Steering House worked closely with the owners of this Brooklyn row-house to maximize the useable square footage with the addition of a 10 foot deep by three story horizontal extension as well as a one story vertical addition and modernize the home using materials that reflect it’s place in Brooklyn’s history. Sandwiched between the Red Hook waterfront and the Gowanus Canal, the homes in this neighborhood were originally constructed to house Brooklyn’s industrial workforce and their families. The predominant construction materials: steel, brick, concrete and wood, echo this past.
A significant percentage of the materials used in the renovation were set aside during demolition and are original to the home. The interior brick wall that extends vertically through the dining room and mezzanine was previously the rear facade prior to our addition of the horizontal extension on three floors. The wood cladding the mezzanine ceiling was removed from the roof to make way for the vertical addition, re-milled on site and installed where you see it today. And the reclaimed ceiling joists held up the parlor floor before being replaced by a stronger structure engineered to support the new radiant heated concrete floor.
Significant effort was taken to locally source many of the home’s other design features wherever possible. The custom kitchen cabinets were fabricated in nearby Red Hook using reclaimed material. The same carpenter created the custom designed storage units seen throughout the home out of a blend of locally sourced reclaimed wood and joists salvaged from the house during demolition. The living room light fixture comes from Workstead whose factory is only a few blocks away in industrial Gowanus and the dining room fixture is from Pelle, located around the corner in Red Hook. Finally, the prominent two-story custom designed steel window occupying the rear facade was sourced from a factory in New York State.
This 2-family home is now configured as a generous triplex over a garden floor rental and displays a unique blend of industrial elements echoing the neighborhood’s past and modern day luxuries in line with the current wave of development in the area. We wish the current owners many happy years in their new, reclaimed home.
