Brooklyn Heights gets its first-ever designer showhouse this month
The Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA) will publicly debut the borough’s first-ever Designer Showhouse on Sept. 29 in a historic 150-year-old townhouse on Livingston Street, replacing its long-standing annual house tour fundraising initiative.
After 31 seasons of relying on house tours as their primary fundraising vehicle, BHA Executive Director Peter Bray says two things became clearly evident — “The universe of homes to draw upon was being exhausted because in such a compact community with a half a dozen homes featured each year, our options were running out and we couldn’t keep going back to the well. Also, it’s a different world now and people are more private about their investments, so it was time for a change.”
The seed for that change was initially planted back in 2015 during a conversation between former BHA Executive Director Judy Stanton and Ellen Hamilton of Hamilton Design Associates that examined the possibility of replacing the house tours with a Showhouse. That was the beginning of a 24-month undertaking that will soon culminate in the borough’s first and only Designer Showhouse located at 32 Livingston St. between Clinton and Court streets.