At Old Barn, summer bliss came in softball-size scoops
Thursday September 13, 2012, 12:12 PM
BY BILL ERVOLINO STAFF WRITER The Record
So was the history of the place, beginning with the actual structure. True to its name, the Old Barn was a Dutch timber frame barn, erected in the late 1700s. In 1930, Olaf Haroldson, a local businessman, bought the building and transformed it into an ice cream shop. But between the Depression-era economy and the gas rationing that continued throughout the war years, Haroldson struggled. In the mid-1940s, he sold the place to Robert McMinn, a World War II veteran, and within a couple of years, the Old Barn Milk Bar had become a North Jersey institution.
Patrons called it the Milk Bar - Or the Old Barn. Some called it Alderney’s because of the sign out front ("Alderney Milk/Ice Cream") as well as the milk dispensing machine in the parking lot ("Alderney Milk 24 Hour Self-Service"). (The Alderney Dairy Co., founded in 1894 as Newark Milk and Cream Co., became one of the largest dairies in the country by the 1930s, with six plants and more than 800 dairy farms.) McMinn continued to run the Milk Bar until the 1980s, eventually turning over the reins to his son Joseph and nephew Gerald.
They kept it going until December 2001, when Preakness Chevrolet bought the property, only to go out of business a few years later. But the warm and sometimes funny memories it generated live on. In 1991, Mary Sheehy Connolly, 47, of Ramsey, was in the parking lot having ice cream with other members of the Wayne First Aid Squad, when they received a call about an injury in the Old Barn parking lot. We told the dispatcher, ‘We’re already there!’ Then, took turns wrapping up this man’s injury while holding each other’s cones."
Today, the Old Barn is certainly not forgotten. Nor is it entirely gone. In 2002, the Wayne Historical Commission raised money to have the barn disassembled, according to commission chairman Bob Monacelli. "All of the pieces are together in one location – we’re not saying where – with the exception of the tables, which were auctioned off after the barn came down," he said. Monacelli, who took part in the disassembly project, says that there has been lots of talk of resurrecting the Old Barn, but no definite plans have materialized. Yet!!!
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