SOMA Living April 2023

MEET THE HILDEBRAND FAMILY

Photography by Jamie Meier

They share the same name and a fierce passion for raising their family in SOMA. But to get here, Lauren M. and Lauren A. Hildebrand took very different paths. Lauren A. is a third-generation Maplewoodian, a graduate of Columbia High School, and always recognized around town. Lauren M. moved around many times as a child. She was born in Minnesota and moved to Connecticut and Massachusetts before landing in New Jersey for high school and college. “I was accustomed to being the new kid and having to adapt,” she shares, “It shaped who I am today.” But that all changed when the two Laurens were introduced by a mutual friend in Hoboken almost 20 years ago. Lauren M. was right out of college, working in marketing at Conde Nast and heading toward a career in luxury fashion and advertising. “She was unlike anyone I’d ever met before; all charisma and confidence, yet with this really earnest yearning for ‘home’ that was apparent pretty quickly as I got to know her,” says Lauren A., who was in graduate school at NYU, working at US Green Building Council, and moonlighting as a bartender at her hometown pub (St. James Gate). “When I met Lauren, it was this quick and wonderful dose of terra firma,” Lauren M. said. At first, the couple lived in Hoboken and then rescued a dog and moved to Brooklyn. Their son Wesley was born in 2014. They’d regularly visit Lauren A.’s family in Maplewood, dog and baby in tow. Soon they realized they wanted a house with a yard. For Lauren A., SOMA was calling. But Lauren M. wanted to explore more options. They spent weeks looking in Montclair and SOMA, and lost out on five offers. When they walked into what would

57 Academy Street,

APRIL 2023 | SOMA LIVING 7

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