A New Jersey Home With a Postmodern Past Is Covered in Head-Turning Tile

One evening in spring 2016, David Mostafavi was scrolling through Zillow when he came across a charming cedar-shingle house in Princeton, New Jersey. He and his wife, Rachel, were living 20 miles northeast in a rental in Edison, where they had hoped to buy their first home. The location split the difference, commute-wise, between his job at aStaten Island, New York, ophthalmology practice and hers at a Princeton charter school, where she taught French. But nothing had stood out to them, David says. "In Edison, the houses are all the same size and feel. There really wasn’t anything aesthetically pleasing about living in that type of developer house."