What’s behind those doors? Morristown house tour draws record crowd

By Kristen Neymarc

For six hours Sunday, doors that normally stay closed to the public opened across Morristown’s Historic District, and people lined up patiently in the drizzle to get through them.

The Macculloch Hall Historical Museum’s biennial house tour offered a rare look inside six private homes, a private garden, two private clubs, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church rectory and the museum itself. Tickets cost $75 in advance and $85 the day of the tour.

A group of friends from Summit, back for their third tour, called that a deal: For one afternoon, the price bought something rarely available at any cost — access to some of Morristown’s most intriguing private spaces.

The occasional rain barely registered. Under umbrellas and rain hats, friends spotted one another in line, stopped for hugs and called greetings across the street. People compared favorite houses and pointed newcomers toward the next stop. The neighborhood took on the feel of a village gathering, with an army of about 90 volunteers greeting visitors and keeping the crowds moving.

On the eve of the tour, Katie Bartlett, executive director of Macculloch Hall, said advance sales looked stronger than ever, though she held off on declaring a record before the event ended. Her instinct proved right.

Roughly 900 tickets were sold, and about 850 people showed up, the largest turnout yet and well above the roughly 500 to 600 who attended in 2024. The tour is an important fundraiser for the museum, helping support its maintenance and programs.

Most visitors came from Morristown and surrounding communities, but the appetite for a look inside crossed state lines. Visitors came from New York, while Bill and Bridget Conlogue drove from Scranton, Pa., to spend the day volunteering.

NEARLY TWO CENTURIES BEHIND THE DOORS

From the sidewalk, the district offers a walk through generations of American architecture — Federal symmetry, Greek Revival columns, Victorian ornament and the Tudor and Arts and Crafts influences that arrived later.

Macculloch Hall dates to 1810. The Evergreens, now home to the Kellogg Club, dates to 1836-38. The 33-room Greek Revival mansion once belonged to the Colles family; when the family divided the estate, the house itself moved. The six private homes on Sunday’s route carried the story through the second half of the 19th century, from 1867 to about 1900. Within a few blocks, visitors moved through roughly a century of architecture and almost two centuries of Morristown history.

But old does not mean frozen in time. These buildings survived because generations of owners changed them. Families enlarged rooms, installed electricity and plumbing, rebuilt kitchens and replaced materials that finally gave out. Each generation decided what to save, what to alter and how to make an old house work for modern life without erasing what made it special.

Walter, one of this year’s homeowners, knows that balancing act firsthand, and his story has come full circle: Twenty-five years ago, he and his family took a similar Morristown house tour and came away thinking, “This is a special place.”

They moved to Morristown. The house they bought had no air conditioning or garage, the electrical system needed an overhaul, and the kitchen sat in the basement. Even the railings demanded ingenuity: Walter sent one deteriorating balustrade to India so craftsmen could reproduce it at a manageable cost.

“We love history,” Walter said. “We’ve kept it as original as possible.”

A quarter century after first taking the tour, he stood inside his own historic home welcoming the next wave of visitors.

Erin Brimmer and David Buck, who moved to Morristown a year ago and regularly walk the neighborhood, had long wondered what lay behind its storybook exteriors. “We’re just both very curious people,” Brimmer said.

Once inside, what struck her was how little the houses resembled one another. “It’s all very surprising,” she said. “You see the homeowners’ personalities. They’re all very different.”

One house mixed “traditional and modern with a lot of very interesting contemporary art.” Another, packed with precious dishes and breakables led her to quip, “You would not put a Labrador puppy in there.”

Dave Rogers has lived in Morristown since 1962 but had never taken the house tour. This year, he and his wife, Maureen Rogers, finally did — and Rogers knew exactly where he wanted to go: The Kellogg Club on Colles Street and the Morristown Club on Elm Street, two private clubs he had never seen inside but had always wanted to.

The tour depends on homeowners willing to open their doors to hundreds of strangers. When asked why she would want to do that, Trish Grushkin, whose house backs onto Macculloch Hall, had a simple answer.

“It’s giving back to the community,” she said.

Miller Road homeowner Kathy Duane comes at preservation with decades of construction experience. She built her first house in 1978, then spent years designing and building homes throughout the East Coast and New England before turning to restoration. She knows how much work can hide behind a beautiful old façade.

“It can be challenging,” Duane said, pointing to Waterford chandeliers that had to be carefully repaired.

For one rainy Sunday, visitors crossed those thresholds and wandered through rooms usually hidden from view. They saw beautiful interiors, certainly. But they also saw what it takes to keep houses like these alive: Years of decisions, repairs, compromises and care.