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The Insider: Working with Woodwork in Park Slope
Every Thursday at 11:30AM, The Insider takes an in-depth look at a recent design and/or renovation project in the borough of Brooklyn. The series is written and produced by Cara Greenberg, a longtime design journalist who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun and Profit.
WORKING AROUND elaborate woodwork in a Brooklyn brownstone can be a challenge. We prize 19th century houses for their original detail, but when we want to put a 21st century kitchen on the parlor floor, well, there’s no natural place for the Sub-Zero, the Viking, and the Bosch.
The owners of this c.1890 Park Slope brownstone, a triplex with a garden rental beneath, inherited a second-floor kitchen when they bought the house in 2001. They lived with it for a decade, spending most of their time on the two upper floors. “The parlor floor was a big, beautiful, underutilized space,” says Kimberly Neuhaus of Neuhaus Design Architecture (NDA), who was hired to create a new parlor-level kitchen and two new baths. The project, which also entailed updating plumbing and electrical throughout the house, was contracted to Manhattan-based Infinity Construction.
“Our goal was to keep every bit of detail we could,” says one of the homeowners. “Kimberly managed to incorporate and maintain almost all the original woodwork.”
Lots more, including ‘Before’ photos, after the jump.
Photos: Courtesy Neuhaus Design Architecture
01/26/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: 12-Footer in Lower Slope
The Insider is our weekly, in-depth look at what’s happening on Brooklyn’s interior design and renovation front, written and produced by journalist/blogger Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
TWELVE FEET SIX INCHES, to be exact. The narrow townhouse on the fringe of Park Slope stands alone, sole survivor of an original pair. “They were probably built in the 1880s or ‘90s by a developer who wanted to maximize income on a 25-foot lot,” says Manhattan-based architect Tim Rasic, who bought the skinny singleton in 2005 and made it work for himself, his wife Lisa, and the two little ones who arrived soon after.
It was a full-on interior and exterior renovation. “There had been only two owners before us, each of whom had the house for about fifty years,” Rasic says. “And they hadn’t done any work in the last fifty.” The big job included a new brownstone façade, all-new electric (the existing wiring was the very old braided type), removal of an outside toilet in a lean-to off the back wall, and chipping away concrete in the backyard to reveal old bluestone.
The serene, sun-filled interior plays off opposites — traditional and modern, rough and refined. Furnishings are a down-to-earth mix of passed-down family pieces, locally sourced vintage items, modern Italian lighting, and good old IKEA.
Photos: House/Alick Crossley Garden/Elizabeth Dooley
Much more, including the lush garden and a complete list of contractors, after the jump.
01/12/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Over-the-Top Mansion in Clinton Hill
The Insider is Brownstoner’s in-depth look at what’s happening in interior design and renovation in Brooklyn. Written and produced by design journalist/blogger Cara Greenberg, you can find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
YES, BROWNSTONER READERS, you may well have seen (and discussed) this exceptional house before. Known as the Pfizer mansion, it was a House of the Day here as far back as February 2006. It sold in 2007 to Jessica and Doug Warren, who lived there with their two teenagers through the three-year renovation that followed. At one point, says Jessica Warren, “We were camping on the top floor and cooking in an electric frying pan.”
The scary befores have been published, as have photos of the work in progress, and even turn-of-the-century documents unearthed during the reno. You may even have been in the house when it was on the Clinton Hill House Tour last spring. So what’s left for The Insider to bring to the table? New interior photos, showing previously unpublished areas and details; specifics of the mostly contemporary furnishings; floor plans, sections, and elevations by Neuhaus Design Architecture (NDA), including the new kitchen addition at the rear of the parlor floor, inspired by a long-gone, apse-shaped, glass-and-steel Victorian conservatory.
