Our Story · Since 1959

Three generations.
227 Main Street.

Fiedler started in a living room in Hackettstown in 1959. We're still here, still family-run, and still working the same ground we always have.

Where it began · 1946

Before the firm,
there was Helen and Len.

Every family business begins with a story. Ours begins with a marriage.

Helen and Leonard Fiedler were married on February 17, 1946 — thirteen years before there was a firm, and long before the family name hung over Main Street. They were partners in the fullest sense of the word: they built businesses side by side, served the town they loved, and raised a family on honesty and plain hard work. Len knew the land and the people on it; Helen ran her crystal shop a few steps down the same sidewalk. Between them, they made 227 Main Street the center of a life.

They were never people who sat still. From early on, it was clear the two of them were going somewhere — and going there together. Everything that followed — the firm, three generations, this whole story — grew out of the partnership they began in 1946. None of it would be here without them.

A young Helen and Leonard Fiedler outdoors in the 1940s, Leonard embracing Helen from behind as both smile at the camera.
Helen and Len in the years they were starting out — going places, together.
Helen and Leonard Fiedler on their wedding day in 1946 — Helen in a gown and veil holding a bouquet, Leonard in a tuxedo, on a curved staircase.
Helen and Leonard Fiedler, married February 17, 1946.

In their later years, Helen and Len kept a farm in Hope, and they both loved it. Visits there were lived outdoors in every season — Easter egg hunts, barn parties — and the row of pine trees Len planted still lines the driveway today. The firm stayed at 227 Main Street; the farm was where everyone gathered — and the memories made there remain special to the whole family.

Helen and Leonard Fiedler in their later years, seated together in front of a stone fireplace — Leonard's arm around Helen, both in white, both smiling.
Helen and Len — the same partnership, decades on.
It started in 1959

A real estate firm that began in a living room.

Leonard M. Fiedler founded the firm in 1959, working out of the living room of his family home on Main Street in Hackettstown. There was no office tower and no franchise behind him — just a man who knew the town, knew the land, and knew the people who owned it.

That start still shapes how we work. We're on Main Street to this day, and the firm has stayed in the family through three generations.

The short version

  • Founded 1959By Leonard M. Fiedler, in Hackettstown.
  • Three generationsStill owned and run by the family.
  • Still on Main Street227 Main Street, Hackettstown, NJ.
  • One integrated firmBrokerage, appraisal, and auction together.
Names carved into a concrete step: the year 1961 above, and below it LENEE, DAN and LOU ANN, with plantain growing along the step's edge.
1961. Leonard Fiedler carved his three children's names into the back step at 227 Main Street — Lenee, Dan, and Louann. It is still there.
The family

Three generations, one firm.

Studio portrait of Leonard M. Fiedler, founder of Fiedler Real Estate.
Leonard M. FiedlerFounder · 1959
Studio portrait of Daniel L. Fiedler, the second-generation broker.
Daniel L. FiedlerSecond generation · 1971
Portrait of Jeffery J. Fiedler, third-generation Broker of Record.
Jeffery J. FiedlerThird generation · today

Leonard founded the firm in 1959. His son Daniel took over in 1971 and grew it into a full-service firm as Interstate 80 opened up Warren County. Today his grandson Jeffery leads it — the third generation, still on the same block of Main Street.

Also on Main Street

Nana's crystal shop.

For years, two Fiedler signs hung over the same Main Street sidewalk. One read Real Estate — Leonard M. Fiedler. A few feet away, the other read Scandinavian Tableware & Crystal — Fiedler's.

Helen Fiedler — Leonard's wife — ran the crystal shop out of 227 Main Street, the same address where Leonard had opened the real estate office in his living room in 1959. She stocked handblown Swedish crystal, Danish cast-iron cookware, and Georg Jensen flatware — things you couldn't easily find anywhere else in Warren County.

For years, it was where Hackettstown went when the occasion called for something finer than the everyday. Even M&M/Mars, the town's largest employer up the road, sent word to Helen's counter when it needed gifts for its retirees. The shop is gone now — but 227 Main Street has been a Fiedler doorway for more than sixty years.

