By Linda Tancs

The town of Belvidere, New Jersey, located at the junction of the Delaware and Pequest rivers in Warren County, offers visitors a step back in time to the Gilded Age.  The town’s growth in river transport, mining, farming, and retail coincided with the trend-setting movements in fashion, culture and architecture under Queen Victoria’s reign.  The young town, incorporated just within years following the ascension of England’s Queen Victoria to the throne, embodies the legacy of this bygone era.  More than 100 of the town’s residential, commercial, and municipal structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, many of them reflecting classic Victorian architecture.  You’ll also find examples of such styles as a Swedish vertical log cabin, carpenter Gothic and Tuscan.  Several boutique shops offer Victorian era clothing and furnishings, both authentic and reproductions.  You can learn about Victorian era mourning and burial customs through a guided walk of the historic cemetery.  There’s so much to do and see you might as well stay the night at the Hotel Belvidere in one of their period rooms.  Sweet dreams.