"Rescuing an authentic piece of Saddle River's past from demolition."
That is how Mayor Albert Kurpis described what is happening this year at the corner of East Allendale and West Saddle River Roads, a lot most residents know only as the place where the Exxon station used to be. For two decades the parcel has sat mostly idle, its future debated but never decided. Now it has an answer, and the answer is a building that is older than the gas station, older than the blacksmith shop that came before the gas station, and older than almost anything else currently standing in town.
That single corner has now held three different things across roughly a century and a half, and each one tells you something about what Saddle River was optimizing for at the time.
A Working Corner, Then a Commuter Corner
Long before it was a gas station, the lot at East Allendale and West Saddle River Roads was the site of the borough's blacksmith business, the kind of practical, load-bearing use a small farming community needed at its crossroads. When the automobile era arrived, the corner shifted with it, becoming an Exxon station that served commuters until it closed in 2005. The borough eventually bought the property, and what to do with it became a standing question. A committee formed in 2017 to figure it out, and for the better part of a decade the answer was: not much. The lot became the kind of in-between space a town stops noticing.
That changes this year, and the thing filling it in did not come from a developer's plan. It came from a barn that almost did not survive its own address.
The Barn Nobody Was Supposed to Save
The barn in question sits, for now, at 4 Apple Ridge Road, on land that was once part of the landmarked property belonging to John George Achenbach, whose 19th-century Dutch colonial house originally spanned what are today two separate lots. In 2002, the Planning Board approved a subdivision of that property, conditioned on relocating the barn and the old Achenbach house driveway to the adjacent lot. In 2004, the property's owner asked for relief from that condition so the barn could stay put as an accessory building. The relief was granted, and the barn stayed exactly where it was for another two decades, technically living on borrowed time.
The property changed hands again in 2023. As part of that sale, the new owners agreed to let the barn go to the borough for preservation, and funds were escrowed to a trust established by the family that owns Perillo Tours. On November 3, 2025, a Planning Board resolution released that escrow, clearing the way for the barn's disassembly and reconstruction on borough land. Steven Perillo is contributing an additional $19,000 of his own money on top of the trust, and the borough is matching that with $19,000 of its own. Early estimates put the full cost of the move as high as $130,000. The current estimate is closer to $58,000, a figure that reflects both the trust fund already in place and the direct contributions layered on top of it.
Once the 25-by-36-foot structure is reassembled at the old Exxon corner, it will be renovated to restore its original doors and details, with well and electrical connections tied in through future budget cycles.
Why This Is the Year It Happened
Saddle River is not a town that has historically put its history where anyone can see it without an appointment. The Achenbach barn spent its first two centuries on private land, visible only to the family that owned the property and whoever happened to be invited over. That pattern is not unique to this one barn. It describes most of what the borough considers historically significant: landmarked houses down long driveways, family land that has never needed a public face because nobody was asking for one.
Two other things are happening in Saddle River in 2026 that make the barn's timing less like a coincidence and more like a pattern. On Sunday, June 14, the borough held a community-wide celebration marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, framed by the borough itself as an occasion tied to both national history and the town's own. And in May, the Saddle River Arts Council and the Paul Larsen Gallery held the opening reception for their inaugural exhibition, a show called "This Is Life: Reflections in Sculpture." It was the arts council's first public exhibition, which means 2026 is also the first year Saddle River has had a standing venue for showing art to anyone who walks in the door.
None of these are large events on their own. A barn move, an anniversary celebration, a first-time gallery show. But stack them together and a quieter shift becomes visible. This is the year Saddle River decided that at least some of what it holds privately, whether that is a barn, a piece of local sculpture, or its own founding story, belongs somewhere a resident can encounter it without a reservation or an invitation.
What to Actually Watch For
The corner at East Allendale and West Saddle River Roads sits directly opposite some of the borough's landmark buildings in its Historic District, which is presumably part of why it was chosen. Once the barn is reassembled and its doors and details are restored, it becomes the first piece of the borough's private agricultural history that anyone driving through that intersection will see without knowing where to look. That includes residents who have lived here for decades and never had a reason to learn who Achenbach was.
There is no public timeline yet for when reconstruction will finish, since the remaining work depends on future-year budget financing for the utility connections. Anyone curious about progress can check the borough's own news page, which has carried each update on the resolution and funding as it happened.
What is worth sitting with in the meantime is the shape of the corner's own history. A blacksmith shop answered what a small working village needed. A gas station answered what a commuter town needed. A restored 1800s barn, sitting in full view for the first time, answers something different: what a town decides to say about itself once it has stopped needing to say anything at all.
If you're weighing a move to a community that treats its history this deliberately, or you already call Saddle River home and want a clearer read on what a property here is really worth, Tuxedo Hudson Realty brings local fluency to every conversation, from the Historic District to the town's newest public corner.
