Untouched Abandoned Mansion - Left Since 1996 - Videos & Images

Part 2 is Available Here: ​http://bit.ly/Abandoned-Mansion-Part-2

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How Do Mansions & Estates Become Abandoned?

I’ve pondered about this for years because this is not a new phenomenon. Many years back my brother was working on family history and found out that once upon a time our ancestors owned a mansion in New Jersey, a house with the curious name “Heimat des Genies”. We later found out that the name is German and loosely translates to “The Home of the Genius”

​Anyhow, the mansion was abandoned over a century ago. We have my grandfather’s letters describing his visits to it in the 1930s; at some point in this time, it was left to ruin (this was largely due to the great depression). My Grandfather did not and could not try to restore it. He had no use for it, it was very costly to maintain, and was already being overgrown. He decided to let the land go rather than pay the overdue taxes.

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One of my brothers found just where the place was and we visited it in the 1990s. We discovered the State of New Jersey didn’t have any use for it, either. What was once a stately manner is now in a deep forest. There’s a cellar hole where the icehouse was, a half-mile from the estate. The rest of the estate is over a mile from the nearest road and the family burying ground is barely visible. One of the men buried there was a Revolutionary War soldier, so the American Legion comes through the woods once a year on Memorial Day, clears out the brush and overgrowth from the little cemetery, and puts flowers and a flag on only his grave. I guess the rest of my family isn’t worthy of their time?  Since it is only five graves, we have begun slogging out; the week of memorial day, in order to pay proper respect to the entire family.

We haven’t had the heart to the tell them that according to my grandfather’s letters they have the wrong grave; they’re putting the flowers on Ichabod Sensenbaugh’s grave, but our soldier was named Ernst Sensenbaugh (and is two grave over). I suppose the 13-star flag on Ichabod’s headstone threw them off. There is one with no name on the gravestone, except “Vater”(please let me know if you have more details). None of the graves have dates. My ancestors apparently didn’t think long-term and just assumed everyone remembers who is who.

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Anyhow, we do not know too much more at this time. The soil in New Jersey is sandy and not very fertile, and couldn’t compete with the rich soil of the West, so once the U.S. had expanded west of the Mississippi large parts of inland New Jersey were abandoned and left to ruin. Heimat des Genies was one such estate. There was just no economic or emotional reason to stay there. One branch of the family moved to Chicago, Illinois (where yet another Sensenbaugh later became an award-winning engineer and you can visit his house, which is now a museum) My branch of the family moved to New York, where my great-great-grandfather co-founded an engineering firm (long since bought out by other, larger firms) and a railroad (which went bankrupt in the late 1860s). And needless to say, none of us were willing to pay the taxes or maintenance costs for Heimat des Genies or any of the other estates. The sad part is only one of many mansions now stand. This is primarily how mansions become abandoned. The inability to pass wealth to the next generation makes it so they can no longer maintain the hallmarks of their family legacy. I am not bitter, just stating the facts.

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