“Fourteen million,” jokes actress Maggie Gyllenhaal about the number of fireplaces in her and husband Peter Sarsgaard’s bright Brooklyn brownstone. “We have 14 million fireplaces.” They actually have several, but even if the effortlessly cool family had only one hearth in their four-story home, which they purchased in 2006, the space would feel endlessly warm. Or, as Sarsgaard puts it, “There are lots of places to curl up with a book.”
Tucked into a sleepy T-shaped street in Park Slope (a Brooklyn neighborhood known for its stroller traffic and laid-back restaurants), the brownstone, with its high ceilings and southern exposure, was an instant hit with the creative couple. The quiet block gave them Sesame Street vibes, and when they first looked at it, Gyllenhaal was pregnant with the couple’s eldest daughter. Since then, another daughter has joined the family, adding to the home’s all-over family feel.
“When we walked into this house, it really felt like a home to us,” says Gyllenhaal. “The light is beautiful and the rooms feel airy because the ceilings are unusually high.” And though the pair worked with architect Elizabeth Roberts and designer John Erik Karkula, they’ve made the 3,600-square-foot space all their own.
For example, Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard found that extra aerial clearance was an excellent way to showcase their art collection, most of which were gifts from friends and family. In the bedroom alone, there’s an eclectic mix: a Matthew Barney photograph Gyllenhaal received in exchange for working on a project with him; a photo by the couple’s friend Yelena Yemchuk; and a painting that Sarsgaard’s grandfather made 50 years ago. In the music room, signed sheet music from jazz composer Ornette Coleman hangs with a Louise Bourgeois print and a Jon Serl painting the pair received from Gyllenhaal’s parents as a wedding gift.
And the airiness of the home gave them space for their own creativity, too. In the music room, which houses a piano, there’s very little furniture, and that’s the point. “There’s just two chairs in it, but after all, most music you play standing up, and our eldest is a dancer,” Sarsgaard says. “I just wanted to have a space where there was room for expression. And I would say that’s true for a lot of the house. I wanted it to feel like a place where it’s easy to make something.” So it’s no surprise that when they host parties, they sometime devolve into 4 a.m. jam sessions with Grammy-nominated musicians, like their pal St. Vincent.
They also host screenings for movie-industry friends in their parlor via a projector. “The nice thing about having a house like this is that you can use it to help support things that you believe in,” Gyllenhaal says. “When I was young, my mom used to loan our house out to political organizations that she believed in and that was her way of supporting them. And that’s something I try to do with both our friends, people we respect, and organizations that we believe in.”
In the backyard, which has a hot water bathtub, Sarsgaard in particular has found his passion: gardening. The yard’s southern exposure, paired with temperate winters, allows him to tend to the backyard garden, where he grows tulips, climbing roses, night-blooming jasmine, wisteria, persimmons—“The only thing that keeps me from harvesting are the squirrels that beat me to them,” he says—and a Meyer lemon tree that he was given as a gift ten years ago. “It’s unheard of to have a fruit-bearing Meyer lemon tree in Brooklyn,” says Gyllenhaal. Still, he slices up his bounty and uses it to spruce up water.
The garden is just another example of the effort they’ve put into their house to make it feel like a true home, one that’s a mix of their personalities. “We’re artists,” Gyllenhaal says, “and we want our house to feel like a place that includes art, and not just on the wall. The way different fabrics go together and the way this tile goes next to this wooden tub, and maybe it’s an unusual way of doing it, but isn’t there something kind of exquisite about it?”
