If You're Thinking of Living In/ Alpine, N.J.; Lavish Homes in a ... - - Alpine, NJ

If You're Thinking of Living In/ Alpine, N.J.; Lavish Homes in a ... -

ALPINE is one of the few municipalities in New Jersey where residents do not complain about their property taxes. Because of high property values and a small number of school-age children, they pay 94 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, one of the lowest rates in the state.

That is one of the reasons the 6.4-square-mile Bergen County borough has become a magnet for millionaires who build sprawling mansions on lots of two acres or more.

Other reasons cited by Mayor Lawrence M. Manus for the borough's popularity among the very rich are its excellent grade school, its location seven miles north of the George Washington Bridge and its minuscule population density of just 269 people per square mile, compared with a countywide density for Bergen County of 3,546.

Alpine has no apartment blocks, just one two-family house and only three commercial establishments -- a restaurant, a gas station and a garden shop. Residents buy their groceries in supermarkets in neighboring Cresskill and Closter. The closest large shopping center is the Riverside Mall in Hackensack, five miles to the south.

Mail must be picked up from the post office and very few of the houses have numbers, a fact that often frustrates truck drivers who search for their destinations on nearly deserted streets, passing one heavily wooded, gated compound after another.

''We value our privacy here,'' explained Dr. Hijung Pyun, a retired radiologist who moved to Alpine from neighboring Tenafly with his wife, Obkay, six years ago. ''That's the major reason we moved here, although the low tax rate was also an attraction.''

Like many other residents of Alpine, the Pyuns are immigrants, having emigrated from Korea. The borough is also home to numerous Iranians, Iraqis, Israelis, Chinese and Japanese.

Dr. Pyun's custom-built, 7,000-square-foot home in the prestigious Rio Vista neighborhood just west of Route 9W is small by the standards of Alpine, where a house of more than 20,000 square feet is currently under construction on eight acres.

Housing prices listed by the Multiple Listing Service start at $319,000 for a small, newly renovated 3-bedroom colonial on Main Street and climb steeply to $6.9 million for a 23-room mansion with two bowling lanes, an indoor racquetball court, a five-car garage and an elevator.

Last July, Worth Magazine ranked Alpine as the 17th wealthiest community in the United States. Based on real estate sales prices during 1995 and 1996, Worth said the median single-family home value was $795,000. But the Mayor said that those figures, and even the current M.L.S. statistics, were deceptively low. ''Many of our houses are not sold through the M.L.S.,'' he explained. ''And smaller houses on decent-sized lots are often bought for a million dollars and then knocked down so that a larger home can be built on the land.''

According to Marlyn Friedberg, the broker/owner at Friedberg Properties & Associates, two-acre building lots in the Rio Vista neighborhood sell for up to $1.8 million, which is about 10 percent higher than last year's prices.

The rising value of properties is a double-edged sword for some longtime residents, such as the 77-year-old president of the Alpine Historical Society, Robert J. Wilson. An eighth-generation Alpine resident who says that one of his ancestors fought under Lafayette in the Revolutionary War, Mr. Wilson grew up as a fisherman in a small house near the Hudson River. He now lives in a modest 40-year-old Cape Cod on Miles Street, but is under pressure to sell.

''Every week, I get letters from realtors offering to buy my house,'' Mr. Wilson said. ''On the other hand, the low tax rate allows senior citizens to stay in their homes.''

At some points, the borough has a commanding view of the Hudson River from the cliffs of the Palisades, which appear on the first European map to include the New World. That map was drawn by Gerardus Mercator in 1541 on the basis of a detailed description written by Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator who explored the river in 1524 on behalf of France.

In the early 17th century, the Alpine area was known primarily for a dock built by a Dutch settler named Frederich Kloester in 1685. It enabled local farmers to ship their produce to New York City. The dock vanished long ago, but one of Alpine's main arteries is called Closter Dock Road.

A WINDING access road from Route 9W and the Palisades Interstate Parkway leads to the Blackledge-Kearney House on the Hudson River, reputed to have been the site of Lord Corwallis's landing on Nov. 20, 1776, in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent George Washington from fleeing from Fort Lee with his troops to Valley Forge.

The house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now a museum, is open from noon to 5 P.M. April 1 through Oct. 31. It contains Colonial-era artifacts and a film about the construction of the park. Admission is free.

Just after the Civil War, the Erie Railroad arrived in neighboring Closter, making Alpine more accessible to New York City. It was followed by the construction of several large estates atop the Palisades. Among the estate builders was Charles Nordhoff, the New York Herald editor who sent Henry M. Stanley to Africa in 1869 to find Dr. David Livingstone. Nordhoff's wife, Lida, is said to have given Alpine its name because the Palisades reminded her of the Swiss Alps.

The improved explosives that resulted from the Civil War, coupled with new rail transportation, made the Palisades attractive for its trap rock, which could now be blasted loose. Among the many projects that used Palisades rock were the cobbling of New York City streets and the building of the New Orleans breakwater.

