This urban N.J. home has a small environmental footprint and big design elements

A local architect took an 1800s post-and-beam duplex and a former general store and turned them into a sophisticated, modern residence.

The two buildings have a total of three bedrooms, three full and two half bathrooms. It’s considered one single family home with a 1,500 square foot main home and a 900 square foot guest house. It’s in walking distance to Princeton University and downtown Princeton.

And it’s listed for sale for $2.2 million.

“Everybody walks in and their jaw just drops,” said Susan L. DiMeglio of Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty, who along with her husband Anthony DiMeglio are the listing agents.

The home was designed by its current owner, Leslie Dowling, an architect who partners with her sister, Julie Dowling to operate the bi-coastal boutique architectural firm Dowling Studios, which specializes in sustainable, modern residential design.

Leslie and Julie started their careers in the Princeton office of Michael Graves while attending Princeton University’s Graduate School of Architecture.

Leslie Dowling first became acquainted with the property when a potential client asked her to look into joining it as one house. “I ended up talking him out of it,” Dowling said, after she talked to the zoning officer who told her the property violated every current zoning law and that the lot is too small for even one residence according to current zoning rules. “I didn’t think we would get the variances to create one larger residence given the lot size.”

Years later, the property sat abandoned and still on the market. And she was looking for a place where she could live and have a design studio. The zoning officer told her she would have to keep the exterior walls to keep both buildings.

They were last used as duplexes for student housing. “They must’ve had the students crammed in because the rooms were tiny, the ceilings were low,” Dowling said. “It looked like they should be demolished because they were in such poor condition. But if you demolished them you couldn’t build anything without a handful of variances.”

Dowling bought the property in 2018 and spent two years redoing them. “The trick was to keep the exterior walls and rebuild them from outside in,” she said.

She built a new foundation around the existing rubble stone one on the main house. “It was a delicate hand-built process,” she said.

The back building is concrete block so she couldn’t move windows or openings. They built a new interior wall so they could put in insulation, wiring and plumbing and attached new siding to the old.

They also cleared the property of impervious surfaces — flag stone and concrete — and put in site drainage and plantings. “We opened up the courtyard so it felt more like a park not just the paved disaster that it was,” Dowling said.

By taking two buildings that were previously used as duplexes — each with two kitchens and more bathrooms, “We wanted to reduce the overall use of utilities,” Dowling said.

The end result is a two bedroom, two full and one half bathroom main house that has two ensuite bedrooms on the ground level and glass stairs leading to an open-concept living area on the second level.

The back building has a one bedroom, one full and one half bathroom apartment and a space Dowling uses as a design studio.

The apartment could be used for an au pair, in-laws or rented out for “at least $6,000 per month,” Anthony DiMeglio said.

The main house is well-suited for a couple, somebody who has one child, a single person or someone who would want to use it as a weekend home. “It’s not a house a typical family would be interested in buying,” Susan DiMeglio said.

The design makes good use of a small footprint by incorporating creative design elements like custom closets even in the hallway, kitchen drawers that are all double drawers.

Dowling says the home is like a sports car, not an SUV.

“This house is an energy efficient, carefully designed, fully customized MINI Cooper,” she said. “Not a gas-guzzling Suburban. It’s more about quality than quantity and wanting to maintain the lightest footprint possible, while having many special features and comforts.”

Dowling said she and her husband lived in the Residences at Palmer Square while they were renovating which helped shape their ideas for living in a small space. “We wanted to recreate the townhouse feeling of being low maintenance, with low energy bills but have the storage and parking we didn’t have in that townhouse,” she said.

The property also has parking for three cars.

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