Bulletin Article

MOVING HOUSES AROUND AND ABOUT -- Part III

by Helen Mountney
"Caravelli’s Hidden House"

This may come as quite a surprise to most people -- there is a hidden house which is part of a property known as 10-12-14 Kings Highway East.       

In the early 1800’s, a large three-story house with open front and side porches was built right up to the sidewalk on Kings Highway just east of the railroad. In 1902, Ernest Caravelli, Sr. opened his barbering business as Caravelli’s Barber Shop in the front room of the house and operated it there for several years.      

Early on, this 39-foot wide property had been sold three times in quick succession—starting with William Eldridge in 1826. Then, a farmer named Abraham Lippincott acquired it in 1839, and it remained in that family until 1911.      

Mr. Lippincott died in June of 1850 and left the property in his will “to wife, Rachael, during her life, or so long as she remained his widow.” In the event of Rachael’s death or remarriage, the house would go to his daughter, Lydia. Rachael was living when Abraham Lippincott died. She died in May of 1859, and willed the house to Lydia who died in March of 1884, leaving the property to her brother, Joseph. In December of 1893, Joseph died, leaving it to his nieces, (single sisters) Sarah and Mary Lippincott.      

This property left the Lippincott family in 1911, when the two sisters sold it to Winifred S. Worth, who purchased it singly. Actually, she was a married woman, but this fact does not show up on the records until she and Walter L. Worth, her  husband, sold it to Ernest Caravelli, Sr., of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 31, 1914. At this time, a "real" street address showed up on the Deed -- 12 East Main Street.

Mr. Caravelli was born in Italy, left his homeland as a fairly young man, and came to Philadelphia to be with his brother, Louis, and his married sister, Rosa Alfano. Subsequently, he met and married Rose Jacovini of Philadelphia in 1908. Ernest and Rose Caravelli moved into the house on East Main Street, where they ultimately raised their six children. It is likely that Mr. Caravelli had rented room space in the house, if not the whole property, for several years since records show that he purchased the property in 1914.      

While he was operating his business here, he also operated the barber shop in the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia which was owned by the Roma Brothers of Philadelphia. That must have been a lengthy commute--down to the Delaware River in Camden, over on the ferry boat, and up to the Reading Terminal Market at 12th Street, just north of Market Street.     

About 1918, Mr. Caravelli apparently decided that using the front room of his home was really not a suitable place to run his business, so he dug a hole for a partial basement in back of the house, put in a foundation, removed the porches, moved this house back about thirty feet, and then built a two-story commercial building abutting the front of the house. Tailors occupied the other side. Some of you will remember Bartoletts the Florist being on the left side for many years before they moved that business to Haddon Township. There are two apartments on the second floor. Years ago, Dr. Orville Meland, a long-time Haddonfield resident and dentist, had his office on the second floor, and I well remember watching the birds fly in and out of the First Presbyterian Church belfry while I was in the old, uncomfortable dentist chair. Dr. J.  Stannard Davis had his medical office on the second floor after Dr. Meland moved his practice to his large home at 114 Kings Highway West.

The rotating glass barber pole in front of the Caravelli property has been there nearly as long as the business has been and is quite a famous landmark here in Historic Haddonfield as well as in the State of New Jersey. It stands quite majestically overseeing the front door to the oldest barber shop in New Jersey.      

I am sure that many never knew the fact that, even though Mr. Caravelli very capably operated his business here and the one in Reading Terminal Market, he was not a barber himself. His brother, Louis, was a barber in the Haddonfield shop for a few years until he died in 1929. When Mr. Caravelli died in 1953, the business was turned over to his son, Fred. Fred continued to operate Caravelli’s Barber Shop, but a few years after he died in 1995, the barber shop business, along with the Caravelli name, was sold.

The present owners of 10-12-14 Kings Highway East, a grandson of Ernest Caravelli, Sr, Louis, and his wife, Judy Caravelli, have been living in this “hidden house” since 1983 when they obtained this well-known Haddonfield property which, if you do the arithmetic, has been in the Caravelli family almost one hundred years.