St. James Building Committee:

About five (5) years ago St. James' experienced a rapid growth of young families with Sunday school aged children. At that time, the Vestry started looking into ways to increase the Sunday school classrooms in the Parish house. The first idea was to install a dormer and make three classrooms upstairs. After engaging an architect to express some ideas and sketches on how to go about the project we came to the conclusion that it would be too expensive and we really would not be gaining that much.

A year went by while the Vestry discussed the pros and cons of tearing down the existing Parish house and rebuilding it. The first Architect did not meet our requirements so we asked another to look at the project to see if there would be any problems in doing the project; he said it would cost $7,500.00 to bring it to the Planning Board of Hackettstown for permission to build it.

The Vestry voted to start the project in the fall of 1999. We hired the firm of Johnson / Fox to design a new Parish House for St. James'.

The new Parish House will have a lower floor and an upper floor. The lower level will house six (6) classrooms, a nursery, boiler room, rest room, elevator shaft, and be connected to the basement of the Mitcham House. The upper level will have a kitchen, rest rooms, meeting room, and be connected to the church and the first floor of the Mitcham House. All areas will be handicap accessible.

We are going to keep the Victorian appearance of the existing building.

The existing building, in our opinion was built in the 1930's, for these reasons:

1) A reinforced concrete foundation
2) All framing materials dressed, four (4) sides
3) Casement windows (invented in 1928)