Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Exclusive

Elizabeth Gilbert’s New Chapter Begins

Slide 1 of 12

An Italianate Victorian home built in 1869 on a hilltop overlooking the Delaware River in bucolic Frenchtown, N.J., is about to enter the market at $999,000. The fully renovated four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home has a wraparound porch on the south and west sides and sits on three-quarters of an acre, most of it dedicated to perennial gardens.

Credit...Sam Oberter for The New York Times
  • Slide 1 of 12

    An Italianate Victorian home built in 1869 on a hilltop overlooking the Delaware River in bucolic Frenchtown, N.J., is about to enter the market at $999,000. The fully renovated four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home has a wraparound porch on the south and west sides and sits on three-quarters of an acre, most of it dedicated to perennial gardens.

    Credit...Sam Oberter for The New York Times

An Italianate Victorian mini-estate built in 1869 on a hilltop above the Delaware River by a descendant of John Reading — Colonial New Jersey’s first native-born governor — is about to enter the market at $999,000. The house has been owned for the last six years by the author Elizabeth Gilbert, whose best-selling memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” revolutionized the concept of self-actualization for its fans. The annual property tax is $13,688.

It is probably the most expensive four-bedroom two-and-a-half-bath house in Frenchtown, N.J., an artsy but rural village that is a stone’s throw from Bucks County, Pa., and just over an hour from New York City. “It was the most expensive place in town back when I bought it, but it always has been,” said Ms. Gilbert of her quaint yellow clapboard at 3 Reading Avenue (the gray gravel lane serves just two houses). “It and its twin next door were built to be the grandest homes in town.”

It is definitely the most eclectically renovated house in Frenchtown, right up to the peak of its cupola, now crowned by a copper roof. The formal circular driveway that once dominated the front lawn has been replaced by a colorful meadow of wildflowers and berry bushes. In place of the attic, there is the 1,400-square-foot “Skybrary” (translation: library in the sky), a mystical aerie carved and customized for Ms. Gilbert by an imaginative carpenter, Michael Flood. In the basement, a terra-cotta honeycomb from Brazil holds 500 bottles of wine. Buddha statuary is a recurring theme in the garden.

Ms. Gilbert wrote her most recent best-seller, “The Signature of All Things” (Viking Adult, 2013), a historical/botanical romance, while ensconced at her 15-foot-long acacia slab desk in the “Skybrary.” A king-size “napping bed” is tucked in a corner, 11 windows resemble a ship’s portholes (hawks, not fish, go floating by outside), and the original ceiling beams are dangerously low. A flight of stairs leads to the intimate cupola, with its 360-degree views.

“I really believe that whoever buys the house will do it because they have an emotional attachment to this enchanted space up here,” she said of the attic.

Downstairs, the main hallway is flanked by an office/library and a country kitchen with a wood-burning stove, tin ceiling, plank floors and a marble-topped center island with a Bertazzoni six-burner range as its centerpiece. The kitchen, after the removal of a wall, flows into the living room, which faces west toward the river. The dining room across the hall from the living room has south and west exposures, and pocket doors that separate it from the library, or not. The powder room has an automated Japanese toilet/bidet and an exotic Balinese lava stone sink.

On the second floor, the master bedroom and main guest room face the river; the master bath has an antique claw-foot bathtub and river views. Ms. Gilbert expanded the second bath to add a steam-room/shower with a natural stone floor, a stone bench for reclining, and decorative Tunisian mosaics. The smallest of the bedrooms has a “secret” back staircase leading to the kitchen (the stairway door on the kitchen level is camouflaged to match the custom cabinetry).

There is ample charm outside, too. The house sits on a three-quarter-acre lot with prime western views of the valley and river and has a wraparound porch with Brazilian plank floors. The original outhouse has been repurposed as a garden shed; the north side-yard has a Pennsylvania bluestone terrace and barbecue area; gardens of perennials, herbs and native berries radiate from the east-facing screened summer porch off the kitchen.

There are two reasons Ms. Gilbert and her husband, José Nunes (the Brazil-born importer she met in Bali on her “East, Pray, Love” odyssey and married in 2007), have decided to sell their house and move, with their dog, Rocky, to a smaller Victorian in the heart of Frenchtown near Two Buttons, the Pan-Asian emporium they own.

“The rational explanation is that we’re downsizing, that this lovely house is bigger than we need, especially because we travel so much,” she said.

“The irrational but accurate explanation is that I have to move after I finish a book,” she added. “We poured a lot of work and love into this house as if we were going to stay forever, but the truth is, neither of us stay anyplace for very long. Now that we’ve made everything perfect inside and outside, it’s time to go. I’m ready to write a new book and I can’t do it in the ‘Skybrary’ because I feel like that room belongs to Alma,” the protagonist of “The Signature of All Things.”

An appointment-only open house for brokers and buyers is scheduled for April 26; the contact number for the property manager, Rayya Elias: (917) 650-5223. Ms. Gilbert and her husband are amenable to selling the home fully furnished. “All we really need to take is our dog, my husband’s cooking spices and the paintings,” she said.

A correction was made on 
April 27, 2014

The Exclusive column last Sunday, about the listing for sale of the author Elizabeth Gilbert’s home in Frenchtown, N.J., misstated the surname of the carpenter responsible for Ms. Gilbert’s customized attic library. He is Michael Flood, not Hood.

How we handle corrections

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section RE, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A New Chapter Begins. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT