CNJ+ September 2023

In its heyday, Point Breeze, Joseph Bonaparte's estate, was the center of social life in Bordentown.

JOSEPH BONAPARTE, THE FORMER KING OF SPAIN, AND HIS BORDENTOWN HOME NOW OPEN FOR VISITORS By, Surabhi Ashok Joseph Bonaparte’s Bordentown home is now open to public visitation as a historical landscape.

The main mansion at Point Breeze no longer stands due to a fire that occurred in 1820 while Bonapar te was returning from a trip to New York. Accord ing to various accounts, he had come back to see his neighbors rushing into the burning house to recover many of his possessions, like his prized paintings and crowned jewels, and presenting it to him. His second reconstructed mansion was razed in 1850 after Henry Beckett bought the property. In October of 2020, the New Jersey State Depart ment of Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Pro gram, Bordentown, and the Delaware & Raritan Gre enway Land Trust together bought Point Breeze from the Society of the Divine World, a Catholic mission ary organization, in order to turn the property into a public park called Delaware and Raritan Canal Park. The hopes are to bring interest from all over the world to Bordentown and ensure that their unique history is protected. Linda Mead, the president of Delaware & Raritan Greenway Land, hopes to open the estate to the pub lic by the fall and hopes that people will see the deep stories entrenched right in theirvery own backyards. Source: https://njmonthly.com/articles/news/for mer-bonaparte-estate-opening-to-public-after-al most-two-centuries/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/nyregion/bona parte-point-breeze-bordentown.html

Joseph Bonaparte was the King of Naples and Spain, and the brother of Napoleon. After the Battle of Wa terloo in 1815, he fled across the ocean to New Jersey, where he settled for twenty years. Bonaparte built Point Breeze, his estate, to overlook both Crosswicks Creek and the Delaware River. He made sure to enhance the scenery by designing var ious carriage paths, stone bridges, sculpture gardens, and underground tunnels for quick escape, and by planting trees and forestry to make up a beautiful 60 acre park. At the center was a three-story 38,000 square foot mansion, with an extravagant wine cellar, art collec tion, and library. The building even became a meeting ground for many notable personas of the time, in cluding Henry Clay, the Marquis de Lafayette, Daniel Webster, and John Quincy Adams. After Bonaparte left New Jersey, the estate was passed along through many owners. The one struc ture that has persevered through the years is the gar dener’s house, which is being turned into a museum dedicated to preserving the history of the area. The museum showcases many of Bonaparte’s old memo rabilia, a lot of which were collected privately by law yer Peter Tucci, some period-specific furniture, and more.

Joseph Bonaparte. Portrait as King of Spain by François Gérard, 1808

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