Architect Restores an 1800s NYC Factory into a 1-Bed Apartment

[bright lively music]

When I was looking for an apartment,

I knew I didn't want something

that was like thousands of other spaces in the city.

And then I found this apartment,

which was inside a 1800s federal-style building

that was once a business that sold furs,

an artists' refuge, and a home for women.

It had the charm and character that I was looking for,

but it needed a ton of work, which I did mostly myself

and with the help of a handyman.

The whole restoration took about four years

because I was just starting my architecture career.

I was working late nights,

and I did what I could with my budget.

On top of all that, just before I purchased this apartment,

my grandparents died.

[somber music]

They were both incredibly special to me,

but losing my grandmother was like losing my best friend.

But despite all the loss,

I was determined to infuse this place

with all of the history that made it so special,

and I was able to add touches from my grandmother's house

that will always remind me of the time that we shared.

In a way, this space is really dedicated to her.

Hi, I am Gabriel Yuri,

and this is my 860-square-foot New York City loft.

[bright gentle music]

We're in the living room space now.

When I first came to see this space,

it was a bit of a disaster to be honest.

Half of the walls were unfinished.

People I think had started to try to fix things,

but ran out of money

and then decided that they wanted to sell.

I knew immediately

that I wanted to peel back some of the layers,

and I had a feeling there was this beautiful brick

behind the plaster, and I was right.

So I knew I wanted to expose this west side wall.

And we did from this end

all the way to the opposite end of the apartment.

And since this building was a furrier,

we actually found little pockets of fur

that were hidden in the wall.

When I first got the space, the ceiling was lowered

and it was covered in sheet rock.

I knew I really wanted to expose

like the old existing ceiling beams, and we did that.

This floor is taller.

There's higher ceiling height

because it was a commercial space,

so we have almost 12-feet ceilings here.

I really feel like just getting

that little bit of extra ceiling height

by exposing the beams totally opened the space up

and made it feel a lot larger.

Since this is a small space,

I wanted to maximize any opportunity to get extra storage.

So underneath these cushions,

there's additional storage here.

I came up with this idea

because this platform had to stay here,

so I figured if it's gonna be here,

we might as well add a little bit of extra storage.

I wanted to retain

as much of the original industrial character

that already existed in the space,

and I wanted to also imbue

a little bit of my own more minimalist modern style.

But I also had like some really great mid-century pieces

that I got from my grandmother,

like this Hans Wegner chair.

The apartment's really a marriage

between those three different ingredients.

My grandmother Norley was born in Vienna, in Austria,

and when she was about 12 or 13,

escaped due to the Nazi occupation

and went to the Czech Republic

before ultimately ending up here in New York City.

And she settled in Queens with my grandfather.

And she found out after coming here

that her father had been killed in a concentration camp.

I'll always be grateful to New York City

for providing that safe haven for her

and allowing her to start the family, which I am part of.

Even before I came out,

my grandmother sensed that I was queer

and she actually brought the conversation up with me,

which just made it easier for me.

My parents were super accepting,

but my grandmother Norley,

I always felt like I could actually talk to her

and divulge even more to her,

partly because she also had this untraditional,

non-conventional relationship in her life.

My grandparents, they had an open marriage.

They both had their own partners in addition to one another.

They really did love each other intensely,

and they were bonded for life.

I may not have realized at the time,

but I think she really fostered

this just super tolerant, accepting environment for me

that as an adult I realized more and more

was incredibly formative for me.

And having these reminders everywhere of my grandparents

makes me feel safe and at home.

[gentle music]

This is the kitchen.

The apartment has a few really narrow spaces,

and this is definitely one of them.

I know for some people a kitchen like this

probably would be too small,

but I'm not the world's greatest chef,

so for me it was totally fine.

The layout is pretty much the same

as how the apartment was when I found it.

I did change the cabinet doors

to these stainless steel doors

and refinished the butcher block countertop.

When I was restoring the place,

my neighbors were also doing a renovation to their apartment

and happened to be getting rid

of the original tin ceiling tile.

And when I realized this, I asked them could I have it.

And I was able to restore the original tile

from the building into the kitchen, and I love it.

[gentle upbeat music]

The narrowness of the kitchen

extends all the way to the bathroom in this hallway.

Even though it's a narrow space,

I tried to maximize the storage potential.

So behind these curtains is all my clothes and washer dryer.

This is a cool old vintage ladder,

and I use it to get up to this side of the storage

to get all the way up to the top.

This door was here, and I just loved the patina.

I didn't want to touch it.

The bathroom is narrow, but it's cozy.

And this old clawfoot tub was already here,

which was great because I love taking baths.

And I just painted the walls black

and left the exposed brick, so it creates

this sort of kind of dark and sensuous bathroom.

I also put the old tin from the building

on the bathroom ceiling

and just gave it a fresh coat of paint.

I didn't want to cram the room with storage space,

but I did put in these little corner shelves,

which are very practical.

