This Old House in Prospect Heights

SpiralstairsA while back I mentioned that This Old House, the renovation reality show on PBS,  was doing its first New York City renovation project ever. I met the contractor and the owners very briefly at Bar Reis, a Fifth Avenue bar. I even published the address of the house (because it was already on Brownstoner. But the next day the owners told me they were uncomfortable having their address on the Internet. So I removed it.

At my daughter's piano recitall recently, I spoke briefly to the house's owner, Karen Shen. She told me that the episodes are already running on PBS. Her house, a 104-year-old row house in Prospect Heights was designed in the Renaissance
Revival style by architect Axel Hedman

 The house is currently under
consideration for designation by the city's Landmarks Preservation
Commission.

According to the This Old House website:

"The plan is to patch and paint the house's exterior
brownstone and perform a preservation-minded restoration of its
cavernous interior. Karen, Kevin, and family will reside on the house's
first and second stories, as well as part of the garden level, which
will include the main entrance, a spare bedroom, and a mudroom to the
backyard. The rest of the garden unit will become a rental apartment,
as will the third floor, though the couple hopes to reclaim what will
be that floor's two-bedroom unit in about five years, when each of the
kids will likely demand his own bedroom."

Karen blogs about the project on the Old House My House blog. She includes all kinds of interesting details about why certain practical and design decisions were made and what kinds of problems were encountered along the way. One of the posts is about the installation of th cast iron staircase Karen and her husband bought on Brownstoner.com eve before they'd ever seen the house.

Last year, while still house hunting, I noticed this gorgeous, cast
iron staircase for sale on Brownstoner's Forum. Several months later,
after we had signed a contract to buy our house and devised a plan to
have a 1st/2nd floor duplex sandwiched by two rental apartments (one
long-term and one short-term), we found ourselves in need of just such
a staircase. Our architect, Susanne Lyn, recommended a few places to
find new, nondescript metal or wood ones. We kept remembering the
vintage one and thought about trying to contact the seller. One
day we saw another post that the staircase was still available! So, we
confirmed with Susanne that it was the correct height (11 ft, the
height of our parlor ceiling), negotiated a great price, and that
weekend, Kevin went to Park Slope to pick up the disassembled staircase
and transport it, step by step, to our house. It is a heavy staircase,
even in pieces.

Mike Hale in his New York Times review wrote that watching the NYC version of the real estate and renovation reality show is an exercise in schadenfreude  for jealous New Yorkers, who'd love to live in a house that big and gorgeous:

Much is made of the surviving woodwork and ornamental plaster in this
Renaissance Revival row house on Sterling Place in Prospect Heights,
and cookie-cutter-apartment dwellers will sigh over the massive pier
glass, the carved fretwork and the bird’s-eye maple cabinets. What many
New Yorkers will really do, of course, is put the 40-ish Mr. Costello
(high forehead, hesitant, designs handbags) and Ms. Shen (attractive,
dominant, but what’s with the kelly green skirt?) under the microscope.
How did they get here? This is not my beautiful house — why is it
theirs?

Check listings for when the show is on.