BYE BYE BROOKLYN - Last Looks at Our Brooklyn Loft
An older photo of the living room. We rolled up the rug in 2020 when we were both home all the time, and the money tree quadrupled in height over time!
I moved to New York in the summer of 2006 and lived in the following places:
A small rented room in a Seminary in Chelsea, my cousin’s apartment on the Upper East Side, a small but tidy apartment on the corner of Bushwick Avenue and Grand Street, in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where my roommate, Kate, and I loved to throw parties. The bedrooms were just big enough to wedge a bed in, no space on any sides.
In 2009 I found a wonderful, cheap, crumbling apart, high-ceilinged, extremely weird railroad apartment on Humboldt Street in Williamsburg. I moved in alone and lived there for 8 (or 9?) years before meeting Jason. For most of that time, Whisker lived there, too.
When Jason and I moved in together, we found a newly built, condo-style apartment in Bed-Stuy. It was a great place, with two balconies, and it was featured on Domino Magazine. But the landlord was a jerk and we only lived there for a year. The day we learned we would have to move out, Jason said, “There are apartments available in the Chocolate Factory building, and I’ve always been curious about that place. Should we go look?” So we went and looked.
We decided that day that we wanted to move into the Chocolate Factory.
Oh my god, I loved this apartment. It wasn’t perfect - the kitchen was large and functional, but ugly; the bathroom had no windows and the tub was shallow. But it was huge. The southern facing windows constantly flooded the rooms with light, and the floors were original from when the space was a Tootsie Roll Factory (meaning, if you scuffed them, no one would know). As people who like to make things, loft style living really suited us.
The day I picked up our keys I wore vintage Butterick 4200. On the day we gave them back and headed to the airport, I wore a wool jersey Mimi G Georgia top and True Bias Lander Pants.
I took this right before the movers came, when I realized I had no photos of this side of the room.
For the better part of 2020, and some time before, I took most of my outfit photos in the bedroom - a room bigger than some of my previous apartments - where I had a desk and shelf set up in the corner for all of my sewing, a spacious closet, and four completely different looking corners to play with. (Click the arrows to view photos in the slideshow.)
All of those photos are from the bedroom, it was a place that really sparked my creativity. But over time, I started sewing at the dining table (not many photos of that), so I could be near Jason or watch TV while sewing.
Our main living space was very large, and we kept it mostly open, often messy. I don’t have a ton of photos of the whole space because it was a big, multi-purpose room. A lot of our furniture was on wheels so we could move things around. We liked to keep the middle of the room empty for evening yoga or projects that demanded a lot of floor space. We approached it more like a studio than a home living room.
These photos are not precious or staged - that’s not how we lived in this space. In fact, the one where you can see the kitchen was snapped right before the movers arrived, with my finger blurring the top right corner, and all of our dishes on the kitchen counter (so we knew what was being packed, and what was not).
These photos show so much, but leave out a lot. I cannot find photos of: the entryway, the alcove room (full of bikes, sculptures, my jewelry studio, a big decorative shelf), the bathroom, the walk in closet full of tools & supplies. But I think this captures the essence.
Photo by our friend Ogee, from Osaka, who snapped this while staying with us a couple summers ago.
Someone on Instagram asked me if I was afraid of being homesick when we moved abroad. My honest answer in the moment was No, I don’t think so. I went to boarding school from the age of 14, halfway across the USA from my family. I’ve always been really independent by nature. But you can’t predict these things. Looking at these photos, I think I will have moments of homesickness. I fell asleep on the airplane when we were flying to Scotland; when I startled awake, I thought I was on our big grey couch in the living room - it was a shock to realize I was in the sky somewhere over the Atlantic.
I grew a lot as a person while living in that loft. Jason and I spent a year of Covid-19 pandemic there (I’m happy to report we still enjoy each other’s company). I created many, many meals, memories, clothes, and objects in that space. I will miss the space and the location, but also, I will keep that energy with me, and hopefully carry it, grow it, as I move forward to whatever comes next. XO, Martha