, 1950. The price range of the new houses, which would sit on half of an acre each, ranged between $16,000 and $25,000 and catered to richer families that wanted to live near the private Metuchen Golf and Country Club.
Septic tank issues and sewer system improvement (1951–1953) As early as January 1951, Stephenville residents and neighboring Plainfield Road-area residents began complaining about muddy streets due to high truck traffic and lack of proper sewer drainage. In March 1951, it was alleged that the development had inadequately followed building and plumbing codes, principally concerning septic systems and raw sewage drainage. Stephenville, like many rural developments of the era, was not connected to Raritan Township's limited master sewer system and each house was instead equipped with a septic tank. The community was however built in proximity of Dismal Swamp and therefore had a poor seepage factor. The influx of new residents and workers in the community quickly oversaturated the grounds which already struggled to drain properly into the swamp. This caused septic tanks to overflow its raw sewage onto lawns and streets, into the nearby Bound Brook (from then on renamed the Stephenville Brook) and streams and even back into houses.
The health hazard conditions led to an investigation from the Raritan Township Board of Commissioners, the Raritan Township Board of Health, the Federal Housing Administration and the New Jersey Department of Health and gathered interest from Senators Howard Alexander Smith and Robert C. Hendrickson. Stephenville residents requested that Tufaro's building permits be revoked in an effort to halt further development of the community until the problem could be corrected. The New Jersey Department of Health deployed an urgency plan to educate families and their children on keeping their premises clean during the crisis, and local schools were given films and programs to keep children away from play areas and streams contaminated by raw sewage flow. Tufaro stated that the area of the development was having its highest ground water level in 40 years, which he said was largely responsible for the trouble. Later investigations also revealed that water drains had once been built and then buried, at a time when the land was farmed, and that the amount of water carried into the area significantly reduced the seepage factor of the land.