- September 5, 2025
- Darren Tobia
Owning a historic home in Trenton is a source of pride for Peter Blackburn. A certificate with Mayor Arthur Holland’s signature is one of the prized possessions in his home. He received it after his neighborhood was designated the Berkeley Square Historic District in 1979. It was listed on the National Register a year later.
But the 84-year-old retiree admits maintaining a three-story Queen Anne, built in 1907, can be expensive on a fixed income.
“My house is over 100 years old but with that comes the burden of having to keep up with repairs,” said Blackburn, who lives on West State Street. “Not too many things last 100 years — sadly, a heating unit and roof don’t.”
Jackson Street Mill Hill Trenton, NJ
In 2023, Blackburn, 84, was one of 12 recipients of a grant — his was worth $2,000– from the Trenton Historical Society to use towards his repairs. The annual program called Restore Trenton was founded in 2007. It is designed to help beautify an old city’s aging housing stock.
It is also helping to change a public perception about historic preservation — that is more than collecting dusty artifacts or creating rules about what color a house can be painted.
“There aren’t a lot of funds available to individual homeowners for repairs, whether they live in historic districts or not,” said Jennifer Leynes, a trustee of the Trenton Historical Society, who lives in the city’s Hiltonia neighborhood.
The Restore Trenton grants only support exterior renovations and the program tends to favor home-improvement projects that improve the streetscape, such as porches, or ones that improve the stability of the home, such as roof repairs. The Trenton Historical Society prefers to support projects in historic districts, such as Blackburn’s, but it isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, Leynes said.
The Trenton Historical Society is playing a large role in what appears to be a preservation revival in Trenton lately. Developers, such as Ajax Management and Woodrose Properties, are sponsoring the nominations of properties to the National Register in order to take advantage of historic tax credits.
The Bell Telephone Company building and the Golden Swan Inn, one of the oldest downtown buildings, were both renovated and converted into apartments. The Downtown Trenton Commercial Historic District was listed on the National Register in March.
Blackburn, who has lived in the home for over 50 years, believes the city is witnessing “upward movement” after years of dereliction that defies the headlines most people read about Trenton.
The next project on Blackburn’s to-do list is his wooden front porch. But that hasn’t stopped real-estate prospectors from knocking on his doors to make offers on his home. “I just got an offer to buy my house,” Blackburn said. “A lot of people want to buy it.”
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