Not many people move to Bushwick for the architecture — the neighborhood’s renovated housing stock tends toward either Home Depot specials or bland new condos. But the carriage house at 290 Bleecker Street is an exception — a single-family home renovated by the artist Jorge Pardo, a MacArthur Fellow known not only for his masterful use of tile and lighting, texture and color — but also for creating houses and large-scale installations that incorporate architecture and design, like the Mount Washington house he built for an L.A. MoCA exhibition. Pardo bought and renovated the Bushwick house for himself in 2015 as an East Coast base of operations, and, as expected, he transformed the space with color and light, tiling the floors (and some of the walls) in a palette of blues, greens, and yellows and putting in a sculptural red staircase.
Now, the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath carriage house is available for rent, asking $9,900 a month. It’s also listed for sale at $2.39 million. The current owner, Jeremy Filgate, a creative director, bought the house from Pardo a year and a half ago. He says that he and his family love the space (and they threw a few parties there), but they live in Clinton Hill, and as enchanted as they all are by it, they aren’t ready to move in.
It’s a house made for having people over — with the entire first floor dedicated to the kitchen and the living room, which opens out to a walled backyard that’s designed to feel like an extension of the house. When Pardo bought the house, it had been gutted by a developer whose plans fell through. But, as he told Architectural Digest in 2021, he didn’t mind in the least: “I like open spaces and really simple things,” he said. “And it felt like a loft, with high ceilings on both floors.” Pardo put in a big kitchen for entertaining with high-end appliances (and a lot of them: There’s a double oven, two dishwashers, four under-counter fridge drawers, two freezer drawers, and a six-burner range) and replaced the back wall with windows.
The house is flooded with light — in addition to the glass back wall, it has lot-line windows on both sides (unusual) and seven skylights upstairs, according to Filgate. It also has zoned AC. And the tile floors don’t just look pretty; they’re also radiant-heated. The house comes with a garage, a rarity in New York, although you do have to walk through it to get to the main entrance. (Pardo told AD that he liked “that Latin American thing where you don’t have a front yard. When you go into your house, you enter your own world.”) The only thing the house didn’t come with, says Filgate, were Pardo’s lamps, but for those who love the look otherwise, the space is available furnished (or un-, depending on renter preference) with the very nice replacements that Filgate picked out.
