In circa 1920’s Ernest Hothorn , a gentleman  farmer with 360 acres and several lakes in Succasunna, Morris Co, NJ, bought acreage, mostly fields, at the end of what was then known as Crestwood Gardens. His property stretched north between Kennedy Place and St. Eleanora’s Lane to a little beyond Juana Street, and West to East from Scarsdale Road to the Bronx River Parkway. His plan was to build and sell a series of fine homes for the "well-to-do". Hothorn named the development, appropriately enough, Hothorn Acres.

The first home Ernest Hothorn built was his own, a beautiful yellow brick Georgian-style structure at 370 Crestwood Avenue, in a park-like setting which extended from Crestwood to Hollywood Avenues. Having no prior history as a builder and no formal training as an architect, Hothorn never had formal plans drawn up,  but rather worked with a builder adding room after room until it grew "like Topsy". Despite his lack of formal training, Ernest Hothorn, no doubt, had an eye for beauty. The homes he built, with their grand and sweeping entrances and park-like settings are both elegant and distinctive,  and are some of Crestwood's finest.

The small yellow house on the estate where it bordered Hollywood Avenue was originally a pretty fancy carriage house and stable. The building provided living space for Hothorns horses below, and contained servants quarters above. Real estate entrepreneur Hothorn didn’t share Henry Ford’s dream and left his cars out in the winter until he discovered the batteries died in the cold. Only then did the "carriage house" become a garage – and decades later it was transformed into the charming home it is today (369 Hollywood Avenue).

Hothorn next embraced Tudor styling, which is reflected in the next three homes he built. The first was for his son, Ernest, which borders St. Eleanor’s Lane and the next at style at 365 Hollywood Avenue for his daughter, Dorothy, who married Walter Schultze, and had 3 boys, Walter, Richard and Douglas, and 2 girls, Barbara and Marjorie. Noteworthy is the fact that this beautiful home was sold during the Great Depression for $25,000.

A third Tudor-style home at 388 Crestwood Avenue was built for his daughter Esther, who married Chester Burley. They had children, Millicent, Marilyn and Chester. This house later became the residence of County Executive, Andrew O’Rourke.

A prominent Crestwood family in their time, Mrs. Schultze gave the land on which the Rectory of the Annunciation was built to the church. Richard Warren Schultze, one of her three boys, who was killed in a training flight in World War II, is remembered by the 1947 stained glass window, "The Resurrection" in the Asbury Church, where the Schultze Family worshipped. Schultze Field was also named in his honor. On a trip down memory Lane, another son, Douglas (who was in the 7^th Pacific Navy Amphibious Force, and married "the girl across the street", Madeleine Helling), recalls his Granddad providing needed jobs to workmen from the defunct Tuckahoe Marble Quarry* to blast out the streets between St . Eleanora’s Lane and Juana Street. He also created a horseback riding ring across from 388 Crestwood. Beyond it nursery stock was grown. A barn of sorts housed livestock – ducks, chickens, and farm animals.

Douglas also remembers riding through Crestwood in a horse-drawn sleigh with sleigh bells a’ringing, but said it wasn’t long before his Grandfather got over his aversion to the horseless carriage. One P.S. School #15 classmate of Ernest Jr. recalls with awe the morning he arrived for school in a spiffy chauffeur-driven limousine. Kids in Crestwood had never seen such a grand sight before and literally stood transfixed with their mouths wide open at such evidence of total luxury.

Another old timer remembers when daughter Dorothy (Mrs. Walter) Schultze had a Maypole raised down near Southgate one May Day in the 1930’s. The Schultze and Burley daughters with friends danced around the colorful, ribbon-bedecked Maypole in pastel party gowns – to weave an enchanted spell one glorious May 1^st morn.

*The Tuckahoe Marble Quarry supplied some marble to the Washington Monument, Lyndhurst, the Metropolitan Life Building Clock face in New York to name but a few famous buildings in which our local marble was used in part in their construction.