State Street Condominium

The architectural design transformed 38 State Street, a 1920s Art Deco garage and former IRT trolley shed, into a five-unit condominium within the Brooklyn Heights Historic District. The project preserves the historic vehicle-scaled garage façade while introducing five vertical townhouse residences behind it, confronting a central challenge: how to reconcile the monumental proportions of the existing structure with a new set of human-scale dwellings that bear no alignment in height, rhythm, or proportion.Rather than forcing a correspondence, the design separates the historic façade from the new construction, inserting a layered zone of terraces and planters between them. This interstitial space stabilizes the historic wall, creating inhabitable outdoor rooms that mediate between the two scales.The residences are conceived as loft-like dwellings. The south-facing façade adopts a more civic scale, directing views toward the garden and harbor while presenting a strong architectural gesture to Atlantic Avenue and the BQE.