Off-and-on drizzles and downpours made for a damp day for participants in townwide yard sales in Red Bank and Fair Haven Saturday.

Still, redbankgreen found plenty of plucky sellers and buyers.

To enlarge the photo display, start it, then click the embiggen symbol in the lower right corner. To get back to redbankgreen, hit your escape key.

As the headline suggests, the weekend that awaits is jammed with the potential for good times.

We’ve got the fifth Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, this one making a migration from fall to spring.

We’ve got one of the inaugural events of this year’s weeklong Paint the Town Pink festivities to raise awareness about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.

And capping it all off, rain or shine, is the first-ever Red Bank International Flavour Fest, an outdoor celebration of the wide variety of cuisines available year-round at Red Bank restaurants.

And Mother Nature appears to be in a mood to cooperate.

Details, as they used to say when that was still a two-syllable word, are just below.

SATURDAY: Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale
Location: all over town. Maps available at the Red Bank Public Library and at many of the participating homes.
Time: Officially, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but sellers can set their own hours.

From an email update from Beth Hanratty, president of the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which has hosted the event since 2010:

lots of records, books and air conditioners

SATURDAY: Pink Hat Tea Party
Pilgrim Baptist Church
172 Shrewsbury Avenue
Doors open 10:30 a.m., Event 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Don’t miss this important Paint the Town Pink event, presented by Riverview Medical Center. Gather all the special women in your life to join us for an educational and entertaining Pink Hat Tea, with a hat and apparel fashion show courtesy Geneva’s Boutique of Neptune, a speacial presentation from Adi Smolinsky, M.D., a Riverview Medical Center OB/GYN, education about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of the importance of annual mammography, and more! Refreshments will be provided by Jameson’s Ultimate Southern Cooking Restaurant in Neptune. Don’t forget to wear your pink hat!

*Pink Sale Event. Deck your pink all year long with our exclusive Paint the Town Pink gear and goodies for sale at this signature event.

This event is FREE but registration is required. RSVP: 1-800-DOCTORS

SUNDAY: Paint Everything Pink Community Day
Riverview Medical Center parking lot
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Pink your town, pink your house, pink your family. Everything is pink at our family-centered, free Community Day! Featuring many of the same pink “zones” families have come to expect as well as exciting new ones, this year’s event will feature:

Kids’ Fun & Games: Rides, arts and crafts, face painting – all the things your kids have come to love! And don’t miss photos with Dr. Bernard from the Pawsitive Action Team at
K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital.

Pink it Yourself Man Cave: In line with this year’s theme of Men in Pink, our “man cave” will offer the men in your life an area just for them. Activities will include DYI demonstrations from the Home Depot, interactive games, and of course our exclusive Real Men Wear Pink t-shirts.

Rockin’ Country Thunder 106.3: Bring out the country in you! With live music from a local country artist, this local-favorite station will have you dancin’ in your boots. Your kids will love our pony rides and everyone can enjoy some good old fashioned root beer!

And that’s not all! Enjoy some snack-food favorites and other sweet treats, and beverages from a number of local pink partners, and don’t forget to stop by our educational tables to pick-up important information about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of raising awareness of the importance of annual mammography.

Special Pink Cotton Candy and Snow Cones presented by Arrow Limousine.

SUNDAY: Red Bank International Flavour Festival
White Street Parking Lot
12 p.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine

Here’s the National Weather Service forecast:

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind between 10 and 13 mph.

Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind around 9 mph.

By JOHN T. WARD

The building appears to sigh and lean, as though aware of its fate. Inside, nooks and corners that once teemed with the cast-offs of the decades have begun to empty out.

It’s a sad time at Monmouth Antique Shoppes, one of the anchors of Red Bank’s vaunted Arts & Antiques District. Eviction notice in hand, owner John Gribbin has informed his 23 remaining dealers that they, like he, must be out by the end of the month, ending a 29-year run.

“It’s not the best time for me to talk,” Gribbin told redbankgreen Tuesday, as he had also last week. “I’m trying to find a home for me and my dealers, and it’s not easy going.”

