When our dear friends—artist Christopher Daniels and his wife, Alice Daniels, the vice president of creative services at Vera Wang—needed an escape from Manhattan’s SoHo (where we had designed a loft for them), they didn’t have to look far. With our help, they began looking at townhouses in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn. When we saw a classic, red-brick town house from 1899 with tall, slender windows on a street with mature trees, we knew it had potential. Sure, it was a wreck inside, with extensive water damage and ceilings featuring gorgeous plasterwork that were beginning to cave in, but it didn’t take long for all of us to agree that this was the place. Over the following months, we stripped the house down to the brick walls and rough-hewn framing before painstakingly building it back up. We took pieces of the original moldings and had new plaster knives made so the ceiling medallion sand details could be reproduced. We added antique wood floors and designed simple Shaker-style built-ins, as well as minimalist clean-lined bookcases in the living room that terminate at an ornate baseboard. Christopher brought in weathered mantelpieces that his family had collected in Virginia, which provided an immediate sense of age. To furnish the space, Alice and Christopher collaborated with his sister, interior designer Courtnay Daniels, who added to the sense of timeless comfort. The completed townhouse appears distinguished but never takes itself too seriously.

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