The Insider: Design Clarity, All-White Palette Characterize Fort Greene Reno

When a young couple purchased the parlor and second levels in a five-story row house condo, planning to start and raise a family there, the two floors were connected by a less-than-ideal spiral stair. “They wanted a proper stair that felt more like townhouse living, and the kitchen was in the back and cut off from everything,” said architect Margot Otten of Brooklyn- and Hoboken-based OSSO Architecture, which carried out what she called “a pretty big overhaul” of the duplex space.

With refreshing clarity and using a nearly all-white palette, OSSO Architecture designed a new staircase and an open kitchen, and reworked the layout on the upper floor to fit in as many beds and baths as possible. Central air replaced window AC units, and slim European-style baseboard radiators took the place of some of the old-fashioned cast iron ones.

Instead of blowing out the back wall on the parlor floor, which has impressive 12-foot-and-3-inch ceilings, the architects kept the original triple window arrangement, replacing one window with a door to the outside. “We had a lot of discussion around the back wall,” said architect Douglas Segulja, the firm’s other founding partner. “We loved the tall, beautiful old windows and didn’t want to lose them, and if we opened it up, that would have required a different configuration of the kitchen,” which now has a sink and a bank of lower cabinets and drawers along the building’s rear wall.

The project budget was relatively tight, Segulja said. “We leaned into preserving existing details like plaster crown molding and window trim, replicating some of it, and let those be the features that stand out.” The committed white palette emphasizes those original details, including the salvaged parquet floor on the parlor level.

Credit for the furnishings goes to the homeowners.

Ikea cabinets in the kitchen, with custom fronts, helped keep the budget in check. “We were able to get a lot of storage in there for what we spent,” Segulja said. “Keeping the room open and concealing a fridge, laundry, and powder room behind tall cabinet doors feels very chic, and allowed us to maintain the existing windows and view to the backyard.”

A powder room provides an intriguing glimpse of Helleborus wallpaper from Farrow & Ball.

The kitchen is centered on an island. A downdraft cooktop from KitchenAid enabled the architects to avoid an overhead stove hood and still exhaust air to the exterior.

“In order to get the new stair to land where we wanted it, right in the middle of the second floor, we turned it to the left a little,” Otten said. “Then we could easily get in three bedrooms without wasting space on a hallway, and two full baths.”

The stair rail and newels are painted Off-Black from Farrow & Ball, a departure from the all-white scheme.

An Orikata Acorn pendant from Room & Board hangs above the dining table.

The Carrara marble top on the custom oak vanity in the primary bath was salvaged from a restaurant about to be demolished. “It had been on a bar and had this timeworn look,” Otten recalled. “We honed it and cleaned it up and reused it.” It closely matches the marble used in the kitchen downstairs.

The shower, floor, and even the baseboard molding are Carrara marble as well, the floor formed of tiles laid in a herringbone pattern.

[Photos by Kirsten Francis]

Got a project to propose for The Insider? Contact Cara at caramia447 [at] gmail [dot] com

The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at a notable interior design/renovation project, by design journalist Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday morning.

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