Category: Notable Houses

25 Princeton Place (1907)

This became the childhood home of Buzz Aldrin, “Montclair’s Man on the Moon,” who was part of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. A plaque is in front of the house. This twin-gable Tudor Revival design occurs four times in Oakcroft: at 130 Edgemont Road, 35 Godfrey, 28 Godfrey, and here on Princeton. It was probably designed by George A. Freeman & F.G. Hasselman of New York, hired by the Godfrey Land and Building Company. This stucco house is in the Township-wide architectural survey “Montclair 1694-1982: An Inventory of Historic Cultural and Architectural Resources” (No. 0713-172).  It was among the first homes to be built in Oakcroft.

This house is on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places as an example of a poured-concrete house designed by Thomas Edison to provide mass-produced affordable housing. Montclair resident Frank D. Lambie was instrumental in construction by designing and building the molds through his Lambie Concrete House Corporation and New York Steel Form Company. A 1910 version of this construction technique is at 420 Valley Road in Montclair.

These two houses originally stood a half-block north, on land that became Anderson Park. Charles Anderson, who donated the land for the park, teamed up with well-to-do friend and neighbor and bought these lots as the new location for the houses so that park construction could begin. The houses were moved around 1903. A photo taken in 1902 by the park’s landscape architect, John C. Olmsted, shows these houses still on the future park site.