To re-cap, the 25-foot-wide, 10,000-square-foot Queen Anne mansion was built in 1887 as a private residence and later used by the Brooklyn Public Library, a Catholic girls’ school, and eventually a recording studio of sorts, with rooms rented out to Pratt students. “The roof leaked, the skylights were tar-papered over, and downspouts were shooting water to nowhere, but the grander spaces were intact,” recalls architect Kimberly Neuhaus of NDA, which brought the forlorn building back to its elegant origins, figuring out how to install all new mechanicals without interfering with the existing detail. NDA also designed the spectacular new kitchen addition, new bathrooms, and a new curving staircase. The construction manager/contractor was Brooklyn-based Interior Alterations, Inc.
The furnishings, a mostly modern mix ranging from thrift-shop finds to pedigreed auction material, are the work of homeowner Jessica Warren, who launched an interior design business, JP Warren Interiors, six months ago (she’s also an inveterate eBay shopper). “The tension between old and new benefits both of them,” she says, “and the simplicity of the modern furniture allows you to see how ornate the house really is.” One reason modern furniture is surprisingly sympathetic in a 19th century house with a 105-foot-long parlor floor may be, as Warren points out, “The long sight lines are like modern spaces.”
Above: The elaborate floor borders in the front parlor are “a re-creation of what was originally there,” says Neuhaus. “The field is original, but the ornate scroll work was too thin to be salvaged.”
Photos: Peter Margonelli / Carl Bellavia
Drawings Courtesy Neuhaus Design Architecture
More after the jump. (more…)
01/05/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Kitchen Extension in Brooklyn Heights
The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly look at renovation and interior design in Brooklyn, is written and produced by Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30.
THE IMPRESSIVE DUTCH REVIVAL row house in Brooklyn Heights, with its stepped gable and bronze plaque reading c.1820, was once home to the prolific Brooklyn architect William Tubby (1858-1944). Renowned in particular for his Clinton Hill mansions, Tubby purchased the house as his private residence and lived there for decades, adding stained glass panels and other interior detail along the way.
Above: Sliding pocket doors between the dining room and new kitchen extension were designed to complement original leaded glass elsewhere in the house.
By the 21st century, parts of the house drastically needed improvement. “There was a small extension out the back with a tiny galley kitchen,” says Gitta Robinson of Robinson + Grisaru Architecture, the husband-and-wife team hired to create a much larger kitchen and turn part of the basement into usable space for a family of four. Working with contractor Robert Taffera, R+G demolished the existing addition and put a new two-story extension across the 25-foot width of the rear wall. “It’s in a landmark district and visible from a side street,” Robinson says. “We had to go through a lengthy review process. The community board rejected it as too modern, but Landmarks liked the design and approved it.”
The new design makes use of a steel window system with thin metal sections. Some of the windows are fixed. Others are awning-style, pivoting out for ventilation. The rear half of the basement was excavated to gain more ceiling height (there’s a guest room at the front of the building and mechanicals in the center), and the backyard dug out about six feet from the rear wall to create a well.
Photos: Melanie Acevedo
Lots more after the jump.
12/29/2011 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Shipshape Kitchen in Brooklyn Heights
The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly coverage of interior design and renovation in the borough of Brooklyn, is produced and written by journalist/blogger Cara Greenberg. Find it here Thursdays at 11:30.
“It started with the stove,” says North Fork, L.I.-based designer Kate Altman, who recently transformed an “impossibly bad” ’70s galley kitchen in a brownstone floor-through for a professional couple and their 11-year-old daughter. It’s now a warm, appealing, functional space with a couple of showstopping features: the lipstick-red Italian range and a custom porcelain backsplash inspired by antique Chinese patterns but whimsically including the Brooklyn Bridge.
The old kitchen was so narrow the fridge didn’t fully open; the work counter was 12″ deep. Altman bumped out a wall to enlarge the room, stealing a few feet from the adjacent dining area. Now there are wraparound CaesarStone counters and custom-built, floor-to-ceiling cabinets.”We quadrupled the storage,” says Altman. “Every square inch is used. It’s tight as a ship.” Scott Solfrian, an architect and owner of BLDG, served as general contractor.
