“This is a house for a young family that lives hard. “We designed with an eye toward materials that would wear well over time,” says Freundlich. The staircase itself was crafted in North Carolina of rift and quartered white oak, a material that can “take a beating,” as McLoughlin puts it, that will gracefully absorb years of collisions with kids’ water bottles, sneakers, and toys and daily encounters with the oils from hands large and small. Sunlight bathes the stairwell’s curving, limewashed walls, and changing shapes of light and shadow travel from one side of the house to the other as the sun traverses from east to west.
The skylight, its frame completely hidden, has a James Turrell–ish quality: Looking up, all you see is sky. On a loftier one, it brings a great deal of beauty into their lives. On a quotidian level, the renovation makes it much easier for the family to shout at one another. Little was lost-the excised floor space contained only bathrooms, laundry, and closets, easily replaced elsewhere-and much was gained. Guided by lead designer Will McLoughlin, OF/D punched a 12-foot-long capsule-shaped skylight in the roof, removed the existing stairs, and, taking advantage of the unusually generous 23-foot width, carved out a funnel-shaped opening in which they installed a winding, sculptural staircase that draws light into the heart of the house and visually and sonically links the floors.Ī kitchen wall is clad in wine-hued Craftsman tile by Pratt + Larson. For their Brooklyn home, the Oliver Freundlich Design (OF/D) team went even deeper, carving into the center of the 5,500-square-foot structure that Freundlich called “a five-story pancake” to flood it with light and make it work for the entire family. Not only had Freundlich, an architectural designer, been friends with McBride’s partner since middle school, he’d revamped the couple’s place on Fire Island-a deeply personal and collaborative undertaking. Meanwhile, McBride didn’t want to have to climb four flights of stairs in order to remind a child to grab their backpack or come to dinner.įor solutions, they turned to their friend Oliver Freundlich. Her family had occupied the parlor, garden, and cellar levels, a twilit existence she found depressing and had no wish to return to. Living in a murky town house was particularly unappealing for McBride’s partner, who had grown up in one in Manhattan. Time to take over all five floors and, finally, confront the shadows. But by the time their third child arrived and they were resorting to dividing rooms with curtains in order to give everyone their own space, the couple realized it was time for a change. McBride and her partner lived only in the top three floors while renting out the bottom two, this wasn’t much of a concern-the upper levels were bright enough.
#BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN WINDOWS#
Like almost all town houses, the 1873 Italianate structure in Brooklyn had windows just in the front and the rear, so light never penetrated to its center, and the lower floors were particularly gloomy. Not an existential darkness, not a spiritual darkness, but a literal one. The brownstone was big and beautiful, but there was a darkness at its core.
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