A Cobble Hill Townhouse With Tons of Green Tile
Tiles by Aït Manos.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
There were green kitchens well before The Brady Bunch’s avocado-colored fridge and Dakota Johnson’s mossy cabinets on Architectural Digest’s Open Door series (“I love green,” she explains to the cameras). But designers tend to opt for sage or forest, and not the uncompromising shade of Grinch that washes over the kitchen and dining room of an 1884 Italianate Cobble Hill townhouse that just listed for $12.995 — more than twice what it got in 2020.
234 Clinton Street is huge — 25 feet wide, with 5,500 square feet over five stories and a cellar. (It was previously home to four families.) The latest owner, who bought in 2020 for $5.25 million, is selling it as two units — a two-bedroom garden apartment downstairs and a four-bed, five-bath owner’s suite on the top four floors, with space for an office, playroom, art studio, and a 14-foot-wide “dressing room.” The typical brownstone overhaul polished the original moldings, fireplaces, and wood floors while squeezing in luxe, if familiar, appliances (Gaggenau), top-of-the-line cabinetry (walnut), and revamped bathrooms. Then, there are tweaks that broker Nick Gavin describes as “the opposite of this townhouse formula that you’re seeing certain architects do again and again.” And that’s the use of color: Parsley-green tile from Aït Manos, which retails for $232 for a square meter, lines the dining room and kitchen floor, along with the kitchen island. Upstairs, the same style of chunky, square Moroccan tile, also Aït Manos, shows up in dark blue, light blue, and a checkerboard of clashing lime and azure. The colors were chosen by the owners, who were planning to live here themselves, Gavin said. “You don’t put in a green kitchen and a blue bathroom to flip your house.”
From left: Green tile cascades over and around a kitchen island. The cabinets are walnut and the wallpaper is by Zuber. Photo: Hayley Ellen DayThe front door opens to an original stair and rail, slathered in mint-green paint that pulls its color from a newel post carved from Cipollino marble. The lamp is a vintage piece by Jean Perzel. Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
From top: Green tile cascades over and around a kitchen island. The cabinets are walnut and the wallpaper is by Zuber. Photo: Hayley Ellen DayThe fron…
From top: Green tile cascades over and around a kitchen island. The cabinets are walnut and the wallpaper is by Zuber. Photo: Hayley Ellen DayThe front door opens to an original stair and rail, slathered in mint-green paint that pulls its color from a newel post carved from Cipollino marble. The lamp is a vintage piece by Jean Perzel. Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
The work is by MADE, a Red Hook–based shop that seems to specialize in the quiet luxury of architecture — homes with dull façades that hide showy interiors — like a Red Hook building where gray metal cladding shields white walls and blonde wood; a Boerum Hill townhouse that opens into a maximalist, wallpapered foyer; or a Village townhouse where wood cabinets reveal shelves of Yves Klein blue. 234 Clinton Street pulls the same trick, with a façade stuck in a historic district, and a showstopper staircase painted a toothpaste-y shade of mint.
The renovation was done this year, and listed with Nick Gavin, the downtown broker with a track record for marketing swank, art-filled spaces that aren’t boring. (An upstairs bedroom has a very good Jill Magid print from her series of underlined books, and an attic loft is staged with canvases leaning against bare walls.) When the listing went live, Gavin texted that the green kitchen was blowing up his phone. “All the design people are messaging me.”
Specs: 6 beds, 5.5 baths
Price: $12,995,000
Extras: Formal dining room, den, home office, art studio, playroom, walk-in closet, dressing room, backyard, deck, cellar
15-minute walking radius: Cobble Hill Cinemas, Brooklyn Bridge Park, The Long Island Bar
The 1886 building is part of a row designed by Fred Lockwood. It was reportedly the home of a surgeon, Algernon Bristow, who became president of the Brooklyn Medical Society.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
The renovation mixed original moldings and floors with pops of whimsy. The owners are a “very creative couple,” Gavin said.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
The foyer opens into a living area with original stained-glass windows on Clinton Street and an original fireplace. The lamp is by Roll & Hill.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
Gavin says the price, more than double what the owner paid in 2020, accounts for the cost of the careful renovation and for the boom in demand in this pocket of Brooklyn. “It’s a very different time in Cobble Hill,” he said, citing prices up to $14 million. “You didn’t have sales like that in 2020.”
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
Some of the furniture and art in the listing is staged, but the rest comes from the owners.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
A playroom takes up about half of a massive former attic that’s lit by skylights.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
The other side of the finished attic is staged as an art studio.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
More color shows up in tile in renovated bathrooms upstairs. All the tile is by Aït Manos.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
More Moroccan-style tile shows up in renovated bathrooms. “I looked at this and wondered how people are going to respond to it,” Gavin said. But the images went somewhat viral, he said, and a dozen architects and designers sent him messages about the house.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
A more demure use of Moroccan tile.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
The stained-glass windows are original.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
The home was renovated by a couple with two children.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
Bedrooms retain the 19th-century wood-burning fireplaces.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
Some of the art and furniture came from the owners. A print over the fireplace is by Jill Magid.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
A backyard.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
A separate unit on the garden level is also renovated but has less color.
Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
