From the crooked wood floors, to the hand-hewn timber frame and two-foot-thick sandstone base walls, “Nothing is quite straight in this house,” says Clément, of the farmhouse he and wife Eleonora bought in 2022. Perhaps that’s to be expected, since the original portion of the house, which consisted of two rooms and a loft, was built in 1734, while the rest of it was added in 1787. The home was one of a few then built along this portion of the Hackensack River in Teaneck, New Jersey, thanks to a group of Dutch colonists moving out of nearby Manhattan.

When Clément and Eleonora found the house, such timeworn irregularities held a certain appeal, as he is from Brussels, Belgium, and she Milan, Italy. “We both grew up around old historical buildings, so when we saw it, it reminded us of home right away,” says Clément.

After living in a Manhattan apartment with their two Great Danes for too long—“When we were thinking about the next step, it included a garden for the dogs,” says Clément, a software engineer—the couple limited their house hunt to those a certain distance from Eleonora’s work, as she’s a neurosurgeon who needs to be within 20 minutes of the hospital. While the old farmhouse fit their criteria in terms of character and location, they reached out to architects Emma Fuller and Michael Overby of Fuller/Overby Architecture before purchasing, to make sure it could be modernized.

Before: Stair Hall

After: Stair Hall

Fuller/Overby are a small firm that work on two to three projects a year, but when Clément and Eleonora reached out, their curiosity was piqued. They immediately found records about the home in the Library of Congress and the local historical society, even unearthing the original building plans.

“We met at Cooper Union, and it is a school that particularly emphasized that architecture and architectural works do not exist in a vacuum, but have both a lineage and something that they're responding to,” says Fuller. “So, we had an immediate interest in finding out more to understand what we were working with.”

At first glimpse, the home’s lineage was quite obscured by the later remodels, with the timbers painted over and layers of carpet covering the wood floor. “The first thing that struck us was that there was so much makeup on this poor lady,” says Fuller.

Before: Bedroom

After: Office

Despite such small windows, Fuller and Overby’s attention was caught by the home’s natural light. “Even with these modest windows, the light was really quite striking,” says Fuller. “There’s something about the river and the sun and the movement of the light throughout the day. There’s this warmth and a glowing. So, we were drawn to imagining how that light could really work in a space that was using it to its full potential.”

To do so, the remodel targeted the second and third floors, converting what was a warren of tight rooms into a circular plan that flows around a central core. The architects removed a portion of the third floor to create a double-height stair hall on the South-facing wall, therefore admitting the best light and allowing it to spread throughout.

They then inserted a sculptural, cantilevered staircase at the core, composed of perforated metal and steel mesh panels for the tread and railings, which works with the soft natural light rather than competing against it. “We rejected glass fairly early on, feeling that the highly reflective rigidity of that material would be detrimental and too much of a contrast with the soft, hand-chiseled character and irregularities of the existing building,” says Overby.

As demolition progressed, it became apparent that the South wall in the new stair hall had “three different planes within one wall,” says Fuller, stemming from the thick stone base wall and thinning as it progressed upwards. Working with contractor Alex Chay, the architects thickened the wall to be more in proportion with the lower elevation, and taking the opportunity that presented to play with angling the window openings, which “magnifies further how the light moves into the space,” says Fuller.

After: Bathroom

After: Library

Interior walls were removed to iron out the second floor plan, and many window placements were kept, even if in an odd spot, like the library floor plate. Fuller and Overby then made such eccentricities of the house more consistent by wrapping the walls in custom millwork, concealing storage or mechanicals in plain sight, and smoothing out what could otherwise have become visual clutter.

Just as Clément and Eleonora hoped, the circular layout has a flexibility to it, with wide doors that can be left open to connect rooms when the couple are there alone, or closed for more privacy and separation. A dressing room, now enveloped in wood storage, can easily become a bedroom at a later date, while the third floor acts as an independent suite, with its own bedroom and bathroom.

Before: Staircase

After: Staircase

As is appropriate to an old house, nooks are still found throughout, from the window seat in the third-floor bedroom, to the library alcove, contributing to the feeling that there’s more to discover if you just keep looking. This was part of the firm’s design ethos all along.

Before: Third Floor

After: Third Floor

Before: Primary Bedroom

After: Primary Bedroom

Before: Primary Bathroom

After: Primary Bathroom

Before: Bedroom

After: Dressing Room

“The doors remain open most of the time,” says Overby. “That was an important part of making it feel more as if it’s like a sequence of chambers, as opposed to independent discreet rooms. So you always have the feeling that there’s more space beyond the one that you're occupying.”

Project Credits:

Architecture: Fuller/Overby Architecture

Builder: AAA General Contracting, Alex Chay

Structural Engineer: Silman, Nat Oppenheimer

Mechanical Engineer: Fusion Systems, Mark Cambria

Historic Structural Assessment: Structural Workshop

Tadelakt custom finish: Sobro Studios

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