I need to situate a private mansion in New Jersey on the Delaware River

Plot Device · Aug 13, 2011

My story primarily takes place in Philadelphia. But there is a wealthy bad guy who lives across the river in New Jersey in a really impressive century-old mansion. And it's plot-critical that his mansion be on the Delaware River itself.

Is there is real life community In New Jersey right on the Delaware River where such mansions exist?

I WILL SETTLE FOR relocating my bad guy so that his mansion is found someplace along the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania. But I'd prefer the Delaware.

Lil · Aug 13, 2011

Why do you need a real-life community? Won't a bridge suffice?

Albedo · Aug 13, 2011

I find Google Maps great for doing research like this, now that they've got medium-to-high rez aerial imagery of most of the world. I've never been to Philadelphia, but this area looks like it may have what you're looking for. Or here. Or here.

Plot Device · Aug 14, 2011

Albedo said:
I find Google Maps great for doing research like this, now that they've got medium-to-high rez aerial imagery of most of the world. I've never been to Philadelphia, but this area looks like it may have what you're looking for. Or here. Or here.

These look interesting, but they also look like nothing more than modern, plastic-crap McMansions. I am interested in finding where the OLD money in New Jersey lives. I want to know where the old-time mansions were built during the Rockefeller era.

jclarkdawe · Aug 14, 2011

Money in the Philadelphia area was on Philadelphia Main Line - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which is northwest of Philly. Impressive houses and some of the most affluent communities in the world, both then and now. Philly in 1900 was the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the money gravitated to areas connected to the PRR.

The area you're talking about is served by the River Line (New Jersey Transit) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I've ridden the entire length at various times and it stays close to the Delaware River. I don't recall any areas that meet your requirements. Most of it is working class or modern upper middle-class. But you might look at the various communities in that area and see if any work.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Snick · Aug 14, 2011

If you are writing a work of fiction, then you can use poetic license to put a mansion where you want one to be, regardless of actual fact. I am not familiar with that river, but there are places in the northeast where that is a mansion in a generally middle class areaeither because the people who built it were there first, or they wanted their mansion near their factory. I grew up in a small mill town that had a few rather spectacular mansions; one of which was across the street from some early 1800's rowhouses where some of the first mill workers lived.

Plot Device · Aug 14, 2011

jclarkdawe said:
Money in the Philadelphia area was on Philadelphia Main Line - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which is northwest of Philly. Impressive houses and some of the most affluent communities in the world, both then and now. Philly in 1900 was the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the money gravitated to areas connected to the PRR.

The area you're talking about is served by the River Line (New Jersey Transit) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I've ridden the entire length at various times and it stays close to the Delaware River. I don't recall any areas that meet your requirements. Most of it is working class or modern upper middle-class. But you might look at the various communities in that area and see if any work.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Thanks, Jim.

I'm already pretty familiar with the Main Line in the Philly suburbs. I used to do catering gigs along the Main Line, and I even briefly lived there in a room for rent after college (so I used to ride the train itself --the train that gives the Main Line its name).

But I have almost no knowledge of the other side of the river in New Jersey. I am told that Cherry Hill, New Jersey is definitely a very well-monied place, but Cherry Hill isn't on the river. It MUST be on the river.

As for suggestions that I take poetic license and make something up, I'm just too stubborn to do that.

I want a REAL place!

jclarkdawe · Aug 14, 2011

I think you're going to have to do some inventing here. I can't say I'm excited about it, but I'd think of Riverton, home of the Riverton Yacht Club. It's got some nice Victorian buildings. But I don't think there are any mansions. But give yourself an eccentric back then, who made his own money and had been a member of the Yacht Club and wanted to stay in the area. Sometimes in fiction you've got to create things. Google Earth has some pictures along the waterfront.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Alessandra Kelley · Aug 14, 2011

Oddly enough, I was just vacationing there. I mean literally, I got back today. The Delaware River, although beautiful, is not where the Old Money New Jersey people live. East of there, in the northern, mountainous, forested region of New Jersey around Morristown, north through Parsippany and West Milford, are a lot of historic, and some very old money houses. Plenty of them are on lakes, canals, or lesser rivers.

I don't know much about Cherry Hill -- it's way south of where I was -- but on the map it seems close to the Delaware.

GeorgeK · Aug 15, 2011

If it's in the future the bad guy could have purchased it.

I need to situate a private mansion in New Jersey on the Delaware River

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

Lil

Albedo

Alex

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

jclarkdawe

Feeling lucky, Query?

Snick

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

jclarkdawe

Feeling lucky, Query?

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

GeorgeK

ever seeking