WSJ News Exclusive | They Hated Their Brooklyn Townhouse. Now They Wouldn’t Dream of Calling It ‘Ugly.’

In 2018, architect Pierre-Henri Hoppenot, who was born in France however grew up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and his spouse, tech entrepreneur Daphne Earp Hoppenot, who grew up in Washington, D.C., paid $2.43 million for a home they hated. The couple deliberate to lift bilingual youngsters, which had led them to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, the one-time Italian immigrant neighborhood that now has a big French-speaking inhabitants. But there was just one home in Carroll Gardens listed for beneath $3 million. It had been slapped collectively in 1941 amongst a row of older, extra substantial buildings. Its brick facade was a cheesy, multicolored mess with home windows organized asymmetrically. And a budget aluminum awning added no appeal to the stoopless entry. 

For a very long time after they purchased it, “When friends came over we would tell them to look for the ugly house and they knew which one immediately,” says Daphne.