Restored N.J. brownstone includes an apartment for your in-laws

A restored, historic brownstone, built for a former Jersey City police chief, is on the market.

The two-family townhouse has five bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms in the main house and a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. It’s listed for $2,799,999.

With most brownstones, several in a row were all built by the same developer, making them look exactly alike. But this one was built specifically for Benjamin Murphy, who was chief of the Jersey City Police Department from 1879 until 1906. He was also a Civil War veteran who fought in the Battle of Gettysburg.

“It has its own unique style,” said Johanna Fine, of Christie’s International Real Estate, who listed the property along with her colleague Francesco Mazzaferro. “It doesn’t mirror any of the homes around it.”

It was built the same year that President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty and six years before Ellis Island opened.

The home is Italianate in style, with decorative wood cornices and terra cotta rosette style lintels on the exterior. The three top floors have bay windows that flood the home with natural light.

The windows are fitting for the home of a police chief, Fine said, “because it feels like you’re king or queen of the block and you can keep watch over everything.”

Most of the doors are original, as are the trim around the windows, stained glass, and moldings. Two of the original fireplaces have been converted to gas, the agents said.

The current owners restored the home in 2016, right down to the coal chute under the sidewalk.

The home is deeper than other homes around it and most typical brownstones, giving it 3,400-square-feet when the average is 3,000 square feet. It also has nine or 10 foot ceilings on each floor.

“Usually the higher you go in these brownstones, the lower the ceilings are,” Mazzaferro said.

The main or parlor level of the home has a formal living room, dining room, half bathroom and the kitchen.

“Everybody loves the kitchen,” he said. “It’s like it’s from a cooking show.”

The next level, which is the third floor, has three bedrooms, one of which is an en suite. The front bedroom is currently being used as a family room, the agents said.

The top floor has the primary bedroom suite in the front, with a walk-in closet, and another bedroom and guest bathroom.

“A home of this age normally doesn’t have a lot of closets,” Mazzaferro said. “This has tons of closet space.”

There is also a staircase going up to the roof, which has been approved for a rooftop deck.

“Not many homes get that permit because you’re not allowed to see the rooftop deck from street-level,” Fine said. “Because this house has so much depth, they’re able to have it. So it’s ready for a buyer to fully deck out the roof and build the rooftop garden of their dreams.”

The garden apartment, on the first level, has a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room with an exposed brick wall. It can be rented out or used for multi-generational living.

“We’ve had quite a bit of people who are multi-generational families look at the property,” Mazzaferro said. “We see that more and more.”

The home is located in Jersey City’s Harsimus Cove neighborhood, near Hamilton Park. It’s one mile from the Hudson River and the New York Waterway walkway and a seven minute walk to the PATH station.

The property was listed in May and has had multiple offers.

“People are astounded by the overall space,” Fine said. “It looks large online but when you walk the space, it’s deceptively even larger, when you’re in it.”

And all that square footage comes at a value compared to other nearby areas, like New York City and Hoboken, Mazzaferro said.

“This, in Hoboken, would be $1 million more,” he said, “for the amount of space and what the property has to offer.”

Are you an agent, buyer or seller who is active in this changing market? Do you have tips about New Jersey’s real estate market? Unusual listings? Let us know.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the local news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.

Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com.