Athena Calderone's Brooklyn townhouse is a serene take on a classic brownstone

Just as in cooking, a home is made up of simple, raw ingredients - architecture, finishes, and furnishings. Once united, they become greater than the sum of their parts. Each element elevates what sits beside it, turning it into something new. These often-invisible steps can be unmasked and shared, kindling exploration in others. A chain reaction that leads to a decision is unique to each of us. This townhouse is my design epic. It’s been an intention and a distant dream for years. Miraculously, it manifested itself four years ago, and its realisation - from renovation, to decoration, to the education it fomented - gripped my life for three of them. The journey to here - to home - is the culmination of all my time spent looking, seeking, and yearning for that which my eye craves. It is my masterpiece, second only to being my family’s sanctuary.

The townhouse, a late 1800s Greek Revival, needed a lot of love. It had been stripped of much of its original detail when it was fractured and converted into four apartments. But it's twenty-five-foot-wide girth (average brownstones clock in at eighteen to twenty feet) on a tree-lined, historic street—and southern exposure and proximity to Manhattan—made it an absolute catch. I had always fantasised about designing a townhouse—fusing ornate traditional architecture with my idea of modern living (complemented by my nonconformist stamp on it, of course). I imagined inserting the old-world details of the many Copenhagen and Parisian apartments I had swooned over, grand double doors and all, and marrying them to a Brooklyn sensibility that juxtaposed the grandeur and grit of the city’s yesteryear. I was also itching to get my hands on something that scared me a bit, something new. I knew that a clash of cultures in the decor was essential for this home—a mix of mostly Italian and French antiques ranging from the forties through the seventies. But I also desired the age and patina of the eighteenth century sprinkled in here and there to drive home a sense of history.

This became my template. I approached this renovation leading with what excites me most - decoration. Where I began was never where I ended up. I mean, how fun is seeking to find that “thing” we don’t even know we are looking for? We think we know, but we don’t, cerebrally anyway; only our eye knows when we see it. The accumulation of each and every piece in my home was a granular alchemic experiment of trusting my eye. Like an animal on the hunt - voracious, calculating, patient, and precise - I searched.

Hours became days, which became weeks, and then years, scouring Chairish, 1stdibs, auction sites, eBay, Instagram, estate sales from the Hamptons to Miami. I obsessively e-mailed dealers, and aesthetic wanderlust found me on planes throughout Europe to accumulate pieces I did not know I needed so desperately in my life until I saw them. While I was guided by my passion for the interior picture, that’s not to say I wasn’t committed to addressing our practical needs, either. We collaborated with Elizabeth Roberts Architecture and began to dissect our specific desires as a family.

MAY WE SUGGEST: Athena Calderone's newly renovated Hamptons home

My first step, and one I encourage every homeowner to take, was to create a comprehensive list - floor by floor, room by room - of our collective and individual needs. Every minute detail was added, and it helped us understand how to divvy up the space and determine the ideal location and purpose for every room. Victor and I agreed that opening up the parlour floor to bring in as much light as possible was essential. Not only do we thrive on sunshine, but the natural light is imperative for my work photographing vignettes and shooting video. This meant taking down the weight-bearing wall that divided the stairway from the rest of the space. With southern exposure and an odd L-shaped configuration at the back of the house, I knew I wanted the kitchen to dominate the rear of the home. To achieve a bright and grand kitchen, we installed a wall of floor-to-ceiling metal casement windows that would dramatically carry light through the entire space. This open floor plan put the living room, dining room, and kitchen all in one long expanse. That’s a lot of functionality stacked within one floor. Without walls to serve as boundaries, I needed to find a way to make each area feel intimate and distinct, yet cohesive. Here is where architecture, design, and decor unite. Patience being a decorative virtue, I exercised restraint, never making hasty decisions unless something spoke to me with clarity.

That isn’t to say I wasn’t obsessive. In every home there is a struggle one must grapple with; for me, it was finding a lighting solution for three distinct living areas on the parlour floor—something that would be harmonious from each area to the next. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, I tried and tested options—three of the same pendant lights, recessed lighting (in hindsight, yuck!), even forgoing one entirely in the front parlour (but what is a Brooklyn townhouse without a jaw-dropping chandelier to admire from the street?). It all felt like a concession, and I wasn’t willing to concede. In an attempt to fill a void, I put a tall, fluted vessel filled with seasonal sculptural branches on the kitchen island. This work-around offered verticality, drama, and nature, and it liberated me to focus on finding just the right symbiosis between the living and dining areas.