There was a stretch of the 20th century when Nutley's oldest surviving house was not a museum piece or a source of neighborhood pride. It was an ITT office. The multinational conglomerate that once ran a sprawling Nutley campus used the circa-1708 Van Riper House as executive space, a stone farmhouse built before George Washington was born pressed into service as a corporate address. When ITT began closing that campus in the early 1990s, the house passed to a developer building the Cambridge Heights subdivision around it, and for a while its future as anything other than a teardown was genuinely uncertain.
It is still standing. On September 26, it will host its second annual beer festival, and the ticket you buy to attend is, more directly than most people realize, the money that keeps the roof on.
What's Happening September 26
The Van Riper House Beer Festival returns to 491 River Road from 1 to 5 p.m., with a rain date of Sunday, September 27. Early bird admission is $35 through September 12, rising to $40 after that, with $15 designated driver tickets also available. The Township of Nutley Board of Commissioners approved the event's social affairs permit at its August 18 meeting, clearing the last procedural step before ticket sales could open in earnest. Every ticket includes a souvenir tasting cup, unlimited samples, live music, and access to house tours of a building most residents have driven past for years without ever seeing the inside of.
This is the second time the nonprofit Van Riper House, Inc. has run the event. The first, held in September 2025, went forward despite rain that pushed part of the schedule to a Sunday makeup, according to TAPinto Nutley's coverage at the time. That the organization is back for a second year, with early bird pricing already moving before the calendar flips to fall, suggests the format worked.
A Farmhouse That Predates The Revolution
The house's cut stone facade, coursed brownstone laid in a Flemish bond with splayed stone lintels, is considered one of the finest examples of Bergen Dutch construction in the lower Passaic River valley. Built around 1708 and enlarged between 1782 and 1788 by John Abraham Van Riper and his wife Leah Winne, the property sat directly along the route the Continental Army took during its 1776 retreat across New Jersey, meaning Washington's forces likely marched past this house on their way toward Newark and eventually the Delaware crossing. Documentation from the state's historic preservation program describes it plainly: the last Passaic River colonial manor home still standing in Nutley.
That is not a marketing phrase. It is a statement about scarcity. The houses that were contemporaries of this one, the working Dutch farmsteads that once lined the river, are gone. This one is not, and the reason it is not comes down to a specific sequence of decisions made by people who did not have to make them.
From Corporate Offices To Nearly Lost
When Town and Country Developers acquired the house as part of Cambridge Heights, local preservationists worked with the Township of Nutley to keep it out of the demolition path. Then, in January 2000, a fire caused significant damage to the northern end of the building. The township took ownership in 2001 and leased the house to Van Riper House, Inc. for twenty years, with the explicit understanding that the nonprofit would restore it. Early efforts focused on roof repairs and landscaping. Starting in 2019, the organization was revitalized under new leadership, got the house listed as a municipal landmark, and began activating the space for the first time with public fundraisers, the same fundraisers that now include the beer festival and a companion spring event.
That is a lot of near-misses for one building: a corporate landlord's exit, a fire, a development deal that could have gone the other way. None of them ended the house. What they did was hand its survival to a small nonprofit operating on a lease and a fundraising calendar, not a municipal budget line.
The State Money Only Covers The Paperwork
New Jersey's Preserve New Jersey Historic Preservation Fund has awarded Van Riper House, Inc. three Historic Site Management grants: $64,080 in 2022, $9,634 in 2024, and $37,980 in 2025, a combined $111,694 over three cycles, according to the state's grant records. The 2025 award is earmarked specifically for the preparation of construction documents and probe investigations, the technical groundwork that has to happen before anyone touches the actual stonework.
That distinction matters. State preservation dollars, even across three separate awards, are funding the studying and the paperwork stage of restoring a 300-plus-year-old building, not yet the hands-on masonry and structural repair the house will eventually need. The gap between what a state grant covers and what a full restoration costs is exactly the gap the nonprofit is trying to close with ticket sales, and it is why the calendar now includes two annual events instead of relying on grant cycles alone.
Two Saturdays That Do The Rest
The organization runs its fundraising on a spring and fall rhythm. The Lawn Party, held this year on April 26, and the Beer Festival, held each September, share a similar lineup of local names that Nutley residents will recognize from other corners of town. Past events have featured:
- Music from Mother Hubbard, Sticky Wickets, and Good Spirits
- Food and drink from the Nutley Wine Shop, Varitage Brew Works, and Ghost Hawk Brewing Co.
- Food trucks including Rude Dawgz, Rosie's Empanadas, and Kona Ice
The first beer festival, in September 2025, was a partnership specifically with Varitage Brew Works, with Ghost Hawk added as a second brewery and more vendors added closer to the date. It is a small, local lineup by design, and it is also the mechanism doing the heavy lifting that a $9,634 grant cannot.
If You're Going
The festival runs 1 to 5 p.m. on September 26 at 491 River Road, with a rain date the following Sunday. Admission is 21 and up. Early bird tickets are $35 through September 12, standard admission is $40, and designated driver tickets are $15. Tickets include unlimited tasting samples, a keepsake cup, and access to house tours, which is worth building your afternoon around if you have lived in Nutley for years and never actually been inside the building on River Road you drive past on the way to Franklin Avenue.
Why This Is Worth Knowing
The Van Riper House survived a corporate landlord, a fire, and a development deal that could have erased it entirely. What is keeping it alive now is not primarily a state agency or a municipal budget. It is a nonprofit running two afternoons a year where neighbors show up for craft beer and live music and, without necessarily thinking about it that way, fund the maintenance of the last colonial farmhouse on the Passaic River in this town. That is a specific and slightly strange way to save a 300-year-old building. It is also, if you have lived in Nutley for any length of time, a familiar one: the town tends to keep its history running on volunteer energy and Saturday afternoons rather than line items.
If you are already planning your fall calendar around Nutley's other traditions, from the farmers market downtown to the restaurant week rotation on Franklin Avenue, add this one. It asks less of you than most preservation causes do. Buy a ticket, walk through a house that predates the country's independence, and go home.
For more on what makes specific pockets of Nutley worth knowing, from its parks to its everyday rhythms, Jessica Munoz keeps a running guide to the town at her Nutley neighborhood page. If you are weighing a move to Nutley or just curious what your home might be worth in today's market, schedule your free consultation any time.
