Jewel Street

The project is located on a quiet street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn – just beyond a formerly industrial zone, now home to several television studios. The wood-framed row house began as a single-family home, built in the 1930’s as Brooklyn was rapidly expanding. Over the course of several generations, the house had been renovated into a rambling series of rooms, and split into a two-family residence. Our brief was deceptively simple: recombine the levels of the house, and bring light into the center of the 50-foot long plan. 

The project comprises a series of spaces, interlinked by a light well, which brings sunlight down and into the deepest levels of the house, including the excavated cellar and basement levels. The house was designed for a young family, such that each level provides a variety of scales and degrees of intimacy. From sweeping, double-height rooms that open unto a landscaped rear yard, to private alcoves washed with sunlight, to the new mezzanine space with custom oak shutters, the house offers a level of flexibility and spatial cohesion rare to the townhouse form. 

The project was a collaboration between Hatchet and Leipzig-based interior designers Studio Oink. 

(Photos ©Naho Kubota)