Sisters Hollister and Porter Hovey have always been intrigued by traditions and decor, partly thanks to a childhood surrounded by their parents' vintage furniture and and inherited and flea market finds. So it's no surprise that the sisters' new book, Heirloom Modern, focuses on "objects bought bequeathed beloved, and worth handing down"?as the subtitle puts it?and those objects' place in interior design. We chatted with the Hovey sisters about some of the homes profiled in the book. Above is a detail shot of our particular favorite, Clinton Hill's Pfizer mansion, an 1887 Queen Anne built as a private residence by Pfizer co-founder Charles Erhart. The house, which has also had past lives as a library branch and a Catholic girls' school, is now a house again, owned by Jessica Warren. Warren and her husband worked with Neuhaus Design Architecture to restore the property, fixing and re-staining the floors and filling the place with thrifted furniture. The restoration led to a fun discovery, the Hoveys told us: letters from a former owner of the home that had been perfectly preserved behind one of the walls.
Warren introduced the Hoveys to Naida McSherry, who lives in a carriage house behind the Pfizer mansion. McSherry is a former fabric designer who ended up in real estate and sold more than 400 homes in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in the neighborhood's pre-gentrification days. Above is a look at her carriage house, which is full of miniature replicas of houses. "She was the first one to really go over there and actively pursue that neigborhood when it was neglected in the 1970s," the Hoveys explain. "She sort of is this great lynchpin of what this great part of Brooklyn has become."
· Heirloom Modern [Amazon]
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