The Insider: Design Team Brings Warmth, Function, Industrial Chic to Young Family's Dumbo Loft
The designers built a dividing wall to create a den/TV area apart from the main living space, but the thrust of the job was sourcing new furnishings, mostly from retail outlets.
Photo by Luis Paez
You may know Modern Anthology from the hip men’s clothing stores in Dumbo and Cobble Hill, though John Marsala and Becka Citron, creative and business partners who have been working together since 2010, recently shuttered both stores and reinvented the retail part of their business online. At the same time, they’ve enhanced their focus on interior design services, which is where they started in the first place. “We were doing design work exclusively before opening the shops,” said Marsala. “Interiors are still our bread and butter.”
The same chic industrial look that prevailed at the Modern Anthology stores is evident in this loft, which Marsala and Citron furnished for a young couple who discovered them while shopping at the Jay Street store just prior to the pandemic. “They loved the aesthetic of the store,” Citron recalled.
The 2,400-square-foot space began as a mostly open loft in a former industrial building, converted to residential use two decades ago, with exposed brick, beefy wood columns and two bedrooms at the back. The couple, who have a small child, “had plans for custom everything from another designer, and that wasn’t the direction they wanted to go in, so we started fresh,” Marsala said.
The designers built a dividing wall to create a den/TV area apart from the main living space, but the thrust of the job was sourcing new furnishings, mostly from retail outlets.
In setting the tone, they took heed of the homeowners’ artwork. Quirky pieces like a framed print that looks like an optometrist’s eye chart but reads ‘I was young and needed the money’ and a vivid, oversized portrait of a woman with piercing eyes were cues, Citron said, that their clients “didn’t want to play everything safe.”
A Chesterfield-style sofa and a pair of egg-shaped mid-century chairs came from Restoration Hardware.
Eye-catching upholstery enlivens a vintage wing chair. The back is covered in plastic-coated fabric imprinted with street signs, the front in a tailored pin stripe.
The over-dyed vintage rug came from Nomadic Trading Company; the wall-mounted sconce is a Serge Mouille design.
Blue vintage chairs and a Saarinen-style pedestal table are all that was needed to make an informal breakfast area.
The dining area is centered on a live-edge table and wire chairs à la Eames from Modernica.
The long hallway leading to the bedrooms became a gallery of framed photos and art, unified with simple wood and metal frames.
Given the generous square footage, a partial wall sufficed to create a separate TV-watching area.
The warmth of natural brick envelops the primary bedroom, simply furnished with a bed by Brooklyn-based Uhuru Design, a dresser by L.A.-based designer Thomas Bina and a chandelier from the lighting studio Apparatus.
[Photos by Luis Paez]
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The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at a notable interior design/renovation project, by design journalist Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday morning.
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