In the early ’90s, Altman owned a beloved Park Slope fabric store, Sewing Circle. Her newest venture is Altman’s North Fork Home in Cutchogue, L.I., a mini-emporium of all things sewing and needlework, along with a selection of decorative and useful household items and gifts.
Photo: BLDG
Details and more photos on the jump. (more…)
11/17/2011 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Total Gut Reno in Brooklyn Heights
The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly look at renovation and interior design in the borough of Brooklyn, is produced and written by Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30.
The brick row house on State Street had been the victim of the same ignominious treatment that befell so many stately 19th century row houses in the 20th. The 22′x40′ building had been transformed from a luxurious single-family residence into four floor-through apartments, and in the process, its stoop was torn off; its elegant parlor windows were shortened; and all interior detail was stripped.
By the time the current owners bought the building in 2008, intending to turn it back into a one-family home for themselves and their two young daughters, it was little more than a tenement. There was nothing for it but to demolish down to the brick shell and re-build.
“It was a total gut renovation,” says Hope Dana of Platt Dana Architects, the team called in to design and oversee what became a two-year project. “Everything is brand new – floor joists, floors, walls, stairs, moldings, paneling, doors. Not one thing that’s there now was there before.” The house now has a kitchen and family room on the garden level; a living room and dining room on the parlor floor; a master suite on the second floor; three bedrooms on the third floor; and two bedrooms, a playroom and a laundry room in a converted attic space. There are three full baths and two powder rooms. Platt Dana also restored the stoop, lengthened the parlor windows, and put in all new mechanicals, including radiant floor heat.
The interiors are the work of Manhattan-based designer Marie-Christine Kresse. “I wanted to give them a clean, modern family home,” she says, “incorporating their existing mid-century pieces with contemporary.”
Interior Photos: Paul Draine
More pictures and details on the jump.
11/10/2011 11:30 AM
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The Insider: All the Details in Bed-Stuy
The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly peek at how Brooklynites renovate and decorate their homes, is written and produced by Cara Greenberg.
Asked to describe her decorating style, the owner of this detail-laden 1890s row house shot back: “Mom, Dad, and Grandma.” By the time she and her husband bought the building in March 2009 and spent half again as much restoring its fine woodwork, plasterwork, stained glass, and other details — not to mention all-new mechanicals, windows, and a roof — there was little left over for furnishing. No matter: both come from families possessed of taste and generosity.
Her dad was an architect with a fondness for 20th century modern; his was a historian and antique collector. Much of their parents’ and grandparents’ bounty landed here, following the couple — she’s a graphic designer, he owns a wine store in Manhattan — from their Carroll Gardens rental, where they lived before embarking on the year-long quest that led to this lovely block just outside the Stuyvesant Heights historic district.
A legal two-family being used as a four when they bought it, it is now a single-family residence with a home office on the ground floor and a triplex above. They demolished existing kitchens and baths and re-purposed those spaces, installed two-and-a-half new baths and a new kitchen, and removed walls to create a building-wide master bedroom and a charming, garret-like office/library upstairs.
The most laborious task was stripping “many, many layers of shellac and paint” off the outstanding late-Victorian woodwork throughout the house, including an over-the-top carved oak staircase in the entry hall, as well as mirrors, moldings, doors, and fireplace mantels.
A resource list of tradespeople appears at the end of this post.
Two dozen more photos on the jump…
Photos: Cara Greenberg
11/03/2011 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Clinton Hill Classic in Modern Dress
The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly look at how Brooklynites are renovating and decorating their homes, is written and produced by Cara Greenberg, a veteran design journalist and proud Brooklyn resident.
Hard as it may be to believe, ten years ago this immaculate 1873 brownstone on one of Clinton Hill’s most elegant blocks was chopped into six SRO [single room occupancy] units, sharing four kitchens between them. Its wood floors were so grimy no one knew they were parquet. Its imposing arched entry door had cardboard panes instead of glass. The sky was visible through holes in the top-floor ceiling.
