COURTESY OF DAN D’AGOSTINO
BUYERS BUILD THEIR DREAM HOME
The homeowners subdivided their lot, but had yet to put it on the market when prospective buyers knocked on their door to
inquire about it. “It was covered in snow, but it’s an incredibly unique lot, almost 300 feet deep,” says architect Dan D’Agostino,
founder of the Little Falls-based Plan Architecture LLC. The potential buyers, a British family, had moved into a Dutch Tudor in
Montclair after the father was transferred to a job in New York. “But he grew up with an architect father, and always dreamed of
building a home for his family,” says D’Agostino. The man’s wife found the architect on the Houzz website, which had conferred a
regional Best of Houzz award to Plan Architecture two years in a row. Working with frequent collaborator Michael Elayan of Elayan
Construction Services, D’Agostino used the father’s sketches as the basis for his home design.
“They didn’t say ‘Design us a modern house,’ but that’s where we landed,” says D’Agostino. “For the exterior, they said ‘Have at it,’
and we did.” The builders used wood shake to tie in to the look of the shingled homes in the area, but also covered it with board and
batten siding that appears to unravel its way around the house. The front door has a two-foot wide floating slab of walnut that spins
on a pivot. “You push on the right-hand side, like when someone pulls a candlestick in a Sherlock Holmes movie,” says D’Agostino. The
airy floor plan extends to three doors that, when open, allow for 39 feet-worth of direct access to the yard. “The seller was there during the construction,” says D’Agostino. “He said he wished he was the one moving into it.” ➤
FALL 2016
MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE
39