Wayne New Jersey Old Barn Milk Bar. Ice Cream Alderney Milk. Vintage Photographs And Story.
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
- At Old Barn, summer bliss came in softball-size scoops
Thursday September 13, 2012, 12:12 PM
BY BILL ERVOLINO STAFF WRITER The Record
So was the history of the place, beginning with the actual structure. True to its name, the Old Barn was a Dutch timber frame barn, erected in the late 1700s. In 1930, Olaf Haroldson, a local businessman, bought the building and transformed it into an ice cream shop. But between the Depression-era economy and the gas rationing that continued throughout the war years, Haroldson struggled. In the mid-1940s, he sold the place to Robert McMinn, a World War II veteran, and within a couple of years, the Old Barn Milk Bar had become a North Jersey institution.
Patrons called it the Milk Bar - Or the Old Barn. Some called it Alderney’s because of the sign out front ("Alderney Milk/Ice Cream") as well as the milk dispensing machine in the parking lot ("Alderney Milk 24 Hour Self-Service"). (The Alderney Dairy Co., founded in 1894 as Newark Milk and Cream Co., became one of the largest dairies in the country by the 1930s, with six plants and more than 800 dairy farms.) McMinn continued to run the Milk Bar until the 1980s, eventually turning over the reins to his son Joseph and nephew Gerald.
They kept it going until December 2001, when Preakness Chevrolet bought the property, only to go out of business a few years later. But the warm and sometimes funny memories it generated live on. In 1991, Mary Sheehy Connolly, 47, of Ramsey, was in the parking lot having ice cream with other members of the Wayne First Aid Squad, when they received a call about an injury in the Old Barn parking lot. We told the dispatcher, ‘We’re already there!’ Then, took turns wrapping up this man’s injury while holding each other’s cones."
Today, the Old Barn is certainly not forgotten. Nor is it entirely gone. In 2002, the Wayne Historical Commission raised money to have the barn disassembled, according to commission chairman Bob Monacelli. "All of the pieces are together in one location - we’re not saying where - with the exception of the tables, which were auctioned off after the barn came down," he said. Monacelli, who took part in the disassembly project, says that there has been lots of talk of resurrecting the Old Barn, but no definite plans have materialized. Yet!!!
Best ice cream place EVER!!
RIP Mr.McMinn 🙏🏻
Thanks for the memories 🥰
Your welcome🙂
I'll NEVER forget this place.
Glad you enjoyed my remembrance of this place. Went many times. Thank you for your reply.
What? No comments? That place was every kids dream on a friday night with the family
My sister and I remember the Old Barn. It was a neat place to go as kids with the family. I'm sorry to see it's gone.
My dad bought our first car in August 1946, a year after the war was over, and he showed us some of the places he had visited as a young man. In September of ‘46 we were did a Sunday drive on the Hamburg Turnpike where we first came across a “scenic falls” in Pomptom Lakes and then the old barn for Ice Cream. The old barn was actually still part of a working dairy farm (Alderney) replete with cows to be milked daily. The ice cream part seemed a bit of an after thought as you would walk into the barn and past all the cows to access a small serving window into the barn on the north west corner.
They served only vanilla, chocholate or strawberry and the double dip cone price was $0.15 which was a nickel more than a standard double dip price but it contained five time the ice cream so nobody was complaining. And the real attraction was to eat your ice cream and watch a cow being milked at the same time
Some years later I rediscovered the place and I think they were serving from an outside window. The sign had the name of another dairy(Welsh Farms?) and the actual cows had been removed from the premises, by order of the board of health. And as I recall in later years the name was again changed and the interior serving area was opened and you could see that the booths and tables were fashioned out of the old cow stalls.
I always tried to hit this place if I was in the area and I loved showing it to new people ….a lot of great memories but nothing is forever
J. Dimatteo
Thank you for your memory. I really enjoyed your comment. : )
@@janneuteboomproductions ….and I really enjoyed finding your video retrospective on the subject….we were back in the area for the day this weekend and It popped up when I did a search ……nice research and production……………….
.J. Dimatteo