Rockleigh top

By Doug Most
Staff Writer
The Bergen Record

Monday, September 27, 1999

A SQUARE-MILE OF HISTORY, HORSES, AND NOT TRAFFIC LIGHTS

There's plenty of mud, a few patches of grass, and even some gravel on Veronica Happel's five acres in Rockleigh. But you won't find a paved driveway leading up to her barn, an unsightly office building next to it, or a sprawling apartment complex cropping up nearby anytime soon.

Pavement, concrete, traffic -- those would be signs that this tiny, serene hamlet tucked into the northeast corner of Bergen County had finally succumbed to the development explosion that has wiped out most green space around the county.

Rockleigh hasn't succumbed, though there are small signs of growth and a corporate park. It still is the only town in the county without a traffic light, and more than half the town has been declared a historic district, two distinctions its people plan on keeping.

"I love the quiet here, the nature, and how we keep it like that," Happel said as she pushed a stroller with her grandson in the mud outside her barn. As she spoke, one of the 15 horses her barn boards, a chocolate quarter-horse/thoroughbred mix named Clark Gable, ran circles in the mud. "I love how the concrete jungle hasn't reached us yet."

Instead, this borough of 68 homes and 280 people on the border of Rockland County, N.Y., and a stone's throw from the renowned Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, resembles more of the conventional jungle, with acres of deep woods filled with deer, rabbits, and the occasional black bear. As if wildlife weren't enough, it seems every one of the eight streets in town has at least one house or barn with horses roaming the grounds.

Once a Dutch settlement known as "The Kings Woods," Rockleigh is a square-mile, close-knit neighborhood all wrapped up in one small town, where Mayor Roberta Adams is often seen strolling with a friend. Piermont Road sees traffic, but Rockleigh Road, Willow Avenue, and the other streets in town are mostly quiet, tree-lined ways with well-kept homes sitting on perfectly manicured lawns.

The homes offer a stark contrast -- contemporary two-story houses with swimming pools and maybe a tennis court sitting amid historic Victorians notable for their beautiful front porches and acres of woods in back.

The town was born on April 12, 1923, when what was then known as East Northvale seceded and incorporated as the Borough of Rockleigh. Northvale now borders Rockleigh to the west.

Although Rockleigh has managed to avoid any major development projects, it does have a 110-acre industrial park off Piermont Road where Volvo is one of a dozen companies that have set up regional or national offices. There's also a campus for disadvantaged children, a Bergen County drug rehabilitation program for teenagers, and a county adult rehabilitation program.

Children in town attend schools in other towns, mostly Northvale.

Crime is not even a remote concern among residents, one reason why the town doesn't have its own police force and has its streets patrolled by the Bergen County Police Department. The only full-time town employee is clerk Lou-Anne Horsey, who works by herself out of the Borough Hall building on Rockleigh Road. A strange car in town, whether slowly passing through or parked in a driveway, catches the eye of the officer on patrol. Last year the town had 21 reported crimes.

For years, Rockleigh was filled mostly with families who had lived there for generations, and inherited homes passed down over time. Everyone knew everyone else's name.

Today, although new homes are not appearing, new residents are, as some of the longtime folks have died or moved away, and younger families have replaced them. The young couples have brought children and dogs and sport-utility vehicles to Rockleigh. But they have the same desire as the longtime residents to maintain the peace and quiet, and to preserve the same safe feeling that lured them to the town in the first place.

With new faces, however, have come adjustments. Now, most residents don't necessarily know all their neighbors, but instead they will ask: Which house do they live in?

Rockleigh's population has barely changed in recent years, growing from 270 in 1990 to 279 last year. Over that period, only eight building permits were approved, most for additions to homes.

The main reason for that is because property owners eager to build a new home must have two acres or more on which to build, or else they can't start digging. The homes are big -- the average Rockleigh home is valued at almost $500,000, and the average property tax bill is $5,000 -- but the properties are huge. Town officials say the two-acre zoning law is needed because there are no septic systems in Rockleigh, and homes need adequate space for wells.

In Rockleigh, the best-known landmarks are the houses themselves, such as the Abraham Haring House on Piermont Road, built in 1758. It sits atop a hill that once was a 200-acre farm, set back a few hundred feet off the road. It was once an estate called Eagle Hill, and was first lived in by Abraham A. Haring. Its history is told on a plaque at the base of the driveway.

"A captain in the Bergen County Militia. During the Revolutionary War, Abraham Haring was captured by the British and imprisoned in New York City, where he died."

Across the street from Eagle Hill, on a recent weekday morning, Michael Vallerini stood in his long driveway raking leaves with his 2-year-old daughter, Juliana. Their dog, a boxer named Lightning, bounded around nearby, and Michael's pregnant wife, Cristina, sat quietly on a ledge along the driveway.

Their driveway crosses a brook, deer are frequently seen all over the 3 1/2-acre property, and the home, set back 400 feet, is barely visible from the road. Those were three features that Vallerini, a pharmacist at Pascack Valley Hospital, said lured him away from the bustle of Guttenberg in Hudson County in January.

"Once you get on your property, you're all by yourself," he said. "There's a lot more space for us to run around."

And, he said, it just feels safe. "The police do driveway checks all the time. They know who belongs and who doesn't."

Certainly Flora Lynch belongs. Now 74, and married for 38 years, she has lived in Rockleigh since she was 18, in the same pretty white house with a wrap-around front porch that used to be her uncle's, situated right next to Borough Hall. For several years back in the Fifties, she served as the town marshal, but now she's more of an unofficial town historian.

"Rockleigh is not like it used to be," she said one recent afternoon. "Now people go in their house and close their doors. A lot of professional people -- Rockleigh didn't used to have that, the doctors and lawyers."

The reason she said young couples are drawn to Rockleigh is that it's remote, but not too remote. "You're close enough to New York City that it doesn't take you so long to get there, and it's still country."

Ernie April, the volunteer fire chief and a borough councilman -- six council members and the mayor run the town's government -- knows exactly how long it takes to get to the city. Before moving to Rockleigh 18 years ago, he lived in New York, and now that he's in Rockleigh, he commutes 45 minutes down the Palisades Interstate Parkway and across the George Washington Bridge to teach medical science at Columbia Medical School.

"It's not like we're complete backwater," April said. "We don't really have room for development unless we rezone. It's just quiet, peaceful, and pleasant."

Like Lynch, he said he has noticed the change in Rockleigh, especially when he tries to recruit volunteers for the town Fire Department. More often than not, he said, people tell him they just don't have the time, something he didn't hear as much 10 or 15 years ago.

"Finding people who are willing to volunteer isn't so easy," he said. "It never used to be a problem."

But people today are more busy -- playing golf, for example. Rockleigh is home to Bergen County's most-played golf course. It's a popular attraction because of the solitude it provides and the 27 holes it offers local golfers -- if they can manage to get a tee time.

The golf course probably brings in more traffic than anything else in town, but that's okay with Veronica Happel. So long as her town can fend off the "concrete jungle" that she dreads, she said she hopes her first 35 years in Rockleigh will be followed by many more.

"I like to have roots," she said, as her daughter, Christine, wheeled her son, Dylan, over to their small ranch house next to the barn. Happel is not alone in her desire to settle in Rockleigh. Two in every three borough residents is 55 or older.