Page 32 - Cityview_Jan_Feb_2014

CONTRIBUTORS

Karen

Clark

When Karen Clark was a buyer at
brooks brothers in New York, she and

her husband, brooks, owned a garden
apartment in an 1892 Riverside drive

brownstone. “It was a small space,”
says Clark, “but when we stripped

the paint from the
woodwork with a

heat gun and treat-
ed it with oil from

a formby’s kit, the
oak was reborn.” As

co-op president,
Clark refinanced

an 18-percent
mortgage, which

paid for replacing
the furnace, rewir-

ing the building—
“they replaced

wires covered with
canvas”—and installing 88 custom-

sized double-pane windows. “I came
to appreciate so many aspects of those

classic brownstones,” says Clark,
who won New York Habitat maga-

zine’s 1983 Management Achievement
Award. She now brings her brooks

brothers sensibility to Cityview’s
reviews of elegant homes. When not

writing for Cityview, Clark is chief
information officer at ortho Tennes-

see and treasurer with the oak Ridge
Rowing Association. “A perfect rowing

stoke is architectural—beauty in func-
tion and design,” says Clark.

[Above] Clark sports her medals from rowing
with the Oak Ridge Rowing Association.

[Right] Brooks and Karen Clark relax in the
library of their Knoxville home.
Photography by tyler oxendine

30 cityviewmag.com maRcH aPRiL 2014