Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City

2 A Single Man Buys a Home for Someday: STEVE CHUNG IN CARROLL GARDENS, BROOKLYN (July 4, 2010)

2 2 2 A Single Man Buys a Home for Someday Steve Chung in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn JULy 4, 2010 Steve Chung, a 37-year-old lawyer, in a converted doll factory in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. (Brian Harkin for The New York Times) 2 3 In 2006, when Steve Chung began shopping for a new apartment, he wasn’t seeking what you might expect from a single, 30-something lawyer ensconced in the heart of the East Village. At the time, Mr. Chung was living in a one-bedroom opposite the Beauty Bar, a boisterous hipster outpost on East 14th Street, and he had neither wife nor child, nor even a serious girlfriend. Nevertheless, his goal was finding a place that was in a family-friendly neighborhood and was large enough to accommodate a wife and children. “When I was looking, prices were skyrocketing, and I feared there was no end in sight,” says Mr. Chung, who is 37 and works as a media lawyer for NBC Universal specializing in First Amendment issues. “Plus, I’m a little crazy when it comes to planning in advance. So even though I was single, and with no serious prospects and no kids, I wanted to buy an apartment that was located in a good school district and had room for a small family.” Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn seemed promising.“I walked around this area, and I saw that a Whole Foods was opening up and figured there was a lot of potential,” he says. As industriously as any parent of a toddler , he checked out local schools. In 2007, after visiting dozens of places, Mr. Chung settled on a $650,000 condominium on Smith Street in an old industrial building that had done time as a dairy store and a doll factory . The apartment had three bedrooms and was just a block from Public School 58, considered one of the city’s best. And while Whole Foods never arrived and longstanding pollution problems led to designation of nearby Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site, Mr. Chung doesn’t regret his decision. The family that he anticipated hasn’t yet come along, or as he sums up the situation, “My whole plan to acquire a place to start a family was a good one, except that I have no family. That was the only flaw.” On the plus side, he now possesses a whimsical duplex, a glittery concoction of colored glass bricks, animal motifs run riot, and unexpected architectural touches executed with a palette straight out of a child’s box of crayons. When Mr. Chung moved into the apartment, he found himself confronted with a look that he came to call “French farmhouse,” one that featured an all-white décor heavy on wooden beams, exposed brick, and arched doorways and interior windows wreathed in swags of red velvet. The previous owner had used the space as a music studio, and furnish- A S I N g L E M A N B U y S A H O M E f O R S O M E d Ay 2 4 ings included giant slabs of marble, Persian rugs, oversized mirrors, and a grand piano. “It definitely had a point of view,” Mr. Chung says. “It just wasn’t my point of view.” Not that he wanted something bland. His goal was to avoid what he describes as “the typical law-firm décor,” a style he found dark and even oppressive. “I remember walking into the office of a large law firm,” he says, “and feeling as if the walls were closing in on me, with all the stoic woods and bank-colored greens.” As Mr. Chung was pondering these matters, he came across a magazine article about designers who help New Yorkers remake their apartments . One firm described itself as a company that served “even people who had no budget,” as Mr. Chung remembers it. “So I called them,” he says, “and as it turned out, their definition of no budget was $150,000.” He had $5,000. But a member of the firm was kind enough to refer him to a Carroll Gardens designer named Robert Farrell, and Mr. Chung has Mr. Farrell to thank for the look that resulted. “He came to my apartment, made a drawing of the space, and then did a paint-bynumbers type of thing saying which walls should be what...