Bushwick and Ridgewood: Where Brooklyn Design Is Heading

By Nora Feldman

Bushwick interior design, and Ridgewood’s across the county line, starts with a century-old brick row built for working families and finishes with secondhand furniture, restored trim, and pieces scaled for 20-foot-wide houses. The two neighborhoods sit on either side of the Brooklyn and Queens border, and the same architects and builders put up most of their housing in the early 1900s. Williamsburg showed where Brooklyn design went in the 2000s. Bushwick and Ridgewood show where it is going next: buy used, keep the period shell, and furnish for real apartment proportions.

This guide is part of our neighborhood design series; every shop and gallery below was confirmed open as of October 2026.

Key takeaways

• Louis Berger & Company was architect of record for more than 5,000 buildings in the Ridgewood and Bushwick area between 1895 and 1930, which is why the blocks on both sides of the line look related.
• Ridgewood has four city historic districts: Stockholm Street (2000), Ridgewood North (2009), Ridgewood South (2010), and Central Ridgewood (2014), the last covering 990 buildings.
• Mathews Model Flats, the earliest of them built between 1908 and 1914, gave each apartment five rooms plus a private bathroom, a major step up from older tenements.
• Recent Ridgewood renovations keep tin ceilings, oak newel posts, and vestibule tile, spend the money on plumbing, and furnish from Craigslist, eBay, and IKEA.
• Lichen on Woodward Avenue, Chyelle on Cook Street, Brooklyn Vintage Company on Irving Avenue, and Big Reuse on Troutman Street anchor the shopping circuit.

One building boom, two boroughs

Bushwick came first. German immigrants arrived in large numbers after the political upheavals of 1848, and brewing became the area’s signature industry. By 1880 Brooklyn had 35 breweries, at least 11 of them in a 14-block stretch of the Eastern District known as brewer’s row, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The brewers built big. The Catherina Lipsius House at 670 Bushwick Avenue, built in 1889 and 1890 to designs by Theobald Engelhardt for the family that ran the Claus Lipsius Brewing Company, is red brick with a rounded corner tower and a high mansard roof. It became a city landmark in 2013. After the Myrtle Avenue El opened in 1888, three- and four-story multiple dwellings spread east toward the Queens line.

Ridgewood stayed farmland, picnic grounds, and beer gardens until after the 1898 consolidation of New York City. Then Bushwick’s builders bought the farms and repeated what they knew. A 1905 code change required masonry for attached rows, so nearly everything after that is brick, much of it from the Kreischer Brick Manufacturing Company of Staten Island. Most builders hired the same firm, Louis Berger & Company. The borough line itself was redrawn along the street grid in the 1920s, and Ridgewood kept a Brooklyn ZIP code until 1979.

Ridgewood’s landmark rows, and the flats that set a standard

The most influential building type here is the Mathews Model Flat. German immigrant Gustave X. Mathews built on wider lots with large air shafts, private bathrooms, and no more than two families per floor. His company built and sold more than 300 tenements in Ridgewood between 1909 and 1912, and the city’s Tenement House Department exhibited the design at the 1915 Panama-Pacific fair in San Francisco. The 96 buildings of the Ridgewood North Historic District, built between 1908 and 1914, are the earliest fully developed examples, with buff and amber brick, carved stone details, and pressed-metal cornices.

Inside, the LPC report describes a five-room plan: living room, dining room, bedroom, sitting room, and kitchen, plus a bathroom, all taking light and air from central shafts. These were cold-water flats. There was running water and a full bath, but no hot water or central heating; a coal stove in the kitchen and a kerosene heater in the living room did the work. Any heating system you find in one today was added later.

Central Ridgewood, designated on December 9, 2014, is mostly row houses with projecting bays. The typical house is two or three stories and about 20 feet wide, with a five-room apartment on the first floor and six rooms on the floors above, each with a full kitchen and bathroom. Paul Stier, Ridgewood’s most prolific builder, put up more than 2,000 houses in the area, about half of this district among them. Many original brownstone stoops, cut-glass doors, and pressed-metal cornices survive.

What the interiors look like now

Two Ridgewood projects covered by Brownstoner show the local method. Architect Otto Ruano of LEAD Studios reworked a three-story, 3,000-square-foot brick row house that had barely been touched in decades. Replacing the plumbing cost about $50,000, almost a third of the budget. In exchange, the tin ceilings needed only minimal patching, and the vestibule tile, a carved oak newel post, and early electric light fixtures stayed. Wide archways replaced the walls between kitchen, dining, and living rooms to show off the tin.

The design studio White Arrow faced the opposite problem in a 20-by-55-foot row house: a railroad apartment with few windows, acoustical tile ceilings, and linoleum. The fix was light. They bleached the existing pine subfloors, salvaged antique doors with glass panels so daylight could pass from room to room, and replaced long-lost baseboards, casings, and crown moldings. IKEA kitchen boxes got custom fronts. Much of the furniture, from the sofa to 1970s Italian chairs, came secondhand.

Bushwick’s stock is more mixed: converted warehouse lofts, brownstones, and brick and limestone townhouses, with brewer-era mansions such as the Lipsius house at the top end. The loft blocks around Cook and White Streets now hold what Brownstoner calls a growing cluster of vintage shops and creative makers. The common thread on both sides of the line is a shell kept or rebuilt in period, money spent on systems, and rooms furnished with used pieces that have a history.

