The Historic Village at Allaire is one of the premier living history museums in the state of New Jersey. A living history museum portrays the everyday lives of people, whose stories are often lost in the grander schemes of history. The Historic Village at Allaire was once an iron-producing, factory-town known as the Howell Iron Works, Co. The Village was a self-sufficient community containing a carpentry and pattern making shop, a blacksmith shop, a bakery, a boarding house, a blast furnace, mills to finish iron products, a school, a church, a general store with a post office, and workers’ home. Iron produced at the village was shipped to New York City by wagon and steamship. It was used to produce steam engines parts in a factory also owned by our proprietor, James P. Allaire. The Howell Iron Works was a typical community at the time and speaks to the experiences of the economic and social changes of those who experienced early Industrial America.