Kitchen

Opening up the stairwell with glass partitions allowed daylight to penetrate to the core of the highly vertical structure. The architects also removed partitions around the kitchen and relocated it to the home's east end where it faces the building's historic bay window.

In the home office and media room, which overlooks the street, the architects were able to preserve the distinctive, star-shaped parquet floors.

Homeowner Karoline Lange’s family has been known to joke about the choice of cedar for cladding the porch. “My brother said, ‘Oh, that’s perfectly Karoline. It’s a giant sauna,” she says with a laugh. (She’s a member of the 612 Sauna Society, a mobile sauna co-op that moves around the Twin Cities.) “But that warm cedar feel and smell has such a homey, feel-good vibe.”

A series of long stairs leads to Maison Amtrak, which is set below street level. The entranceway demonstrates Cohen’s love of Japanese design with a geometric simplicity matched only by the formal elegance of the stained Douglas fir two-by-fours.

Now at the center of the home, the kitchen blends Victorian moldings and a parquet floor with soapstone countertops and streamlined custom cabinetry painted in Clunch from Farrow & Ball.