If the icon of old Brooklyn is the Brownstone, with all its ornate detail and small spaces, and the icon of new Brooklyn is the open floor plan of loft-like spaces in glassy towers, perhaps the house featured in the NY Times this weekend represents a happy medium, a meeting of the two. The current owner of the house on Park Place moved there in the 1970s (her mother bought it for $39,000), and eventually decided on a high-modern makeover for the place. The moldings had already been removed, much of that detail scraped off by an earlier owner. "They agreed that the garden floor would become the rental apartment and they hired an architect, Ron DiDonno, to reconfigure the space." That garden floor ended up being so open that they've rented it out for television commercials. "To get the home they wanted, everything had to go. 'It was a brick-to-brick renovation,' Ms. Marland said. 'Nothing is left but the staircase and the downstairs kitchen.' To that they added a B&B Italia sofa and Donghia dining table, bought at sample sales, though not all the modern flourishes are high-end. “We still have $8 paper shades from Pintchik’s on the windows."
An Old Brownstone's Loft Aesthetic [NY Times]
Photo from Property Shark.
