When Becky and David Middleton, both 41, needed more space for their family of four children, ages 6 to 11, they moved just 10 blocks, paying $840,000 last April for an 1887 Victorian farmhouse with five bedrooms in Glen Ridge, N.J. A kitchen and bathroom renovation is underway. They have lived for 16 years in the 1.5-square-mile Essex County borough of around 7,500 with vintage homes and gaslit streets, wedged between the busier suburbs of Montclair and Bloomfield, and bordering the city of East Orange to the south.
