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 …

For Leo and Amanda Sidran, there was a fair bit of kismet in their connection to the duplex rental they found in a beautiful old brownstone on Eighth Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The couple, who met as members of a Madonna cover band, The Four Madonnas, in their mutual hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, discovered that the landlord’s grandfather, who’d owned the house previously, was a composer and composition professor. “The landlord, the third generation to own the house, said to us proudly, ‘This is a musical house, there is music in those walls,’” Leo said. That musical history…

As an art historian, architect and designer, Carolyn Brooks has for 25 plus years helped law firms, banks and corporations of all kinds create spaces that work well. Meanwhile, the burned-out, boarded up four-story brownstone on Seventh Street that she bought in 1991 with her husband and renovated back to its own original 1903 beauty worked pretty well for her own family, even with just a single full bathroom for the top three floors they lived in. But in 2009, when her beautiful, now 16-year old daughter, Sophia, demanded her own bathroom, everything changed. With this second renovation, …

Even though Rebecca Sroge loves her fabulous house, a three-story minimalist “loft” with a historical façade on 14th Street and Seventh Avenue that I’ve many times visited for parties and never wanted to leave, she almost said no when I asked to feature it. “Dave reminds me we’re under construction (again) with everything covered by fine white dust…” she wrote, referring to her husband, architect David Johnson. I laughed when I read the note, recalling my tour of the house years earlier. “You live with an architect,” I said, “Aren’t you always under construction?!” Of course, she agreed, …

“We are design junkies, it is our passion,” said Anne, gesturing around the airy main room of the duplex she shares on 13th Street with her husband Mike and son Max. The light streams into the open kitchen/dining/living room vrom a skylight and four oversized windows and onto the brightly-hued, eclectic mix of mid-century modern collectibles. “A lot of Park Slope buildings tend to be narrow and dark, but what attracted us most about the place was how airy and light-filled it felt,” Anne said of the two-bedroom, two-bath apartment whose two floors are connected by an open spiral staircase.That…

“Welcome to the happiness set,” said Stephanie Thompson of her charming duplex loft in the former Ansonia Clock factory building on 12th Street.  Surrounded by vintage finds and salvaged treasures, Thompson’s three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath co-op is as relaxed as it is beautiful. Built in the late 19th century, this iconic factory turned co-op complex boasts gorgeous original wood-beamed ceilings, exposed brick, wood floors and oversized windows.  Thompson, a writer, blogger, and self-proclaimed home decorating enthusiast, instantly fell in love with the character-filled loft upon first …

It’s the project that every interior designer dreams about: the new owners of 17 Prospect Park West, one of Park Slope’s most fabled limestone mansions, were in need of an interior designer to modernize and revitalize the 5,200-square-foot Victorian beauty.  Shortly after its purchase in 2008 from movie star couple Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany for a whopping $8.45 million, interior designer Tamara Eaton embarked on this project of a lifetime. Eaton, of Tamara Eaton Design, LLC in Manhattan, along with architect Ben Fuqua at DHD, LLC and contractor Interior Alterations, Inc., were tasked…

In 2009, Elizabeth Russell found herself in a predicament that many young Brooklyn renters do — her friends (and their furniture) were moving on.  Not wanting to give up the newly-renovated three-bedroom apartment on 15th Street, just half-a-block from Prospect Park and the F train, she took it upon herself to make the space a home, in spite of the two new strangers moving in. Located in a four-story limestone, the gut-renovated apartment had all the modern conveniences a renter could ask: hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances, a dishwasher, a newly-tiled bath and most unbelievable of …

When couple Mary Gillen and Ed Blythe decided to move in together last year, they could never have imagined how a strange twist of fate would lead them to the apartment of their dreams in one of the finest Romanesque Revival mansions in the country.  The four-story brownstone, located at 838 Carroll Street between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West, was built in 1887 for James H. Remington, President of the United States Law Association.  Designed by noted Manhattan architect C.P.H. Gilbert, the façade is surfaced almost entirely with rough-faced stone laid in random ashlar.  Though the …

When attorneys Kenneth and Linda Eiges purchased their four-story, Victorian home on picturesque 11th Street in Park Slope's Historic District, little did they know that they were embarking on an adventure in home renovation and restoration that would span nearly three decades – and counting.    One of six Romanesque Revival houses in a row between Eight Avenue and Prospect Park West, 629 11th Street was built in 1901 by prominent Brooklyn architect Thomas Bennett.  The home is set above a terrace with an L-shaped stoop, and like other homes on the street, has a Classical cornice and …

Situated half a block from the historic Old Stone House, 331 Fourth Street was a building only an architect and construction executive could love. Built in 1895, the two-story carriage-house has a rich history as a stable, a bootlegging establishment during prohibition (authorities apparently filled the cellar with coal-ash to prevent its continued use), an electrician's shop, and finally, a sculptor's studio. The property suffered from decades of neglect and disrepair. Nonetheless, when Gilly Youner and John Leeper first laid eyes on the decrepit Fourth Street carriage house, they saw the …