Cherry Hill's Barclay Farmstead honors woman who saved it
Barclay Farmstead was "kind of a disaster" when Bonnie Cocchiaraley first walked through the Cherry Hill landmark in 1974. "A lot of windows were broken," she recalls. "Plaster was falling down."
Barclay Farmstead was "kind of a disaster" when Bonnie Cocchiaraley first walked through the Cherry Hill landmark in 1974.
"A lot of windows were broken," she recalls. "Plaster was falling down."
The mayor at the time, John Holden, had asked Cocchiaraley - then a 50-year-old mother of two - for a Bicentennial project suggestion.
Transforming the shuttered farmstead into a living history museum "just kind of popped into my head," she says. "I had always wanted an old house to do over. But not [as] a house museum. House museums die."
Now 92, Cocchiaraley, a longtime Florida resident, is back in South Jersey to see family and celebrate the 32-acre farmstead's own bicentennial.
She is to be honored Thursday at a Friends of Barclay Farmstead event, where several volunteers from the restoration effort's earliest days will present her with a plaque.
It is to be installed at the stately 16-room house, which Cocchiaraley urged the township to buy for $335,000 in 1974.
A developer had offered owner Helen Barclay $500,000 for the property, but she wanted to preserve the house. The township agreed to do so, which sealed the deal, says Cocchiaraley.
"Without Bonnie, there would be no Barclay Farmstead," says Susan McNaughton, 69. She helped put together an educational program that has brought thousands of local fifth graders to the site.
Says Sally Callaghan, another veteran volunteer who oversaw the facility for 11 years after Cocchiaraley resigned in 1992, "Bonnie is the farmstead. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
I chat with Cocchiaraley in one of the farmstead's bright and beautiful first-floor rooms.
The woman I first met in 1976 as a cub reporter for the weekly Cherry Hill News (R.I.P.) is as vivid a presence as ever. Her Oklahoma twang is still kicking, too.
"It was cold as hell out here," Cocchiaraley says, describing the drafty, leaky old building that volunteers helped make functional again four decades ago.
"You could see the structure of what was a very beautiful house," she says. "It just needed some tender loving care."
Cocchiaraley was able to muster as many as 200 volunteers for projects such as the fifth-grade tours, says McNaughton.
Folks pitched in to scrape paint, do research, or don period costumes for special events at the house, which was built by a Quaker farm family beginning in 1816.
"The history of Cherry Hill is really right here, living and breathing every day," says Mayor Chuck Cahn, stopping by to meet Cocchiaraley.
"We have our own bit of history to enjoy, thanks to Bonnie, who was instrumental . . . and to the [people] who followed her," the mayor adds.
The township has made a sizable investment in the property as well, spending about $1 million in capital and grant funds since 2002 alone.
"We probably get 1,000 visitors a year for tours, events and programs . . . [and] more students attend our popular school tour program and scout program," says Sandra Ragonese, the township's director of historic properties and programming.
Neighborhood residents also enjoy the open spaces of the farmstead's grounds, where 150 plots for growing vegetables "are by far the largest community gardening" site in South Jersey, adds Ragonese.
As my conversation with Cocchiaraley winds down, I realize she's regularly dabbing her eyes with a tissue from a box a friend has provided.
"Just seeing all these people again is great," she explains. "Those were wonderful years."
Cocchiaraley notes that many historic house restoration projects fail for lack of interest.
"But this community was interested. There was so much participation," she says. "All I did was stand in the background and let it happen."
Having seen Cocchiaraley lead the charge during the difficult early years of the farmstead's rebirth, I'm not sure I'd describe her role as "background."
It is true that the project struck a chord in a community that had lost much of its past to development.
But Barclay Farmstead found the champion it needed in a diminutive yet determined gal from Oklahoma who proved to be a superb steward of Cherry Hill's history.
Welcome home, Bonnie.
856-779-3845 @inqkriordan