DANIELLE P. RICHARDS / THE RECORD Former President Richard M. Nixon's esate prior to demolition.

Workers early Wednesday began tearing down the mold-ridden Saddle River home where former President Richard M. Nixon and his wife, Pat, lived from 1981 to 1990.

The dilapidated eight-bedroom house on Charlden Drive will give way to a new home on the 4-acre property.

Ted Preusch, a former police chief in Upper Saddle River who served as a special federal marshal for Nixon, walked the grounds he knew so well just after sunrise today to take one last look.

“It’s in terrible condition,” Preusch said of the wood-frame house. “When the Nixons were here it was extremely well-maintained.”He was long gone when the excavator’s clam bucket took the first bite through the kitchen wall, reducing it to rubble with a resounding crunch.

“It’s hard to bring this house down because of its history, but there’s no way around it,” said Robert S. Helemian Jr., the new owner of the property. “Part of me hurts to see it go, but a new home will go up.”
Hekemian Jr., of Saddle River, knew the owners of the property before the Nixons purchased it. He bought the house two years ago, paying just over $3 million to the Ushijima family of Japan. The Ushijimas had bought the home from the Nixons in 1990 for $2.4 million, more than $1 million more than the Nixons had paid.
In its heyday, the house was a rustic prize designed by the late Eleanore Petterson, a Saddle River resident who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. The Nixons moved in six years after the Watergate scandal forced the Republican president’s resignation.

Hekemian negotiated with the Ushijima family for the property for three years, making several trips to Japan in an effort to persuade the family to sell. Hekemian plans to build a home for his family on the same footprint on the tree-filled acreage.
The winding path around the home where Nixon strolled with dignitaries and friends will be preserved, Hekemian said. Other artifacts from the house, such as the guardhouse and 1980s-era television surveillance equipment, has been donated to the nearby Saddle River museum, which opened earlier this year on East Allendale Road.

“We tried to save it,” Hekemian said. “I used to come here all the time before the Nixons owned it.”

Saddle River police Lt. Tim Haruthunian was often one of the local police officers on the advance logistics team if the Secret Service needed help.
“It’s just another piece of history and memories taken down,” he said. “It’s the ever changing scenery of Saddle River.”

As the clam bucket demolished two upstairs bedrooms, mattresses left behind inside came crashing to the ground below.

“It’s another day at work,” said Whiz Milligan, 36, the demolition expert from Mike Fitzpatrick contractors in Oak Ridge. “It’s pretty weird. I was told yesterday this was the Nixon house.”

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