Inspiration comes from the strangest places. While watching a documentary about the tower castles of Ireland, we were intrigued by the similarities between the layout of these medieval monoliths and the average Brooklyn brownstone. So, we chose to use it as our jumping off point for how the space would be experienced. In traditional tower castles, the first floor was done in rough stone with elemental wooden tables, simple candles, etc, because of the fact that only “common” folk inhabited these areas. But the higher you were in society the farther you could ascend in the tower, with each level becoming more grandiose to cater to the individuals that had access to the space.

We inverted this idea due to the fact that our client’s home had many of its early Arts & Crafts details still intact on the first floor - original friezes, stained-glass windows, egg and dart molding and wood-paneled walls ran throughout. The second floor of the brownstone, where significant layout and structural changes were made, was meant to be a mixing of the historic and the new, with a sort of shedding of pomp.  The third and final floor, which saw the most significant alterations, was clean and simple - a reflection of modern 20th century living inside the shell of an historic home. It’s a bit like time-traveling via staircase.