Habitats/112th Street Near Frederick Douglass Boulevard; Architect Couple Build A New House in Harlem

JOAN BLUMENFELD and Bob Krone live in something extremely unusual for Manhattan, though it's no big deal anyplace else. They live in a new house.

They built their modern interpretation of a brownstone on a vacant lot in Harlem, not far from the apartment at 104th Street and Central Park West where they were living with their two sons.

Initially, they figured they would buy a wreck and renovate it, and in fact they had signed a contract for a dilapidated building. But the deal fell through because of title problems. Then a broker they met while looking at houses suggested they consider a vacant lot -- and it was a revelation.

''I didn't think they were available,'' Mr. Krone said. New construction in Manhattan is usually carried out on multiple parcels by developers, not individuals.

Mr. Krone and Ms. Blumenfeld are architects, so they weren't intimidated by the idea of building. In March 2001, they bought a 17-by-100-foot lot on 112th Street near Frederick Douglass Boulevard, just a two blocks north of Central Park. After 14 months of construction, they moved into their house in November.

They paid $150,000 for the land and spent about $760,000 on putting up their 4,000-square-foot home, or $190 a square foot, which they called ''rock bottom'' for new construction in New York. New buildings in New York are usually $250 to $300 a square foot, they said.

They assume they came out well financially because houses in mint condition in Harlem usually sell for more than $1 million.

In their work lives, both deal with large commercial jobs, so doing a residence was fun. ''We love working together,'' Ms. Blumenfeld said. ''We have wanted to do an architectural project for a long time.''

Ms. Blumenfeld is a principal at Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, where she has worked on things like the 800,000-square-foot interior for the new Reuters building in Times Square. Mr. Crone is the president of WPG Design Group in Manhattan, which specializes in corporate interiors and retail, with clients like Bloomberg and Cantor Fitzgerald.

Indeed, they so enjoyed the experience of imagining and then creating a brownstone that they would like to do it again, perhaps as an investment. ''We're actually looking for vacant pieces of land,'' he said.

Although their new house is farther north than their apartment, the neighborhood is not foreign to them, nor are neighborhoods that some people consider ''in transition.''

They had bought the apartment at Central Park West and 104th because they believed the neighborhood was improving. ''It was very much at the edge of the Upper West Side,'' Mr. Krone said. ''It looked like the neighborhood was coming up.''

They were right, and when their apartment increased in value, they were able to use the equity to finance their new construction.

Nevertheless, they didn't want to feel unsafe, and when they first bought the land they weren't positive they would end up living there. The west side of Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 111th Street and 112th Street was unoccupied, and the vacancies pulled down the neighborhood. But now new stores have gone in, and the area is much more appealing, Ms. Blumenfeld said.

IN designing their house, they replicated the basic format of a brownstone. ''We wanted it to fit into the neighborhood,'' she said.

On the exterior, the roof line aligns with the others on the block. The front stands out, but not jarringly, with its mix of brownstone, glass and metal. The interior follows the standard arrangement of four floors. Like many other owners, they will rent the garden apartment, which is still under construction.

Their interior, however, is lighter and more open than most brownstones, not only because they have minimized the use of walls but because of the staircase design. It is not enclosed in a wall, and there is much glass and metal around it, so the brownstone feels even wider than its 17 feet.

''In most brownstones you never feel the full width because the stairs are enclosed,'' she said. They have also left the entire parlor floor open. ''Instead of getting a 12-by-15-foot room, you get 15 by 55 feet,'' Ms. Blumenfeld said. ''It's a whole different feeling.''

They also did whatever was possible to bring in light, Mr. Krone said. For instance, on the second floor, in the small area over the main entry, an area usually enclosed with walls, they used glass instead, so light from the front flows into the stairwell.

Their parlor floor is like a loft, one big open room with a kitchen at the far end and their sitting area with a fireplace at the front. On the second floor, the middle area is what they call the ''Nintendo room,'' where their sons, Robert, 17, a student at Stuyvesant High School, and Max, 10, a student at P. S. 87 on the Upper West Side, can play games.

Each son's bedroom is furnished with a bed and a desk built by their father. In their previous apartments, the boys always shared a room, and the bed and desk were constructed as one unit, with the bed over the desk, to save space. When they moved into their new house, there was enough space to separate the beds from the desks, Mr. Krone said.

On the top floor is the master bedroom and bath, and an all-purpose room that is part office, part guest room. Eventually, they plan to put a deck and a garden on the roof. ''The one thing we'll never have to do is use the Stairmaster,'' Ms. Blumenfeld said.

The house is simple, but so well designed and built that it doesn't feel in any way like rock-bottom construction. All the finishes are attractive and clean looking, but they said they kept the overall cost down by having nothing custom made. The floors are basic red oak laid in strips. The kitchen cabinets are stock, not custom, from Craftline. A DuPont product called Zodiac, which is 75 percent quartz chips in a resin base, was used for the countertop.

Building their own home was different from their work projects, they said, because they were dealing with small companies as subcontractors. In big commercial jobs, Ms. Blumenfeld said, the contractors can take people off one job and put them on another, so they meet deadlines. That's not the case in small residential work, so things go more slowly.

Both of them came to their passion for structures and materials through their families. Mr. Krone is the grandson of a cabinetmaker and grew up in a house in Chicago that was built by his grandfather. He still enjoys woodworking. ''I'll take on any project that will only last a weekend,'' he said.

Ms. Blumenfeld's father, Adrian Blumenfeld, oversaw New York City's school construction projects from 1963 until 1973, she said, and it was he who suggested that she become an architect. Like a typical teenager, she said, ''I never paid any attention to anything he said -- except that.''

Mr. Krone and Ms. Blumenfeld have moved every few years, and as much as they're enjoying their new place, it wouldn't surprise them if they moved again. Some people joke about moving when it's time to paint, but they really mean it.

''We typically stay at a place until it's time to paint,'' she said. ''We get really restless, and feel like we need a change.''