North Jersey is filled with homes designed by renowned architects, but only a select few of those homes are linked to notable East Orange architect Edward Bowser Jr., one of New Jersey's first Black architects who worked under Le Corbusier.
Now one of Bowser Jr.'s homes can be yours.
Listed by John Haydu of Keller Williams NJ Metro Group, the home at 249 Runnymede Road in Essex Fells was listed for $949,000 on Oct. 4. This home is just one of at least a dozen houses and buildings designed by Bowser Jr., who is known for home designs in towns such as Montclair, West Orange, Nutley and North Caldwell.
Early in his career, Bowser Jr., one of New Jersey's first Black architects, had been an apprentice for Swiss-French architect and designer Le Corbusier in Paris. Bowser Jr. went on to become a pioneer of modern architecture, designing notable buildings like the Medical Arts building in East Orange, the headquarters of cigarette-lighter company Ronson Corporation in central New Jersey and the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Known as Fellsbridge, this three-bedroom, three-bedroom home was built in 1957 and sits on a 0.58-acre wooded lot along Pine Brook. The home was designed by Bowser Jr. using the modern concept of the nine-square grid, which was used by Le Corbusier to teach architects about the dynamic of design.
Across its 2,400 square feet of living space, the home features living room and dining room areas with huge windows, wood paneling, cork flooring and cathedral ceilings. There's also a vintage galley kitchen with Danish cabinetry and a lower level with a spacious recreation or art studio space, a summer kitchen, a family room and more.
While just about all of the interior and exterior details of the home are original to Bowser Jr.'s initial design, the property just recently underwent a several-month restoration by its current owner, Montclair-native Frank Gerard Godlewski, who purchased the home in 2007.
Godlewski, an architectural designer and historian, studied the nine-square grid and Le Corbusier at The Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York. He went on to live in Italy for 23 years, where he worked for notable Italian architect Aldo Rossi, participated in projects in the 1985 Venice Biennale of Architecture and completed restorations on properties of the former Italian royal family, among other things.
After coming back to New Jersey to care for his mother and grandmother, Godlewski said he began working with the former East Orange Mayor Robert Bowser to create an archive of his brother's work as an architect.
"A very good friend and my mother took me to a thing at the Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, and I was sitting between James McGreevey and Robert Bowser, the mayor of East Orange," he said. "The mayor said to me, 'My brother was an architect and he worked for a famous architect in Italy, Le Corbusier.' And my jaw dropped. I told him about how I went to Cooper Union and that was my whole thesis. So I started helping him with his brother's archives."
It was also around that time that Godlewski stumbled upon his Essex Fells home. He said he was looking for a home to buy with his mother, and they landed on this one because it was the most affordable one they could find in the area.
And it wasn't until closing day that he discovered it was the creation of Bowser Jr.
"We had always thought the house was from the 70s. At the closing, they told us they found the drawings for the home, and they told me the architect was Edward Bowser Jr.," he said. "That was one of those things that happens to you. It's like a coincidence in the universe. We weren't looking for a house like this. The house found us."
Now 18 years later, Godlewski has restored the home back to its 1957 condition all on his own. The process included things like using eye makeup to restore original wallpaper that had been damaged from a leak — a technique he learned during his time in Venice — and refinishing the home's cork flooring as the same wood color as the ceiling to cover up marks of wear and tear.
In anticipation of selling this home to be with his family in Spring Lake and returning to Italy for some new projects, he said he felt like finishing this restoration was a social and academic responsibility for him. After having given lectures and participating in a PBS documentary about Bowser Jr.'s work, it was his way of having one more role in conserving the limited work of Bowser Jr.
"I felt like I had the responsibility to carry out Robert Bowser's wish to get his brother to be recognized and to get his name out there," he said. "I'm obligated to make it as restored and beautiful as possible so that people see the beauty of the design. So they fall in love with it as much as my mother and I did, and want to continue just living in this beautiful atmosphere."
Maddie McGay is the real estate reporter for NorthJersey.com and The Record, covering all things worth celebrating about living in North Jersey. Find her on Instagram @maddiemcgay, on X @maddiemcgayy, and sign up for her North Jersey Living newsletter. Do you have a tip, trend or terrific house she should know about? Email her at [email protected].