Norrice Raymaker, a longtime homeowner in the Heights neighborhood of Jersey City, N.J., had cast an anxious eye on the once-dignified house on Beacon Avenue. When she walked by the three-story home back in 2017 and 2018, she admired its wraparound porch and vestiges of earlier landscaping.

But Ms. Raymaker, who was then a member of the local neighborhood association as well as president of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, a preservation group, worried its days were numbered.

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The newly refurbished house has been a longtime presence on its Jersey City street. Credit...StudioSZ/Justin Szeremeta

One historic house after another had already been demolished in the north-side neighborhood, only for property owners and developers to put up blocky buildings where Second Empire residences once stood. The new structures — set back from the street with living units over garages — were easily replicable by builders and derisively known as “Bayonne Boxes” in some quarters, a reference to the prefab form’s proliferation in nearby Bayonne during the post-World War II period.

The Beacon Avenue house stood on a double-wide lot, which, Ms. Raymaker knew, was particularly desirable for redevelopment. The house was vacant after an electrical fire. And the area is not one of Jersey City’s historic districts so there were fewer protections for older structures.

Ms. Raymaker was not the only area resident worried about the Beacon Avenue house: After the property changed hands and an architect, Behrang Behin, showed up at a meeting of her neighborhood group in 2018 to present a plan on behalf of the new owner, who just happened to be his older brother, Babak, someone in attendance asked: “You’re not going to knock down that nice, old mansion, are you?”

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