Kitchen in front parlor?
I have just purchased a landmarked PS brownstone which needs a major reno. We are planning on creating a upper triplex with garden level rental. After great debate, we are leaning heavily towards putting the kitchen for the triplex in the front parlor. Has anyone ever seen that before? Thoughts? Will landmarks object? Help.
I have just purchased a landmarked PS brownstone which needs a major reno. We are planning on creating a upper triplex with garden level rental. After great debate, we are leaning heavily towards putting the kitchen for the triplex in the front parlor. Has anyone ever seen that before? Thoughts? Will landmarks object? Help.
We put the kitchen in our front parlor (actually about 2/3 of the front parlor) and we love it–it’s a great move if you want a large kitchen. Yes, from the outside you can see it’s a kitchen, but we have curtains. We also get tremendous light, which is great.
We still have a hall off the kitchen from the front door, so you don’t walk right into the kitchen from the front. Beyond the kitchen, we have a small formal dining room (1/3 of the original parlor), and our living room is across the back of the house. I love having a nice, rectangular living room that leads to our deck rather than the typical very-hard-to-work- with long skinny parlor that’s challenging to arrange furniture in–inevitably there’s wasted space and/or small seating areas.
In our gut reno we were also able to add a powder room and a coat closet. I love our layout and would highly recommend it.
If you want more info, feel free to send me an e-mail, and good luck!
We have a kitchen in the front parlor of our brownstone and it works well. A lot depends on the width of your house (our’s is 18″). Our kitchen was the “music room” originally and has beautiful pocket doors which face outward to the public stairway and sheetrock inside (we have the bottom 3 floors and 2 apts. above us). It creates a galley kitchen — very standard design. The one complaint I have is that when the refrigerator door (a 30″ sub zero, I think) is open, it is hard to get by and creates a bottleneck. We have a round table by the front windows and it is very nice to be able to look out at the street. We also have the original wooden shutters for privacy when we want it. We end up spending a lot of family time in there and it works well for us. I’ve seen lots of brownstones with this configeration. Landmarks, who approved the plans, didn’t care at all about how we set up the inside of the house.
thanks for your input. as for an assault or flow or entrance, we will be keeping the wall which forms the hall next to the stairs thus allowing those who enter to focus on the rear parlor and not an assaulting kitchen. these are all good thoughts though I find it interesting that so many people feel it shouldn’t be done. it seems to me to be a great use of space as opposed to a long skinny parlor which was much more usefull to original owners who had the luxery of all 4 floors and a very different more formal lifestyle. to each their own but I enjoy reading and thinking about these varrying povs
I’ve seen a few projects (but designed none myself) with the kitchen in some other place than the back on a parlor floor. Never seen it in the front of the parlor, but have seen it in the middle as you’re envisioning.
LPC won’t object unless you put something that blocks the sightlines from the street (e.g., you put a soffit lower than an existing window) — not a problem if the kitchen’s in the middle.
In the projects I’ve seen, the kitchen in the middle can work if a) the kitchen is basically open to both the back living room and the front dining room, and b) there remains another way to get from the entrance to the back living room (i.e., you keep the hall next to the stairs) and c) the entry foyer is screened from the kitchen (perhaps with an entry closet). Such a kitchen is probably a galley with an L shape counter/breakfast bar between the living room and the kitchen proper.
I would definitely explore other options before committing to this.
–an architect in Brooklyn
Have you thought about removing that wall in the entrance hall by the stairs? I have seen this done in very narrow brownstones and it really opens up the livingroom and makes it inviting. That wall is usually a supporting wall but your architect wiould know how to reinforce it.
I had a friend (architect) who had the kitchen in the middle of an open parlor floor – it seemed awkward to walk from the front to back thru the kitchen but as she was an architect and had great taste it was beautiful. BTW the kitchen was on the long parallel walls, not perpendicular with low counters as a peninsula – that made it better.
I have seen this done once before in a skinny brownstone (I think I have seen 100+ brownstones) and I don’t think it works. The person had a kind of living room after the kitchen. The kitchen dominated the entire house. There is also something awkward about walking into a kitchen when you come in from the street. Also the front parlor floor was designed to be a living room or parlor. A friend of mine suggested that for me and I didn’t think so — actually I love that space for exactly what it is. I was reading a book on Feng Shui, which I think incorporates a lot of intuitive ideas about design and it said having a kitchen as a room in the front of the house right when you walked in wasn’t good design. I know another person who had a kitchen in a brownstone in a parlor floor apartment placed right at the entrance and it just assaults you.
It seems so much more graceful to have it in the back. There must be a reason why you don’t want to do that. I wonder why.
Robert –
Thanks so much for your reply. A few things:
1. I agree about the kitchen being the family room. The idea we have is to put the kitchen in earnest in the back of the front parlor and then have our dining room table in the front of the front parlor so that we are indeed shielded a bit from the street and vice-versa. We chose to do this because the front parlor is 27 feet long and only 11 wide (not a very economical use of space for a living room). We assumed at first that we would use it as a more “formal” living room which in our experience meant we would never use the space at all. So we came up with this idea which would allow us to make the back parlor a nice sized (much wider) living room which can be separated from the kitchen via doors to front parlor or opened up to incorporate the two rooms.
2. Do you think Landmarks can/would possibly tell us we could not do this?
3. does my above description change in any way your opinion of this plan? Have you ever seen it done?
4. Are you looking for work and if so, do you have a website or some way I can review your work
Hi,
I’m an architect in Park Slope.
For interior work Landmarks Issues a Certificate of No Affect if it is above the third story. For work on the lower floors it issues either the Certificate or the permit.
I am not crazy about putting the kitchen in the front parlor because it is visible from the street. The front parlor and front basement spaces in Brownstones are in a way public spaces. Kitchens are the most used spaces in the house and I consider them the real family room. Also consider the angle from which people will see you from the street. It would not be a good site. At best your house would look like an appliance show room at worst people would see your dirty dishes the morning after a party.
Send me an e-mail if you have any more questions.