How They Pulled It Off: A Park Slope Townhouse With a Dramatic Array of Not "Normal" Stone

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

The owner of a classic early 20th-century Park Slope, Brooklyn townhouse lived in the home for well over three decades before deciding to have it completely refreshed. Already well into their "empty nester" phase, they wanted to reimagine the 3,800-square-foot home to better accommodate their new lifestyle—largely centered on entertaining friends and visiting family. After touring a similar property down the street that was meticulously updated by interior architect Merrill Lyons, principal of Lyons Studio, they called on her to revamp the home and apply her distinctive approach. "They’d done some small updates over the years but nothing of tremendous significance and this was their chance to do what they had dreamed of for so long," says Lyons.

Her goal was to create a modernized home that still retains key historical features; the winning characteristic of a space for which the owners had been stewards of for so long. "When we first walked through the home, there was an overwhelming amount of dark Victorian wood detailing," the architect adds. "While impressive and beautiful, we knew that in order to implement upgrades that the home required, we would have to edit out some ornamental features."

On the main parlor level, Lyons and her team opened up what had been dark, closed-off spaces and narrow hallways. The same strategy was used in the bedrooms and bathrooms on subsequent floors. Much of the internal systems—plumbing, electrical, and HVAC—were replaced, as were the well-worn floors and crown moldings no longer up to code.