From the Record:
Nixon Saddle River estate torn down
The former home of Richard M. Nixon, once the hub of his post-presidential life but mold-riddled and dilapidated in recent years, was leveled by demolition workers Wednesday.
The eight-bedroom, wood-frame house on Charlden Drive will give way to a new home on the four-acre property.
Ted Preusch, who served as a special deputy federal marshal for Nixon for nine years, walked the grounds he knew so well just after sunrise to take one last look at the place.
“It’s in terrible condition,” Preusch, a former police chief in Upper Saddle River, said sadly of the home where Nixon and his wife, Pat, lived from 1981-90. “When the Nixons were here, it was extremely well-maintained.”
A few hours after Preusch’s final visit, the excavator’s clam bucket took the first bite through the home’s kitchen wall, reducing it to rubble with a resounding crunch.
“It’s hard to bring this house down because of its history, but there’s no way around it,” said Robert S. Hekemian Jr., the new owner of the property. “Part of me hurts to see it go, but a new home will go up.”
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Hekemian, a real estate developer who lives in Saddle River, knew the owners of the property before the Nixons purchased it. He bought the house two years ago, paying just over $3 million to the Ushijima family of Japan. The Ushijimas had bought the home from the Nixons in 1990 for $2.4 million, more than $1 million more than the Nixons had paid. The Nixons stayed in the neighborhood, moving to Bear’s Nest, a townhouse complex in Park Ridge.
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In its heyday, the house, built in the 1960s, was a rustic prize designed by Eleanore Petterson, a Saddle River resident who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. The Nixons moved in six years after the Watergate scandal forced the president’s resignation.