Greenwich Village Townhouse — Retuning a Historic Townhouse for Modern Family Living

The details have been retuned to balance old and new. Traditional balusters in the historical stairwell were removed and replaced with a simple, tapered metal railing to unify the vertical home. Ornamental crown molding and carved marble fireplaces were left intact, newly paired with cased openings with complementary profiles to frame the parlor enfilade. Twelve-inch wide, plain-sawn wood planks run continuously throughout the home. Hand-finished with a light satin surface, this new flooring grounds the home with a natural elegance, distinguished by its generous and consistent proportions: an attentive eye will notice that the stair treads, too, are composed in the same 12-inch boards. Behind the scenes, the renovation replaced the existing freon-based system with an all-new mechanical and plumbing system, all while adding insulation to the envelope—a quiet but systematic upgrade in comfort and efficient energy use for the years to come.

An artful sequence of exact removals and careful additions calibrated each space to the rhythms of daily life. The garden level kitchen was reconfigured to embrace indoor-outdoor living. A load-bearing interior wall was sliced away to extend the eat-in-kitchen while new steel-and-glass doors open the room to the garden beyond. The rear garden now connects the lower level to the parlor level, a jewel-like outdoor room for entertaining and relaxing alike.