The Old Exxon Corner Has a Barn Now: How Saddle River's Village Center Got Its Newest Old Building

For about twenty years, the corner of East Allendale and West Saddle River roads was the one spot in the village center where nothing stood. The Exxon station closed in 2005. The borough eventually bought the land, and a committee had been discussing what to do with it since 2017. Today a red, wood-sided barn from the 1800s sits there. It was taken down on a private lot off Chestnut Ridge Road and rebuilt at 66 East Allendale Road in late 2025.

A gas-station lot holding a relocated barn could pass for a novelty. In this corner of Saddle River it is the usual way of doing things. The village center has been made out of reused buildings for more than seventy years, and the old Exxon parcel is the first property listed in the federal historic district drawn around that habit.

A barn that waited two decades for a decision

The barn started out as an outbuilding of the Achenbach House at 184 Chestnut Ridge Road. That 19th-century Dutch Colonial was built by Johan George Achenbach and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The National Park Service documentation describes a Victorian barn north of the house and includes a 1984 photograph. It also dates the cupola to a 1963 addition.

How the barn spent the next 20 years comes down to a land-use condition that was never resolved. The steps, as laid out on the borough's Historic Barn project page and in Planning Board Resolution 25-16:

1. 2002. The property was subdivided, and the barn stayed on the parcel that became 4 Apple Ridge Road. A soil-movement approval for a new house there required moving the barn and the Achenbach driveway to the neighboring lot.
2. 2004. The owner went back to the board asking to keep the barn where it was, as an accessory building. The driveway requirement was never lifted. That same year, fire destroyed most of the Achenbach House.
3. 2023 to 2024. The Apple Ridge property sold. In March 2024 the Planning Board revised the barn condition and left the driveway requirement in place.
4. November 3, 2025. The new owners offered to donate the barn to the borough. In return, the old driveway condition would be declared satisfied. The board voted unanimously and adopted Resolution 25-16 on December 2.
5. Late 2025. The barn was taken apart and rebuilt at 66 East Allendale Road.

The cost also dropped a long way. NorthJersey.com reported in November 2025 that early estimates for the move were as high as $130,000, and that Mayor Albert Kurpis had put the figure at $58,000. Borough Administrator Richard Molinari said the borough would contribute $19,000 and the Perillo family the rest. Borough Attorney David Lafferty said escrow money set aside at the 2023 closing would go to a trust fund set up by the family that owns Perillo Tours to help pay for the move, and that "Steven Perillo is paying an additional $19,000 personally." The borough's December 15, 2025 bill list records a $19,000 payment for the barn "relocated from Perillo to Exxon prop."

What 2026 added, one bill list at a time

When the move was announced, Kurpis told NorthJersey.com that the site already had a well and electrical connections. Hooking them up to the barn would be paid for out of future budgets, and the barn would be renovated "to restore its original doors and details." The borough's monthly bill lists from May through August 2026 show that work getting done:

A new exterior door and lighting were also part of the 2026 work. Together, the itemized 2026 lines above come to $22,930. That is smaller than the $58,000 estimate for the move, and it covered what turns a rebuilt frame into a usable building: power, water, glass and a lawn around it. The borough has not published a combined final total for the move and the follow-up work.

The lot the barn landed on is property No. 1

The Saddle River Center Historic District was added to the National Register in 1986. It runs along West Saddle River Road where it meets East Allendale Road. The NPS nomination counts 32 principal buildings. Its boundary description opens with "66 East Allendale Road, 2.536 acres," the same lot where the Exxon station once stood and where the barn stands now. Before the gas station, according to the 2025 reporting, the site held the borough's blacksmith business. In the mayor's words to NorthJersey.com, the barn now stands "opposite our landmark buildings in our Historic District."

What faces it across the road is the reason the move fits.

Across the road, the borough has done this before

Barnstable Court opened in 1954 as a shopping and office complex in the middle of the district. Its builders didn't clear the site. They took the outbuildings of William Packer's house and his old industrial buildings and turned them into shops and offices around an informal courtyard, with the mill pond as the focal point. The 1986 nomination calls it "one of Bergen County most interesting preservation projects." It adds that no other project in the county had reused a group of historic buildings for commerce, including industrial and accessory buildings as well as houses.

The Saddle River Inn, founded in 1981, sits in Barnstable Court. So the borough's best-known dining room is itself inside one of the earliest reuse projects in the county.

The same thinking runs through the rest of the district. Around the time Barnstable Court opened, the Woodruff-Packer foundry at 70 East Allendale Road was converted to ongoing commercial use. In the years before the 1986 nomination, a number of houses were turned into offices with their exteriors left intact.

On a short loop from the barn, the nomination points out these buildings:

• DeBaun Grocery, 67 East Allendale Road. One of two small, one-story frame country-store buildings put up early in the 20th century.
• Mowerson Store, 146 West Saddle River Road. The second of those country stores, in the same simple vernacular style.
• The Saddle River Hotel property, 69 East Allendale Road, which the nomination links to the old hotel.
• 74 East Allendale Road, where William Tricker Inc. Water Gardens moved in 1926. The nomination called Tricker the oldest commercial grower of aquatic plants in the United States.
• Two Esler family houses. From 1873 to 1924 the Esler nursery ran as a large florist operation inside the district. Its greenhouses came down in 1924, and the two houses are what remain.

Two of the most familiar buildings near the corner are outside the district line. The nomination leaves out Zion Lutheran Church and the Municipal Building, which stand in the eastern part of the hamlet. According to the borough's history page, the church dates to 1821. A schoolhouse went up behind it in 1825 and was replaced by a brick school in 1855. Borough Hall at 100 East Allendale Road was completed on December 15, 1937, and opened in 1938.

The nomination describes the village as "a cohesive area with a human scale" without dominant focal buildings. A single barn on the corner fits a district described that way, and like the buildings around it, it was first built for another purpose.

Plans for the corner, old and new

The borough's 2010 Master Plan set aside 66 East Allendale Road for future municipal use. It suggested turning part of the former Exxon parcel into parkland, tying it into the Saddle River Crossing trail system, and possibly using it as a second entrance to Rindlaub Park. In 2017, the borough's planner described the Crossing plan as using the river to stitch the hamlet together with trails, with work begun on a wooden walkway. Both are planning documents. Neither shows how much of that vision exists on the ground today.

A more recent sign that the borough is still collecting village property appears in Bergen County's proposed 2025 historic preservation and open space allocations. They listed $352,000 toward the borough's purchase of 125 West Saddle River Road, which is property No. 12 in the 1986 district.

The borough has not said what the barn will be used for. Its project page covers the relocation and the 2026 restoration and stops there. Questions about the project go to Borough Administrator Richard Molinari at 201-327-2609, extension 239. If you are interested in preservation more generally, the Landmarks Commission page explains that National Register listing and local landmark designation are separate, and that the current local list and map are available on request.

For anyone pairing a look at the barn with holiday errands, Saddle River Café at 171 East Saddle River Road is taking Thanksgiving takeout orders online until Sunday, November 22. Pickup is Wednesday, November 25, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

At Keren Abraham, we pay attention to the details that give a Saddle River property its character, whether that means a landmarked Dutch Colonial or a cupola added in 1963. If you own a home with history of its own and want to know what it's worth today, let's make it happen. Get your free home valuation.