Proof, if it were needed, that loft living has come of age, this New York loft is actually a reworking of a previous loft conversion, carried out twenty years ago when the movement was taking off. Situated on the top floor of the Eagle Warehouse in Brooklyn Hights, the space is dominated by a magnificent glass clockface providing sweeping views of Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Skyline.
The building in which the loft is located began life as the headquarters of the Brooklyn Eagle, a newspaper which was edidted in the mid-nineteenth century by the celebrated American poet Walt Whitman. At the end of the nineteenth century, the building was extensively renovated and converted into a warehouse providing storage for middle class families moving into Brooklyn to escape Manhattan's rapidly escalating land values. Brooklyn Bridge was being constructed at the same time and when the architect of the removation realized that the deck of the bridge would be more or less level with the top floor of the building he added the clock, whose face advertises the company's name.
Rundown and abandoned in the 1980's, Eagle Warehouse was a prime candidate for developers cashing in on the loft boom. A condition of converting the property was that is was Ôlandmarked' or given heritage status. However, when the present owner, an architect and interior designer moved in, very little of the original character had been maintained. The loft subdivided into individual rooms, the ceiling had been lowered by 1.5 m (5 ft), partially obscuring the clockface and interior surfaces were concealed behind plasterboard.
The owner's response was to re-imagine the space as if the original architect had designed it for himself. He stripped away the partition and false ceiling, took he walls back to the brick and transformed what had been a two bedroom apartment into a one bedroom loft. Over half the floor area is now an open space, where different functions are difined by lighting, cabinets and counters, and furniture placement. With the original scale and proportions restored, the sprinkler pipes, valves, and clockface, along with it's motor and steel strapping, fully exposed, the result was a return to a true loft space.
The Clock
New Loft Living
2002
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