Above: What began as an opening carved between a townhouse and the apartment building next door became a garden-level living room. The clients' B&B Italia sofa, recovered in blue wool, anchors the space alongside a Vesta Kiruna lounge chair; a Nordic Knots Climbing Vine rug beneath. Yucca Stuff's Concho table sits center in stone and wood. Above the fireplace, a Krishen Khanna painting hangs on the wall.
Like many of us trapped inside during the pandemic, months spent confined in the same temporary apartment made a young couple sick of their space. "As we came up for air after the first three crazy, hectic months of lockdown," one of the owners recalls, "we realized we wanted to create a home that spoke to us." For this family, that meant a Romanesque brownstone on one of the Upper West Side's most storybook blocks. It’s a home that would take three years to find, three more to transform, and every ounce of collective nerve to see through to the end.
During the multi-year search, the couple saw plenty of beautiful apartments—but, as one of them puts it, “after seeing the same kitchen in ten different buildings, everything felt cookie cutter.” The husband, Houston-born, wanted space. But the wife, a Manhattan native, wasn't leaving the city. A townhouse was the grand compromise. They ended up finding a five-story brownstone with a footprint that included the garden floor of an adjacent co-op building, yielding a double-wide rear yard anchored by a 120-year-old magnolia tree.