Gimme Shelter: The Homes of 8 Brooklyn Professionals
While you’d expect the apartment of a couple who both work in the food-and-drink industry—Schwartz is the consulting chef at Milk & Honey and will be head chef at the soon-to-open The Ship; McFalls is a bartender at Little Branch—to have a fully stocked bar and a well-appointed kitchen, you might not expect that there’d be much of a design sensibility in place. But the immaculately preserved (ornate wooden fireplaces! original pocket doors!) Crown Heights brownstone apartment that Schwartz and McFalls (and their Shiba Inu, Kiko) moved into recently is a beautiful study in dark woods, rich leathers, cream-colored walls, and antique curiosities they’ve collected over the years. There is, naturally, a vintage bar cart so that the perfect Manhattan can be mixed at a moment’s notice, and a guest’s coffee is ingeniously lightened with sweet condensed milk instead of plain old half-and-half, but this is a home that also serves as a sun-filled showcase for the couple’s personal aesthetic, which is a little bit offbeat, a little dark, and yet totally welcoming to all who enter.
Photos by Austin McAlliser
