Up and Down Brownstone

Most New Yorkers see the city's venerable brownstones as architectural portals to the past. Architect Bill Peterson designed his condo in an East Village brownstone to include a folding facade, bringing his historic home into the future.

Brownstone With a Secret Side

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Ramsay de Give for The Wall Street Journal

The moving facade of 224 E. 14th St. creates an open air living room.

The building at 224 E. 14th St. looks like any other on the block, but a section of the brownstone-finished facade folds into Mr. Peterson's apartment to create an open-air living room.

"Originally in an old brownstone there would have been a parlor-floor balcony," Mr. Peterson said of the retractable living-room wall. "This is reimagining it."

To create the mechanics behind the wall, which opens and closes like a garage door, Mr. Peterson worked with McLaren Engineering Group, an engineering team that has done sets for Cirque du Soleil. When the facade opens, "It looks like the building's falling in on itself," he said.

Mr. Peterson said he started working on the East Village building with a business partner in 2005 and came up with the idea for the moving facade. He completed his purchase of the his condo on the first two floors and part of the basement in 2008 for $1.8 million, according to property records.

To ensure the building looked like an old brownstone from the outside, Mr. Peterson took a thin layer of real brownstone and attached it to light aluminum honeycomb. With the technique, the facade looks and feels like a traditional brownstone building, but it is also able to move.