Although the This Old House Boston origins are as strong as Tom Silva’s Yankee accent, the show has been venturing out of New England almost since the start. They made their first foray outside of Massachusetts back in 1986, during the show’s seventh season, when they traveled to Tampa, FL, for the renovation of a 1950s concrete-and-stucco tract house. In the years since, the show has crisscrossed the country—renovating houses in Phoenix, Santa Barbara, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Miami, Honolulu, Napa Valley, Savannah, Tucson, San Francisco, West Palm Beach, Washington, DC, Austin, New York City, Los Angeles, Detroit, Charleston, Atlanta, and Nashville. They even did a little globe-trotting, renovating houses in London and Bermuda.
TOH host Kevin O’Connor has been part of many of those out-of-New England renovations, having joined the show in Season 25. Although he has always enjoyed discovering new places and what makes them unique, this season’s project in Ridgewood, NJ, is different. Following close after the Glen Ridge, NJ, project last year, the Ridgewood project has prompted him to take a sentimental journey.
Kevin O’Connor’s Favorite Places in New Jersey
“I’m a Jersey boy,” says Kevin, who was born and raised in the Garden State, and lived in the same house in Maplewood, NJ, until he left for college. With Maplewood located a short distance from Ridgewood, the TOH producers asked Kevin to name a few spots in the area that were particularly significant for him, then wove those places into the intro episode. Here are the places Kevin picked and why:
Maplewood, New Jersey
“My hometown is a great little town,” says Kevin, who grew up the fifth of seven kids, part of a big family that knew the importance of home. “We were four doors away from my dad’s parents. And with such a big family, I know that kind of support network was really important to my folks.”
For Kevin, Maplewood conjures memories of walking to elementary school (“I did that from kindergarten to sixth grade”) and strolling down the town’s main street. But the town also has a few claims to fame: George Washington slept in a local landmark house during the Revolutionary War. And the town’s Memorial Park was designed by landscape architecture legends Olmsted Brothers and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The town is also where the game of ultimate frisbee and the wooden golf tee were invented. When it came time to pick a place to introduce This Old House viewers to his hometown, however, Kevin followed his stomach—to Roman Gourmet. The establishment that was his go-to video arcade and pizza place as a teenager is still up and running, owned by a younger generation of the family that was spinning pizzas in Kevin’s day. It’s that kind of town.
Long Beach Island, New Jersey
The Jersey Shore! Cue Bruce Springsteen, lifeguard whistles, and breezy boardwalks. For Kevin, the Jersey Shore is synonymous with Long Beach Island, the seaside town where his parents started taking the family for summer vacations when he was a few years old. “They started doing a one-week rental, then a two-week rental, and as the family grew and it became harder to find a place big enough for us all, they bought land and built a house,” says Kevin.
With his siblings, Kevin enjoyed all that the beach has to offer, whether it was jumping in the surf or tunneling through the sand. The family also took advantage of fishing spots throughout the area. A barrier island, LBI was hard hit during Hurricane Sandy, and its coastline is expected to continue to suffer from sea level rise. For now, the LBI beach still offers the charms Kevin knew as a youngster. As he noticed when visiting LBI early in the Ridgewood project: “This is why we come here, to see how good it is to feel the sand between your toes.”
St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, Newark, NJ
“St. Benedict’s had a big impact on me,” says Kevin, referring to the Catholic high school he attended in Newark, NJ. He commuted from Maplewood by city bus, a journey that took an hour each way. Kevin’s dad had gone to St. Benedict’s, a school with a long tradition that goes back to its founding by Benedictine monks in 1868.
“My parents sent me there because they thought the public high school had a drug problem. They figured the monks would be a good influence.” Athletic programs, such as the soccer team Kevin joined, were a big part of life at St. Benedict’s and so were the academics. Today, the inner-city school, which has a graduation rate of 98%, is considered transformative for its students. Says Kevin: “My time there was an incredible experience.”
After graduating from St. Benedict’s in 1986, Kevin headed to college in Massachusetts and has lived in New England ever since. But some things never really change. “I’m still a Jersey guy,” he says. “And I’m very proud of it.”
