Villanova Heights goes on sale at last

By Kevin Deutsch

Architect Gary L. Brewer was recently visiting one of the newly completed mansions he’d helped design in the ultra-high-end community of Villanova Heights when a passerby stopped to admire the home.

“Are you almost done with the restoration?” she asked, apparently thinking the home was part of the historic Fieldston community across the street.

It’s the kind of mistake Fieldston residents are unlikely to make, but one Mr. Brewer was pleased with, citing it as he explained the effort made by architects to ensure the massive homes fit in with their smaller Fieldston counterparts.

Villanova Heights’ first two homes are complete and up for sale. The development has been criticized and delayed by neighbors who battled against its reshaping the landscape of the highest hillside in Riverdale, a part of the Special Natural Area District. Others protested the imposition of what they saw as oversized McMansions hard by a historic district with grand homes of its own.

Development has dragged out over years complete with court battles and environmental concerns, but now that Villanova Heights is ready to open its first two sets of ornately carved doors, the hope among its boosters is that the wider community will embrace it.

“When people live in a neighborhood like this and they learn of proposed development, the knee-jerk reaction is going to be horrible. They think it will ruin the character of their neighborhood,” said Mr. Brewer, who designed the homes with architectural giant Robert A.M. Stern, known as the father of post-modern architecture. “We wanted to show that you could add to a historic neighborhood and have it be as good, if not better, in some ways. Our hope is that people will say Villanova Heights looks like Fieldston, and adds to Fieldston.”

The new homes, an 11,135- square-foot French Norman and 11,870-square-foot Colonial Revival, were erected on a 17- acre lot — once dense with trees — on Iselin Avenue and West 250th Street. They are among the largest homes in Riverdale.