In 1899, outrage among environmental groups in both New York and New Jersey over the blasting led the Legislatures of the two states to pass twin bills to preserve the rock formations. Land was expropriated and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission was formed in 1900. The final trap-rock blast took place on Christmas Eve that year.

Large grants from philanthropists, including the Rockefeller and Harriman families, allowed the commission to spend $543,000 to purchase its first 13.5-mile-long stretch of the current 55-mile, 81,000-acre park that starts at Bear Mountain in New York and continues southward to Fort Lee in New Jersey. The Park Commission is based in a stone mansion built in 1929 for Herbert Oltman, a stockbroker who lost his fortune in the market crash.

The park includes hiking trails, picnic grounds, fishing sites and marinas. One marina is the Alpine Boat Basin, which has a total of 122 slips for boats 20 to 50 feet long, with rents varying according to size -- as little as $1,000 and as much as $2,750 a year.

One of the largest estates ever amassed in Alpine was the 200-acre Rio Vista, acquired by Manuel Riondo, a Cuban sugar baron, between 1904 and 1920. Among its outstanding features was a 100-foot-tall stone clock tower that still stands in the new Rio Vista neighborhood.

The only public school in the borough is the Alpine Elementary School, covering pre-kindergarten through grade 8. It has 180 pupils, said the principal, Dr. Mathew R. Glowski, who noted that about a fourth of Alpine's children attended private schools.

''Our biggest challenge is convincing parents that our public school is every bit as good as a $15,000-a-year private one,'' explained Dr. Glowski.

The school introduces computers in pre-kindergarten and French and Spanish language classes in kindergarten. The class size is a mere 13, about half the state average, and each classroom is equipped with one to three computers.

THE students go on to Tenafly High School, in neighboring Tenafly, which sent 91 percent of last year's 230 graduates to higher education. The school offers 10 advanced placement courses in English, mathematics, sciences, foreign languages and history. Its students scored an average 549 in verbal and 605 in math on the SAT last year, which is 52 and 97 points higher, respectively, than the state averages.

The only major borough-owned recreational site is the 10-acre Alpine Swim and Tennis Club off Hillside Avenue. Family memberships cost $450 year. The club offers a pool open from Memorial Day through Labor Day and a pair of tennis courts that are open year-round.

Last year, a consortium of Alpine, Rockleigh and Bergen County paid the New York Council of Boy Scouts $7 million for 134 of its 700 acres in the northern section of Alpine. The property will be left in its natural state except for a few hiking trails that will be added. And it will continue to be used for Boy Scout camping.

On the southern end of Alpine is the 135-acre Montammy Country Club. Its 18-hole golf course has just undergone a $7 million renovation. The club will not disclose its fees, but Mayor Manus said that the initiation fee alone is at least $50,000.

Photos: Smaller homes on Alpine's Closter Dock Road. The dock, which vanished long ago, enabled farmers to ship their produce to New York City. A mansion, left, in the prestigious Rio Vista neighborhood, where a Cuban sugar baron built a 100-foot-tall clock tower. (Photographs by Eddie Hausner for The New York Times); On the Market: 3-bedroom, 2-bath colonial, new kitchen, .33 acre on Miles Street, $398,000. 3-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath contemporary, indoor pool, 2 acres on Cambridge Way, $1.75 million. 7-bedroom, 7-bath mansion, pool, tennis court, 3-car garage on Bristol Court, $2.25 million. Chart: ''GAZETTEER'' POPULATION: 1,900 (1997 estimate). AREA: 6.4 square miles. MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: $210,000 (1997 estimate). MEDIAN PRICE OF A ONE-FAMILY HOUSE: $1.2 million (1997 estimate). TAXES ON MEDIAN HOUSE: $12,000. MEDIAN PRICE A YEAR AGO: $1.1 million. MEDIAN PRICE 5 YEARS AGO: $950,000. PUBLIC SCHOOL SPENDING PER PUPIL: $14,000. DISTANCE FROM MIDTOWN MANHATTAN: 10 miles. RUSH-HOUR COMMUTATION TO MIDTOWN: 30 minutes via Red and Tan bus to George Washington Bridge Terminal, one way $3.20, 20-ticket book, $59.20; then the A subway line, 20 minutes. GOVERNMENT: Mayor (Lawrence M. Manus, Republican), elected to 4-year term, and 6 council members elected to 3-year terms. CODES: Zip 07620, Area 201 GREATEST SHOW IN ALPINE: Among the best-known Alpine estates was the 145-acre summer home of John Ringling, one of the owners of the Ringling Bros. Circus. He purchased the property in 1918 for $125,000. Ringling was famous for entertaining on a grand scale, including an annual circus party, for which performers were brought in from all over New York State. The hundreds of invited guests partied long into the night, fell asleep on the extensive lawns and awoke to party all over again. Map showing the location of Alpine, N.J.

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