Original Built-in Dressing Areas
I am writing about those built-in dressing rooms/areas that exist usually in the centers of the floors with bedrooms in unrenovated brownstones. I’ve noticed that some folks doing renovations keep them and just spruce them up. Others tear them out and make usable space where they used to be. First of all, are these architectural…
I am writing about those built-in dressing rooms/areas that exist usually in the centers of the floors with bedrooms in unrenovated brownstones. I’ve noticed that some folks doing renovations keep them and just spruce them up. Others tear them out and make usable space where they used to be. First of all, are these architectural details original to the buildings? If not, about what period were they added? Is there a generally accepted practice with regard to these during renovations? Has anyone here felt pangs of guilt removing them? Thanks!
As several people have already pointed out, it really depends on how “special” your pass-through area is. I’d certainly have qualms about ripping out old marble sinks, original brass faucets, birds eye maple woodwork (or cherry, or mahogany, etc). But I didn’t feel at all guilty when we repurposed our own very lack-luster pass-through space. We created more functional closets (much deeper)and a better connection/flow btw our master bedroom and sitting-room. The new space doesn’t lack for period detail: we relocated a set of pocket doors from the parlor floor and also re-used some of the cabinet doors. Lots of folks put a bathroom into this space which seems like a great idea and saves one of the small windowed side rooms to be used as a study or small bedroom.
I was so seduced by the old-world charm of the pass-through closets with their built-ins, shaving sink and pocket door, that I restored the missing shaving sink in my house, new plumbing and all. I had the built-ins and pocket door intact, I just need a salvaged marble sink which I got an the Old Iron Guy in Lowes parking lot. The closets are shallow but with shelves they’re great for storing anything that folds (clothes or linens) as well as shoes. I find the sink really useful and it keeps me out of the bathroom so that my husband can use it. I can guarantee that your closets were not as old, smelly and painted as mine, and now they’re stripped, beautiful and not smelly at all.
The dressing area in my place was definitely original to the 1890 house but was unusable. The closet sandwiched between the two banks of built-in drawers was about 20″ deep and therefore too shallow for anything on hangers. The built-in drawers and shelves which flanked the closet had been painted a million times and the unpainted interiors had that old, musty wood smell of wormwood and rot. I did salvage the hardware but had no qualms about gutting the built-ins for more functional space.
FWIW the woodwork in my dressing rooms had never been painted and matched the rest of the house (although it was pine, like the rest of the top floor outside the bird’s eye maple master bedroom). There also was usable closet space (shallow, but big enough for all my dress shirts and ties) with lots of drawers below. Had the rooms not been pristine I might well have done something like what going4broke wrote about.
I would have some guilt removing them (especially if they rooms are nice), but in the end, it comes down to the way you want to live in the house. If the area just does not work or cannot be adjusted to make it feasible, then that is your answer.
We had them on our 2nd floor. Besides the marble sinks, they were not special. The woodwork had no particular detailing & was all painted. Overall, the space wasn’t nice or particularly useful so we gutted the space, along with the adjacent bedroom closets (keeping the sinks & using them elsewhere in the house) creating walk through wardrobes (matched on the top floor) with double pocket doors on both sides (using original doors from elsewhere in the house that we paired up). This gives us a sizable and attractive 8′ x 12′ space with closet space on either side and a wide opening that we can have open (or not) which is nice for light & cross breeze… Admittedly this won’t be great for everyone as the front and back bedrooms (which we use as study & master bedroom respectively) don’t have the same degree of independence that they did with the original warren of closets, small divided closet hall etc.
PS we used to live in Harlem & have seen extraordinary dressing room spaces (I am sure matched in some houses in Brooklyn such as Bob Marvin’s) that would be lovely to live with including wonderful wood work & marble…
Whether they’re original depends on the age of the house. The very earliest brownstone-type row houses were built without indoor plumbing, at least on the upper floors. The dressing rooms are certainly original to my 1899 house and the only sprucing up I’ve done was to improve the lighting and replace the original Fuller cocks, which were a PITA to keep working, with reproduction compression faucets that look almost exactly the same but have regular, easily replaceable washers. [I actually found a source of NOS Fuller balls but, because of limited clearance, I had to remove the entire faucet every time the short-lived Fuller balls needed replacing, since there wasn’t room to unscrew the top of the mechanism].
I WOULD have suffered extreme guilt pangs had I doneanything more.