Design Brooklyn

Renovation, Restoration, Innovation, Industry

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• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori & Chang
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781617690525
• eBook ISBN:
  9781613125427
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

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RENOVATION

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The word renovation is particularly suited to Brooklyn, a place that has kept much of the old architecture from both its industrial and its residential pasts, and has, in recent years, welcomed top thinkers and creative people from around the world to accomplish new work on its soil. All eyes have turned toward architects, designers, and craftspeople in the borough to glean ideas for bridging the old and the new in objects and interiors.

Especially in Brooklyn, home renovation can mean a new approach to an old problem. Architects and homeowners have developed better solutions for light-challenged interiors and for juxtaposing the original building with new construction and a modern aesthetic. Others have conceived of fresh modes of interactivity for vertical living so that families can live and work at home in a more balanced way, and some simply enliven their Victorian rooms with fresh coats of white or black paint or insert contemporary furnishings.

In Boerum Hill, a defunct belt factory transforms into a bustling arts center. The Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg has become a beacon of its day, reinventing an industrial-era cooperage into a singularly Brooklyn hotel. Designers like those from the studio Nightwood give the bones of old furniture new life and build with salvaged wood and handmade fabrics. Some business owners have retrofitted complete vintage looks from scratch, fashioning a bar or retail shop with utter care and attention to detail.

This is how Brooklyn is enjoying old buildings, objects, and processes: by collaging them into present-day aesthetics and functions.

Vision in White
2ND STREET

What Amy Gropp Forbes and Adam Forbes immediately loved about this Park Slope townhouse was that the interior—all of it, down to the details—had been painted white. The original woodwork remained intact; it simply looked different, more airy, than the other Victorian homes on the block. Coming from a loft in Manhattan, the couple thought the white interior provided just the right amount of modernity, and yet it still honored the elaborately carved moldings and trims instated a century earlier.

On first glance, the building needed little more than a cosmetic renovation, but as work began, more serious structural issues revealed themselves. Both the plumbing and the electrical wiring had to be redone, which meant the walls had to be opened up. Fortunately, architect David Sherman, a Park Slope resident himself, and the contractor knew how to protect the woodwork during construction.

“As we created new things we made an effort to mimic details in a slightly more pared-down way,” says Amy. “We kept a certain level of detail so it wouldn’t be too obvious where the renovation stopped and started, with one exception: the kitchen.”

The major work required did allow the couple to make a big change to the traditional brownstone layout: they moved the kitchen upstairs to the third floor. The idea sprang from Adam’s wish—he is also trained as an architect—to place the kitchen where there was more direct sunlight. In most townhouses, the kitchen is kept on the first (garden) or second (parlor) floor, for proximity to the backyard. This house, however, had only a shallow outdoor space in the back. And because there was an extension on the garden and parlor levels, there was opportunity for a generous terrace and outdoor dining area off a third-floor kitchen.

The result of this rearrangement is both practical and aesthetically pleasing. The parlor floor now has a gracious living room, sitting area, and formal dining room (a small kitchen next to the dining room comes in handy during larger dinner parties). Then, up one flight, a sun-filled family dining area and kitchen awaits, opening onto a deck and green space.

Above and below: Built around 1900, this classic Park Slope brownstone maintains its original façade. The interior was almost entirely painted white, displaying original detailing in bright relief.

Above and below: In decorating the living and dining rooms, Amy Gropp Forbes could realize an aesthetic vision she had essentially grown up with: her father admired and collected mid-century modern furniture, while her mother was a craftsperson. Carrying out this vision meant balancing elaborate details with a modern sense of color. She prefers neutral tones and views color as an accessory—the bright bag that gives a monochrome outfit just a spark of intensity. The original woodwork gleams white in the parlor rooms, upholding the grandeur of the highceilinged spaces as they were first conceived.

Painting the carved-wood fireplace surround white brings the Victorian details into the twenty-first century. “I love the ornateness and floweriness of a design combined with a more subdued palette,” Amy explains. “It’s a big theme in the house overall.”

A built-in glass-encased library spans one wall of the sitting room, with a writing desk that flips down from the center—all of which is original to the residence. The owners replicated the installation upstairs in the family dining room to hold dishware.

Amy placed beautifully crafted pieces throughout the parlor rooms, including still lifes of cream-colored ceramic wares on tabletops and mantelpieces. She and Adam Forbes accented the white here and in the dining room with burnished bronze hardware. The electric-blue Eero Saarinen Womb chair and magenta and rattan daybed by Hans Wegner give the pale rooms a burst of color.

In the dining room, the coffered ceiling and wainscoting enrich the eye with a bit of opulence, yet the even tone of white keeps the room just minimal enough to feel contemporary. The owners found the Murano glass chandelier while traveling in Venice and were pleased with its unusually subdued color.

The room adjoining the second-floor kitchen has an informal family dining table and orange molded-plastic Eames chairs.

When tearing out the bathroom where t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE BY ANNE HELLMAN
• FOREWORD AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKE D
• INTRODUCTION INNOVATION IN CONTEXT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF BROOKLYN BY LUCAS G. RUBIN
• 1. RENOVATION
• 2. RESTORATION
• 3. INNOVATION
• 4. INDUSTRY
• SELECTED DESIGN AND FABRICATION SOURCES
• Footnotes
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
• INDEX OF SEARCHABLE TERMS