The Crown Aluminum Industries model house, Skillman, New Jersey | Architect Martin Engelbrecht | furnishings: Sears Roebuck

12/20/2025 08:51:00 AM

Minimum maintenance and maximum privacy are the outstanding assets of this small house in Skillman, N.J., designed with a young family in mind—a couple with a daughter in grade school and a son who is still a baby. Of wood frame construction, the house is sheathed in horizontal clapboard siding of aluminum, which is the key to its economical maintenance. The baked-on enamel finish will rarely need repainting and its freshness can be restored by simply hosing down the outside of the house. The roof, too, is aluminum so there is nothing to come loose or catch fire during a storm or to rot from dampness. Close-to-total privacy is afforded by the plan of the house — even in a built-up community, on a site with near neighbors on three sides and a street in front.

Both front and back walls are quite windowless except for glass gable ends, and the carport screens the entrance terrace. But floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors open to this terrace from the dining room on one side and from a bedroom on the other. Similar sliding doors open from the guest-study and the master bedroom to the covered terrace in the rear which is shielded from the neighbors’ view by a fence. The plan is also designed to save on the cost of installing utilities, for kitchen, bathrooms and heating-cooling systems are all consolidated in the center of the house. Laundry equipment is in a niche in the larger bathroom where it is wonderfully convenient to the nursery. The house was sponsored by Crown Aluminum Industries, with furnishings from Sears Roebuck.