The clearest signal of where this is heading is Lichen. Ed Be and Jared Blake started by reselling furniture and opened a storefront at Manhattan and Montrose Avenues, on the Williamsburg and Bushwick border, before opening their showroom in Ridgewood. Their first in-house collection, made with the Japanese furniture company Karimoku and shown at ICFF, centers on the ZE sofa, a reissue of a long-dormant Karimoku office piece rescaled for a contemporary apartment, plus a modular storage and table system called CMPT.

Where to shop and look

Start at Chyelle, which Chyelle Milgrom opened in a 1,700-square-foot space at Cook and White Streets. The rooms are set up like apartments so you can sit on the sofas before you buy, and at opening, glassware and lamps started around $20. Brooklyn Vintage Company mixes furniture and home goods with records and art. Big Reuse takes no furniture donations at its Bushwick location, so its shelves run to home goods, lamps, and books. All three were stops on a Climate Week store hop on September 25, 2026.

In Ridgewood, Woodward Avenue is the spine. Lichen is open weekends only, so plan around that. Stay Forever, founded by Michelle Delgado and Lisa Jee, covers the small layer of a room. For art, Lorimoto was founded by Lori Kirkbride and Nao Matsumoto, and Matsumoto started Ridgewood Open Studios in 2019; the 2024 edition drew around 150 studios and exhibitions, according to Hyperallergic. In Bushwick, Arts in Bushwick ran Bushwick Open Studios from September 18 to 20 this year.

Practical notes for a Bushwick or Ridgewood apartment

• Check the landmark map first. In Ridgewood’s four districts, interior work needs an LPC permit when it also needs a Department of Buildings permit or affects the exterior. Ordinary repairs need none. Our Brooklyn Heights guide lays out the three permit types.
• Save the tin. Pressed-metal ceilings that survived a century usually need patching, not replacement, and they give a plain room its ornament.
• Move light through railroad plans. Pale floors, glass-panel doors, and pale paint carry daylight from the front windows to the back rooms.
• Size furniture for 20-foot widths. A row house apartment of five or six rooms will not take a loft sectional. Look for apartment-scaled sofas and modular storage.
• Budget systems before furniture. Untouched houses mean old plumbing and wiring, and the Mathews flats were built without central heat.

For the city side of a gut renovation, see our NYC apartment renovation guide.

Frequently asked questions

What does Bushwick interior design look like?

A period brick shell with secondhand furniture. Original details such as tin ceilings, oak stair posts, and tile are kept or rebuilt, renovation money goes to plumbing and wiring, and rooms are furnished with vintage and used pieces sized for narrow row houses and lofts.

Is Ridgewood in Brooklyn or Queens?

Queens. The town historically spanned the Brooklyn and Queens border, which was redrawn along the street grid in the 1920s. Ridgewood used a Brooklyn ZIP code until it received a Queens ZIP code in 1979.

What are Mathews Model Flats?

Three-story brick tenements built mainly by the G.X. Mathews Company in Ridgewood in the early 1900s. Each apartment had five rooms and a private bathroom, with two families per floor. The design was exhibited at the 1915 Panama-Pacific fair in San Francisco.

Do I need Landmarks approval to renovate in Ridgewood?

Only inside the four historic districts, and only for some work. Interior work needs an LPC permit when it also requires a Department of Buildings permit or affects the exterior. Ordinary repairs, such as replacing broken window glass, need no LPC approval.

Where can I buy vintage furniture in Bushwick and Ridgewood?

Chyelle at 199 Cook Street and Brooklyn Vintage Company at 194 Irving Avenue in Bushwick, and Lichen at 564 Woodward Avenue in Ridgewood, which is open on weekends. Big Reuse at 378 Troutman Street is the stop for used home goods and lamps.

Sources

• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission: Ridgewood North Historic District Designation Report (2009)
• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission: Central Ridgewood Historic District Designation Report (2014)
• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission: Central Ridgewood press release, December 9, 2014
• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission: Catherina Lipsius House Designation Report (2013)
• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission: Permits and Making Alterations
• Wikipedia: Bushwick, Brooklyn
• Brownstoner: Ridgewood Row House Reno by LEAD Studios
• Brownstoner: White Arrow Refreshes a Ridgewood Row House
• Brownstoner: Chyelle Opens in Bushwick (November 2025)
• PIN-UP: Lichen and the Karimoku ZE Sofa
• Highsnobiety: Lichen’s First Brooklyn Store (2019)
• Lichen: Showroom Address and Hours
• Brooklyn Vintage Company: Visit
• Big Reuse: Bushwick Reuse Center
• Climate Week NYC: Vintage Furniture Store Hop, September 25, 2026
• QNS: Ridgewood Business Guide (June 2026)
• Lorimoto Gallery: About and Visit
• Hyperallergic: The Ridgewood Art Scene Thrives (2024)
• Arts in Bushwick: Bushwick Open Studios 2026

Related reading

• Williamsburg Interior Design: Lofts, Towers, and Where to Shop
• What Is a Brownstone? A New Yorker’s Guide to the Real Thing
• Bed-Stuy Brownstone Interiors: Inside Brooklyn’s Great Victorian Survivor