When the current owners — a couple with two teenagers, who live on three of the four floors and rent out the garden level — bought the building in 2001 and embarked on a renovation, the house more than met them halfway. Behind the jerry-rigged kitchens, original detail lurked. The plaster crown moldings and hefty stair balusters were all there — in need of repair, but basically intact. Seven marble fireplace mantels remained. In the basement, they found all the house’s original panel doors. With the help of a master carpenter, plasterers, and other tradespeople, they put it all back together again.
The eclectic furnishings, strong on 20th century modernism, demonstrate how sympathetically clean-lined modern design can work against the more ornate splendors of 19th century row house architecture. Turkish rugs, African artifacts, found objects, and contemporary artworks round out the decor, making for a unique and lively mix.
Lots more photos and details on the jump.
Photos: Cara Greenberg
10/27/2011 11:30 AM
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Report on ‘Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn’
Regular Brownstoner reader/commenter Mopar filed this report about yesterday’s panel discussion on gentrification in Brooklyn emceed by Suleiman Osman, author of the new book “The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York”:
Tuesday night’s panel on “The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Race and Gentrification in South Brooklyn” at the Museum of the City of the New York focused on Brooklyn’s former slums where brownstones now sell for $2 million and up.
“For me, the Park Slope of 2011 is a limousine parked in front of a public school, said “Prospect Park West” author Amy Sohn, explaining that just that day she had seen one parked outside PS 321 waiting for a parent. “I feel the book [Osman's] is about my life. I came from Mitchell-Lama housing and now we live across from [actor] John Turturro.”
Was the brownstoning movement of the 1960s and 1970s a success? It depends on who you ask. Author of “The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York” Suleiman Osman, who grew up in Park Slope and is a professor of American Studies at George Washington University, did not pick a side.
“If it’s about increasing real estate values, then it’s been very successful,” said Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Coalition. “If it’s about the urban ideal of diversity, then it’s failed miserably. We need public policy with equity and justice at the forefront to achieve that urban ideal we were all attracted to and decided to stay in New York for.” (more…)
03/16/2011 4:00 PM
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MacDonough Street: The Grand Tour
We heard that about 40 people attended Christopher Gray’s one-hour walking tour of MacDonough Street in Stuyvesant Heights yesterday morning. If you missed it, you can still retrace his footsteps via his Streetscapes piece in the New York Times. Gray leads us down the four-block stretch from “1860s villa-style mansions to 1890s mass-produced brownstones.” Architecturally speaking, he writes, “The two groups from Nos. 323 to 333 are nothing special, except that excavation work at 329 caused the Department of Buildings to order it and No. 331 demolished in January, alarming neighborhood groups.” (As our own Montrose Morris wrote a couple of weeks ago, the homeowners, the community, the Landmarks Conservancy, and the HDC came together to do some emergency stabilization work to save the buildings. They may not be the prettiest facades on the block, but they are real people’s homes.) Gray also points out his favorites: “No. 160, with deeply weathered oak doors and mottled plant growth on the stonework, shows why the Restoration Hardware school of repro-history can be so unsatisfying — you cannot buy real age.”
An Architectural Encyclopedia [NY Times]
MacDonough St. Houses Report [Brownstoner]
Update on MacDonough Street [Brownstoner]
Salvation on MacDonough Street? [Brownstoner]
Stay of Execution on MacDonough Street [Brownstoner]
MacDonough Street Update [Brownstoner]
Wall Collapse, Vacate Order for Bed Stuy Houses [Brownstoner]
03/01/2010 8:58 AM
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Owner Takes Park Slope’s Pink House Off Market
Local media were abuzz recently when Park Slope’s hard-to-miss pink brownstone on Garfield Place went on the market for nearly $2.3 million, but The Brooklyn Paper reported yesterday that Heights Berkeley Realty, the firm selling the house, took the property off the market due to legal complications. The grandson of owner Bernie Henry, who painted the house bright pink in the 1960s, “is under investigation for forging key documents that have put a cloud over who has legal ownership of the building,” according to the Paper. As for the ostentatious color of the home, the article mentions that of course a buyer could repaint it, but one local resident commented: “It’s like anything else in life: at first, you hate it because it’s new. But then you come to love it. And then you don’t want it to ever change.”
