Page 61 - Homes & Antiques (February 2020)

HOMES Brooklyn Brownstone

Fort Greene, which had been gaining a
reputation as a creative hub since
artists started moving there in the
1980s. The !lm director Spike Lee had
set up his !lm company there and, as
Marysia recalls, ‘it was a very cool
neighbourhood, with a lot of young
creative people doing cool things. But
really, nobody I knew lived in Brooklyn
at that point – absolutely nobody’.
It was a trip to visit a friend-of-a-
friend in the area that !nally made her
drop her preconceptions and fall in
love with the quiet tree-lined streets of
brownstones, built in the 1860s. She
also realised that it was incredibly
close to Manha"an – just a !ve-minute
drive from the Manha"an Bridge – and
as one half of an interracial couple, a
place where they could feel at home
– ‘the neighbourhood looked like ‘us’,’
she says. It was also somewhere in
which they could acquire a whole
house, rather than just an apartment,
and a#er several months of searching,
they came across the perfect property
– a four-storey townhouse on one of
Fort Greene’s loveliest streets.
‘The lady we bought the house from
had lived here for 40 years. She was
101!’ says Marysia. ‘What was fantastic
was that, unlike many similar houses,
which had been chopped up

CLOCKWISE FROM
ABOVE The house is
painted white throughout,
which provides the
perfect gallery-style
backdrop for Marysia’s
extensive collection of
art and antiques. On
the first floor landing,
an antique runner from
Morocco adds a dash of
colour below a selection
of framed photographs;
a delicate mobile from
MOMA hangs in front of
a painting by Toby Mott;
in the kitchen an inlaid
tray from Lamu, Kenya,
serves as an attractive
informal platter.

February 2020 Homes & Antiques 61