The Henry Guest House is in New Brunswick, New Jersey at Livingston Avenue and Morris Street. It was originally located on New Street (previously known as Carroll Place) between Livingston Avenue and George Street. The Georgian stone farmhouse was built in 1760 by Henry Guest. He was a New Brunswick alderman and an associate of John Adams and author Thomas Paine.
Henry Guest, who operated a tannery, bought two and a half acres on the corner of Livingston Avenue and Carroll Place (New Street) in 1755. He built a sandstone house five years later and lived there with his family until his death in 1815. Henry Guest said, “If his descendants would only keep a roof on it, the house would stand till Gabriel blew his trumpet.” In a 1817 sales advertisement the building was described as "one of the best stone houses in the State of New Jersey."
By the twentieeth century the house was threatened with demolition, and in 1924, it was moved up Livingston Avenue next to the New Brunswick Free Public Library. Over time, the roof and other parts of the building deteriorated. In 1992, the city and the New Jersey Historic Trust funded a major exterior renovation. A new roof, repainting of the mortar, and other repairs prevented further decay and today the Guest House is mostly used for meeting rooms.
Famous quotes containing the words guest house, henry, guest and/or house:
“The temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn’t want it, they said in their hundred voices, “No, not yet,” and the sky said, “No, not there.””
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Entertaining angels unawares: It is always we who are to entertain the angels, and never they us. I cannot, however, think that an angel would be a very entertaining person, either as guest or host.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father ... there is not one that has more intricacies in it than this—that from the very moment the mistress of the house is brought to [child]bed, every female in it ... becomes an inch taller for it....
I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that ‘tis we who sink an inch lower.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)