Walls That Talk

Interior designer Suzy Moran’s New Vernon manse brims with personal touches that illuminate her family's history, interests, and style.

Anybody can decorate a house,” says designer Suzy Moran. “People’s lives have to be portrayed in their homes. It’s not just about furniture; it’s about making a personal connection.”

A longtime admirer of English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and his famous 1911 neo-Georgian manor house, the Salutation in Kent, England, Moran hired Berkeley Heights architect Alexander A. Bol to create a smaller scale facsimile “modified for taste and efficiency” in elements like window style and size. The house took two years to construct. Moran, principal designer of Greenfield Grange in Morristown, put the time to good use. “I planned the decorating as the building progressed,” she says. The family brought things from their former home in Essex Fells, but all the new furniture and other furnishings were “selected, purchased, and in storage when construction was complete, so we were ready to move right in.” Along with the nine-room main house, there is a five-room carriage house and a five-room cottage “modeled after our first home, which was built in 1720.”

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