Milton Gilbert House

Most of the houses built in Alpine these days are tacky, boring, and oversized. It wasn't always that way though. The residences built in the '60s and '70s often blended into their wooded surroundings, using natural materials often found on site. The plastic homes built today utilize the maximum square footage allowed while clear cutting and leveling the property, making an eyesore of a once lovely boro. A few older homes skirt the line of opulence and passivity. 11 Autumn Terrace was the best of the best. 

The Milton Gilbert House was a 12,600 sq. ft. mansion built in 1976 on 4 acres of land at the highest point in Alpine. 

Chicago born architect Norman Jaffe designed the home in a style uniquely his own. Jaffe was renowned for his innovative designs, most of which were out in the Hamptons on Long Island. 

The home had all the flourishes one would hope to see in a Jaffe design. Large windows stretched from the floor to the ceiling, which was also pierced by skylights. The natural light perfectly complimented the earthy finishes of the interior. 

Exposed natural stone walls rose from the white oak foors to support a ceiling made of clear tongue-and-groove cedar boards. Clear cedar is far more expensive than the knotty stuff, but no expense was spared for this home.

A large indoor pool took up a chunk of the north wing of the house. It was surrounded by a deck made of California Redwood and capped with the same clear cedar that ran throughout most of the home. Of course, a skylight allowed natural light to envelop the space. 

Although the Gilbert House was the first project to being Jaffe to Alpine he was commissioned to design four other projects in the small town over the next decade. Only one of these commissions was ever confirmed to have been built, the Karram House at 15 Marie Major Drive. 

The Gilberts left the home around 2003. It was then sold to a company called Canfield Enterprises. It was occupied for another decade before ultimately ending up vacant. 

A particularly annoying and amoral sub-sect of urban explorers, derisively known as "clout-bexers" developed a real fondness for extravagant vacant mansions around the time the covid pandemic was raging. These clowns unfortunately found and began trading the house around to each other so they could get attention on Tik Tok and YouTube. This caused a ton of massive wave of vandals to sweep the building. The home was systematically destroyed over the course of just a few years as people smashed windows and left the doors to the house wide open. 

The mansion was sold again in 2022 to 11 Autumn LLC, this time for twelve million dollars. The new buyers decided the home was a total loss and needed to be demolished. Fortunately the property changed hands again in 2025 before anything happened to the home. The new owner added solar powered cameras to the property to put an end to the trespassing and vandalism.

Unfortunately the new security features were just prolonging the inevitable. The home got caught up in a wave of demolition that took out the Frick Mansion, 6 Charney, even 14 Autumn across the street. The Gilbert home was the last of this spate to come down in June of 2026. 

There will never be another home like the Gilbert House, especially not in Alpine. I would contend the loss of the home is the most significant unnecessary architectural loss the state has seen in 2026. I dread finding out what the next big loss will be.