Japanese-Influenced Midcentury by Edward Durell Stone Available for First Time in 50 Years

A 46-minute train ride away from Penn Station, the New Jersey township of Montclair was incorporated in 1868. With six of its districts listed on both the state and national Register of Historic Places, the township is a bastion of Gilded Age architecture by such illustrious practitioners as Starrett and Van Vleck, Charles A. Platt, and McKim, Mead and White. While a preponderance of Montclair’s notable buildings are of late 19th- and early 20th-century vintage, the affluent enclave can lay claim to at least one significant example of midcentury modernism, the Yager Residence, which has just become available for the first time in 50 years.

Located in the picturesque Upper Montclair neighborhood, the home was commissioned by New Jersey cardiologist J. Allen Yager and designed by renowned architect Edward Durell Stone, whose projects include Radio City Music Hall, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Completed in 1959, the Yager Residence mixes midcentury modern design with elements of traditional Japanese minka houses, such as shoji screens and a surrounding engawa deck. On the two-story home’s entry level is a living room with ample walls of glass, ceilings high enough to fly a kite, a formal dining room, a semi-open-plan kitchen, and the primary suite. An open staircase zigs up to a mezzanine lounge overlooking the living room, and zags downstairs, where there are three petite additional bedrooms, a full bath, laundry room, and a family room with beamed ceilings, tiled floors, built-in bookshelves, and a wet bar. There’s also a detached two-car garage.

Surrounded by trees on a .66-acre lot, the pedigreed property is listed with Amy Owens of Keller Williams Realty at an asking price of $949,000.