The Feltville Interpretation Program

About the Program

Category: Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

The Feltville Interpretation Program included research, development and installation of a professionally executed outdoor exhibit for the Deserted Village of Feltville, located within the Watchung Reservation, a 2,000-acre natural preserve. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the site boasts a multilayered history dating from the 1730s through the 1920s. Its greatest significance relates to Feltville, created in 1845 by David Felt, a philanthropic New York City stationer who provided a healthful, utopian, self-sufficient manufacturing community for poor city workers. The County has restored the two largest buildings and faces major costs for rehabilitation of eight cottages; therefore, there has been little funding available to address site interpretation. That has meant that many of the 75,000 visitors, who have walked through the village annually, learned little of the site’s significance. By combining professional and in-kind services, production of interpretive signage was accomplished with less than $25,000 in County funds. Installed throughout the site, interpretive panels connect visitors to the past by means of brief text and more than fifty period and site-specific illustrations, including photographs, maps, letters, newspaper articles, art and advertisements that illuminate patterns of American development such as industrialization, immigration, and social movements spanning three centuries.