And then I had this bath tray created out of the same wood

so that I can have like a glass of wine or some green tea

in the morning in my bath.

So this is like a weird L-shaped hallway

that connects the dining room to the kitchen.

But I figured why not make it a little moment for art

and some beautiful objects.

This is the bust of my grandmother

that she had in her house.

And my side passion is photography,

so this is a mix of my own photographs

and artists that I really admire.

I went to grad school in London,

but I really wanted to start my design career

in New York City, so after I graduated,

I came back and I moved in with my grandparents.

It was amazing to get to live with them.

My grandmother was really one of my best friends,

and I think it was hard on her

for me to be so far away in London for three years.

After a few months of living with them,

my grandmother passed.

And then just a few weeks later,

my grandfather passed as well.

I see the poetry in the fact

that they passed so close to one another

and also in New York City where their romance began.

It kind of spurred my search for my own space.

And I was always looking with this eye

of where could I incorporate the elements that I loved

about their house.

[gentle upbeat music]

Now we're here in the dining room/library.

I decided to hang this amazing window

that I got from my former office building,

Starrett-Lehigh on the Westside.

They were replacing the windows with brand new ones,

and I just figured these old ones are so beautiful.

I wanted like a little piece of that time in my life.

And so I salvaged one of them,

and now it acts as the room divider

between the dining room and the living room.

So you have this brick build out on this side.

And so I figured let's just span shelves

from one end to the other

and maximize the storage space on this wall

with bookshelves and some cabinets below.

And then also just wanted to use

the full height of the space and get as much in as we could.

Since the ceilings are high, we needed a library ladder,

which I had custom built for the space.

This is where have my family portraits.

And this was my Aunt Brenda, sadly no longer with us,

but I always felt like a kinship with her.

And then my grandfather.

My grandmother looking very glamorous.

My grandmother with her jazz singer boyfriend

in their home in Queens

where a lot of this furniture came from.

And then another sort of glamour shot of her there.

In the living room there was the original hard pine floors,

but in really bad shape, so we just refinished those.

And then in the dining room, it was too far gone to save,

so we did this herring bone gray marble.

So this is another example of where things were covered up.

There was this weird shaped build out here

and I just figured like why not rip it off

and see this like crazy pipe

that I feel like is almost a sculpture in and of itself.

These Jens Risom chairs I got from my grandmother.

I feel like the weaving sort of compliments

and plays off of the herringbone floor.

The table is Tom Dixon from ABC Home,

and the pendant is George Nelson.

It's definitely a small dining room,

but I feel like I can comfortably have

four or five people over for a little dinner party.

All of these amazing transom windows

were totally covered up.

And when we ripped off the wall that was here,

we discovered them, and I just thought it would be amazing

to bring them back and also get some of this southern light

to come in to the bedroom.

And these pocket doors were in my grandmother's house.

She was not formally trained as a designer,

but I feel like she just had this incredible design sense.

And she sketched these doors out and had them built.

And as a kid, I always loved seeing them in the house.

It was a little bit of a challenge

reconfiguring the hardware to fit into this thinner wall,

so we devised this steel header

that kind of hides the hardware,

and now I think it works pretty well.

[gentle music]

So this is the bedroom.

The exposed brick wall comes all the way through

to the end of the apartment here.

And I decided to leave this wall super minimal

because I feel like the texture of the brick

is just so beautiful.

The bed is a custom design.

And I just couldn't find anything on the market

that I really loved, so decided to design something myself.

The chairs on either side are Arthur Umanoff,

also from my grandmother.

These sconces are from a salvage place

that I found on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

They're actually industrial naval lights.

I didn't mind seeing the exposure electric conduit.

The pendants in this room

are also just a little bit of a nod

to the industrial history of the building.

As well as just leaving the air conditioning units exposed.

I didn't mind.

A lot of people I think were a little surprised

that I wanted to do that.

I was kind of happy to have them exposed

and contribute to this industrial feeling of the space.

I went to grad school in London

at the Architectural Association,

and I had found this door in Oxfordshire.

And I was using it there as my dining table,

but I really didn't wanna let it go,

so I brought it back with me

and now it's my closet door for the bedroom.

I wanted like a little space for books

and for objects in the room, and so I copied something

that my grandmother used to do all the time,

just stacking bricks or blocks and having wood cut to size.

And I think it's just such a smart, efficient solution,

so I made this sort of corner shelving unit here.

[bright music]

From an early age,

I was interested in architecture and design.

I would play The Sims,

but I wasn't really interested in the people.

I just wanted to build the houses for the people.

And I would have these old AD issues,

and I would see houses that I loved,

and I'd recreate them in the game.

I think with the design of this space,

I was telling multiple stories.

One of them of course being the history of the building,

this incredible legacy of industrial New York.

And then also my grandparents' story,

but also my own sort of design aesthetic.

And it was definitely a challenge

to blend all these different things together,

but I'd like to think that it came together

in a harmonious way.

I love having the reminders of my grandparents.

It makes me feel like I'm still connected to them.

[bright uplifting music]