![]() It wasn’t long before other religious communities started sending their high school seminarians to live and study at the Divine Word Missionary campus. The expansion included the addition of a building that included classrooms, a dormitory, dining center, administrative offices and a gymnasium. A complex of buildings was built to satisfy the needs of the new Divine Word Seminary High School. With a new and growing student body, a proper campus was needed. The Bordentown location was transformed into a four-year high school or “minor” seminary. The school for belated vocations, as it was known, moved to Miramar College in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The coursework in the 1940s was complex and the teaching style was rigid. Bordentown offered accelerated curriculum to supplement and complete any high school studies that candidates had already completed, helping prepare them in Latin and Greek before entering the novitiate program. At that time, the course for SVD candidates was four years at a preparatory seminary, two years at novitiate, two years at Juniorate, two years of philosophy studies and four years of theology. ![]() Joseph’s Mission House opened for its original purpose – to educate young men who were discerning a vocation to religious life after graduating from high school. After several years of repairs and restoration, St. From 1943 to 1947, the building was used as a residence for the Divine Word community. The clock sounded every 15 minutes as a reminder to recite the Quarter Hour prayer. In 1942, a hall clock was purchased and placed in the great rotunda at the center of the building so everyone could hear its chimes. The sale price was listed at $165,000 but the Society got a real bargain, purchasing the property for just $55,000! Some work needed to be done in order to clean the mansion and prepare it for use again. The estate was also referred to as “Bonaparte Park,” since Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother once owned it. The 242-acre estate featured a mansion, three swimming pools, a tennis court, croquet court and formal gardens. ![]() ![]() Eleven years earlier, the bank had seized the property from its then-owner, Mr. This paper examines the history and archaeology of the estate and its great houses, and how its interpretation has changed through time.Hoping to establish a Mission House in the newly-formed Eastern Province, in 1941 the Society of the Divine Word purchased a property known as Point Breeze in Bordentown, New Jersey. Point Breeze is a place which has long elucidated strong reactions both positive and negative from visitors. Further complicating matters are the varied reactions of local residents to Point Breeze, reactions which ranged from awe, to vandalism, to perhaps even arson. Joseph's efforts are particularly interesting given his liminal position as the exiled brother of a self-proclaimed emperor. The archaeological investigations serve to illuminate the ways gardens, architecture and landscapes were deployed by early 19th-century intellectuals in efforts to create public identities based on an international currency of style, taste, knowledge, and social harmony. A combination of historical research, geophysical investigations, landscape studies, and archaeological excavations by Monmouth University have revealed extensive information about the estate and landscape Joseph created. There, the former King of Naples and Spain designed a European-style country estate containing a pair of palatial mansions, guest houses, a large observation tower, ancillary buildings, designed gardens, and numerous tenant farmsteads, together forming an elaborate public stage where he could play the part of an exiled monarch. Joseph Bonaparte's 2,225-acre Point Breeze estate in Bordentown, New Jersey was one of 19th-century America’s grand picturesque landscapes.
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