When I decided to leave Brooklyn for
Park Hill, my friends and family responded as if I was moving to Mars. Park Hill really was a secret
neighborhood then. I'm Gary Brewer. I am an architect in New York City. Welcome to my house in Park Hill. Frankly, I have a love hate relationship
with modern architecture, and I've always been mostly interested in
traditional design, which I think you can see in the work that I do. I've always been interested in
historic houses and neighborhoods. I like their designs, I like
their interior architecture, I like their gardens. It was what I found so appealing
about the Park Hill neighborhood. I bought this house in 1998. After living in Carroll Gardens
in Brooklyn and before that I had lived in Manhattan in the village. At the time I was working on a
project at Wave Hill Gardens in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. And one weekend there was an
article in the New York Times in the thinking of living in section. They wrote up Park Hill
as a planned community. They had pictures of three
houses on the market. So I... drove up to this house and what I found
so appealing is the house is set high on a hill and so I always like the idea
of looking up at a house and it also seemed like it had a certain amount of
privacy. When I toured through the house, there was a lot that hadn't been done. So I knew it was going to
take a lot of work to do it. But my initial reaction was, Wow, that
looks really amazing from the street. The house as a style is called an American
Foursquare popular from the 1880s to maybe the 1930s or 1940s because it's a
compact little box-like house and it's called a four square because when you take
the floor plan and you divide it into four squares and oftentimes the stair is in
the middle and the second floor also has typically four rooms and it oftentimes
has a porch that's facing the front and they come in a variety of styles. They can be craftsmen,
they can be colonial. I mean this house has a
little bit of everything. I kind of joke that it's a bit of a mud. It's about 2,000 square feet and it
has the essentials of what I think makes any new house or old house nice. When I bought the house, there was
not a lot of detail on the interior. So I decided early on that whatever I was
going to do to the house would be period appropriate, and I would add things that
would make the house better and more of what it might have or should have been. You enter in from the front
door, and there is a small entry hall that opens to the stair. The living room is two squares of the
American Foursquare, and it's nice that it has triple exposure, meaning
it has windows that face both the front, the side, and the back garden. Everything in the room is essentially
new, although it looks historic. All the trim, the mantelpiece, the tile,
the new larger windows, it's all new. As far as the interior design,
most of it I did on my own. And I have worked with some of the
best interior designers in the country on the house projects I have done. And I've learned a lot from them. And it also has made me really appreciate
how difficult it is to do interior design. Especially if it's a sort of do
it yourself kind of endeavor. And it was an ongoing thing. I mean, I'm constantly changing things. I've been collecting since I
came to New York in the late 80s. I spent a lot of time going to the
flea market in Manhattan and Chelsea, which was such an interesting scene. I mean, you would see Andy
Warhol and Diane Keaton and just really interesting people there. As a long time board member of the
Institute of Classical Architecture and ART (ICAA) I'm very interested in classical
design, and I think you can see it in the objects I collect at home. Originally, the kitchen was a disaster,
but I sort of feel as an architect it's easy to see past cosmetic things that
you don't like, and so when I redid the kitchen, I added new windows, I added
all of the trim that you see in there. I kept most of the cabinet boxes,
I had new glass fronts made for the cabinets, I had the island made, I did
new stone tops, and it also opens up to the back garden, which is quite nice. I wanted a kind of more relaxed feeling,
less kind of classical, and one time when I had a group of friends over. Someone's wife said to me, Oh
my God, I love your kitchen. It's just like my grandmother's, which
I kind of thought was charming, I think. But I sort of liked that feeling. And in the things that I've
collected in the kitchen, it kind of, I guess, reinforces that vibe.
Going from the ground floor, there's a stair that is in the
center of a house, and it takes you up to the second floor. Once had four tiny little bedrooms
and one outdated bathroom. So I turned two bedrooms by removing
a wall into a primary bedroom, which was big enough to fit a queen size bed. I also added all of the trim. I added extra closets because old houses
oftentimes don't have enough closet space. In front of the closets, I did Italian
murals and I also added a sort of charming little window seat and it
has a green grass cloth wall covering. So I like to think that the primary
bedroom is like being in a tree house and it carries the color of
the trees and nature into the room. Other rooms on the second floor,
there is a small study that faces an upper level terrace with French doors. And it was fitted out as a bedroom,
which I didn't really need. I needed a study. So I repurposed the design and I
added the bookcases in there because I have a lot of books, um, and I
have a roll top desk in there, and I'm also interested in craftsman style
architecture, and I have been collecting craftsman style pieces for a long time,
so that was the inspiration for that room. On the second floor, there's
also a small guest bedroom. It is big enough for a queen sized
bed and has a closet and a side table. And sometimes it's used as a guest room. It faces away from the
street, so it's quite quiet. The thing about guest rooms is
it's kind of nice that it's small because it means people aren't
going to be staying a long time. So... Up in the attic is a small room, and it
was originally kind of a bedroom, and there was an odd little toilet in one
of the dormers, so I redesigned it as a home office, especially with, you know,
the era of COVID, and I did the built in bookcases, I did the new window seat,
I re-covered the walls in grass cloth. I added new lighting and so it works and
as a as a home office. The house has a lower level basement and It had a dirt
floor and it didn't have a ceiling and one of the last projects I did was to
turn it into a room. Essentially, it's a laundry room combined with another place
to work from home. As everything else in my house is more traditional, and
I'm interested in mid century modern, I thought the lower level might be inspired
by that and have a Rat Pack type of style. I have a little record player down there along with a
collection of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin vynils. So it's nice because it adds extra square
footage and then when the laundry is done, you're not doing it in an unfinished room. Most people do not know that
Yonkers, after San Francisco, is the hilliest city in the United States. It's set on a plateau 300 feet above
the Hudson River, so some of the houses have sweeping views of the Hudson River. I mean, it's 25 minutes away
by train, and on a good day, 30 minutes to midtown in a car. But it seems so far away in terms
of the landscape, and it really is, architecturally and in terms of gardens,
a significant American historic place. This house is set far away from the
street, and most of the property is in front with a small garden in the rear. And having spent most of my life
traveling to see historic gardens, the historic Untermyer Gardens designed by
William Welles Bosworth in Yonkers was certainly a high point for inspiration. The backyard had a, half
of it was a dog kennel. Covered in gravel, and the
other half was a swing set. So, everything you see in the
back garden is all brand new. All the planting, all of the stone walls. I use the gardens and the porches and
the outdoor spaces for entertaining. So when I have people over for
events, we set up a table for drinks. And, in a way, I sort of think
of my house as my summer house. It's 25 minutes away from
Manhattan, and I don't have to only drive there on weekends. The previous owner gave me a little
note card with dates of who lived in it for how long, and the sequence of
the homeowner included the dates during the depression when the bank owned the house. And it was
such a touching moment. I think of home ownership as being
a steward of that house and in fact of the neighborhood as well. I found this house in not so great shape
and I'd like to think that the changes that I've made has made it better. When I pass the house on to a new
owner, I want to make sure that they love the house as much as I do. And I will give them the actual note
card with the dates and names of the homeowners on it, except for I will
write in my little name and my little dates and I will pass it on to somebody
younger, who will take it from there. Home ownership is about
making a place better.
