A New-Build in Brooklyn Filled With Light and Tons of Books

After relocating to Brooklyn from London in 2015, Gully and Nilopher Patel had a clear idea about the kind of home they wanted for their family.

“We wanted to live in a brownstone, but modern,” said Mr. Patel, 50, who works in technology at Bank of America, “which we discovered is not as easy as it sounds.”

They saw few homes on the market that reflected their taste, and when they looked for a property to renovate, they always seemed to encounter problems and false starts. Frustrated, they briefly looked at homes in suburbs outside New York, but quickly determined they didn’t want to leave the city.

“New York is a lovely place,” said Ms. Patel, 43, a sous chef at Locanda Verde in TriBeCa. Even though they knew few people when they moved to the city, the couple and their children — they now have three boys, ages 10 to 20 — were struck by the friendliness of the people they met. “We fell in love with this place.”

At the end of 2019, they saw a listing for a tired two-family townhouse in Park Slope covered in clapboard siding. It was not a charming brownstone, but the property did look promising as a lot where they could build something new.

Their real estate agent, Adam Pacelli at Compass, didn’t hesitate to give the couple his honest assessment of the property. “He said, ‘Gully, if you want to buy this, it’s a tear-down,’” Mr. Patel said.

The couple was more excited than intimidated and closed on the property for about $1.5 million in February 2020. Then, on the recommendation of Mr. Pacelli, they hired OPerA Studio Architecture to design a new townhouse to replace the old structure.

“It was a rundown, wood-framed house that came down pretty easily,” said Thomas Barry, the principal of OPerA Studio. The old townhouse had about 1,525 square feet of living space, “which was a third of the development potential of the site,” Mr. Barry said. So beyond designing an attractive new building, there was an opportunity to build a much more spacious home.

After years of poring over design magazines and books for inspiration, Mr. Patel showed Mr. Barry four photographs that reflected four elements the couple wanted in their new home. “We wanted a living room with lots of height,” Mr. Patel said. “Not wide, but very narrow and tall.”

Then, he continued, they wanted a library overlooking that double-height space, where they could host dinner parties. “I saw this idea of a dining table with lots of books around it, and that attracted me,” Mr. Patel said.

The third element they desired was a sculptural staircase. The fourth was a top-floor lounge opening to a roof terrace.

In addition, Mr. Patel said, after growing up in a small, dark house in England, he wanted their new home to be filled with natural light.

In response, Mr. Barry designed a 3,100-square-foot, four-story home organized around a core of custom oak-and-glass bookcases.

On the parlor level, the bottom of this wooden core appears suspended above an open kitchen. On the second floor, the bookcases enclose the library the Patels desired, including views over a double-height living room through glass-backed shelves.

On the third floor, the bookcases give the couple’s children places to store books just outside their bedrooms. On the top floor, the bookcases provide a place to display favorite art volumes in a lounge by a roof terrace, while incorporating windows that bring sunlight into the center of the home.

A floating staircase with a steel guardrail and open risers curls between the shelves, making the climb up feel similar to exploring an academic library.

To finish the interior, the Patels and Mr. Barry worked with an edited palette of materials that created a crisp, minimalist look, including oak flooring, gas fireplaces with plaster surrounds instead of mantels, and clean-lined contemporary furniture.

The kitchen, which is open to the living room to encourage family conversation at mealtime, reflects Ms. Patel’s preferences from working in restaurant kitchens, including storage concentrated in under-counter cabinets.

“Because I’ve been working with professional kitchens, I was looking for something very similar, without units crowded at the top,” Ms. Patel said. “I wanted everything clean and functional.”

One of the few decorative elements is a backsplash of triangular metallic mosaic tile, which they found at AKDO’s Manhattan showroom and installed on the wall behind the range.

In addition to the primary residence, Mr. Barry designed a 1,200-square-foot apartment on the garden level, which the family plans to rent out in the future.

Between pandemic-related delays and a focus on meticulous craftsmanship, building the townhouse took time. After demolishing the old structure in 2021, the family didn’t move in until the spring of 2025 — and even then, they initially lived in the garden-level apartment as work continued on the parlor level. But the home was substantially complete last fall, at a cost of $2.6 million.

The townhouse is so new that the Patels still experience moments of disbelief.

“It’s like a dream,” Ms. Patel said. “A dream come true.”