A Glorious 1885 Park Slope ‘McMansion’

The Parlor Floor: The mix of furniture in the living room includes a Gaetano Pesce chair by the window. The wallpaper on the left wall is from Timorous Beasties. “We used it as the backdrop in a film about Sigmund Freud–Vienna 1900,” Andrew Rossi says. Photo: Annie Schlechter

Twenty years ago, Andrew Rossi attended a rough-cut screening of the documentary Startup.com at the brownstone owned by the filmmakers D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus on the Upper West Side. “I just thought that was such a wonderful way to work,” Rossi recalls. “To live in a brownstone and to be able to work there, too — such an intimate and creatively fertile environment.”

Rossi is a film and television writer and director whose The Andy Warhol Diaries streamed on Netflix last year. He’s married to another filmmaker, Kate Novack, whose André Leon Talley documentary, The Gospel According to André, came out in 2018. These days, after a decade in a South Williamsburg loft that they left because of ongoing repairs to the building, they live with their two children in an 1885 brownstone in Park Slope, where they also work.

“Part of my fantasy about being in a brownstone, which I did actually end up doing, was to be able to shoot a film inside the house,” says Novack, “which was kind of exciting. There are all these stories within the walls of this house.” The film, produced by Rossi, is a 2020 short called Hysterical Girl that revisits “Dora,” the only major case history of a female patient published by Sigmund Freud. “It reimagines her as a teenage girl today and looks at how we as a culture have one foot in 1900 and one foot in 2020,” says Novack. “The Timorous Beasties wallpaper was the backdrop and perfect because it kind of does the same thing in terms of referencing time periods.”

When they bought the brownstone in 2015, it had been converted into two duplex apartments. Being documentary filmmakers, they dug into its past. “I went back in the Brooklyn Eagle,” says Novack. “You could track the evolution of the way that people lived.”

The parlor floor looks as it did back in the day, and many of the home’s heavy-wood Italianate architectural details are well preserved. Novack loves it but is quick to put it in historical context. “It’s funny that we are all sort of precious about these details, which I get,” Novack says. “But it’s also funny because these houses were sort of like the spec houses that we all hate now. We’re so snooty about McMansions, but as I understand it, we are living in the McMansions of 1885.”

The Foyer: The runner on the stairs is from Cold Picnic. Photo: Annie Schlechter

The TV Area: On the wall is a movie poster for The Conformist, by Bernardo Bertolucci, and a poster for the Polish version of The French Connection, by William Friedkin. On the flat-screen: Snapshot, by Andy Warhol. The canvas carpet is from Black Point Mercantile, custom painted by Sharktooth in Williamsburg. Photo: Annie Schlechter

The Living Room: The sectional vintage Don Chadwick sofa by the window was in Kate Novack’s childhood home in “an itchy, puke-y green,” she says. “We recovered it in a dusty-pink velvet from Mood.” The art above it to the right: posters for John Cassavetes’s Opening Night and, below, a contact sheet of Andy Warhol snapshots. The large painting is by Pat Ryan. The area rug is from Cold Picnic. Photo: Annie Schlechter

The Kitchen: The backsplash tiles from Mosaic House were originally intended for a bathroom floor, but the couple decided to use them in the kitchen. Photo: Annie Schlechter

The Dining Area: The family eats on an antique Dutch butcher’s table. The red cabinets are from USM, and the wall clock is by Gaetano Pesce. The papier-mâché pizza on the left shelf is by Stella Rossi, and the painting of Napoleon is by Rubrio Rossi. Photo: Annie Schlechter

The Main Bedroom: Novack’s grandfather’s wing chair was re-covered in Lisa Corti fabric from John Derian. Photo: Annie Schlechter