[5][2] In 1941, the Bergen County Panorama described the mansion as “the most imposing home in the (Hackensack) valley, a 16-room replica of a Norman castle on the site of a 1700 Dutch colonial homestead torn down in 1892.

[8] In the years preceding the erection of the Atwood-Blauvelt mansion, the property on which it sits was owned by Richard and Euphemia Van Wagoner, and contained a Dutch Colonial house, built of sandstone, that predated the American Revolutionary War.

The Van Wagoners sold the property to insurance company founder and grapefruit magnate Kimball Chase Atwood of Clifton, New Jersey on October 1, 1895.

[1] The Atwood-Blauvelt mansion was built during 1896-97 for Atwood, based on a design by Paterson, New Jersey architect Fred Wesley Wentworth (1864-1943).

[1][2] Atwood (1853-1934), who was raised in modest circumstances, founded the Preferred Mutual Accident Insurance Association in 1885, and in the 1890s established the largest grapefruit grove in the world at the time, on the Manatee River near Bradenton in Florida.

With his wife and their three children, Jeff Wells and his family generously hosted countless banquets, galas and holiday parties to support local and international causes and charities.

[2][14] Care One, which owns the mansion, has let animals move in to help it deteriorate, raising obvious concerns that the company is waiting for the day it can demolish and develop the property.