Printers now call former Keyport firehouse home BY Tammy McKillip PHOTOS BY TAMMY McKILLIP The East Front Street building that is now used as Offset Printing once served as a borough hall and a firehouse for Keyport. Correspondent KEYPORT - It just might be the most historic place in Keyport, but Terry Musson says the building she and her husband own, live and work in at 51 E. Front St. is not destined to be on the national historic registry. "Nobody ever put it on the registry," she said of the town's original borough hall and former fire station, which now serves as a print shop. "Because nobody ever put it on there, we didn't have to get any special permissions to build here. I think it's the most historic building in town, and we would never have been able to build our home here if it had been on the registry. There are just too many restrictions." Musson, a former New Yorker, said she and her husband, also named Terry Musson, bought their business, Offset Printing, in 1977, two years after moving to Keyport. The shop had been in existence at 89 Broad St. since 1953, but that building was also home to a body shop, and the couple decided that a decade of fumes and plastic particles in the air was enough. In 1988, when they heard that the fire department was about to sell the building, they snatched it up and began to make repairs. Terry Musson and her husband co-own the historic building that houses Offset Printing, and live in a converted apartment upstairs. "We had to replace parts of the floor because the fire truck had fallen through it," she said. Because the original front doorway was an overhead garage-type door, Musson said she and her husband replaced it with double glass doors and large storefront windows. The couple also had to replace the ceiling in the "apparatus" room, where the fire trucks were parked 100 years ago and which is now the main room of her business. "This was the original borough hall," she said, pointing to the upstairs apartment she and her husband recently renovated and moved into. "The first fire company, Hook and Ladder, was downstairs in this room. The courtroom was upstairs, as well as the offices. The jailhouse was in the back. The safe was in the hallway." Although Musson won't go so far as to say the place is haunted, she admits to hearing things on occasion and said that objects are often misplaced in the old building. "I don't know that I consider it haunting," she said. "It's probably stupid things that we do ourselves. Things move around. It's probably just me, dropping something somewhere and then finding it again. When I had employees, we used to say, 'The phantom put this here!'" Unspooked, Musson said she and her husband decided to sell their Third Street home two years ago and move into the building, in an effort to downsize. "My husband said, 'Why don't we sell the firehouse?' And I said, 'Well, I don't want to move our business into the garage, so why don't we sell the house and make an apartment upstairs?' So that's what we did, with a few stipulations. He said he wouldn't do it unless we got an elevator, so we have a residential elevator, and I didn't want to do it unless we could have a deck, so we have a deck." Because they wanted to remain true to the historical look of the building, Musson said she and her husband worked with a few architects before hiring structural engineer and builder Frank Servidio, of Navesink Construction, to remodel what had been the first of the town's three borough halls. Musson said Servidio has just been approved to renovate and add onto another historical building across the street. "He's not tearing anything down," she said. "He's going to build four townhouses and a store with an apartment above in what used to be the old post office. I think it'll be great." In addition to commercial and screen printing, Musson said her business also makes vinyl signs and recently acquired a large-format printer, which can print up to 42 inches wide and on canvas. She said she and her husband love living and working in the building that was such an important part of Keyport's past. Offset Printing is located at 51 E. Front St., Keyport. Hours of operations are 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information, call (732) 264-3681.