At Home in the Slope

The grand late 19th century row house, picturesque with its peaked roofline, oriel window, and rough stonework, has had just a handful of owners. The current ones, who moved in more than 35 years ago from Manhattan in what one half of the couple described as a “midlife crisis,” were empty-nesters looking for something new.

Neither knew Brooklyn well—aside from a few visits to an aunt’s stately home in Brooklyn Heights. “My dad thought I was crazy,” the husband admitted.

They first saw the Park Slope house on Labor Day weekend in the late 1980s. The parlor floor is open and airy, and a generously scaled wood staircase winds to the top of the house, capped by a sizable skylight.

They were struck by the home’s scale, stained glass, and richly carved woodwork: It was love at first sight. “It was just different,” he recalled.

Though they were advised not to buy the first house they saw, nothing else compared. A few weeks later, they made an offer—just as the stock market crashed. They withdrew, but couldn’t stop thinking about the property and came back with a lower bid.

It turned out they bought it for just slightly more than the price they would get for their seven-room co-op apartment. Though they briefly carried both properties, they now “consider this a $15,000 house,” said the husband, laughing.

A preservationist’s haven

When they arrived in Brooklyn, old-house revival was well under way. Preservation-minded neighbors like Evelyn and Everett Ortner, and Clem Labine of Old-House Journal, lived nearby. Shops along Atlantic and 7th Avenue offered services, restoration supplies, and antiques, and there was no shortage of skilled craftspeople from carpenters to stained-glass experts.

The borough was exciting new territory for the pair. “When I first moved here I would go out on my bicycle to the different neighborhoods and it was absolutely fantastic,” said the husband. “It was very novel because I grew up in Westchester.”

Though most of the home’s original features remain intact, it had undergone some changes—especially during the 1930s, when a doctor owned the property. The front and middle parlors and stair hall were opened up to each other and the high ceiling was coved. A built-in bookcase still spans one wall of the sweeping space.

Little appears to have changed in the rear parlor, accessed through elaborate pocket doors. A carved and columned mantel bears glazed navy tile under a beamed ceiling. A dumbwaiter still hides inside a closet, and the room’s tapestry-like damask wallcovering likely dates from before Prohibition.

Upstairs, a geometric pattern of delicate plasterwork dots ornaments the ceiling in a former bedroom; plaster appliqués emboss the stair hall. The bathrooms feature rectified tile and stained glass windows, and a pass-through between bedrooms contains wood cabinetry and marble countertops.

With all that history and craftsmanship, the couple wanted to restore, not overhaul, the owner said. Aside from redoing the kitchen, their goal was to bring back the original details. There was just one problem: They didn’t know how.

The first general contractor recommended to them said he wouldn’t do the work and, in the end, help came from friends. One, who years later is now a prominent New York City doctor, offered to take on the job with a pal. Afterward, the couple found a book the duo had used that explained how to do the work, the owner recalled, laughing.

Another friend, an interior designer, gathered a crew of young workers from Greenpoint. The team was eclectic, he said, and no one spoke the same language. But somehow, it came together and the couple was able to move into the house several months later.

A house filled with stories

More than three decades on, art, antiques, and found objects fill every room and wind up the stair. Some were inherited—like the Toby jugs collected by his mother, who was an avid antiquer, and his childhood desk, now surrounded with papers and books in the rear parlor.

A striking piece in the home—a large print called ‘Babylone d’Allemagne’ by Toulouse-Lautrec—was a gift to the homeowner’s father from a prominent philanthropist.

Other items were picked up during decades of travel. The couple met on a ship when both were traveling after their junior and senior years of college. Together, they’ve been to Rarotonga, South Africa, Portugal, Mexico, Vietnam, and beyond.

There’s a pipe collection with pieces from as far as Tunisia and as near as Bay Ridge. Pillows hail from Indonesia and other countries. A huge stone bowl was lugged home from Portugal.

A lamp picked up in Greenwich Village had to be driven home through the sunroof of their Volvo. Another, a green Arts and Crafts-style lamp in the back parlor, came from a now-gone Brooklyn maker on Atlantic Avenue, who also created several of the house’s hanging light fixtures.

A wooden chest from Copenhagen is lined with Danish cartoons. A circa 1860s painting of soldiers preparing to leave for war was found in a junk shop in Italy.

“I like old stuff,” the homeowner said simply. “We had a feeling that we didn’t want to fill it with modern things.”

He recalls their grandchildren, now adults, playing in the house when they were small.

A bedroom is a study in personal history, with a carved wooden bed from a craftsman on Atlantic Avenue and family photos crowding a mantel. Some of the rooms are papered in William Morris designs, ordered from Canada instead of Britain because the shipping was more economical.

In one of the rooms, a former occupant, probably a child, had scratched into the side of the wood mantel “I love this house.” The couple has left it there.

In a room on the third floor, a music stand sits with a piece of sheet music open—a tribute to the homeowner’s years playing clarinet in local community bands before the pandemic disrupted that rhythm.

A former attorney, he has continued to volunteer for civic organizations, including ones involved in preservation and parks. His wife was a writer before she retired.

Now, he said, he spends more time reading in the house, with its plethora of books, surrounded by layers of life lived within it.

“We never went out and decorated,” the homeowner said. “It’s a mixture of all kinds of things, I mean, everything has a story, at least to me.”

[Photos by Susan De Vries]

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