Brooklyn Inside & Out

One of the best renovation/restoration I've ever seen. Beautiful!

Thanks, Suzanne!

"...the interior will be reimagined!" That is one of the most frightening phrases in historic preservation. There are literally hundreds of examples in New York of distinguished historic homes gutted by new owners who hired their favorite fashionable-up-to-the-moment architect, an architect nostalgic for their "community college dorm rooms"...and their designs have all the warmth that phrase describes. They are responsible for exchanging real plaster and genuine decorative elements for white plasterboard by the mile, with door and window frames executed in finger jointed pine or spruce of such a low grade that it must be painted to look presentable, and so narrow that initially upon seeing it that the viewer thinks that these frames are nailing strips for woodwork not yet installed, waiting for the owners to have enough cash to buy real wood. There are more tragedies in one of these reimagined homes; the ornamental plasterwork that would cost a fortune to replicate today, ripped out for plasterboard ceilings. Then there is the original woodwork, most of it crafted from of a grade of hardwood impossible to find today and worked into ornamental creations we no longer pay craftspeople to create. Which brings up yet another sore point. The designers who gut out all the walls to create those wide open spaces that popular magazines present, with modern furniture that looks shapeless and squishy, or angled steel that could take out our shins. They never show you that no one wants to sit near the staircase or in the bay window in the winter because the fashionable architect removed the parlor wall that once sheltered the front rooms, and the New York cold has made any seat near the front door a refuge suitable for polar bears. Many of these homes have been featured on these pages in real estate ads that leave the destruction plain for everyone to see. They resemble nothing so much as mugging victims who will never be comforted or restored. How tragic!

I'm researching a story about it, stay tuned!