Inside a Rich Businessman’s Gilded Age Mansion Turned Immersive Museum

Newark’s supply of fresh water and proximity to New York City made it an ideal location to found a brewery.

Peter Ballantine moved to Newark in 1840 and bought a brewery with a business partner before becoming its sole owner in 1847. By 1913, Ballantine was producing over 500,000 barrels of ale per year. By 1915, the company employed 1,800 people.

With business booming, architect George Edward Harney designed the 27-room, three-story Ballantine House for Peter’s son, John Ballantine, his wife, Jeannette Ballantine, and their family.

The Newark Museum of Art acquired the home in 1937 and used it as office and gallery space before restoring two of its three floors and opening them to the public.

In 2023, Ballantine House reopened after a two-year, $12 million renovation. With additions such as contemporary art, interactive exhibits, and realistic soundscapes, the museum aims to preserve the historical setting while updating the home to better reflect the city’s modern, diverse population.

“We wanted to bring in different stories,” Amy Simon Hopwood, the museum’s associate curator of decorative arts, told Business Insider.

Admission to the museum costs $10 for adult non-members.

Today, it is known as the Orientation Gallery. The floor features a map of Newark with notable sites highlighted in circular decals.

“People who live in or know Newark can see familiar things, and newcomers can really get a sense of the history and the breadth of Newark itself and where the Ballantine House is within the city,” Hopwood said.

New Jersey-based artists created reproductions of decorative fireplace carvings, stamped plaster walls, and stained-glass windows to help visitors resist the urge to touch the real artifacts.

The entrance hall featured oak wood paneling by the woodworking company Kirk & Jacobus. The stained-glass window above the front door depicted a rising sun.

The artwork on display highlights downtown scenes and the African-American community that was present in Newark during the Gilded Age and continues to make up 47% of the city’s residents, according to US census data.

“Responding to an Alarm,” dated between 1871 and 1881 by an unknown artist, depicts Lorenzo Dowd Trent, a prominent Black driver who worked for Newark’s fire chief.

“Previously, there were European and British paintings in the hall, but we wanted to really show the different communities of Newark,” Hopwood said.

Guests could leave their calling cards on a tray to request a visit if the family wasn’t home.

An 1885 photograph of the room also shows that the room had a piano.

The green sofa and armchair were heirloom pieces belonging to the Herberts, a middle-class Black couple from the early 1900s.

The folding screen behind the sofa was donated by the Ballantines’ daughter, Alice Ballantine Young, who purchased it on a trip to Spain.

The Renaissance-style fireplace mantle featured gilded gold detailing and tiles inspired by 16th-century Italian influences.

Silver requires constant polishing since air causes the surface to tarnish.

This room was a male-only space until Jeannette Ballantine added a door connecting it to the neighboring parlor in 1891.

A placard explained that the identities of the women remain unknown, but that they would have “aspired to the same activities, fashions, and education as Alice” despite the period’s widespread racism and segregation.

The room may also have been used as an informal family space.

The museum commissioned curtains from a local Newark drapery for the exhibit.

Shonibare, a Nigerian-British artist, dressed eight headless figures in 19th-century clothing made from Dutch wax cloth, a West African fabric. He then staged them around the Ballantines’ table in poses that flout Victorian etiquette — one figure has its feet on the table, others have dropped their forks and spilled their wine — to symbolize celebration and comfort in a place where African-Americans would not have been welcome during the Gilded Age.

The wallpaper was designed to look like antique Japanese leather, but it was actually paper made out of solidified linseed oil. Known as Lincrusta-Walton, the durable wall decor was named for its inventor, Frederick Walton, who created it in 1877.

The Ballantines paid around $592 for the window in 1885, which they ordered from D.S. Hess & Co. That’s just under $20,000 when adjusted for inflation in 2025.

Ballantine Young lived in this room until she married in 1899. She and her husband then moved upstairs to the third floor.

The museum added an African-American quilt donated by Lonna R. Hooks, New Jersey’s first Black Secretary of State, to Ballantine Young’s bed.

Like many wealthy wives in the Gilded Age, Jeannette Ballantine was in charge of running the household. She used the boudoir to plan dinner party menus, sift through calling cards left by guests, and write letters, among other tasks typical of a high-society hostess.

The Ballantines’ bedroom featured another contemporary art piece, a 1971 painting by Newark artist Dmitri Wright titled “Black Couple in Bed Looking at TV.”

To win G.O.A.T. The Art Game, players bid on pieces displayed at the Newark Museum of Art and call other players’ bluffs about fake paintings to amass the most valuable art collection.

“I was in here somewhat recently, and there was a huge group of people playing the game,” Hopwood said. “It was pretty involved.”

During my visit to Ballantine House, a group of teenagers from a local summer camp excitedly roamed the halls, laughing and chatting as they admired the opulent rooms. Hopwood apologized for the noise, but I didn’t mind. It was just as the museum intended.