More than a dozen of the displaced shops are finding a new home just a few doors east, at the Gizzi family’s Riverbank Antiques. (Click to enlarge)

The wood-frame building, at the southeast corner of West Front Street and Bridge Avenue, was once part of the Eisner uniform factory complex – “a sweatshop,” said Gribbin. Now, it is slated to be razed to make way for the MW West Side Lofts project, a mixed-use assemblage of luxury rental apartments, street-level retail, live-and-work artists’ spaces, a parking garage and a Triumph Brewing Company restaurant.

No permits for the demolition or ensuing construction have yet been issued, according to a borough official. But Monmouth Antique Shoppes and Ambiance antiques, which occupies a neighboring building owned by the lofts developer, have been told to clear out. They were recently given 60 days notice, almost six years after the lofts plan won approval.

Unaffected by the action is Guy Johnson’s Antique Center of Red Bank, which occupies two sprawling buildings, including the giant barn-red structure at the intersection’s northeast corner and a second warehouse opposite Brothers Pizza.

The diaspora has proven to be an awkwardly welcome boon for Carla Gizzi, who runs her family’s Riverbank Antiques business just a block east of Gribbin’s. She’s busily making arrangements to accommodate more than a dozen displaced dealers.

“I feel horrible for John, but it actually enables us to stay in business, and we’re keeping these dealers in Red Bank,” Gizzi said. “We’re consolidating and enabling them to stay.”

Among those making the move are Reggie Hawn and Cheryl Figliola. Hawn, who’s been at the shoppes for less than two years, said she’s “looking forward to the day when we can all reunite under one tent,” reforming a group of dealers with complementary specialties.

“What made us successful here was that we’re all collectors first,” said Figliola, a 17-year tenant of the shoppes. “Everyone found their own niche.”

Gribbin said he doesn’t know where he and other dealers, who together operate as a sort of cooperative, selling each other’s goods when dealers are absent, will wind up. But he sees his business’s departure as part of an inexorable slide toward oblivion for the antiques district.

“As to me, I’m leaving Red Bank,” he said. “This industry has been a major draw for the town, and it’s going away slowly.”

Just across the street, another storefront formerly occupied by an antiques dealer stands empty following the recent departure of Plum Cottage, which relocated to Fair Haven.

Closing in on a celebration of its centennial, Fair Haven is having some trouble tracking historical time capsules, the Asbury Park Press reported Wednesday.

With food, fireworks, music and other details of the June 16 public celebration squared away, borough officials are trying to determine whether to assemble a time capsule for posterity, and wondering past time capsules are accounted for, the Press reports.

From reporter Larry Higgs’ account, referring to “other time capsules buried in the borough 36 years ago, during the nation’s bicentennial in 1976:”

“We’re not certain what the status of time capsules in Fair Haven are,” said Theresa Casagrande, borough administrator, after Monday’s council meeting. “We’re looking to dig up some historical knowledge, and see how many are buried and whether it is appropriate to open them.”

Officials haven’t decided if a time capsule will be buried for the borough’s centennial this year, filled with artifacts depicting life in the borough in 2012, she said.

“I know we did find a time capsule in the cellar of borough hall that was never planted as part of the school project (in 1976) and returned it to the school,” Casagrande said. “(Historian) Pat Drummond seemed to recall there was a time capsule at Bicentennial Hall as part of that celebration.”

That time capsule remained unopened until it was returned to the superintendent of schools, she said.

“There was one in 1976 … buried across the street somewhere in Memorial Park,” said Mayor Benjamin Lucarelli. “The question is, is it time to open it, or time to put down another time capsule?”

Casagrande said officials have to determine if that is a different time capsule or the school time capsule found when the basement of borough hall was being cleaned out.

There may be one more problem. The instructions for opening one of the time capsules may be inside the time capsule, he said.

Local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott, below, with a custom-branded Eisner lightbulb in the second-floor New Jersey Room of the Red Bank Public Library, once the home of industrialist Sigmund Eisner. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

On April 15, 1937, the Red Bank Public Library – for decades an itinerant but growing collection of books and archival material – finally found a permanent home, relocating from a downtown storefront to a mansion at 84 West Front Street.

Three months earlier, the heirs of Sigmund Eisner – mass-manufacturer of uniforms for the Army, the Boy Scouts and other organizations  – had donated their late father’s mansion overlooking the Navesink River to the library.

