Architect Daniel Kaplan is now good friends with the couple that own this 1885 brownstone in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York—but there was an interesting moment during the design process. “I had to convince them that they should put the living/dining/kitchen on the garden floor instead of the parlor floor,” recalls Kaplan. Because at that point, the owners were “really nervous about me moving their lifestyle downstairs.”

Before: Rear Exterior

After: Rear Exterior

But Kaplan had good reason to make the basement the locus of family life. For starters, the owners wanted to convert the brownstone to a duplex, with their house occupying the lower two levels (called the garden and parlor floors in brownstone parlance). Then they would rent a separate unit on the upper two levels. Kaplan suggested to located the main living spaces downstairs, so that they could connect to the backyard.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

The main challenge with moving family life downstairs was to make sure that the resulting basement spaces wouldn’t be too dark, and that the ceilings wouldn’t be too low. “Ninety percent of all of my work is, ‘How do we make these long, narrow brownstones get light?’” says Kaplan.

Kaplan designed a rear two-story extension, which doesn’t encroach on the deep lot, and creates a roof deck for the two upper floors, including the rental unit. “Then I cut out the back half of the existing parlor floor, raised that two feet, and made the ceilings at the garden level 10 feet tall,” says Kaplan. “I got them a lot more ceiling height to make it brighter and more comfortable down there.”

This resulted in the children’s bedrooms upstairs having lower ceilings, but as they had started out at eleven feet, that two-foot loss wasn’t much of a sacrifice.

Before: Rear Access

After: Rear Access and Dining Room

“In the front of the house, I preserved a bunch of original things,” says Kaplan—including the fireplace in the living room and a pier mirror that now sits in the primary bedroom on the parlor floor. “Then I kind of had carte blanche at the rear and with most of the interior.”

In the main living spaces, the material mix includes a concrete floor in the kitchen, spliced with an ipe boardwalk that extends outside. One wall is covered in handmade tile, and sidewall skylights wash the whole surface in sunlight.

A flooring change from concrete to white oak denotes where the extension starts and the old house ends, while exposed brick walls and steel structural support columns reveal “truth in materials” and “the history of the house,” says Kaplan. In that vein, the team salvaged and repurposed joists as benches and shelves.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

“The best thing I’ve ever detailed is this staircase,” says Kaplan, explaining that it was important to the homeowners not to have solid walls around the new stairs, in order to spread light and let the sun infiltrate the cellar, which is now finished as a playroom.

Kaplan used a combination of threaded rods, turnbuckles, and steel plate, as well as “nuts and washers to suspend each stair tread,” says the architect. “That’s why you don’t see any stair risers or stringers—the things on either side of the treads that you’d typically see. So, the stair feels really open and the light can come down.”

Before: Staircase

After: Staircase

Before: Parlor Floor Front Room

After: Main Bedroom Suite

Construction wrapped in 2020, and Kaplan and the homeowners have since become good friends. “Every architect needs someone to come to them and say, ‘Just do the house the way you would do it for yourself,’” says Kaplan. “They were really laid back and amazing.” And now, they’re relishing in the resulting space with the family rooms downstairs.

Kaplan has since dubbed the project Pool of Light, in a reference to the new kitchen and dining room, including the blue-green tile and the plantings just outside the picture window. “I coordinated the color of the backsplash with the moss and sedum at the rear wall,” says Kaplan. “As you walk through this house, there’s almost this Caribbean feeling of leaving the city street’s grittiness and having the warmth of a turquoise ocean.”

Before: Parlor Floor Bathroom and Bedroom

After: Bathroom and Multiple Bedrooms

More Before & After Stories:

A 19th-Century Brooklyn Brownstone Is Saved From Utter Disrepair

An Italianate-Style Brownstone in Brooklyn Rises Above Years of Ad-Hoc Remodels

A Humdrum Home in Brooklyn Receives a Stylish Revamp

Project Credits:

Architecture: Bowerbird Architects / @bowerbirdarchitects

Builder: BMB Builder Inc.

Structural Engineer: Madsen Consulting Engineering, PLLC

Landscape Design: Bowerbird Architects

Lighting Design: Bowerbird Architects

Interior Design: Bowerbird Architects

Cabinetry Design: GALA Architectural Woodworking

Photographer: Matthew Williams

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Before & After: A Brooklyn Brownstone’s Dreary Basement Becomes an Urban Oasis