You can’t get more “Brooklyn” than Leyden Lewis. The son of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, interior designer ELLE DECOR A-List grew up in the Crown Heights neighborhood and today maintains the design practice that bears his name in the town. As a child, Lewis remembers watching kung fu movies and running errands with his parents in downtown Brooklyn. Visits to the Bank – a huge, echoing edifice covered in gleaming marble – were especially notable. “I remember being kind of confused, being dragged into that bank, and being like, Where are we? Why are we standing in line?” Lewis recalls.
The bank was Dime Savings Bank, a 1908 landmark that is now adjacent to Brooklyn’s architectural addition: a 1,066-foot-tall residential skyscraper. Designed by SHoP Architects and developed by real estate firm JDS Development Group, Brooklyn Tower is the first high-rise building in the area. And in what looks like a full-circle moment, Lewis designed one of the units of the skyscraper model. “How often can you participate in your history through design?” Asked. “I really tried to represent what I would have done if I lived in this space and honor that date.”
Celebrating the spirit of Brooklyn is central to the design of the unit, an 880-square-foot one-bedroom apartment located on the 56th floor of the tower. The compact design, complete with an awkward column abutting the kitchen, was admittedly difficult, but Lewis took up the challenge. “People produce modular apartments because understanding how to furnish can be complicated,” Lewis says. “We wanted to add a little Leyden Lewis Design Studio jazz to it, but at the same time we wanted it to be functional.”
Once inside, you will understand what jazz is all about. The apartment evokes a Brooklynite building, with a gold accent wall, a heavily curved sofa (a custom Lewis design), and lively work by local artists like Billy Gerrard Frank, Malin Barnett, and Megan Brady. With a wide expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass windows, the town is spread below.
Those vertigo-filled views presented another unique challenge, according to Lewis: “For some people, living in a tower comes intuitively. But I think there will be individuals who have lived in much lower levels, if not a home, they will be like, ‘Can we live in a tower?'” ?”
To establish the space, Lewis incorporated warm materials, low-key furnishings, and artistic layers where possible. The custom wood counter designed by Niko Yektai wraps around a corner near the kitchen (the interior architecture was managed by fellow ELLE DECOR A-List Design studio Gachot), a move that adds an organic touch amidst all the glass but is also a clever space—a rescue tactic. As for that annoying column? Lewis covered it with mirrors, an effect that virtually makes the column disappear—with the added advantage of mirroring the views outside the window.
The bedroom, meanwhile, is covered in a textured cork wallcovering from Holly Hunt. The bed, another Lewis custom creation, recalls Japanese silhouettes (Lewis’ obsession he credits with all martial arts movies) and is flanked by two Murano-glass sconces. An undulating window seat in polished African mahogany is the perfect place to curl up with a book or admire the game-sized Manhattan Bridge.
And for whom exactly is this house in the sky? According to Lewis, they are art collectors, journalists, polyglots, travelers, and partisans: “These people are so we.“
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