A Holiday Tradition Returns: The Dennisville Christmas House Tour Is Back After Six Years
The “Walden Puddle” historic log house, built in the early 1900s.
There’s nothing like a restored, recharged Christmas tradition. Hence the buzz in Dennisville as the town’s popular Christmas House Tour returns from a six-year hiatus.
The 2024 tour runs on Saturday, Dec. 21, from 3-7pm. It is presented by the Dennisville Historic Homeowners Association, a nonprofit group promoting the preservation of the town’s historic buildings. Tickets are $15 if purchased online and $20 the day of the tour.
Nine historic houses and buildings, including two churches and a school, will be decorated and open to the public.
This is the 32nd edition of the tour, which started in 1988. This event has been missed by the Dennisville homeowners and the public, which loves seeing old homes come to life.
“This is something we absolutely love sharing with the community,” says Joan Berkey, an architectural historian and the new chair of the House Tour Committee. “It’s wonderful to bring this back. We conducted the tour virtually during COVID and with the road construction, but it’s not the same thing.
“It’s great to see the reactions when people experience an historic building. They tell homeowners, ‘Wow, I can’t believe how authentic your house looks. I had only seen it from the outside.’”
Ticket pickup/purchase is at the Dennisville Post Office, 24 Hall Ave., beginning at 2:30pm the day of the tour.
Patrons will be greeted by students, who will answer questions and suggest different starting points so that homes are not inundated with traffic.
Students will outline a couple of strategies for people to best utilize their time.
The 3pm start gives customers about 90 minutes to do the bulk of their touring during daylight. For others, it allows an evening experience, bathed in Christmas lighting, without taking up the whole night. Finishing by 7pm, it allows for other activities on the Saturday before Christmas.
Homeowners will take an individual approach to showcasing their properties. That can range from an impromptu question-and-answer session to stationing guides in several rooms of the house.
While Berkey’s own house is on the tour, she says there’s little doubt about another home being hailed as the signature property.
It’s called “Walden Puddle,” an early-1900s log house north of Dennisville. This charming house makes its tour debut and will feature its owners’ decades-long collection of antique Christmas decorations.
“This is very rare, an early-1900s log house in Cape May County,” Berkey indicates. “There are so many things about the house that are awesome. You have the original stone fireplace, original light fixtures and floors. One of the children’s bedrooms have two original small bunk beds. There are original beds made of logs. The balcony overlooks the great room and the fireplace. That’s just some of it.”
Named by previous owners, Walden Puddle was built in 1928 in the Craftsman style. It retains many original details including exposed log framing, a huge Pennsylvania stone fireplace in the living room, light fixtures, log beds, and built-in bunk beds in a child’s bedroom.
The house overlooks a small millpond created in the mid-1800s for a lumber mill known as Little Mill. Local lore claims the house was built of locally milled cedar logs.
The first known owner-occupants of Walden Puddle were S. Albert Stevens and his wife, Grace, who bought the house in June 1948. Jamie and Sandy Ciardelli, who purchased the home in 2022, are only the third owners.
For Jamie, the historic nature of this property literally hits home. He serves on The Historic Preservation Advisory Commission in Beach Haven, where he lived before cashing out on the real-estate market boom to come here. He not only helps HPAC preserve homes – the group has saved an estimated 400 from being torn down over the last two decades by helping owners comply with historic-district guidelines – but he can aid that process as a restoration carpenter.
The Walden Puddle owners are antique collectors and the house will be filled with many of their antiques, including Christmas decorations.
The Ciardellis are offering their first tour of a house with a storybook origin.
“My daughter Angela is actually the one who found this home online,” Jamie recalls. “Christmas is always special to our family. Angela’s birthday is on Christmas.
“She said, ‘You better look at this house.’ We did and we loved it, but it was under contract. As it turned out, there was a problem and that deal fell through. We went down there the next day.
“We pulled into the driveway and up in front of this big, beautiful log home. I looked at my wife and said, ‘I know you are going to fall in love with this house.’ We weren’t even there five minutes before we knew it was going to be the house of our dreams. It has been.
“Besides that,” he adds, laughing, “I have a happy wife.”
And he has plans. Ciardelli was already thinking about the size of the tour Christmas Tree – 15 feet – late in October.
Other historic buildings on the tour range in date from roughly 1790 to the 1870s.
The display will include the red chair, of Facebook group “Chair Watch” fame, that dangled precariously for several years from the attic’s edge of a dilapidated house on Route 47. It has been restored and will be displayed at the Dennis Township Museum and History Center, a stop on the tour.
Berkey adds that there are free cookies and refreshments at the 1890s church’s social hall. There will also be a special “letters to Santa” mailbox inside the post office that will be open the day of the tour (all letters get a personal answer), and a soup and sandwich lunch/dinner at the South Dennis Methodist Church, which accepts donations only.
Plans keep materializing, as Dennisville embraces a Christmas renaissance.
