The ingredients for a spirited and creative renovation were all there: an ebullient art collection, a historic building with lots of details intact, and, of course, dream clients: friendly and approachable artists looking for a new live-work situation. And for Rustam Mehta and Tal Schori, the founding partners at Brooklyn-based GRT Architects, it was an exciting opportunity for a project where, Rustam says, “simplicity and elegance were a goal—but in no way did that mean minimal or expensive.”
The project began when artists Ruby Sky Stiler and Daniel Gordon, along with their growing young family, were in the market for a place where they could live, work, exhibit, and even host in-laws after facing an uncertain future as renters of separate art studios and an underground gallery. So when the couple found a 19th-century row house that had been used as the Seneca Club, a local Democratic institution, since the 1920s, they saw a diamond in the rough: high ceilings, open spaces on the parlor level, and plenty of room for a live-work arrangement (not to mention a remaining pay phone and a stash of vintage political ads tucked away in a closet!).
GRT Architects appreciated the character and features of a building with a past. “We pride ourselves on understanding history and what makes building types unique and basing our aesthetic decisions off this,” Tal explains. But, he points out, “like many town houses of this vintage, there were significant structural problems lurking.” This meant that money had to be spent on things you wouldn’t see—“never fun,” comments Tal—but that provided opportunities for major changes in the layouts of upper floors and even a roof terrace over an existing first-floor addition that dated from the turn of the 20th century.
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