Leroy Street Studio Breathes Fresh Life Into a New York Brownstone

So when clients tapped the venerable Manhattan architecture and interiors firm to reimagine their Renaissance Revival brownstone on the city’s Upper West Side, Hare and his colleagues—architect Arom Jeon and interior designer Sybille Schneider—devised a plan to radically revise not only the five-story building’s 6,000 square feet but also to create more expansive volumes. “One of the biggest challenges in a 20-foot-wide home like this is achieving an open plan that truly feels open,” says Hare. But it was the kind of puzzle that Leroy Street Studio is best known for solving. “A lot of our work is adaptive reuse in various forms,” he says. Indeed, the firm, whose design DNA doesn’t hew to any specific style, is the go-to for clients who are intent on spaces that respond to their environment.

There was no hand-wringing over removing period moldings or compromising the interior’s integrity: The husband’s grandfather purchased the building in the 1960s and converted it into a multifamily dwelling, obliterating the original layout and details. “This provided lots of possibilities and opportunities to play with sections rather than rooms,” says Hare, who saw to it that a portion of the third floor was completely cut away and the rear façade was extended to create a double-height living room on the parlor floor as part of the conversion back to a single-family home.

All the better to enjoy the couple’s burgeoning art collection: Ross Bleckner’s Falling Birds spans one soaring wall in the living room and opposite it, one of his untitled paintings. Although the husband’s artist mother exposed him to art, he credits Bleckner’s work with awakening him to its power. “I didn’t understand her talent when I was young, but I do remember my mother’s friend the artist Eric Freeman introducing her to Ross,” he says.

After seeing Bleckner’s show at Mary Boone Gallery in 2003, the husband was hooked. Moving from their prior home into the larger townhouse offered the couple ample wall space for displaying art. In fact, the Leroy Street group took the collection into consideration from the very beginning.

“Our most rewarding projects are collaborations among the architect, interior designer, and client from the start. The results are always more integrated,” says Hare.

The approach allowed Schneider to specify the living room’s built-in sofa and to forgo architectural lighting for the more artful Sabine Marcelis resin light fixture on the stairway. In a happy twist, the homeowners decided to fill the niche originally meant for a bookcase with a favorite Ashley Hicks totem.

The husband admits that his grandfather might question the choice to return the house to a single dwelling. “He’d be proud, but he’d think I was crazy. They did not live extravagantly at all,” he says. But for this young family, living with art enriches them in ways nothing else can. “It’s hard to put into words what art does. It just adds so much to our lives. We love coming home to art.”

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Winter Issue under the headline “Open House.” Subscribe to the magazine.