Inside Andrew Tarlow's Fort Greene House

The second issue of New York Magazine’s new stand-alone home design magazine, Design Hunting, is out this week and features no fewer than six properties in Brooklyn, including restaurateur-hotelier Andrew Tarlow’s 150-year-old house in Fort Greene. (The magazine hit newsstands Monday, and will be available online in a month.) Tarlow and his wife Kate Huling were attracted to the 1863 house because it had changed very little over the years; they bought it in 2007 and then embarked on what you might call a “makeunder.” They renovated the kitchen and second-floor bathroom, cleaned up the garden and added a fireplace for cooking outdoors, and relined a chimney. Most of the furniture and appliances are second-hand, gifts, or built by Tarlow, whose paintings also line the walls (he was an artist before founding his culinary-hotel empire). The parlor ceiling is a darker color — olive green — than the walls, and the centerpiece is a flaky bit they decided to make a focal point after their first paint job started to peel. The kitchen is quasi-unfitted, with a restaurant stove for cooking; an eagle eye may perceive that the floors slope but the appliances and counters are level. There is no kitchen island, and no television. The couple’s five children “read together, play and draw.” Sounds like our kind of thing. 
Back to Basics [Design Hunting]
Photos by Adrian Gaut