Blast from the Past: Eatontown Museum Gives Visitors a Peek at Boro's Early Days

What if walls could talk?  What would they say?  Perhaps walls don’t actually speak but the blank slates say more without even having to make a sound.

Known as the Eatontown Museum, the walls here tell the borough's long journey through photos, maps, and artifacts.  A one-room house rumored to have been built in 1730, and then documented with an owner in 1805, has grown through the years and remained a pillar in Eatontown’s history, according to the Eatontown Historical Committee.

Walking through the different rooms of the museum at 75 Broad Street is like entering another time zone, transporting one's mind to what was rather than what is. 

Directly across from the museum's entrance is a slab of missing wall plaster that at first looks to be a framed piece of art. Yet upon further inspection, the cross section allows visitors a view of the original materials used to build the house.  Almost as if it is a picture hung on the wall, the framed whole reveals mud, dirt and straw.

“My favorite pieces would have to be all the old school memorabilia," said Kathy English, secretary of the Eatontown Historical Committee. "The photos of the old schools and the bell from the old school,” she added.

During May the Eatontown Historical Committee gives tours to fourth graders in the district to teach them the borough's history and what it was like to live in the Nineteenth Century.

Antique sewing machines, yard equipment, kitchen equipment, and much more fill this house, leaving visitors sometimes asking: “What is that thing,” English said.

The Eatontown Museum is open the first Sunday of the month from 12-3 and English explained that they do take donations or loan items from local residents.