New park unveiled on historic S.B. property
Monmouth Junction grew from farmland owned by Rowland family
BY CHRIS GAETANO
Staff Writer

CHRIS GAETANO One of the baseball fields at Monmouth Junction's Rowland Park was the site of a grand opening on Saturday.

SOUTH BRUNSWICK - On Saturday, they stood where Monmouth Junction began.

In 1733, the section of town residents now call Monmouth Junction was a single tract of land covering thousands of acres. Owned by the Rowlands, an influential family of Welsh settlers, the property splintered over the years, being sold off parcel by parcel, until only about 80 acres remained.

It was upon these 80 acres that township officials held the grand opening of the brand-new Rowland Park.

"So many things in our community are historic, and we tend to forget [this] in our work-a-day lives," Mayor Frank Gambatese said during the opening ceremony.

The opening represents the culmination of years of effort in both preservation of the land and the construction of the park's facilities, which include baseball, soccer and football fields as well as a pavilion and a playground. The park itself is surrounded by a ring of trees that, in the crisp fall air, had turned various shades of red, gold and orange, swaying like a cold flame as the wind swept through their leaves.

CHRIS GAETANO Ruth and Joe Spataro attended the grand opening of Rowland Park in Monmouth Junction. The park is on land that Ruth Spataro's family held for generations.

The decision to purchase the land came in 2000 when Ruth Spataro, a prolific community volunteer, as well as the wife of former Mayor Joseph Spataro, pointed out the historic significance of the property. As a descendent of the Rowland family, Spataro was the one who noted that the land, which has been in her family for generations, was the origin for all tracts that currently make up Monmouth Junction. The history of the land was pieced together by Spataro with her mother, using resources they both had access to as teachers.

William Rowland sold off two 88-acre parcels in 1852, one to his son Lewis. Five years later, the remainder of the farm went to another son, Stryker, who continued to sell off pieces of the property as the years went by. This was around the time that the area began to develop. The farm finally left the family in 1951, when William Zimmerman and his wife bought the remainder of the property. Eight generations of Rowlands have lived in South Brunswick.

Spataro has also said that an encampment of Continental Army soldiers stopped on the land for a night or two in 1778. The discovery of two antique bayonets on the property in the 1950s gives credence to this claim.

Spataro was present with her family at the opening ceremony as an honored guest.

"I worked three years to get them to take a look at this land. It was too good a piece of property to lose. But I never imagined anything like this," said Spataro, saying that she had thought it was going to be passive open space, rather than a park. "But thank goodness [it is]. ... I was really happy to be here today."

Bonding for the park commenced in 2003, and according to Councilman Christopher Killmurray, while the township would have preferred to have opened it in time for baseball season, he was thankful that it was ready just in time for fall sports.

The park required $1.2 million from the county as well as $450,000 from the township's open space fund. Meanwhile, across the street is the Boyko property, about 130 acres of open space purchased by the township in 2005, which Ruth Spataro was key in helping to acquire.

"She was pretty instrumental because [the Boykos] were very difficult people to deal with," said Joseph Spataro, who currently sits on the Planning Board.

Ruth Spataro had been a teacher in the district for 38 years and was intensely involved in educational issues in the township. She also taught the owner of the Boyko farm when he was a little boy and helped negotiate the purchase.

This leads to a total of about 210 acres of open space right off Broadway Road. This was no small accomplishment, according to Gambatese.

"It takes a major effort to put a park like this together," said Gambatese.

The opening was the first time Spataro had been out in months, as she had recently recovered from a serious illness, so she was very happy to come to her family's land again that day. She also said, though, that she would be retiring from public service.

Township residents, many of them either playing or watching sports on the fields, expressed a positive feeling about the park.

"It's pretty nice," said Rich Adams, who has lived in South Brunswick since 1983. "I like it laid out the way it is. It lets kids play a lot of different sports. ... This is really a tremendous improvement over what we had."