The shared hope of H. Raymond, Monroe and J. Lester Eisner was that the house would provide a warm and dry place for reading, but also that it would function “as a bit of a museum, too,” says local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott.

Next month, the library will celebrate its 75th anniversary in the house with museum-like displays that highlight Eisner and his transformative impact on Red Bank as an industrialist and philanthropist.

The event, says McDermott, “is completely about” Eisner.

The ornate first-floor parlor of the Eisner mansion, above, and an undated photo of Sigmund Eisner, below. (Click to enlarge)

Valued at $25,000 at the time, the house was donated partly furnished, according to a Red Bank Register account of the opening. Wicker chairs provided welcome indoor seating overlooking the river.

The house had been home to Eisner and his wife, Bertha Weis, a member of a well-established Red Bank family. An Eastern European immigrant who “came to Red Bank as a peddler,” Eisner set up a sewing machine in a rented house near Broad Street and eventually built an manufacturing empire that employed 5,000 people at its peak during the first World War, said McDermott.

Eisner’s complex of factory buildings at the West Front Street and Bridge Avenue was reported to be the largest uniform factory in the world, she said.

Some of that property is now the home to the Galleria at Red Bank, a collection of restaurants, shops and offices. Another portion, on the northeast corner of that intersection, is home to the Antique Center of Red Bank.

Antique Center owner Guy Johnson is lending some of his collection of Eisner and old Red Bank memorabilia to the library display, including uniforms and a lightbulb branded with the Eisner name, probably for use in the factory, McDermott said.

The event will also highlight the reopening of the library’s New Jersey History Room. For many years, an ornate front room trimmed in ornate Gothic woodwork served as the repository for reference and archival materials about Red Bank, Monmouth County and the state. But the rarity and delicate condition of some of the materials, including one-of-a-kind atlases and directories, called out for a dedicated, controlled-access space, said McDermott.

That space is now a second-floor room of several hundred square feet that is open to the public from 2 to 4 p.m. each Tuesday afternoon, and by appointment at other times. McDermott said it is available to anyone, and is particularly helpful to people interested in researching family and property histories.

McDermott herself has been immersed in the materials as she assembles the exhibit, she said. And one regular visitor, a volunteer in the effort to put together the exhibit, has been known to exclaim, while going through old photos, “Oh my god, that’s my great-grandfather,” McDermott said with a laugh.

The goal of the exhibit is to create “a kind of timeline” about Eisner, a philanthropist who left money in his will to his factory workers, as well as to a host of churches of various persuasions, said McDermott.

“He didn’t have any barriers,” she said.

The building got a $1.6 million renovation in 2007, reopening after a problematic 15-month closure in January, 2008. In the interim, the library operated out of retail space donated by Hovnanian Enterprises.

Here’s an article from the January 6, 1937 edition of the New York Times announcing the donation of the house to the borough: Eisners deed house to library

And here’s the announcement about next month’s event:

On Saturday, April 14, 2012, from 2 – 4 PM, the Red Bank Public Library will celebrate 75 years as the Eisner Memorial Library with a Ribbon Cutting and Reception in our newly restructured New Jersey History Room.

Our New Jersey Collection contains many unique and valuable items pertaining to the Library, the Borough of Red Bank, and Monmouth County. The Library building itself is a special place, having been previously the home of Sigmund Eisner, businessman, civic leader and philanthropist, and his wife Bertha, an influential businesswoman and civic organizer. Presented to the Borough of Red Bank in January 1937, the former mansion was opened as a Public Library on April 15, 1937, thanks to the generosity of the Eisner sons, Raymond, J. Lester, and Monroe Eisner.

Please join us on April 14, as we celebrate this historic anniversary in our beautiful building on the Navesink River. For more information, please feel free to contact the library at 732-842-0690.

Theft occurring between 2-17-12 and 2-18-12 at English Plaza parking lot.  Unknown subjects stole drivers side view mirror from parked vehicle.  Ptl. Matthew Ehrenreich.

Criminal Mischief occurring on 2-18-12 at  Spring St.  Victim reported that unknown person(s) broke her side view mirror on parked vehicle.  Ptl. Thomas Doremus.

Theft occurring at  S. Pearl St. on 2-18-12.  Victim reported that unknown subject stole various pieces of lumber, louver doors, wooden paneling from back of vehicle in which the tailgate was left open for placement of items.  Ptl. Matthew Ehrenreich.

