Batten down the hatches, the modern renovators are coming! According to the NY Post this weekend, there’s a whole new generation of people buying and renovating townhouses with less concern for the past than the future. Like many articles that strain to identify a trend, we think this probably overstates the case. What you are seeing more of (which the article also points out), in our opinion, is a more eclectic mixing of traditional and modern when it comes to the interior decoration of these places, which we’re all for. (In our living room, for example, we’ve got a glass DWR coffee table next to a Biedermeier sofa.) “More than strictly modern, many have achieved an interesting balance between old and new,” Katherine Dykstra writes. We still think it’s a small (thankfully) minority who buy a house with historic architectural details and rip them out to go modern, though the couple in the article who bought the Harlem townhouse appears to be just such an example. We suspect, however, that when it comes time to sell, they’ll be ruing the day they opted for exposed brick walls and a modern cement fireplace.
Funky Townhouses [NY Post]