To Modernize or Not to Modernize? That Is the Question

Over the weekend, the New York Times took a look at brownstone owners who choose to modernize rather than restore their properties. This may be a bigger trend in Manhattan where there is more money to hire architects and make a statement than in Brooklyn, but here we have our champions of contemporary too. Most typically owners in Brooklyn “blow out” the rear of the building with glass walls that lighten the typically dark interiors, said the story, and modernize floor plans by eliminating walls and “opening up the space”  between formal rooms, halls, and kitchens, even if they leave facades intact. Above, the modernized exterior of artist David Salle’s two-building house and studio on the corner of Hanson Place and South Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, now on the market for $10 million.
The Brownstone Revisionists [NY Times]
Photo via PropertyShark