Moore Residence
Montclair — Moore Residence
Situated on an unusually narrow and deep parcel in Montclair, the Moore Residence began as a modest wood-framed house that had been altered repeatedly over time. Unlike homes whose historic character could guide a restoration, this residence offered little architectural coherence to preserve. The project therefore approached the house not as an artifact, but as an opportunity for reinvention—using the constraints of the site as the primary generator of form, space, and identity.
Because zoning limited expansion toward the street, the design turned decisively to the rear yard, where the house was allowed to grow and establish a new relationship with the landscape. The addition introduced new bedrooms, a primary suite, and expanded living spaces organized around views and access to the long garden. To intensify the vertical proportions of the already three-story structure, a steeply framed roof was introduced, enveloping the upper level and giving the house a stronger silhouette. This roof form transformed necessity into expression, creating volume within while lending the exterior a sense of upward aspiration.
Architecturally, the Moore Residence was shaped less by strict modernism than by the transitional residential sensibility of Dennis Wedlick. Warmth, proportion, and contemporary openness were balanced with the familiarity of domestic scale. Most importantly, the house reoriented itself toward the rear landscape, becoming almost ceremonial in its embrace of the garden. What had once been a constrained structure on a difficult lot was recast as a tall, light-filled dwelling—a kind of cathedral to the yard, where narrowness and length became the project's defining strengths.
