Burlington County Honors Historic Preservation Efforts
By CAROL COMEGNO of the Courier-Post Staff
Lawyer Robert Malloy was looking for a new office in Marlton and found an older home that was being used as a day-care center in the downtown area.
He decided to restore the 1865 Italianate home at 26 S. Maple Ave. to re-create the ambience of that era, moved his law office there from the very modern Pavilions at Greentree and rented part of it to other small businesses. He calls it the Reuben Sparks Building after the local resident who built it.
He subsequently restored the adjacent Joseph Bucknell House built in 1845 and recently moved his law office there. For his efforts on the Reuben Sparks Building, Malloy received one of nearly a dozen historic preservation awards this week from the Burlington County Board of Freeholders.
"I'm glad I didn't know what I didn't know when I started it because there was a lot more to restoring it than I thought," Malloy said Thursday after county historian Joseph Laufer presented the plaque award. "There's something interesting wherever you look in an older building. It's not cookie-cutter stuff. It's pretty, it has much more texture and it's very comfortable," said Malloy, who lives in Mount Laurel.
He said the porch had to be rebuilt, inside partition walls were replaced and the house had to be stabilized because of damage underneath caused by many holes dug by groundhogs over the years. The Sparks two-story, wooden home office has a square-columned facade, a cupola atop the roof and fancy bracket work at the top of the outside walls where they meet a roof overhang. "I was really impressed with county (government) organization for these awards and its historic preservation efforts. The county has a lot of history that goes under the radar," he said.
County Freeholder William Haines Jr. said the awards are "key to helping us preserve the county's rich heritage for the benefit of present and future generations."
A number of newspaper columnists received awards:
Alice Smith, the Riverside Historical Society archivist, won an award for her research of Delanco's role in the testing of the Navy's first prototype submarine in 1861 in the Delaware River and Rancocas Creek. She is also a local history columnist for the Riverside Positive Press.
The other history columnists were Will Valentino of Palmyra, author of a weekly history column in the Town News, and Dennis Rogers of Edgewater Park, history columnist for the Beverly Bee and president of the Riverfront Historical Society, who said the awards "bring visibility to history."
Other winners were Betty Hahle and John McCormick of the Riverton Historical Society for restoration of a 1926 film about Riverton; Dennis Weaver of Maple Shade for DVD histories of Moorestown and a Maple Shade house; Donald D. Catts for a map of Shamong Township; the Eastampton Community School for field trip programs to historic Smithville Park and Mansion; the 130-year-old St. Mary's Choral Society of Burlington City and a book of legal opinions of a well-known county judge, Martin L. Haines, by the Superior Court and the Burlington County Bar Association.
The Bass River State Park service won for preservation and cataloging of 312 artifacts dating to park origins and the involvement of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.
