Wyckoff home selling for $3 million has 'old money' history. Take a look

It's a house with history. And 443 Sicomac Ave. in Wyckoff has the old money price tag to match.

Listed last week for nearly $3 million, the five-bedroom home dates to 1930 when the co-founder of a corset manufacturing company ran an apple orchard across the street. The farmhouse was one of two built side-by-side for a pair of prominent sisters from Paterson in the wake of their father's death. 

The home at 443 Sicomac has been modernized, said Diane Mainardi, a sales associate for Terrie O’Connor Realtors. Still, it remains the more original looking of the two, collectively known as Fairwin Farms and divided by a geometric garden. The other, privately-owned 437 Sicomac, has been more significantly altered and enlarged.

Set on about 2 acres on the eastern side of the now-split estate, 443 Sicomac has all the hallmarks of a country manor. It has a gourmet kitchen with cream-colored cabinets, rustic shingle siding and a mile of white wooden trim. There are four bathrooms, two fireplaces and a sunroom. There is an outdoor area with a koi pond and an inground pool. An unattached three-car garage sits at the end of the driveway.

Mainardi said hints of its history abound, most notably in a servants' bell in the kitchen. The home lets in a lot of light and is a good fit for those who like to entertain guests. Still, it remains cozy and comfortable in spite of its size, Mainardi said.

"There's not a place where you walk in the house and it doesn't make you feel like you're at home," she said. 

The home was built for Paterson's Grace Quackenbush Fairhurst, the niece of the Crown Corset Company co-founder Edward Russell and the wife of company president, Edward Fairhurst, Mainardi said. The other was built in its mirror image for her sister, Helen Quackenbush Winans. Fairwin Farms comes from a combination of their last names.

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Fairhurst, a World War I veteran, and a three-term councilman in Wyckoff, served as mayor three times - in 1946, 1949 and 1953. He also spent 12 years as the town's road commissioner.

Outside of local government, he worked for Russell at Crown Corset before leaving to run Fairhurst Silk Manufacturing Company in Paterson, according to his January 1973 obituary in The Record. A city native, Fairhurst served as president of the Paterson Orphanage. He was also a branch board chairman for First National Bank of New Jersey and a master at Paterson's Freemason Lodge No. 88, then known as Ivanhoe.

Prior to the home's construction, the Fairhursts lived on 14th Avenue in Paterson. Winans lived over on East 28th Street.

Russell was also originally from Paterson - so was his sister Amy Russell and her husband Albert Quackenbush. 

The Fairwin homes were built shortly after the death of Quackenbush, who, like Russell, was a player in the women's garment industry. Quackenbush, a descendent of one of Passaic County's oldest colonial families, was the president of Newark's H&W corset company when he died in 1929 at the age of 65, according to The Morning Call of Paterson. 

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Housing ultimately consumed most of what was once a 33-acre apple farm, according to Wyckoff Historical Society records. Purchased by Russell in 1906, the property produced apples and sweet cider for wholesale and local delivery for decades. To place an order in the 1920s, locals dialed 246, according to old print advertisements.

Trimmed down to 5 acres to make way for housing, the orchard operated into the turn of the century before shutting down. The site is now preserved under municipal ownership and is used for passive recreation.