A woman in a light winter coat and a young boy stand on a sunny sidewalk in front of a storefront window; a hanging sign reads 'Fiedler's Gift Shop.'
Helen Fiedler and her son Dan outside Fiedler's Gift Shop, 227 Main Street, 1956.
A Main Street building with two hanging signs — 'Real Estate, Leonard M. Fiedler' and 'Scandinavian Tableware & Crystal, Fiedler's' — and an old car parked at the curb.
Two Fiedler signs, one address — the real estate office and the crystal shop on Main Street, in the early 1960s.
Beyond the office

The name was on the ballot, too.

A family firm in a small county doesn't last by selling real estate alone. It lasts because the people running it are woven into the place.

A blue halftone portrait of Leonard Fiedler in a suit and tie, from a 1970s printed poster.
Leonard M. Fiedler, the 1970s.

From 1971 to 1985 — fourteen years, three terms — Leonard Fiedler served as Warren County Surrogate-Judge. Three times the county elected him, and the name on the ballot was the same one hanging over the real estate sign on Main Street. His first year in that office was the same year his son Daniel took over the firm. Daniel was elected a director of the Greater Hackettstown Area Chamber of Commerce and named to head the Hackettstown Parking Authority.

It's the same idea the firm was built on. You can't know a place from the outside — and the Fiedlers were never on the outside of Hackettstown.

By the end of the 1970s

  • $5 million in salesIn Warren County alone, in 1977.
  • Seven full-time agentsAnd the Main Street office expanded to hold them.
  • Two MLSs, plus RELOWarren and Morris counties, and the era's leading relocation network.
  • Four departmentsAdvertising, appraisal, new homes, and resale.
How it grew

One firm, built to handle the whole of a property.

What began as a brokerage grew into a full-service firm — but it grew on purpose, not by accident. Today Fiedler brings four related companies under one roof, so the same team that knows your property can value it, market it, and, when it's the right move, take it to auction.

It's one integrated firm with one standard, not a collection of departments handing you off to strangers.

Under one roof

  • Fiedler Real EstateBuying, selling, and leasing — residential, commercial, and farms & land.
  • Fiedler AppraisalIndependent, certified valuation.
  • Fiedler Accelerated MarketingAuction and accelerated disposition.
  • Fiedler Real Estate Referral GroupA home for inactive agents and trusted referrals.
What we believe

All real estate is local. So are we.

That belief isn't a slogan — it's the reason the firm has lasted. The value of a property is tied to its place: the road it sits on, the soil under it, the town around it, and the people who live there. You can't read that from a desk three states away.

We've spent more than six decades learning Warren County and the counties around it — Hunterdon, Morris, and Sussex. When we tell you what a property is worth or how to sell it, we're telling you what we know, straight, from working this ground ourselves.

Where we work

  • Warren CountyHome base, and where our roots run deepest.
  • Hunterdon · Morris · SussexThe counties we know and serve alongside it.
  • Farmland to Main StreetFrom working farms to commercial buildings.
The fuller history

The whole story is still being written down.

More than six decades leave a lot of stories — and the best of them have lived only in the family's memory. We're sitting down with the people who were there, including the founder, to record the history properly while we still can.

That fuller account will live here when it's ready. We'd rather take the time to get it right than rush something that matters this much.

Add to the archive

Do you have a piece of this history?

An attic photograph, an old clipping, a memory of Hackettstown the way it was — some of the best pieces of this history have only ever lived in one family's memory. If you have one, we'd be honored to include it, with full credit to you or your family.

Share a memory

We reply from the office, usually within a day or two — that's when you send your photos. Nothing is published without you seeing it first.

Work with a local firm

Talk to Fiedler.

Buying, selling, or just looking for a straight answer about a property — reach out and someone here will follow up personally.

Talk to Fiedler
227 Main Street · Hackettstown, NJ Call (908) 852-2200 Email info@fiedler.realestate