Bears Nest is an English style gated community owning 46 acres of land and is located in northern Bergen County, New Jersey. It was originally designed by noted architect Eleonore Pettersen, who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, the site plan incorporated respect for the landscape and a design aesthetic that is both unusually innovative and functional.
In 1985, architect Pettersen, created the first phase of 76 English village style townhomes in the midst of rolling hills and 100-years-old trees, which were largely preserved. The village atmosphere at Bears Nest is achieved, in part, by integrating into the hills, clusters of homes joined by curving streets and antique bronze lampposts, all within a spacious, natural woodland setting.
The architect Eleanore Pettersen’s patented design of ‘all-brick exterior’ using Autumn Smoke Brick won Bears Nest an award for his inventive and innovative use of masonry. The autumn Smoke is a brick that is used by the architect to design exterior of the houses in the Bears Nest. On entrance, one would experience the taste of English-village ambiance with copper lanterns at the unit entrances, the corbelled chimneys, and stone ram’s-head sculptures that covers many of the doorways. The indoors encompasses beautiful lights, fireplaces in the living rooms, whirlpools in the master baths, cathedral ceilings, skylights, and European-design cabinets. The community provides the decent combination of both historical and modern outlook that can be witnessed by anyone.