Theft occurring at  W. Front St.   Antique Center on 2-20-12.  Victim reported that three white male subjects ranging in age from 40 to 60 years old bought a copy machine, adding machine, and brass fire hose nozzle and camera tripod.  The subjects told the antique dealer that they would load items into truck and return to pay for said items; however they did not and fled the area in vehicle with merchandise.  Ptl. Garrett Falco.

Theft occurring on 2-23-12 at  West Front St.  Victim reported that unknown subject stole his silver in color mountain bike from in front of a business on sidewalk.  Ptl. Thomas Doremus.

ARRESTS:    4 Contempt of Court

OTHER ARRESTS:

John Castellana, age 44 male of Red Bank was arrested on 2-24-12 in the area of West Front St. for DWI by Ptl. Stan Balmer

Donald Cameron, age 50 male of Red Bank was arrested on 2-24-12 in the area of Monmouth St. for COC [Contempt of Court] by Ptl. Thomas Doremus.

Alvin Ross, age 22 male of Matawan was arrested on 2-23-12 in the area of Bridge Ave. for COC by Ptl. Patrick Kennedy.

David Haynes, age 30 male of Red Bank was arrested on 2-23-12 in the area of Shrewsbury Ave. for COC by Ptl Stan Balmer.

Michael Hurst, age 46 male of Asbury Park was arrested on 2-22-12 in the area of Monmouth St for COC by Ptl. Matthew Ehrenreich.

Jeffrey Capaccio, age 48 male of Tuckerton, NJ was arrested on 2-21-12 in the area of Monmouth St. for Poss. of CDS, Marijuana under 50 grams, Receiving Stolen Property by Det. Robert Clayton and Ptl. Jorge Torres.

A male juvenile age 16 of Leonardo was arrested on 2-19-12 in the area of W. front St. for Disorderly Conduct by Ptl. Ashon Lovick.

Charbel Chehadeh, age 29 male of Jersey City was arrested on 2-19-12 in the area of E. Front St. for Disorderly Conduct by Ptl. Ashon Lovick.

Andrew Makuch, age 25 male of Red Bank was arrested on 2-18-12 in the area of Hudson Ave. for Poss. of Weapons Unlawful Purpose, Unlawful Poss. of Weapon, Poss. of Penetrating Bullets and Burglary by Ptl. David Hicks.

Matthew Kiley, age 22 male of Hazlet was arrested on 2-18-12 in the area of W. Front St. for Disorderly Conduct by Ptl. Thomas Doremus.

Peter Ciamcimino, age 23 male of Tinton Falls was arrested on 2-18-12 in the area of W. Front St. for Disorderly Conduct by Ptl. Thomas Doremus.

Albert Catani, age 25 male of Hazlet was arrested on 2-18-12 in the area of W. Front St. for Disorderly Conduct by Ptl. Thomas Doremus.

Matthew Burns, age 25 male of Hazlet and Robert Vanfechtmann, age 22 male of Hazlet were both arrested on 2-18-12 in the area of W. Front St. for Disorderly Conduct by Sgt. Robert Gannon.

Joseph Lalicata, age 22 male of Hazlet was arrested on 2-18-12 in the area of W. Front St. for Disorderly Conduct and Criminal Mischief by Ptl. Ashon Lovick.

A juvenile male age 15 of Red Bank was arrested on 2-18-12 in the area of Throckmorton Ave. for Burglary and Resisting Arrest by Ptl. Thomas Dormeus.

A juvenile female age 15 of Fair Haven was arrested on 2-17-12 in the area of Broad St. for Poss. of CDS, Marijuana under 50 grams by Ptl. Matthew Ehrenreich.

Nana Asanidze-Snow, age 45 female of Red Bank was arrested on 2-17-12 in the area of Broad St. for Shoplifting by Ptl. Gary Watson.

A 15 year old juvenile female from Howell was arrested on 2-17-12 in the area of Broad St. for Poss. and Consumption of Alcohol Underage by Ptl. Gary Watson.

Five months after securing state Register of Historic Places status, Little Silver’s 347-year-old Parker Homestead has been added to that list’s national counterpart, the Asbury Park Press reports Thursday.

