2021 Preservation Award Winner – 142 Ridgewood Avenue

The 2021 Preservation Award winner is 142 Ridgewood Avenue, Eva and Frank Reda Residence.

142 Ridgewood Avenue was built in 1892 by an unknown builder to the design of an architect whose name is likewise unrecorded.

Material in the Glen Ridge Historical Society archives was fundamental to fully understanding the original house and how it presented itself to public view.

The house is a fine example of the late-Victorian Colonial Revival manner. It retains the continuous porch, exaggerated horizontality, and balanced asymmetry characteristic of many sophisticated houses of the previous decade. But the center of the porch breaks forward forward and uses classical columns—in particular Scamozzi’s Renaissance version of the Ionic order. The porch roof featured an inaccessible, ornamental balcony.

The Nathan Russell photo in the house file showed what had changed, and what was missing. The upper balcony was gone, and the front steps had been replaced.

Porch Restoration and General Exterior Renovation
Wright & Robinson Architects

Nathan Russell photograph — date unknown, probably taken prior to 1910

142 Ridgewood Avenue

In 2022

142 Ridgewood Avenue