Linda DaRocha, who has spent much of her life in Harrison, was ready to move to the surrounding suburbs to raise her family. But when the historic home at 300 Davis Avenue went on the market, she and her husband, Tom, decided to spend another thirty years in town.
“We fell in love with it,” she said.
“We drove by and they had a ‘For Sale’ sign on the house,” she said. “I told him, if we can get this house, I’ll stay here.”
That was back in 1989. Now, DaRocha, with her three adult sons now grown, is finally ready to sell one of the township’s most beloved landmarks, a century-old Queen Anne that locals call the “Queen of Harrison.”
“The town council, anyone who works in Town Hall, and even the neighbors are always complimenting the house,” DaRocha said. “But it’s time to go – it’s only the two of us in that big house.”
Big, it is, with five bedrooms, four-and-a-half bathrooms, and a finished basement. The home was built in 1896 for Dr. Henry Allers, a well-known physician who, like DaRocha, spent much of his life in town. As an indication of his prominence, the news of his daughter’s weddings notched stories in the local newspapers. Allers died in 1917.
Since then, the home has only had three other owners. One of those families was the Shinn family. DaRocha knows this because Jenny Shinn, when she was in her 80s, stopped by her childhood home and asked DaRocha if she could see inside.
“She wanted to see if people had taken care of it,” she said. “We ended up crying, the two of us, because we found out we went to the same high school at St. Vincent’s Academy in Newark.”
Shinn, whose father owned Shinn Crane, told her that the home used to have a dumb waiter and her brothers would ride it up and down. However, not much else had changed about the home. Part of the reason for that is that the DaRocha family renovated the home in 2008 and went to great lengths to preserve some of the historic character, even having the crown molding in the kitchen recast in plaster to replicate the original.
Perhaps the corner-lot home’s signature feature is the three-story tower with views of the Manhattan skyline. “We’ve watched fireworks from up there,” she said.
The property is walking distance to West Hudson Park and the PATH Station—the convenience is part of the reason DaRocha’s husband, an investment banker on Wall Street, didn’t mind remaining in Harrison.
Although the home is beloved by locals, it doesn’t have a local landmark designation that might prevent the next owner from demolishing it. The family is working with Rosa Agency realtor Jason DeBarberie in hopes of finding the next caretaker of this historic home in Harrison.
“Harrison is notorious for developers knocking down homes and building new ones,” DaRocha lamented.
“I don’t think it makes sense financially to purchase it and demolish it,” DeBarberie said. “But that’s not something the owners would knowingly let happen.”
See the listing here.
