1-of-a-kind 1908 North Jersey home listed for $1.9M
Style meant to resemble a German mansion
Amid a century-old Montclair neighborhood packed with Queen Annes, Victorians and 20th-century revivals is a one-of-a-kind home roofed in red tile.
Completed in the spring of 1908, 171 Christopher St. was custom made for Otto Schaefer and his wife, Julia. Schaefer, an exporter with South American connections, wanted a condensed version of a German mansion he fancied, according to Montclair Library records. The result is an 11-bedroom, fivebathroom home with tall and narrow rooms.
“It’s more statuesque than its neighbors,” said Amy Owens, the listing agent with Keller Williams NJ Metro.
Though vastly different from its neighbors, the Schaefers’ home became part of the community. Julia Schaefer held afternoon tea, bridge club gatherings and other social events at the home, according to contemporary reports in the Montclair Times. Otto Schaefer was a member of the Montclair Athletic Club and the local Art Association.
Future residents of 171 Christopher St. were also key players in Montclair’s social scene. Perhaps none made more of an impact than Jean Hyde Kidd, who in the 1970s played a vital role in the introduction of magnet schools designed to desegregate Montclair Public Schools.
A Montclair native and lauded volunteer, Kidd was the executive director of the Adult School of Montclair, chair of the May in Montclair Festival Committee and president of the Junior League of Montclair-Newark. With the last group, Kidd helped create the Senior Care and Activity Center on Greenwood Avenue. She also was a prominent voice in the Montclair Operetta Club, Montclair State’s Citizens’ Advisory Committee and the Montclair Parent-Teacher Association.
Her home was one of many built in the early 20th century along Christopher Street. The street’s namesake, Christopher Hinck, mapped the road for development at the tail end of the 19th century, about 20 years after he and his brother Claus Hinck started buying Montclair farms. Eventually, the brothers owned most of the land around Woodman Field between Walnut Street and Watchung Avenue, local records show.
The home at 171 Christopher St., listed for $1.9 million, features a kitchen with exposed brick, a library with builtin bookcases and a fireplace, and curving staircases to reach the three aboveground floors. The backyard has a bluestone patio, two water features and a deck just off the kitchen. The home retains increasingly rare features that were common for the early 1900s, such as a screened porch and a tiled rear solarium.
Stained-glass windows are prominent, as are architectural details around the windows and door frames. Modern alterations were made to blend seamlessly, Owens said. The garage was rebuilt in the last decade with tile sourced from Italy to perfectly match the home, she said.
The original carriage house exists but is not included with the sale, Owens added. It is now a privately owned single-family home fronting on Grove Street.
The home’s standout style likely landed it on the radar of criminals in March 1950, when it was the target of a sensational daylight robbery, the Montclair Times and others reported. The house, then owned by James Brown Wray, was raided by four armed bandits who took $20,000 in jewels from a powder room safe. The crime was the first daytime robbery in Montclair in nearly 25 years.
Other owners of 171 Christopher St. included John Svenson, a local car dealer who owned the home for a few years in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Frances Rothberg Abel. Likely the most notable resident of the nearly 125-yearold home, Abel moved to Montclair in 1960 after spending more than six years teaching medical students at the University of Buffalo, where she received a medical degree in 1949.
A groundbreaker in North Jersey, Abel was a specialist in internal medicine at Overbrook Hospital in Cedar Grove and on the staff of Montclair Community Hospital, Mountainside Hospital and Hoffman-LaRoche, where she was the assistant director of the pharmaceutical company’s dispensary. In 1969, she joined the staff of the New Jersey College of Medicine.