Famed Pink House Pulled Off Market in Legal Dispute [Brooklyn Paper]
Park Slope’s Pink House 4 Sale [Gothamist]
Photo by Karen Bonna Rainert
10/16/2009 10:00 AM
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Dumping on Vanderbilt Avenue
The Local brings us the bizarre story of the vacant building at 384 Vanderbilt: yesterday afternoon, a swath of garbage and debris lined the avenue between Gates and Greene, where construction workers had been cleaning out the building. It turns out that the waste, which caused damage to at least one of the cars lining the street, was the result of a $900 dispute between the workers and a contractor hired to remove the waste. But the refuse lining the street wasn’t the only stinky aspect of the work at 384 Vanderbilt: one resident and one employee of the neighboring Brooklyn Veterinary Hospital pointed out that the people behind 384 Vanderbilt have been running renting fraud schemes and are currently developing 384 in violation of landmark regulations. Luz Santiago, the Brooklyn Vet employee, said: There was a hustle there. That’s a ten-dollar job on a three-million-dollar brownstone. Even if you hustle, you gotta do things proper. GMAP
The Day: Dumped [The Local, NYT]
Photo by Matt Lieber/The Local
09/03/2009 10:29 AM
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Ben & Jerry’s Milks Brownstone Lust in New Ads
We can’t quite pinpoint why, but for some reason these Ben & Jerry’s ads that have been popping up all over town hold a certain appeal for us…
06/22/2009 10:45 AM
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Closing Bell: Brownstone Voyeur
Brownstone Voyeur is a new joint project from casaCARA and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. The project will be a regular Thursday series that will take you behind those pretty Brooklyn facades to see what’s inside. First up, a classic modern in Cobble Hill.
03/05/2009 4:00 PM
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Brownstone Interior Destroyed Modernized by Artist Couple
We had mixed emotions reading the Times Real Estate story this weekend about the older artist couple who financed the purchase of a Stuyvesant Heights brownstone four years ago by selling a Basquiat that one of them had picked up for $100 back in the Eighties. (Anyone know what block this is?) Aren’t there enough brownstones that have already been stripped of their original detail that someone wanting to create a modern space could avoid destroying yet another piece of history? Yes, these folks were considerate enough to call in a salvage company to save the architectural artifacts, but it’s still a bummer. And how about all that tree-cutting? What a soap opera! Update: Okay, it’s sounding like the Times article might have overstated how salvageable the interiors of this place were, so it’s looking like we came down a little too hard on these folks. Apologies.
Bankrolled by a Basquiat [NY Times]
Photo by Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times
12/22/2008 9:00 AM
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Unprotected Sunset Park Being Destroyed Bit by Bit
The website Cititour has an advocacy post about the destruction of brownstones in Sunset Park. The item focuses on the house above, on 54th Street and 6th Avenue, part of “a row of turn-of-the-century brownstones with stained glass windows and fireplaces [that] are being destroyed bit by bit.” The blog writer argues:
Witnessing this destruction should make the case for giving the area landmark status before it’s too late. The neighborhood has been seeing an all-out assault on row houses in recent months as real estate prices remain fairly high. Some are being torn down to make room for condos, others are having additional floors added, and still other two-family homes are being converted into 4-families, again with the city’s blessing, and a total disregard to the neighborhood. It’s a crying shame.
While we don’t doubt that new construction in Sunset Park is felling older buildings, we’re unaware of whether there is an organized movement afoot to landmark the area. Can Sunset Park readers fill us in?
