The Hird Estate in Ridgewood is a throwback to when textile mills dominated North Jersey.
The carefully modernized home at 256 Hempstead Road was built in 1939 for the well-off daughters of mill magnate Samuel Hird. Artists with a penchant for philanthropy and horticulture, Mary Eva Hird and her younger sister, Martha Hird, made the estate a showpiece for Ridgewood Garden Club tours in the 1940s.
The sisters trimmed small pools along their backyard brook with forget-me-nots and other wildflowers. Near the terrace, they cultivated a memory garden. Each plant there was a gift from a friend. More prominently, they dotted the estate with specimen hardwoods and clusters of rhododendron.
After the estate left the Hird family in 1967, 256 Homestead’s lot was downsized to three-quarters of an acre to create four new homes. A pair of professional horticulturalists supervised the removal and replanting of rhododendron during their construction, The Ridgewood News reported.
The sisters’ green thumbs worked beyond the Ridgewood estate. In the 1920s, they helped fellow parishioners spruce up the grounds of Clifton’s Calvary Baptist Church, which sits on Lexington Avenue across from Hird Park. The park and the church grounds themselves were once owned by their father, Samuel Hird. He donated the land and a good portion of the cash for the church’s construction from 1919 to 1921.
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Arriving in the United States from his native England in 1870, Hird worked in the mills north of Boston before moving to Philadelphia, where the sisters were born. In 1897, Hird took his growing family to North Jersey and ran the Robertsford Worsted Mills in Garfield. At the end of 1908, he incorporated the company as Samuel Hird & Sons and later opened a mill west of the Passaic River in Clifton. Most recently home to Black Prince Distillery, the factory site is now slated for redevelopment.
“It was an unusual place. It would cause traffic jams,” said Mark Auerbach, a local historian. “They had sheep there. And people would come on weekends to feed the sheep.”
Beyond the family business, the Hirds weaved themselves into their communities. Hird was on the board of directors for Passaic National Bank, Passaic General Hospital and the Passaic school district. He funded Garfield’s YMCA. The sisters, who lived at 209 Lafayette Ave. in Passaic before moving to Ridgewood, donated Camp Ocawasin in Butler to the Passaic Boys’ Club.
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Mary Eva, an author and illustrator, was the president of the Calvary Baptist Church Society. Martha, a poet, was a teacher at the city’s Columbia Avenue elementary school, according to her obituary in The Herald-News. She was also involved with the family’s philanthropic project in Narasaraopet, India, the Hird High School for Girls, until she died in November 1961, five months after the death of her older sister, Mary Eva.
The family members’ connection to India grew from their YMCA links. The sisters’ nephew H. Edward Hird Jr. traveled to the country in the 1930s as a representative for YMCAs of North America, according to The Herald-News. Also active in his local community, “Ed” Hird served several terms as president of Ridgewood’s YMCA and Rotary Club. A World War II veteran, he was a president of Samuel Hird & Sons and the executor who sold 256 Hempstead out of the Hird family.
The Hird Estate is once again for sale. Late this May, the property was listed for $2.4 million. Christina Gibbons, the listing agent with Christie’s International Real Estate Group, said the home’s sideways positioning offers unmatched privacy.
Located on the fringes of Ridgewood’s Old Country Club section, the colonial-style home has a modern kitchen with white granite counters, custom cabinets and professional-grade appliances. Still, there are parts of the home that maintain “the old charm and character,” Gibbons said. Rooms have high and detailed ceilings, hardwood floors and stained-glass windows. The primary suite has a sitting area with a fireplace. Two of the five other bedrooms have en-suite bathrooms.
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