The borough’s oldest surviving homestead, which includes a main house and three outlying barns, the Parker property was acquired by the borough from Julia Parker, the last descendant of the original family, who passed away in 1996.

Former Mayor Suzanne Castleman, who died in July, was a driving force behind the acquisition, heading a board dedicated to the home’s preservation.

From the Press:

The most pressing issue at the homestead now is stabilizing and repairing three barns on the property, estimated to cost $500,000. However Mayor Robert C. Neff Jr. said the listing on the national register now makes the homestead eligible for federal grants to do that work.

The board is scheduled to meet March 8 at 7:30 p.m. at borough hall.

By JOHN T. WARD

‘Person to Person,’ a TV program of bygone days that featured live interviews with – and often, tours of the homes of –  Marilyn Monroe, John F. and Jackie Kennedy, Marlon Brando and other big names of half a century ago, returns to the airwaves next week with a drop-in at the Middletown home of pop rocker Jon Bon Jovi, CBS News announced Thursday.

The comeback episode, to air Wednesday night, also includes tours of homes owned by two other “legends of today:” actor George Clooney and investment sage Warren Buffett.

The Bon Jovi segment includes a look at his “private recording studio,” CBS says in promo material.

The house has hosted the famous (then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, at a campaign fundraiser in 2008) and the infamous and unwelcome (alleged cat burglar Nick Tracy).

The original ‘Person to Person’ was hosted by Edward R. Murrow, and featured the iconic newsman smoking and interviewing celebrities via a remote link, he in a New York studio, the subjects in his or er home. It debuted in October, 1953, with tours of the homes of baseball great Roy Campanella and conductor Leopold Stokowski and his wife, Gloria Vanderbilt. The show ran until 1959.

The new program will be hosted by Lara Logan and Charlie Rose and is taped, not live. It airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday, February 8.

By JOHN T. WARD

Here’s a stocking-stuffer idea that’s as local as they come.

A series of note cards by Red Bank artist Terry McCue honors the borough’s history by preserving, in pen-and-ink,  some of its most noteworthy buildings.

And the proceeds from the sale of the cards go to support an institution that occupies one of those structures: the Red Bank Public Library, which makes its home in the former Sigmund Eisner mansion on West Front Street.

McCue’s drawings, done over several decades, were the product of a twist in a long career in the graphic arts that took many, she tells redbankgreen.

Now 89 years old, she’s been a sketcher of window displays for New York department stores; a draftsman at Fort Monmouth; a creator of ads for the now-gone Vogel’s department store in Long Branch; and a designer of sheets and towels – not to mention a mother of six, grandmother of 11, and wife to her husband, Martin, a former Red Bank borough clerk and volunteer firefighter.

The 40-plus-year resident of Pinckney Road says the series of drawings came about after she made a drawing of the house next door as a gift when the owner moved away. Displayed in the recipient’s new home in Rumson, it was spotted by Realtor Gloria Nilson, who hired McCue to execute illustrations of homes for clients.

“The agents would give them as gifts to buyers,” McCue says.

That set her on the path of house illustrations. When she had time, she started doing drawings of old Red Bank buildings that caught her eye. Working from photos she’d take from several angles, “with close-ups of the details.”

Among the buildings committed to paper: the former Anthony Reckless Estate, now the Woman’s Club of Red Bank; the train station; the Dublin House; and the John Stout House, now the office of Red Bank Family EyeCare on East Front Street.

“I like the old buildings,” McCue says. “They’re there, they’re settled. They look like they ought to be there.”

Some of the homes McCue had hoped to get to were torn down before she could draw them, including the Rullman House, built in 1805, which the borough demolished in 1999 to create Riverside Gardens Park, and the Thomas Morford House, destroyed by the developer of what’s now a bank across the street from library.

Still, “eventually, I had a collection” of about a dozen, McCue says. The library once mounted a show of the drawings, but they sat gathering dust in a closet at her home until recently, when she pulled them out and donated them to the library. She signed over the copyrights, allowing the library to use them as it wishes.

“They’re just beautiful drawings of architecturally significant buildings,” said library director Mary Faith Chmiel. “They make great little gifts for people who used to live in town.”

Bundles of six note cards and envelopes are available at the library, with a suggested donation of $10.