North Jersey 1912 mansion once home to pioneering woman politician, listed for $7.5M

Once owned by one of New Jersey's pioneering female legislators, a 110-year-old brick mansion in the hills of Montclair is every bit a modern mansion.

Recently fully renovated, 88 South Mountain Ave., in Montclair boasts eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms and a massive indoor pool and spa. The home has been listed for $7.5 million, by Sam Joseph, the listing agent with Prominent Properties Sotheby's International Realty.

The home's history dates to early 1912, when Kate A. Bennett bought the property, essentially in her backyard, which was then owned by Peter J. Carey of 26 West 85th St. in New York City. On it sat a towered Victorian-era summer estate.

Boasting three floors covered with a fieldstone and brick facade, Carey's part-time home was far from a shack, but apparently not up to Bennett's standards. After buying the property, Bennett teamed with the popular local real estate development firm of F. M. Crawley & Bros. and had Carey's home torn down to make way for a new Colonial Revival manor, Daybreak.

The first floor boasts 11-foot ceilings, a sprawling kitchen with ceramic brick tiles and a formal dining room that seats 16. Tacked on the rear is a modern two-story addition with an indoor pool and deck-side kitchen space. Behind the home sits a four-car garage and living quarters added in 1929 by former owner Arthur H. Bryant, according to an August 1929 report in The Montclair Times.

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Though substantial in its own right, Daybreak is essentially the little brother of 99 Lloyd Road. Built in 1909 for the then massive cost of $30,000, that mansion was once owned by Pro Football Hall of Famer Michael Strahan. Its first owners were Bennett and her husband Edwin H. Bennett, the president of the Babcock-Wilson Manufacturing Company and the general superintendent and treasurer of the Singer Manufacturing Company. He died in February 1912 from pneumonia in Berlin, leaving Bennett the home on Lloyd Road among other assets.

Her creation, Daybreak, features expansive bedrooms that generally come paired with proportionally large bathrooms. In fact, most of the rooms are outsized. Even the grand entry staircase's landing is large enough to comfortably hold a grand piano.

Daybreak was put on the auction block in the fall of 1942, when Clarence J. Hand and his wife, former state Assemblywoman Constance W. Hand, bought it for their summer home. Constance Hand spent six terms in the New Jersey General Assembly at a time when just a handful of women were representing major parties in the statehouse, according to records kept by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Raised in East Orange, Hand attended East Orange High School and Vassar College before furthering her studies at Drake Secretarial School and becoming a law clerk. She married in 1917 and nine years later became Justice of the Peace in Orange, a post she held for five years.

Hand's political journey saw her elected to the New Jersey State Assembly as a Republican in 1934 and 1935. Despite a setback in 1936, she reclaimed her seat in 1937 and continued to hold it through successful re-election campaigns in 1938, 1939 and 1940. During her run in Trenton, Hand was involved in the creation of some of New Jersey's complex and contentious liquor laws, school teacher regulations and women's rights statutes.

She fought for equal rights for married teachers, who were often discriminated against in favor of unmarried women. She also introduced bills to repeal state laws that excluded women from the minimum wage law and prohibited women from working between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m. in bakeries, restaurants, factories and laundries. Effective the previous year, the controversial "no night work for women" law was meant to keep women from purportedly unhealthy work, but did not extend to jobs in canneries, glass factories and hotel restaurants.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: North Jersey 1912 brick mansion hits the market for $7.5 million