Casacquasanta: A One-of-a-Kind New Home in Westfield, NJ

This house sits on a street of classic Westfield homes, and the brief was to belong there without copying anything. The owners did not want stucco, so the exterior is painted brick with cedar trim, an arched front door and gas-lit copper lanterns — a California Modern feel with clean lines, minimal detail and a great deal of glass, on a block that reads traditional.

Ellie Mroz Design led the interior design, construction consulting and selections, working alongside Michael Robert Construction. The house was featured in Design NJ in April/May 2022.

Almost nothing here is standard. The materials are natural and meant to patina: the cedar will silver over time, and the painted brick was a decision made at the very start rather than a finish applied late. Painted brick adds depth, texture and shadow lines, and it is what lets a new house sit beside older ones without pretending to be one of them.

The windows are oversized and black-framed for an industrial edge. The cedar shutters are custom and built large enough to actually cover the windows, the way shutters did on the houses this street is full of — a detail that is rarely done now, and the one that most repays a second look.

The staircase is not in the center of the house. It was pushed to one side, next to the mudroom and the secondary entry, and that single move is what makes the plan work: every sight line ends at a window or some other source of natural light. Stand at the front door and you look clear through the family room and into the backyard.

Off the secondary entry, a long hallway repeats arches at intervals, and looking down it you see straight through to a window at the far end of the house. The staircase itself sits in a tower bounded on two sides by walls of windows. It is the room the house is recognized by from the street.

The arch became the house’s repeating note, at the front door, through the hallway and into the bar. The owners wanted something that repeated and something traditional, but not too traditional. That is the theme running through the whole house.

The clients wanted an aesthetic that did not feel cookie cutter — a little bit of old with a little bit of new, something timeless. They also wanted the materials used to build the house used to furnish it, which is the idea the interiors are actually built on.

So the furnishings are time-tested and natural: cotton, linen, jute and wool, more elements found in nature and fewer man-made ones. The pieces are family friendly and approachable rather than precious. The palette runs to neutrals and texture instead of bright or abrasive color, and two orange leather armchairs in the family room carry the one unexpected note. Everything has a collected feel.

We always start the design of a full home with the kitchen, because it is central and it is where the bulk of the budget goes. Everything else calibrates to it.

The dining table and chairs are the owners’ own, which set the wood tones the rest of the room had to live with. We never try to match wood tones exactly, because you will never get it quite right — we use complementary tones instead and let the difference read as intentional. The counter stools were chosen last, for a base whose shape echoes the arched openings in the hallway.

The pub was on the wish list from the beginning, and the risk with a room like that is it becomes an afterthought nobody uses. So it was planned into the flow deliberately: it connects to the wine room and the family room, and it opens directly onto the covered pergola and the rest of the outdoor space.

The owners are serious about wine and mixology, and the room takes its cue from a Manhattan restaurant they love. A custom arched window and a hand-painted mural carry that atmosphere. The ceiling is antiqued tin, chosen because the room needed something to make it feel authentic — the patina reads as though it has worn in over decades rather than months.

It is a real bar rather than a decorative one. The ceiling runs high, the floor is herringbone with an ebony border, and the window wall was built doubly thick so it could hold a recessed nook with industrial shelving for glassware. There is a beer fridge and a full workstation with a sink and storage behind the counter.

Lighting is the favorite part of any project here, and in this house it was treated as an architectural decision rather than a finishing one. The foyer fixture is wide rather than low, sized to the ceiling height — interesting without being formal, with the bulbs set between diffusers so the glow stays soft.

Mercury glass lanterns punctuate the long corridor, and they were one of the first things decided for the house. The stairwell needed fixtures that would visually fill a two-story volume and look as good from the street at night as from inside, so the cluster was positioned by inflating balloons and hanging them on string until the pattern was right. The electrician only had to follow it.

The rear façade is swathed in wood and brick like the front. The covered porch has no corner columns, which is what keeps the views open — the chimney carries the roof instead.

Beyond it are an outdoor kitchen, a fireplace with a television, teak dining under a cedar ceiling and stacked firewood held behind iron bars that echo the door trim. It is the part of the house the family uses most from May to October.