A visit to the extraordinary Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse
Like BHA itself, event blends the historic with the ‘now’
The Back Parlor created by Steven Walsh Design is a sophisticated and inviting space for entertaining and relaxing. Much of the artwork was taken from Walsh’s personal collection. Photo by Beth Eisgrau-Heller
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — Hundreds of guests mingled at Wednesday night’s opening party for the 2024 Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse, the biannual event which transforms a historic Heights home into a showcase of modern interior design.
This year, the Showhouse took over 182 Clinton St., a classic brick Greek Revival townhouse built in the late 1840s.
The Showhouse is the Brooklyn Heights Association’s primary fundraising event, and like the civic organization itself (founded in 1910), the project combines an appreciation of history, community and the “now.” The four-plus levels of the revamped home sparkle with the creativity of 16 brilliant and idiosyncratic interior and landscape designers.
“We want to expose people to the beautiful homes that are in the neighborhood and to the wide variety of ways you can decorate a house, and to bring together people in the community at an event like this,” BHA President Jeremy Lechtzin told the Brooklyn Eagle. “Also, to show the depth of decorating talent that is available in Brooklyn and across the city.”
An architectural historian and technology lawyer, Lechtzin provides in the Showhouse catalog a deep dive into the history of the house dating back to its 19th century farmland beginnings. Its story mirrors the arc of many neighborhood homes reconfigured over time into multi-family housing before converting back to a single-family in the 1990s, Lechtzin writes.
The Showhouse is co-chaired by interior designer Ellen Hamilton and architect Erika Belsey Worth, with designer Leyden Lewis as honorary chair.
“I really believe that the Showhouse is the full embodiment of what it’s like to live in Brooklyn Heights, and we’re very lucky to live here,” Hamilton told the Eagle. Curating the Showhouse and working with the designers is “very sympathetic with the work of the BHA,” she said. The volunteers and staff members “really care about BHA’s activism and about the character of the neighborhood, and about all the Brooklyn Heights Association does to make this a beautiful community to live in.”
The full executive staff worked on the project for nine months, and at least 15 to 20 volunteers run the day-to-day, Hamilton said. “We really encourage everyone to come and visit because it benefits such an amazing cause.”
Mysterious interconnections
While the project’s many designers had no contact with each other beforehand, shared themes and spontaneous connections run throughout the house, Belsey Worth told the Eagle.
The interconnections are one of the “wonderful, recurring mysteries” of the event, she said. “Green is the most common color, and green lowers your heartbeat and calms you down. I think people know that intuitively, and that’s what we’re seeking today — that sense of calm, of nature. It can be seen downstairs in the front room, and in the growing ‘grass’ design upstairs. In these times, the designers just know this sense of peace is what we are craving,” she mused.
Belsey Worth also happened to be wearing a green gown to the party. “It matches the baseboards,” she laughed.
“It’s great to be here supporting the BHA at their biannual event, and it’s a beautiful house,” said state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, attending his second Showhouse since being elected to represent neighborhoods from DUMBO to Dyker Heights. “It’s so cool downstairs. This is the first place I’ve ever been to where I saw a sub-basement that looks like a speakeasy.”
He added, “To be able to have showcase like this for the neighborhood is really tremendous, and it’s all for a good cause.”
“Every year the BHA Showhouse is even more stunning than last time,” Councilmember Lincoln Restler, a Heights resident, said. “It’s such a smart and creative way to showcase great design, and raise funds for the best civic association in the City of New York.”
Also attending the party were Restler’s mother Susan (BHA’s treasurer) and father Peter.
“It’s a beautiful and fascinating renovation and reimagining of a house,” Susan said, adding that she loved the three-dimensional plasterwork depicting a field of flowers in the primary bedroom.
“And it’s nice to see everyone in the neighborhood and also meet a lot of new people you don’t recognize,” Peter said. “The hidden Prosecco room — that’s the room we’re going into next,” he added, heading for BHA’s first-ever Showhouse space of its own: a converted dressing room filled with historical photos and documents, and outfitted with bartenders pouring the bubbly.
