On a mild morning in Forest Hill, sunlight strikes the south-facing breakfast nook at 54 Abington Avenue at an angle that feels deliberate, almost engineered.
Framed in 1875, the residence stands as an asymmetrical mass of rusticated brownstone, Roman brick, and steep late-Victorian gables. In the front yard, an autumn cherry blossom has all but a few leaves left to fall, alongside an apple tree. Inside the kitchen, 34-year-old commercial real estate professional Terrell Simmons stands watching the light pool across the restored floorboards.
“Right here is one of my favorite parts of the house,” Simmons said. “Even thinking about when it was first constructed—I do find myself thinking: When they put this together, what was in their mind? Why did they do this this way? Oh, this makes sense on this side: it’s where the sun is landing.”
Simmons, who works in commercial real estate across the Hudson in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. Five years ago, while watching former industrial waterfronts in New York command Manhattan-level rents, he looked west across the river. He calculated that Newark possessed the identical historic bone structure—rail spurs, deep-water ports, dense transit spines, and turn-of-the-century masonry—without the accompanying hubris.
Discovering the Bone Structure
“I was driving back from Brooklyn to New Jersey at all times of the day—morning, night, lunchtime—just to see how it looks,” Simmons recalled. “And I was like, this feels just like Brooklyn. People might not say it, but Jersey, to me, has a better quality of living. I can walk outside to the trees, have access to restaurants in 5-10 minutes, and still get the benefits of New York if I want to.”
Simmons initiated his Newark property journey in 2021 with a two-family home in the Fairmount neighborhood, living on one floor while leasing the other. But the ambition for long-term domestic permanence persisted. When 54 Abington Avenue surfaced on his radar, he drove up the ridge into Forest Hill, passing the wide, leafy parkways once laid out by Newark’s industrial barons.
“To me, it was special,” Simmons said. “The stone is not something that you see anywhere. I’m taking a chance buying this. It’s huge. But I feel like, God forbid—I plan to be here for ten years or more—if I ever had to put this back on the market, it’s still going to sell so easily just off the fact that it’s so unique.”
Simmons acquired the property later that year, marrying his wife in the backyard beneath the fruit trees. Then, the restoration began.
Unearthing the Domestic Archive
Historic homes resemble sedimentary rock; successive generations of owners leave behind layers of drywall, drop ceilings to curb fuel-oil costs, and seal drafts with salvage timber. Armed with a crowbar, Simmons began stripping the home down to its original structural framing.
While opening a kitchen ceiling that sat at nine feet, a worker accidentally punctured an upper partition, revealing a concealed ten-foot rafter line. In the basement, hidden behind an uninsulated partition wall, Simmons shone a flashlight against the foundation stonework and uncovered a nineteenth-century heavy cast-iron cookstove cast by a firm named Ben Hur, its raised iron lettering still intact. Nearby, behind a makeshift wall sat an iron safe with its mechanical dials operational.
The floor plan itself offered a physical blueprint of late-Victorian domestic hierarchy. Two separate staircases linked the ground floor to the upper stories: one broad, ceremonial staircase crafted in dark polished walnut for the family, and a narrow, utilitarian stairway concealed behind a rear pantry door for domestic staff.
“You have two different staircases,” I observed. “It’s very intentional: the servants use this way, and we use these steps. You don’t want guests to experience the operation of the house; you just want them to experience the house itself.”
Yet what Simmons did not discover from his mortgage paperwork or county deed was that the original resident who commissioned that floor plan was one of the most formidable abolitionist minds of the Reconstruction era.
The Abolitionist Masthead on Abington Avenue
From 1875 until 1914, 54 Abington served as the private residence and study of the Rev. William Hayes Ward. A Congregationalist clergyman, linguist, and Assyriologist, Ward served for nearly fifty years on the masthead of The Independent, the influential New York-based national weekly newspaper founded by abolitionists. By 1896, Ward served as its editor-in-chief, transforming the publication into an uncompromising northern megaphone against the rise of Jim Crow segregation, Black voter disenfranchisement, and white mob lynchings.
Ward’s activism operated through institutional channels. As a director of the American Missionary Association, he helped channel Northern philanthropic capital into the founding and sustenance of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) throughout the postbellum South, including Fisk University and Atlanta University. In Atlanta, Ward formed a close intellectual bond with a young sociology professor named W.E.B. Du Bois.
In May 1909, following anti-Black race riots in Springfield, Illinois, Ward joined Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, Ida B. Wells, and Du Bois in signing “The Call” for a national civil rights conference in New York. Ward took the rostrum as both an organizer and keynote speaker at the National Negro Conference—the historic gathering that established the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Simmons uncovered this history through the Forest Hill Historic Plaque Program, a collaborative effort launched in 2020 by the Forest Hill Community Association, the Newark Public Library, and Newark Landmarks. Under the initiative, homeowners sponsor the casting of a bronze plaque, while archival researchers at the library’s Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center review municipal ledgers, Sanborn fire insurance maps, and federal census rolls to verify architectural and biographical lineage.
“I came here not knowing anything about William Hayes Ward,” Simmons said. “And then the discoveries just kept coming. For me, the last five or six years, I’ve had this feeling of wanting to discover who I am as an African-American. So me wanting to discover myself, and coming here and realizing, yeah, this is somebody who was connected to civil rights—I’m like, What is the universe trying to tell me?”
The Preservation Paradox
A bronze municipal plaque now sits mounted beside the side entry of 54 Abington Avenue, certifying its place in a district listed on both the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Yet as Simmons notes, living inside a historic landmark requires confronting the economic friction of historic district mandates. To preserve architectural integrity, historic guidelines restrict modern exterior modifications. For an urban homeowner attempting to insulate three stories of 1870s timber against northeast winter freezes, those rules can present steep financial hurdles.
“I tell you, it is not for the weak,” Simmons said. “You have to be really dedicated to the house itself. One of the biggest things for me right now is that these windows are all wood. When I want to fix a window, the guidelines require wood replacements. From an economic standpoint, wood sash windows allow drafts in, creating massive heating bills. I’ve heard neighbors get quoted a hundred thousand dollars to replace all the windows in their house.”
The tension highlights an ongoing urban policy challenge: how to safeguard architectural history without pricing out working families and young preservationists who invest sweat equity into the neighborhood.
“Yes, we want to preserve the history, but the history is not there just to remain history,” Simmons said. “It’s to keep the ball rolling. We have to evolve to what works for today. Otherwise, that rigidity is what eats the house up. Nature is going to do its thing.”
Reclaiming the Domestic Hearth
For Simmons, the ultimate antidote to the home’s vast square footage is not museum-style preservation, but reanimating its primary social purpose: communal gathering.
“I love the idea of building a foundation where my family and friends can congregate,” Simmons said, stepping into the high-ceilinged living room toward the home’s ground-floor fireplace. “Socially, we all tend to go out to restaurants to congregate. What I want to do is bring that back to the house. If my friends want to come over, let’s cook together. Let’s fellowship in-house. That’s where the best memories are born.”
Outside, on the front porch overlooking Abington Avenue, the autumn wind rustles the cherry blossom and the heavy canopy of the yard’s hardwoods. Down the ridge, commuter trains along the Morris & Essex lines hum toward Broad Street Station, and the industrial valley stretches toward the Passaic River.
Anchored in stone that has withstood three pandemics, economic collapses, and the birth of the modern civil rights movement, Simmons stands on the steps of an abolitionist sanctuary that is finding new purpose in a changing Newark.
“We create the world we want to live in,” Simmons said, looking down at the brownstone pavers. “If that’s what you want to do, that’s what you do. This is what I’m on. This is what I want to build.”
