“We’re not going anywhere,” declares Luise Stauss, a freelance art director, photo editor, and soon-to-be mother of two as she rubs her six-month baby bump. Despite the tight proportions of her two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, she has no intention of trading up for anything bigger.

Fourteen years ago, Luise and her husband, Nicholas Blechman, now the creative director of the New Yorker, pulled up stakes in Williamsburg, when it was still kind of edgy, and moved a few miles south to comparatively comatose Brooklyn Heights. They had fallen for a 1948 building designed by architect A. Rollin Caughey.

The matchmaker was their friend Christoph Niemann, an illustrator best known for his New Yorker covers and children’s books. Niemann was born in Germany (as was Luise) and lived with his family on the seventh floor of the Breukelen, a 12-story cream-colored building on Montague Street.

“I had never really imagined Brooklyn Heights as a place I would want to live,” Nicholas says. “I thought it would be off limits, especially because it felt so adult.”

But he and Luise admired Niemann’s small yet nicely proportioned corner apartment, with its pale parquet floors and light that streamed through original casement windows. On the roof terrace, they found heart-stopping views of New York Harbor and the Lower Manhattan skyline. Leaning into the breeze against the thin metal railing, Luise says, was like standing on the deck of an ocean liner. On phone calls with Niemann, they could hear the groaning horn of the Staten Island Ferry in the background.

So they moved in, first buying a ninth-floor one-bedroom unit, and then, in 2008, when their son, Anatole, was six months old, taking over Niemann’s apartment when he relocated to Berlin. Downstairs lived other creative friends, such as the well-known graphic designers Emily Oberman and Paul Sahre, and there was a lot of shoptalk and mutual throwing of dinner parties.

Now Luise prepares dinner for her family in the hanky-sized kitchen, which has been remodeled by Jan Greben, a New York–based architect and friend. Her interventions—including updated cabinets, floor tiles, and countertops—were simple but effective. A sea breeze floats through a set of windows above the sink, cooling the cook space. “Even on the hottest day you can live here without AC,” Luise says.

“We love the heart of the color wheel. I’m drawn to the yellow first—it’s so bright and rich and adds sun to your house—and then it works so well with blue and red. ”
–Luise Stauss, resident

It is easy to impose visual perfection when you’re a minimalist and don’t have to juggle too many objects, but Luise and Nicholas are eclectics with a sentimental streak and many talented friends and family members. They have stuff. Good stuff.

In the L-shaped living and dining room, for instance, a classic Saarinen Tulip table and Prouvé chairs mix with offbeat pieces like Tobia Scarpa’s 1962 Bastiano sofa for Knoll and a velvet upholstered daybed custom made by designer Chris Lehrecke with wood the couple selected from his property in upstate New York. The principal bedroom is outfitted floor-to-ceiling with a sleek Vitsœ storage and desk system showcasing framed art and robot toys.

As for the walls, an abundance of posters, paintings, photographs, magazine covers, and doodles turn them into giant scrapbook pages. There’s the Pentagram designer Paula Scher’s gift of one of her obsessively labeled silkscreened maps. And a photo of the couple shot early in their relationship by Lee Friedlander. And a depiction of long-tailed rats riding bicycles in a “rat race.” Drawn by Nicholas’s father, the cartoonist and animator R.O. Blechman, this work is dedicated to Anatole and hangs in his room.

The layout makes efficient use of the apartment’s approximately 1,000 square feet by dividing it into sections without fragmenting it into shoeboxes. Anatole’s room, which is big enough for a digital upright piano and baskets of toys and is decorated in Bauhaus primary colors, is off a stub of a hallway next to the kitchen and has a tiny adjacent bathroom. The master bedroom and bath are entered from the foyer.

And where will they put the new baby? “With us at first,” Luise says. Then they’ll carve out a piece of Anatole’s room. Didn’t they mention? They’re not going anywhere.

Project Credits:

Architect: Jan Greben Architecture

General Contractor: Roco G.C. Group

Cabinetry: James Hegge

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