A Brownstone Dies In Brooklyn [Cititour]
Photos from Cititour.
04/23/2008 10:00 AM
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It’s Almost House Tour Time
Birds chirping, daffodils budding…home and garden tours, on the horizon! Nine house and garden tours have been scheduled for the coming months. First up is the Fort Greene House Tour, which’ll take place on Sunday, May 4th; the following weekend the Brooklyn Heights House Tour will happen, followed by the Park Slope Civic Council House Tour on May 18th. After that, there are tours scheduled through the beginning of fall for Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Boerum Hill, Victorian Flatbush, Crown Heights North, and Bed-Stuy. A full listing with info on which organizations to contact for more info is on the jump. (more…)
04/02/2008 2:30 PM
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Brooklyn Brownstones Stay All in the Family
This morning The Observer reports on how many kids who grew up in houses in the Brownstone Belt are, as adults, moving back in with mom and dad. The trend is seen as having a lot to do with brownstone neighborhoods now being hip and yet frequently unaffordable for recent grads who might otherwise make a go of it alone:
All the graduates interviewed for this story agreed that living on your own in New York City was possible, especially if you had a well-paying corporate job. But for those who hope to someday own property in the areas where they grew up, or to make a career in a less lucrative field, living with your parents makes a certain kind of sense; you can’t afford not to.
The bigger question, maybe, is how much more prevalent this phenomenon is in brownstone areas (which often have bigger houses than in other parts of the city) than it is in other NYC neighborhoods or even the U.S. as a whole. Could this just be part of a larger cultural shift in which more kids are coming back home post-college, or is it indeed more common in brownstone Brooklyn?
Full Brownstone Nests) [NY Observer]
Photo from Orchard Lake.
03/26/2008 11:05 AM
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Living in a Cobble Hill Townhouse/Time Capsule
Talk about old-school. According to the cover story in this weekend’s City section, the house at 312 Clinton Street in Cobble Hill has been in the same family for five generations, and it’s filled with mementos (“collections of bottled fainting remedies, thigh-high men’s socks, and mint-green sales slips for coal”) and obsolete appliances, like an Easy brand washing machine built around 1940. The house was purchased in 1866 by the great-great-great-grandmother of its current resident, Nora Geraghty. Geraghty says the house’s collection of antiques and lack of some modern amenities have occasionally made her feel like she couldn’t “live a modern, normal life,” but that the way it connects her to her family’s past ultimately justifies the clutter and lack of some mod cons. The way I feel about my great-great-grandmother, says Geraghty, my great-great-grandchildren will feel about me, unless New York is gone by the time they’re born. Because in a thousand years, this place will never be sold. Are there readers who have been living in the same house as their ancestors and can relate to Geraghty’s reluctance to change her property?
The Ghosts of Clinton Street [NY Times]
Photo of 312 Clinton by Kate Leonova for Property Shark.
12/17/2007 8:57 AM
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Why Townhouses Are Priced at a Discount
Between 1997 and 2006, townhouses in Manhattan appreciated at a slightly slower rate than condominiums, according to Radar Logic. The reason, according to The New York Times, is basically that a house is a hell of a lot more work than an apartment.
You hate when you come home from a trip with a lot of luggage and have to drag it up the stairs, or you’re in a huge hurry to leave and you have to run back up to the third or fourth floor dressed up in high-heeled shoes because you’ve forgotten something, said Barbara Fox, president of Fox Residential Group, who lived for two decades with her husband, James Freund, in a 7,000-square-foot town house on West 73rd Street near Central Park. And you hate when you have to have repairs because there’s always got to be somebody there to answer the door.
So, townhouse dwellers, what are your greatest gripes about non-doormaned, vertical living?
Town House Living: The Untold Story [NY Times]
Photo by Littlekim
12/10/2007 9:31 AM
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brenda-from-flatbush
Feb 09, 2012 | 11:02 AM