BROWNSTONE VOYEUR: High Victorian Rental in Clinton Hill

WELCOME BACK TO BROWNSTONE VOYEUR, the resumption of a popular casaCARA series in which we go behind the facades of brownstones and other historic Brooklyn housing types to see how folks of today live in the sumptuous spaces of long ago.

“EDITH WHARTON MEETS THIEF OF BAGHDAD”…that’s how Reid Burgess describes the decor of the parlor/garden duplex he and his girlfriend have been working on for almost three years in a classic, detail-laden 1870s Brooklyn brownstone. “People think it’s kind of crazy when we tell them we’re renting,” said Reid, until recently a professional musician who now considers himself a designer/developer. (You can get a look at his first project, a from-the-ground-up ‘little Palladian villa’ in Charleston, S.C., on Reid’s blog.)

Back in Brooklyn, the couple have been busy stripping paint off doors and woodwork, re-painting the place in colors more to their liking, and furnishing with pieces collected from various sources, including eBay, Chinatown, and an auction house in Richmond, Va.

All changes are with permission of the landlord, but still, the couple “had to make virtues out of imperfections,” says Reid. “It’s not a reno where you have complete control of everything. Things I never would have done I’ve learned to think of as interesting.”

For example, they would not have painted the parlor, dining room, and woodwork orange. Some of that they’ve changed, including stripping and staining an arched mahogany door, painting picture rail a dark bronze (it too was orange), and painting other woodwork in Benjamin Moore’s satin-finish Wenge. They also re-painted the back parlor, which they use as a dining room, dark green. But the front parlor remains orange. “We kind of grew to like it,” Reid says.

The front parlor, with its 13′ ceilings, elaborate plasterwork, and over-the-top marble mantelpiece and mirror in High Victorian style, was in very decent shape when Reid and his girlfriend found the place through Craigslist. When they moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn three years ago, Reid says, “It had to be a quintessential parlor. That was the attraction.” The parquet floors, too, with Greek key pattern, were intact and polished.

The white Empire sofa, which Reid says is surprisingly comfortable, was a Craiglist find. Reid paid just a few hundred dollars for it, but he had to drive 17 hours to Pittsburgh and back to pick it up. “That was extreme,” he admits.

The kitchen is in the original hall of the building, off the rear parlor.

Downstairs, the front room is used as a library/guest room, and the back as a bedroom.

The lattice was falling down on the deck off the parlor floor and needed repair.

To dig back into the archives of previous ‘Brownstone Voyeurs,’ click here.

 

BROWNSTONE VOYEUR: Stylish Shoebox in Boerum Hill

BROWNSTONE VOYEUR is a joint project of casaCARA and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn.

THIS APARTMENT IS REALLY SMALL. If you drink and dance, I wouldn’t recommend doing it in Jane Rosenbaum’s apartment. You might just hit a wall.

Two rooms totaling 375 square feet in a pre-war State Street rental building, it’s nevertheless got a lot of charm and some good DIY ideas, yours for the copying.

• A limited color palette — white and periwinkle blue — keeps the tiny space from looking too busy. (This takes discipline! I intended to use only blue and white in my Springs cottage, but keep bringing in things that are red, brown, green, orange…)
• Secondhand furnishings were all painted periwinkle to unify them.
• Round table folds to store against a wall. Open, it seats six for dinner.
• There’s a Murphy bed behind a white curtain in the living room (and you thought they were only in Marx Brothers movies)
• Salvaged chandelier in the living room is painted white and used with candles. Bookshelf up high makes use of every inch.

Moving on to the only other room, the kitchen:

• Galvanized buckets organize utensils
• The cabinets are painted with chalkboard paint; Jane uses them to display the menu for dinner parties.

Jane is an interior designer — her website is here, in case you missed it up top. She worked previously for Wolfman-Gold, the NYC housewares company known for its all-white look, and in display design at Henri Bendel in Ohio.

She ran this ad recently on the Boerum Hill listserv:

Don’t like the way a room looks? Change it now! Living Room, Bedrooms, Dining Room, Hall and Kitchen Spruce Ups include: paint colors, window treatments, rugs, accessories, fabric, lighting, and rearranging of furniture, if necessary. Dining Rooms, Halls and Kitchens: $300 each. Living Rooms and Bedrooms: $375 each. Bathrooms: $150-$275 http://www.janeinteriorsnyc.com

BROWNSTONE VOYEUR: Collecting Local Art in Clinton Hill

BROWNSTONE VOYEUR is a joint project of casaCARA and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. The series, which has been a regular Thursday feature on both sites, is going on hiatus for the summer. This is the last installment of the season; look for it to return in the fall.

A 20-FOOT-WIDE BROWNSTONE in Clinton Hill, replete with 1870s detail — wide moldings, a flat arch opening between the front and rear parlors, a bay window at the rear — is the perhaps unlikely showcase for a locally acquired gallery of very modern paintings, and look how well it works.

The homeowners, Richard Montelione, an attorney, and Jack Esterson, an architect, enjoy browsing local fairs and shows of student work at nearby Pratt Institute to add to their collection, which they display against soft brown walls (Benjamin Moore’s Jamesboro Gold, to be exact), outlined with crisp white moldings.

On the parlor floor, above and below, furniture sources are: white sofa, Room & Board; coffee table, Gueridon; orange Ellipse chair, Modernica; Danish modern end tables, Horseman Antiques on Atlantic Avenue; TV credenza, Design Within Reach; white leather club chairs, Room & Board; round coffee table, ABC Carpet. The table lamps are Italian, from The End of History in Greenwich Village.

The dining table, below, is from Desiron and the leather chairs from Crate & Barrel.

BROWNSTONE VOYEUR: All the Details in Boerum Hill

BROWNSTONE VOYEUR is a joint project of casaCARA and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. Look for it every Thursday on both sites.

THIS HAS BEEN MY comfortable home away from home for the past two weeks. It’s my dear friend Nancy’s brick row house in Boerum Hill, and it’s classic.

Built around 1870, the house retains many of those coveted Victorian “details,” including spectacular plaster work in the dining room (painted an historic blue-gray), original pocket doors with etched glass, an over-the-top pier mirror, right, between the front parlor windows, a black marble mantel in Eastlake style, long four-over-four parlor windows, and wood floors so old and thin if they’re sanded one more time they’ll turn to sawdust.

Nancy bought the house in 1987 – it was the first house she looked at – and furnished it with a mix of found and inherited antiques. Particularly intriguing (and sort of useful) is the piece she calls “the chest of 1,000 drawers,” a cabinet used for fittings by a jewelry maker. It had been left in her previous home, a loft on Fulton Street in Manhattan.

All the paintings on the wall are the work of David Fisch, a close friend of Nancy’s, who died in 1993.

Nancy travels frequently to Amsterdam, and there’s something of a European feeling about the place, I’ve always thought – the velvet textile used as a tablecloth in the dining room, the collection of old copperware on display throughout, the enormous glass-fronted cabinets full of art books.

I could live here quite happily. Oh, right – I have been.

TOMORROW! BROWNSTONE VOYEUR: Eclectic Classic in Boerum Hill