Lefferts Manor House / Abruzzo Bodziak Architects

The Lefferts Manor section of the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Historic District in Brooklyn is a remarkably well-preserved series of historic houses from the late 19th to early 20th-century: stately and large enough for families, the interiors can pose challenges to contemporary living, with outdated building systems, a lack of storage, and dark, divided spaces. New owners of a corner house—a couple with backgrounds in marketing and journalism, raising two children—came to ABA for something "clean, bright, natural, highly purposeful/functional, and kid-friendly." While the exterior of the building is protected by landmark status, ABA approached the interiors not as restoration, but as reinvention. Looking to retain character while minimizing complexity, ABA suggested unifying spaces and bringing calm and simplicity by using as few ingredients as possible, consistently throughout. In doing so, the design process simultaneously references the house's historic form, borrows from early modernists like Adolph Loos in material usage, and unapologetically eliminates detail.