Ackerman Farmhouse / Fuller/Overby Architecture

The Teaneck farmhouse was built as a homestead of the Dutch Ackermans, early immigrants to 17th century New Amsterdam. Around the turn of the century the family resettled along the Hackensack River in New Jersey where farmland was more plentiful than on Manhattan Island. The simple one room structure was built in 1734, in the 1780's the family expanded the house using a barn typology. Locally quarried New Jersey sandstone was used throughout to construct the two foot thick walls - the same material (now exhausted) which forms the brownstone row houses of New York City. The farmhouse stayed within the family through the early 20th century and then passed through a variety of owners. In 2021 the house was offered for sale and remained on the market for more than a year due to diminishing internal reconfigurations, minimal interior natural light, and its status upon the National Register of Historic Places which complicated alterations (drawings and photographs of the house are held within the Archives of the Library of Congress). The clients, of Belgian and Milanese birth, found the property during an extensive search for their first home. They had moved to NYC to study and purse careers and the farmhouse, unique amongst typical American housing stock , had a familiarity to their childhood. The dignity of the structure simmered underneath an abundance of infill partitions, attempts at modern amenities, and misguided remedies to wear and tear.