Tracy Tullis and Steve Hubbell are all for modernity, but their Victorian brownstone on 13th Street, just near Prospect Park, seemed to root them in a time gone by, a time they were not particularly nostalgic about. 

Standing in the former dark den turned bright white with clean lines and bursts of orange paint, a grown-up library turned into a happy place for three active kids (Malcolm, 11, Silas, 3, and Mesta, 8) and two cats, Tracy pointed to the spare mantle and shuddered.

“It was just this awful ornate dragon-headed built-in, and we finally pried it off the wall," she said with a big smile. "Lugubrious is not the look we love.”

Her smile faded slightly with the hubris of erasing any bits of history, but she shrugged it off, choosing instead to focus on the positives of change.

“Just because they liked it in 1886…I mean, women couldn’t vote then, children worked in factories,” she said.

It was last spring, more than a decade after the couple took ownership of the classic Brooklyn brownstone, that they decided to take arms against a sea of dark wood and fretwork and match their very au courant sensibilities to their surroundings.

Their love of home décor tome "Brooklyn Modern" led the couple to architect Brendan Coburn. They loved Coburn's house, which was featured in the book. But the kicker, maybe even more important than his tatse, was that “he was the only one not dismissive of our budget and what we could and couldn’t do,” she said.

Voilà. Despite not being able to afford to go all the way toward their dream, which included ripping out the whole back wall to the garden and replacing it with glass at an exorbitant expense (Tracy recalls being quoted as much as $20,000 for a single beam), the renovation offers up a far cleaner, sparer lighter but still-warm space for the un-fussy family.

Tracy was forced to modernize during the construction last August, buying her first-ever microwave and a Crockpot, which she used to feed her family on the second floor during the five-month rehab of the first floor kitchen, last modernized in the 1970s.

The all-glass dream was modified to replacing the former French doors with windows on either side to larger all-glass doors, “which Brendan [Coburn] promised would make a big difference and did,” Tracy said.

The new expansive view highlights the beautiful deck outside and landscaped garden, designed by Fort Greene-based Foras Studio’s Susan Welti and Page Ceck, who had, coincidentally, designed Coburn’s garden as well. It’s a small modern design world in Brooklyn.

Not only the cats appreciate the new fresh outdoor space, an extension of the openness inside, which replaced “a sad little lawn" they don't need to reseed. 

Little Silas looked out of the new doors one morning, Tracy said, and declared, “‘That’s a gorgeous garden!’”

The turquoise-painted back wall of the yard is a great backdrop for the stark spare white kitchen with its bright orange island base and the colorful chairs that pepper around the mid-century modern table.

An old tin mold pan, which belonged to Tracy's grandmother, hangs over the non-working fireplace as a reminder of the past. Other than the mold, there is no sign of the “excessive Victorian froufrou” Tracy so joyfully removed.

New pantry doors slide handily, saving space, on an old barn-door mechanism, and a wall of custom-designed cabinetry, blissfully free of swirls and swoops and cornices, hides any clutter.

The budget-conscious Coburn designed the art closet in the alcove just off the kitchen around Ikea drawers and used inexpensive metal-encased factory lights overhead to deflect the inevitable bouncing balls belonging to the kids. 

The door into the playroom was widened to offer a more loft-like feel and the bright orange couch and white shelving offers a cohesive link-up with the kitchen beyond. Kids’ artwork—the ultimate modern art—abounds.   

Upstairs in the front parlor, the couple replaced their former “bulky old-fashioned furniture” with a spare but inviting array of mid-century modern pieces picked up, mainly, on Craig’s List.

“Our old furniture looked good in our Manhattan loft, but in our traditional space, traditional furniture was too much,” Tracy said.

Photographs and art line the walls, and are always “in a state of flux,” Tracy said.

There is the shot of goats in Vermont done by friend and famed photographer, Dona Ann McAdams (her photos can be found in the MOMA), and a haunting black-and-white of the machinations of waterworks by Stanley Greenberg, whom the couple met at the Park Slope Food Coop. A close-up shot of a horse is the work of famous photographer and neighbor Eugene Richards, the happy result of Tracy’s “garbage-trolling.”  

There is a variety of artwork that reflects the time the couple spent living in Egypt, an ancient place rife with a new modernity Tracy claps excitedly about.

“When we were there, there was no hope, it was stagnant,” she said.

There on a the wall is a cartoon image of Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser in front of a wall with the Communist hammer and sickle. 

On the third floor, antiques mix with new buys, like a big round fluffy white rug from Crate & Barrel. Inside Silas’ closet, where formerly a ladder led to the roof, there is a surprising bit of natural light from a skylight added in the recent renovation.

Tracy beams: “Whenever I can steal light, I’m a happy person.”

There are things to keep, surely, like Grandma’s wall harp that hangs in the hall, but with the renovation and the ridding of the old, there is often that light that Tracy, and her husband Steve, look for so keenly at home and in their work. Steve is a senior communications officer with Soros’ Open Society Foundation and she as a researcher and policy analyst, currently with the Women’s Prison Association.

Their home environs now offer them the openness they need to move forward and onward and to teach their children to do the same.