Editor’s note: Plans before the Jersey City Planning and Zoning boards to build two four-story, four-unit buildings at 124 and 128 Glenwood Ave. in Jersey City have raised concerns from neighbors who say the new developments don’t belong among the string of charming and historic Queen-Anne style homes known as the Mayhew Terrace Cottages. The plans for 124 Glenwood Ave. are scheduled to be heard by the Planning Board at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow. The Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86162443723. The meeting ID is 861 6244 3723. The plans for 128 Glenwood are scheduled to be heard by the Jersey City Zoning Board at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83659307838. The meeting ID is 83659307838. A representative of the developer could not be reached for comment.
The Mayhew Terrace Cottages, erected 1894-1895 on the north side of Glenwood Avenue between Hudson Boulevard (now Kennedy Boulevard) and West Side Avenue in Jersey City, were developed by William W. Coffin (1831-1896), a local wool merchant and speculative real estate developer who was a pioneer resident on Glenwood and in the enchanting Boulevard residential district.
Coffin’s six-house tier of detached Queen Anne-style mansions were the first of their kind in that section of Jersey City: grandly situated on an elevated, acclivitous plinth of raw earth and fitted field stone; set back far from a common slate pavement sidewalk for the abundant allowance of front garden space; dramatically entranced by steep, winding, curving and crossing stone wall fences, resplendently medieval in their cloister-like character; and deep rear yards thickly forested with maples, elms, oaks, and firs.
Although part of a single envisioned architectural entity — with duplicate plumb foundation framings and footprints, generous two-and-a-half-story heights, thoughtful floor plans, spacious attic lofts, adequate service areas, and Old World building materials and workmanship — each house was given subtle yet distinct design features discernable both below and blocks away, particularly from the Boulevard and Montgomery Street trolley car roadbeds and horse carriage and coachways.
Hence, in the conjoined addresses known as 120 to 130 Glenwood Ave. — minus 124 and 128, with 128 being leveled decades ago and 124 just this past March — we see variating roof gables and pitches and the shifting volumetrics of bows, bays, balconies, brackets, projections, overhangs, orioles, fenestrations, doorways.
The result, in a single glance, is an architectural panorama of storybook aspirations unique to Jersey City.
Read More: A question of character: Neighbors in Jersey City ‘cottages’ want historic charm