“The BHA room is perfect,” former BHA Executive Director Judy Stanton said. “It was Ellen’s idea and we needed it so people know why we’re doing the Showhouse. This is just a huge amount of work.”
“I just love the kitchen,” former BHA President Martha Bakos Deitz told the Eagle. “I’m just glad that they are continuing the tradition, because it’s great.”
Picking up the vibes
Jennifer Morris (JMorris Design), who designed the home’s entry and “Park Bath” staircase, echoed Belsey Worth’s sentiment that Showhouse designers picked up on a longing for a peaceful refuge. “The concept for my space is forest bathing,” she told the Eagle. “It’s a Japanese idea of walking through nature to get a sense of restoration and reboot. My spin on it is more like park bathing — like heading into Prospect Park or Greenwood, or just walking through Brooklyn’s tree-lined streets to get that relaxation that we crave.”
The mood is also evident in the dark and mysterious cellar media room, created by Hormuz Batliboi of Batliboi Studio.
“I was thinking about movie theaters and cinemas, like the interior of the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn,” he said. “It’s all red and velvet, and it’s got that moodiness and the crimson-maroon drapes. That was really the starting point for how we wanted to do this.”
A similar feel is present in the whimsical mudroom, created by designers Andrea Fisk and Jess Hinshaw of Shapeless Studio. “The mural is by Esmé Shapiro, an artist in the Catskills,” Fisk said. “We gave her the prompt of kind of ‘stark, moody and magical,’ and she got it.”
While visitors trooped up and down the stairs discovering new rooms and interesting nooks, the “garden kitchen” was a natural gathering place, with a centerpiece green marble island, limestone floor mirroring the floor of the garden (this was the only time designers coordinated), and huge glass sliding doors leading outside.
Guests couldn’t keep their hands off the island, which had been treated with anti-etch technique and honed to a soft matte finish by MORE Surface care, said Maggie Hummel, a principal at Ingui Architecture who worked with designer Claire Fleming from sister company BIA Interiors.
The marble stone “was our driving force” and the kitchen was designed around it, Fleming said. The team also wanted to connect to the “exceptional” outdoor space created by Lauren Barry and her staff of gardeners at Project Plant.
“The garden space when we started was a paved bluestone patio — a totally different look,” Barry told the Eagle. Project Plant created tiers of enlarged planting beds — especially on the right side which gets more light — and limestone terraces, which brightened the space.
Designers had just five weeks
All the work had to be completed within five weeks, and some had less time for various reasons, including vacations. Designers more than met the challenge to make the spaces their own.
“I was very fortunate to get this space — it’s sort of a dream room,” said Steven Walsh (Steven Walsh Design), who reimagined the sunny back parlor overlooking the garden. “My inspiration was a 1970s Parisian apartment that was owned by fashion designer Givenchy; it’s a tribute to that space,” he said. “I had wonderful sponsors who donated beautiful things, and helped me create a very luxurious, sophisticated room very much in the spirit of my personal taste.”
The walls of the primary bedroom created by Landed Interiors were covered with amazingly intricate plaster wildflowers and wheatgrass created in collaboration with Brooklyn-based plaster artists Arkada Plus, originally based in Russia and Europe. “They are wonderful. Usually that would be a six-month process but they did it in five weeks around the clock,” Landed’s Rebecca Muller told the Eagle.
“Every time we popped in the people were painstakingly working on the plaster work in the primary bedroom,” BHA Deputy Director Kim Glickman said.
“The Showhouse is an amazingly huge project to put together with a really skeletal amount of people doing it, both paid and unpaid,” Glickman added. “It was sort of incredible when I walked in today and saw what has been accomplished. The designers pour their life into this, and all of us behind the scenes have been working since the spring to pull it together.”
The Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse 2024 is open through November 3. Tickets for touring are available at brooklyndesignershowhouse.com.
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