Warren Township Historic Sites Committee
“Hofheimer: The Family and Its Legacy,” a 46-page illustrated booklet that tells the fascinating history of the Nathan Hofheimer family and its impact on Warren Township, is the newest publication of the Warren Township Historic Sites Committee.
“Although no member has lived in Warren for nearly seven decades, the influence of the Hofheimer family on the township has been profound,” writes author Alan A. Siegel in his introduction. “Warrenville, once a sleepy crossroads village, has become the vital center of a modern American suburb, thanks in large measure to the decision made over a century ago by a wealthy family to establish its summer home in Washington Valley. This is the story of that family, their estate and its legacy.”
Researched and written by Siegel, president of the Warren Township Historical Society, and designed by Historic Sites member Karl Horster, the booklet opens with the first ever detailed biography of Nathan Hofheimer, who immigrated from Germany as a teenager in 1866, made his fortune in the whiskey business and became one of the early investors in what would become the General Motors Company. When the family patriarch died in 1921, he was reported to be worth $450 million.
Beginning in 1911, the year Nathan’s son Arthur bought a parcel of land on the corner of Warrenville and Washington Valley roads, family members acquired over 300 acres of farmland at the center of Warrenvlle. Here, over the following decade, the Hofheimers built their summer retreat, complete with four mansions, a golf course, horse stables, swimming pools, a family mausoleum and an imitation European-style grotto on the Middle Brook at what had once been the site of a copper mine.
The booklet’s author has written extensively about Warren’s history. Among Siegel’s ten published books are Warren A to Z: An Entertaining Guidebook to the 275 Year History of Warren Township and Images of America: Warren Township. Siegel’s booklets on the Kirch-Ford-Terrill House and the Mount Bethel Baptist Meeting House were also published by the township’s Historic Sites Committee.
Copies of the Hofheimer, Kirch-Ford-Terrill and Baptist Meeting House booklets are available for purchase at Edgewood Pharmacy.
