Zack Shapiro and Devon Maley were searching for the right place to raise their two young daughters when they found a 19th-century town house for sale on Philadelphia’s historic Fitler Square, just east of the Schuylkill River. “We fell in love with its charm and the potential of it,” Devon recalls. “We couldn’t get it out of our heads.”

Situated on a corner beside a cobblestone alley, it had more natural light than most town houses, with windows on three sides instead of two. The house had not been renovated in many years, but it was in their budget—so they sealed the deal.

The relatively small, skinny building—at 1,743 square feet and just 15 feet wide—called for maximizing space. And being two centuries old, it needed retrofitting. “It definitely wasn’t laid out in a way for a modern family to use,” Devon says, adding that it was “quite literally crumbling.”

The couple reached out to Brooklyn firm General Assembly and Philadelphia’s Trade Architects to update the home with white oak built-ins, reclaimed pine floors, and exposed original brick walls, illuminated by a new kitchen solarium and substantial skylights. Because General Assembly also designs furniture as well as interiors (through its sister company, Assembly Line), the firm also provided some of its own furnishings.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

As they were planning the project, Zack and Devon contemplated six different floor plans. “And they weren’t like six like small variations,” explains General Assembly founder Sarah Zames. “Each one was different.”

The team considered moving the stairway to a new location to improve flow and configure new rooms. They looked into adding an additional floor on top, and expanding the ground floor at the back of the house. But because of the history of the home and the neighborhood, any change to the exterior had to be approved by the Philadelphia Historical Commission, which ultimately rejected the added floor but approved the ground-floor addition.

“One evening, I went to Zack and actually cut up and pasted together a couple of the floor plans they had given us and said, ‘What if we did this?,’” Devon says with a laugh. “We were trying to figure out how to maximize storage, family flow, and the sizes of bedrooms.”

They decided to leave the stairway in its original location at the rear of the house near the entry, a new mudroom, and a new powder room; add two bedrooms on the second floor for their daughters; and create a primary bedroom suite with an adjacent office on the top floor.

Before: Rear Entrance

After: Rear Entrance and Sun Room

“They very kindly worked with a lot of our crazy ideas,” Devon notes. “It was cool that they were open to that,” Zack says in agreement. “We signed that email to Sarah and Colin, ‘Your very unlicensed architect.’ But they’re the ones who really nailed it.”

The house, initially dated to the mid 1800s, turned out to likely be substantially older. Devon and Zack learned from a conversation with Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron that “based on our roofline, and the surrounding homes, it’s probably early 1800s,” and one of the first homes built in this historic neighborhood.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

When construction began, the home’s age showed. “The house was in really bad shape when we got behind the walls,” Zack says.

As crews from Osborne Construction worked on a back wall on the ground floor, they removed the plaster—and revealed a worrying detail. “You could see daylight right through the mortar joints,” says Trade Architecture’s Katherine Treppendahl. “It was a little bit terrifying. We basically rebuilt everything inside.”

The home’s exterior is affixed with a row of star-shaped bolts, which are not mere decoration but help hold the walls in place. Normally the walls of town houses are stabilized by being tied structurally to each other—but with corner homes, the wall “starts to want to shift at the outside corner,” Treppendahl explains. The star bolts tie the brick to the existing floor framing.

Before: Primary Bedroom

After: Primary Bedroom

Millworker Loubier Design crafted a bevy of built-in oak cabinets and shelves for the interiors. “The design of the house is almost like a ship,” says Treppendahl. “Every square inch is serving a very necessary, functional need.”

The built-ins and new stairway bannisters, all white oak, were inspired by the Shaker furniture tradition, which dates back to colonial times and is associated with Pennsylvania and neighboring northeastern states. Because the built-ins continue throughout the house, the interior itself almost feels like a single piece of furniture.

Before: Upper Stairs

After: Upper Stairs and Skylight

“I think in a project like this, the wood built-ins were not only important space-wise, but detail-wise too,” says General Assembly partner Colin Stief. “And yet oak is a pretty modest material, which felt in keeping with just the overall spirit of the house.” It also pairs well with the home’s pine flooring, which—when the original pine floors could not be salvaged—was reclaimed from a factory north of Philadelphia.

Before: Upstairs Bath

After: Upstairs Bath

On the ground floor, the existing kitchen didn’t have an oven, and a long counter cut it off from the adjacent living room—so the team reconfigured the space with a new island in parallel to the existing counter for better flow. They also added a new, custom steel-and-glass solarium/dining room that fills the entire kitchen and living area with natural light. “Sometimes our daughter’s like, ‘Is it raining?’ I’m like, ‘Look up,’” Zack says.

The addition created space for a powder room and a mudroom near the entrance, and the team added a skylight above the adjacent stairway. “We’ve had friends come through and say, ‘I’ve never been in a row home felt so open and so bright,’” Devon says. “It’s just good for the soul.”

Before: Stair Landing

After: Home Office

The design team also took into account the fact that both Zack and Devon are left handed, as is one of their daughters. “In the powder room, the switch is on the left—and the dishwasher is situated to the left,” Devon says. “Everything flows in a way that is comfortable to us.”

In the living room next to the kitchen, the architects and clients wanted to keep the existing exposed ceiling beams, because in the rest of the house they were covered in order to run pipes and electrical conduits. But first the team carefully removed the beams in order to add sound-reducing insulation. New, period-friendly multipane windows also help minimize noise from outside, and the team restored the original living room fireplace with a new mantle.

On the top floor, the couple opted to remove the drop ceiling. “My first visit to meet Zack and Devon and see the house, I found a little access hatch and put my head up in there,” Treppendahl recalls. “I remember saying, ‘We can vault this. This would be amazing. You can get so much extra height in here.’” The team added large skylights to the newly vaulted ceiling, flooding the primary bedroom with even more natural light.

Before: Lower Stairs

After: Lower Stairs

“It feels so dramatic, like a James Turrell installation,” Zames says. “Even though we opened up the home a lot, it is still a fairly tight building, so it’s a relief when you get to the top floor and you just see this really beautiful, minimal kind of space: a lovely, comfortably sized bedroom and a really nicely sized bathroom.”

That primary bathroom even has its own refrigerator.

“I did it for skincare products,” explains Devon, a former fashion buyer. “That was one of my odd asks that the architects poked fun at me about, but I love so much. If we take a nice bath or a steam-shower, I’ll keep like cold towels in there for afterwards. We can also keep champagne in there.”

“We recommend it to clients now,” Zames says.

Overall, the project took more time and a larger budget than the clients and their design/build team expected, but it was never rushed. For Devon and Zack, it was worth creating a lasting refuge that’s as beautiful as it is functional.

“We know so many people who will sort of have their city time, and then when their kids get of a certain age, they move out to the suburbs for more space,” Devon says. “It was important to us that our home function to the best of its ability so that we could live here forever—so we can keep living the city life that we want as a family.”

More Before & After stories:

How a Retired Couple Adapted Their Forever Home for Aging in Place

Two Foodies Give a Top-Floor Apartment a Top-Shelf Revamp in São Paulo

In Mumbai, an Architect Gives His Childhood Home a Renovation Guided by Memory

Project Credits:

Interior Design: General Assembly / @gen_assembly

Architect of Record: Trade Architects / @trade_architects

Builder: Osborne Construction / @osborneconstruction

Millwork: Loubier Design / @loubierdesign

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