Rider Furniture | Fine Quality Home Furnishings at Substantial Savings

About Us

A Brief History Of Our Store

Rider Furniture is housed in the "Old Joe Russo House," which dates back to circa 1750. The home once served commercial travelers arriving and departing on the Delaware & Raritan Canal, linking Trenton to New Brunswick in the 1800's.

Raising the house The modern-day restorations which took place in August of 1990 included workers using the traditional methods of 18th-century home-building. In one day's hard work, they transformed nearly 80 tons of timberwood lumber into the additions to the house, which became Rider Furniture's main offices. What took a team of horses and nearly 100 men to accomplish 200 years ago was tackled in 1990 by a team of a dozen men in T-shirts and cut-offs aided by a mechanical crane. Without nails or screws, the builders joined the giant white oak timbers into precut notches, lowering the two-story timber frames into place as easily as a child playing with an Erector set.

With the new addition, the interiors of each section of the building collectively form a museum of lumber-cutting techniques. The beams in the earliest built, Dutch section, nearest the canal, were hand-cut; while those in the middle, English section were sawed; and those in the new section were cut by machine. The building's old parts, as well as the newer additions, are built so strongly that it is estimated that it will stand another 200 years.

"Before" "After"
"After"