Check out this 7-bedroom, $1.93M Montclair home that dates back to 1910

Home to a line of United States Army veterans, 54 Melrose Place has stood through Montclair's transition from a country town to a bustling suburb.

"It's an impressive home with a classic look," said Elizabeth Morris, an agent with Prominent Properties Sotheby's International Realty. "The seller updated the home, but she didn't take everything out. She left all that beautiful character."

The seven-bedroom home's oldest portions date to Montclair's early 20th-century population boom. Listed this April for $1.93 million, the home was built for James Alfred Chard and Louisa Bartlett Cable.

He was a captain in the Spanish-American War, a recruiter for the New York National Guard and an oil merchant who helmed New York City's Chard & Howe. She was a member of the Montclair Community Theatre and the daughter of George Washington Cable, a Confederate soldier turned renowned novelist whose support of racial equality led him to leave Louisiana for Massachusetts in 1885. There, in 1894, she married Chard.

Cable had her own military ties, having sponsored a liberty ship to support U.S. forces during World War II. The ship, first named for her father and later renamed Hecuba (AKS-12), supplied Pearl Harbor in 1945 and 1946, according to U.S. Navy records.

Township records show Chard had purchased the Melrose Place property by 1906, but the home wasn't built until about 1910. It's a big house with spacious rooms. The living room has wood-beamed ceilings and a grand stone fireplace, but it is light and bright, Morris said. While it is sizable, 54 Melrose is not overwhelming, she said. It still feels like a home, she added.

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With white quartz kitchen counters above dark hardwood floors, 54 Melrose blends past and present. It has a new roof and white marble among its seven bathrooms, but the windows are vintage leaded glass and the moldings are hard carved, Morris said.

"It feels fresh, but it has a richness to it," she said.

The home nearly met disaster in April 1925, when sparks from the chimney ignited its roof. The fire gutted the home's east wing third floor and estimated $10,000 in damage, The Montclair Times reported. Following repairs, Chard sold 54 Melrose three years later. The new owner was a fellow military man and a direct descendant of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

A businessman and banker by trade, Major Washington Irving Lincoln Adams ran the financial department for the U.S. Army's Quartermaster Corps' Eastern District during WWI. Adams was rejected for active field duty having enlisted at age 50, The Montclair Times reported. Instead, he supervised personnel, supply and transport operations from his post in New York Harbor.

A long-time resident of the township, Adams in 1901 co-founded the Montclair Trust Company. In the 1930s, he became president of the Montclair Theater Guild, a town commissioner and an acting mayor. Before then, Adams was a Republican nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives and a member of the Electoral College.

Adams funded a considerable expansion of 54 Melrose before selling the home in 1937 to Felix A. Jenkins, a member of the board of directors of the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Not a military veteran himself, Jenkins' four sons Daniel, Cyrus, Peter and Henry all nonetheless served in World War II. Cyrus in October 1941 joined the American Field Service and served in North Africa as a medic alongside the British Army for two years before coming home to join the U.S Army.

Jenkins, like his sons, was a graduate of Montclair High School. He went on to graduate from the University of Virginia's law school before becoming the general counsel and secretary for the famed production company now owned by The Walt Disney Company.

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Jenkins died in 1947 and two years later, William Skinner bought the home. A 1908 Yale University Graduate, Skinner was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army's 33rd Field Artillery during World War I. He was also an investment officer for an insurance company and a trustee of the Montclair Art Museum.

Located in Monclair's quiet estate section, 54 Melrose is only about a mile from the Museum and the rest of downtown, Moore said. Sitting on nearly half an acre, the home is the quintessential Montclair estate, she said. It has a blue-stone patio and a spacious flat back yard big enough to add a pool, she added.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: North Jersey home with military history lists for $1.93M. Look inside