BERGEN POINT
The owners of this Victorian fixer-upper were engaged in a nearly 20-year saga before it became this Bergen Point gem. Judy Bielan, a Bayonne lawyer, and her husband Paul Somers, a Bayonne cop, bought the house in 1996. Bielan throws around words like dilapidated and money pit to describe their dream house, which occupies a double lot on the corner.
Legend has it, according to a longtime neighbor, that the house had been in another lot and had been rolled on logs to its current location.
Bielan says the house was filled with tiny rooms and pantries. She had trouble imagining it as a home for a growing family. “Every single thing had to be redone,” she says, “The basement used to have horse stalls, and there was a horse shower there. It was disgusting. The attic was beat up and unfinished.”
But despite all this, she says, “My husband and father were visionaries, and the price was right.” So they bought it, but before they could move in, they had to wait for a bit of show biz to run its course. Talk show host Montel Williams was using the house as a location for his TV show, “Matt Waters.” Waters, played by Williams, is a retired naval officer who returns to his hometown to become a science teacher. Scenes from the show, which was cancelled after only six episodes, were filmed at Bayonne High School.
The opening scene was of breaking down a wall in the bedroom of the house. “We put the wall back up,” Bielan says.
By 2002, with the birth of their second child, the family was thinking of moving to another home. They looked at a number of places and then decided, hey, they could stay put if they built an addition.
They ended up with a four-story addition, attached garage, wraparound extension to the porch, and an elevator. Bielan says the elevator didn’t cost that much and turned out to be perfect for young kids and grandparents.
After the renovation, the house had five bedrooms, including a master bedroom with a walk-in closet on the top floor, an office, playroom, four full baths, a powder room, kitchen, dining room, living room, one gas fireplace, and furnished basement with another bedroom, pool table, and workout room.
One of the home’s most unusual features is an in-ground swimming pool in back.
Bielan has been living in Bayonne since she was two years old. Like many other Bayonne natives, she has fond memories of going to Uncle Milty’s amusement park. Now her family enjoys the pleasures of Bergen Point. Bielan has a law office on 8th Street. They patronize the businesses down there and enjoy a meal or two at Chris’ Corner.
Victor and I visited on a splendid spring morning, which showed the house in the best light. It’s perched on a grassy hill with four Victorian-style lamps on either side of the front steps. A huge wraparound porch features white wicker furniture, a swing that looks like a large birdcage, and lots of little rabbits and other outdoor ornaments.
We toured all four floors. On the first are framed before-and-after photographs of the house. But Bielan left the best for last. In the master bedroom on the top floor are huge bay windows overlooking the Bayonne Bridge and the Kill Van Kull. This is truly a Bayonne cityscape to die for.
Bielan’s 13-year-old daughter Jade said it all: “I like this house. I don’t want to live in any other house.”
AVENUE C
This renovated beauty was built “before 1900,” according to owner, Dr. Jonathan Singer, a retired podiatric surgeon and photographer who lives there with his wife, Marcia, a retired art teacher at the Nicholas Oresko School. Together since 1973, they cohabit with two dogs, Phoebe and Daisy.
The Singers are purists when it comes to architecture, but apparently the many owners who’d lived there before them were not. “They needed more rooms and added on bedrooms,” Singer says. “With the additions, the house looked like boxes upon boxes; they didn’t care about style.”
The Singers bought the house in 1980.
“It had started to fall apart,” Singer says. “There were leaks, electrical problems, and in the basement, the beams were breaking.”
Here was their chance to make the needed repairs while realizing their artistic vision. “We had to do something, so we took the house and totally renovated it,” Singer says. “We put its architectural components together to give it some style.”
He says he called on is old friend, Frank Lloyd Wright, for inspiration. Singer of course did not know Wright, who died in 1959, but he loved Wright’s designs and sought to use some of his signature details.
The house, which has five bedrooms and a finished basement, has lots of beams and stained glass, both of which are Frank Lloyd Wright characteristics.
A sliding door from the living room leads to a deck, where the family enjoys summer barbecues.
At night, the Singers sometimes light the house up, and folks walking or driving by often stop to have a look at this faithfully renovated Victorian.
The lawn and driveway are neatly kept, and the house itself was redone in a kind of maple-sugar-candy stucco. The entrance has huge redwood-colored polished beams designed in an Asian motif. This and stained glass front windows say “Frank Lloyd Wright” before you even enter the house.
Also on the front terrace is a stainless steel sculpture done by a Brooklyn artist who exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
In fact, art is the main attraction in this period home. Jonathan Singer, who is a well-known photographer, cuts a striking figure. He’s tall with a white ponytail and aviator glasses. He was wearing a leather jacket with emblems commemorating the exploits of General Jimmy Doolittle, famous for the World War II attack on Tokyo. Singer also modeled a beautiful jacket like the one worn by General George Custer in his battle against the Sioux.
The house has a number of hand-crafted natural wood tables, as well as paintings by graffiti writers.
The Monmouth Museum’s Botanica Magnifica, Singer’s photographs of “the world’s most extraordinary flowers and plants,” will be on display through June 21 in Lincroft. His five-volume book on the same name was donated to the Smithsonian.—BLP