The Hearth Is the Home

The house was divided into separate apartments when they bought it. The renovation turned the back half of the parlor floor into a big kitchen. Photo: Annie Schlechter

Arriving at Evyn Block and Adam Sachs’s home in Brooklyn on a winter’s day, the delicious scent of a goose roasting draws you into the warmth of the kitchen, which takes up half the parlor floor. Which makes sense: Sachs, a food writer, was for a time editor-in-chief of Saveur; his wife owns her own PR firm and was once marketing director for Daniel Boulud.

When they bought the 1860 townhouse in 2011, it had been divided into four apartments. “The parlor floor had been a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom that still haunts me,” Sachs says. The couple brought in Elizabeth Roberts, an architect and old friend, who had extensive experience in the renovation of townhouses like this one. They took their time — 13 years — to finish it all. But Roberts knew what the assignment was. “Adam is passionate about kitchen design and how this dream kitchen of his was going to work,” she says.

The renovation of the parlor floor included taking down the brick wall at the rear of the room, part of an extension that hid a tiny, cramped kitchen. “We basically moved the kitchen into what was the original rear parlor of the house and then put the dining in that room,” Roberts says. They discovered a fireplace behind a wall, and Roberts encouraged Sachs to open the flue and consider a cooking fireplace.

In fact, Sachs had been dreaming of a cooking fireplace ever since attending a wedding in the south of France where open-fire cooking took place in big stone hearths. They enlisted Ben Eisendrath’s company, Grillworks. The installation included rebuilding the firebox, relining the flue, and putting a big exhaust fan on the roof. “It has completely changed the way
we cook and entertain,” Sachs says, “and it is one of my strange hobbies.”

They closed on the house when their son, William, was 5 days old and moved in when he was almost 2; he’s now 13. And their daughter, Julia, was born a few months before they moved in. They added salvaged casement windows to the back — “Elizabeth designed the back wall around them,” says Sachs. With the porcelain tiles, “we wanted something that was a combination of cozy and austere,” Sachs says, “some mix of English and Scandinavian with a little fantasy mix of Old English scullery.” Block, who calls herself “a passionate eater,” adds, “Cooking and entertaining is a central activity here, and we are comfortable with a little bit of chaos. The table is all beat up, and it’s fine; it’s okay if you draw on it and a wineglass makes a mark.”

Daughter Julia and the family dog, Phoebe, in the living room. Photo: Annie Schlechter

The Oven: “We purchased the secondhand burgundy-red Lacanche stove from a nice lady in Sparta, Wisconsin,” Adam Sachs says. The counters are PaperStone. The joists were exposed during the renovation. Photo: Annie Schlechter

“The nine-foot pine table was originally ten feet and finished in a horrible dark color, so I had it shortened and stripped,” Sachs says. The windows were found in aNew Jersey salvage yard, and Sachs drove them back in a U-Haul. “We fell in love with the idea of steel-casement windows,” he says, “but couldn’t afford new ones.” Photo: Annie Schlechter

Adam Sachs and Evyn Block enjoy a quiet moment at the kitchen table. Photo: Annie Schlechter

Sachs tends to the goose he is roasting for dinner. The porcelain tiles used for the oven wall also cover the floor. “I knew that Adam was going to work this house,”Elizabeth Roberts says, “and I think we all decided that a light material was going to beso nice, and it’s really indestructible.” Photo: Annie Schlechter