Behin Ha completes trio of townhouse ADUs on a single Jersey City lot behind a preserved 150-year-old house

The New York architecture studio Behin Ha has completed three two-bedroom townhouses on a single 5,000-square-foot lot in Jersey City’s Heights neighborhood, positioned behind a restored house that is roughly 150 years old. The project, finished in December 2025, adds density without demolition by working within the existing block’s scale and the city’s historic preservation rules.

The site at 11 Beacon Avenue was originally occupied by a fire-damaged single-family house that had been subdivided into two apartments over the years. Behin Ha’s founding partners Behrang Behin and Ann Ha took an approach that preserved the original structure rather than removing it.

Key facts
| Item | Detail |
|——|——–|
| Location | 11 Beacon Avenue, Jersey City Heights, New Jersey |
| Completed | December 2025 |
| Program | Three two-bedroom townhouses (ADUs) + restored single-family house |
| Lot size | 5,000 square feet |
| Architect | Behin Ha (Behrang Behin and Ann Ha) |

Preservation as a starting point

The owner, Behrang Behin’s brother Babak, initially planned to demolish the old house and replace it with a four-story, nine-unit rental building. But Jersey City zoning rules require permission from the city’s historic office before demolishing any structure more than 150 years old. Behin searched the local library for documentation of the house’s age; the oldest map he found placed it at roughly 140 years. “We couldn’t prove it either way,” he said. The historic office never issued a decision on the demolition request.

Meanwhile, across the Heights neighborhood, older houses were being replaced by three-story rentals with a garage below and two apartments above, which locals call “Bayonne boxes.” Behin described them as “urbanistically not great.” The neighborhood had grown wary of such replacements.

Rather than press for demolition, the brothers kept the house in place. They stripped later rear additions back to the original footprint and returned it to a single-family home. That freed the rear of the lot for the three new townhouses.

A “hyper-ADU” approach

Behin Ha describes the project as a “hyper-ADU” — not three separate backyard apartments but one supersized accessory dwelling split into three townhouses. A standard ADU in Jersey City is capped at 650 square feet; each of these townhouses runs about 2,000 square feet. The structures are wood-framed under the International Residential Code, with units separated by shaft-wall assemblies. Behin said the framing kept costs down and matched the pitched-roof, wood-frame vernacular of the surrounding blocks.

The studio’s original scheme placed the townhouses close to the restored house to preserve an 18-foot rear yard and limit the variance requested. The neighborhood association instead proposed pulling the new structure back to give the historic house more room and submitted a letter supporting that change. The architects then pushed the townhouses to the rear of the lot, three feet from a taller building behind. That opened a wide gap in front, between the new townhouses and the restored house.

Light from above and a private courtyard

Boxed in on every other side, the units take their daylight from that front gap. Most glazing and main living spaces face that gap, while smaller windows line stairs and hallways at the rear. To optimize natural light despite tight quarters, Behin Ha treated the roof as a “fifth facade.” Clerestory windows set beneath a row of cusped, pitched peaks bring daylight down the central stair shaft and into top-floor rooms. “These clerestories help to bring light both into the hallway shaft that goes down, but also the top bedroom and bathroom,” Behin said.

At ground level, each unit opens through floor-to-ceiling glass onto a private courtyard enclosed by western red cedar fencing, with an interior entry foyer alongside it. The courtyards give first-floor living spaces daylight and a view without requiring shades, and a connection to the outdoors on a lot with neighbors only feet away. According to Behin, the arrangement was meant to give residents “a sense that you’re connected to the exterior.”

The pitched roof forms also break the rear elevation into a rhythm of individual peaks, relating the multi-unit structure to the scale of neighboring houses. The exterior is clad in fiber cement board in iron gray with a black standing-seam metal roof. Interiors pair polished concrete floors on the ground level with red oak above and white ash veneer millwork.

What this means for infill housing

Preservation and growth are usually framed as a choice: build or preserve, grow or retain character. With these townhouses, Behin Ha achieves both on a single lot — the old house was kept, and three homes were added. And it was done by working with the neighborhood instead of around it. That is the part worth copying, Behin said. “This is the agenda that the project demands of us.”

For architects, planners and developers working in tight urban infill sites, the project demonstrates one way to add density while respecting existing building stock and community concerns. The use of clerestory windows and a front gap to pull daylight into narrow units offers a replicable strategy for similar constrained lots in older neighborhoods.

Source: The Architect’s Newspaper — https://www.archpaper.com/2026/08/behin-ha-jersey-city-townhouse-adus/

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