Vintage Furniture Store in Sunset Park: City Foundry Daily

City Foundry's gallery at 33 35th St, Building 5, in Industry City, Brooklyn 11232, is open daily from 11 am to 6 pm, and the phone is 718-923-1786. It is a 4,000-square-foot vintage furniture store in Sunset Park, stocked with mid-century seating, industrial lighting, metal objects and architectural salvage, and prices run from $550 for an apothecary swivel stool to $36,000 for a set of six Gaetano Pesce chairs. If you want to sit in an actual 1950s highback chair before you buy it, this is the place that opens every day of the week.

City Foundry was established in 2000 by Sohrab Bakhshi, who grew up in Iran, absorbed Bauhaus influence in Israel, and moved to the United States in 1980, where he honed his eye picking through New York City. After building a collection of his own, he wanted a space to show it, and Atlantic Avenue, long known as antique row, seemed the right fit. The shop's own history says people told him the store would not last on that block. Instead it doubled in size within two years and added a third gallery next door.

His partner, Claudia Cuseta, who studied fashion in New York and went on to start the house music label Maxi Records, joined in 2006 and brought the shop online. The current gallery in Industry City opened in November 2019. The shop's About page notes that the Boerum Hill gallery on Atlantic Avenue closed in June 2023, so the Sunset Park gallery is now the place to go if you want to see the stock in person.

The shop sells architectural pieces, lamps for ceiling, floor, table and wall, metal objects, globes and vases, seating, storage, tables, wall art, mirrors, clocks, signs and garden items. What links them is an eye for mid-century modern set against industrial-age finds and artifacts of a scientific nature, the mix that Bakhshi has been known for since the Atlantic Avenue years.

Seating shows the range. A pair of mid-century highback dining chairs by Harvey Probber is $2,400, a Scandinavian modern oak high-back recliner is $4,000, an early mid-century olive green chenille daybed chaise longue is $3,600, and a walnut Rail Back sofa by Mel Smilow for Smilow-Thiell is $14,000. At the other end, an early twentieth-century painted steel apothecary swivel stool is $550 and a tufted ultra-suede bench with lucite feet is $1,500.

Lighting is where the industrial side shines. An early twentieth-century cut glass dome pendant is $695, an industrial prismatic Holophane glass globe pendant is $1,400, a large conical milk glass library pendant is $1,400 and the shop notes that five are available, and a large industrial patinated copper search light is $6,200. A multi-stem brass mesh chandelier from the mid-century is $3,800. These prices come from the shop's online collections and change as pieces sell.

The shop's About page points out that Industry City already houses Restoration Hardware, Design Within Reach, ABC Carpet and Porcelanosa, and describes City Foundry as the only custom, antique and vintage purveyor in the heart of the complex. That makes the trip useful beyond a single stop: you can see new-production design and a gallery of originals in one afternoon and learn quickly what a 1950s piece actually looks like next to a modern reproduction.

City Foundry also runs a second space, a studio in Building 7 that is open by appointment only, so do not show up there expecting a walk-in browse. The daily gallery in Building 5 is the one for casual visits. The shop also rents its furniture, lighting, objects and artifacts to set designers, photographers, stylists and design firms for film and television sets and events, and it does custom refinishing and upholstery along mid-twentieth-century lines, plus its own line of industrial and mid-century influenced furniture and lighting made by hand in Brooklyn.

Go in the middle of the week if you want to look at pieces without other people around them, and bring photos and measurements of your room, because the stock is big and visual and a pair of $3,200 bentwood armchairs looks very different next to your own sofa. Since the gallery is open daily from 11 to 6, there is no day that is closed, which makes it easy to fold into a weekend plan.

A frank judgment: skip the chandeliers unless you have the ceiling height and an electrician, because the grand coral shell chandelier is listed at $12,000 and is a showpiece rather than a casual purchase. For a first purchase, the industrial pendants at $695 to $1,400 are the most approachable way to bring something with real age into a home. Ask the staff about the restoration shop if a chair needs reupholstering, since that is a service the shop sells.

Industry City sits on the Sunset Park waterfront and is large enough to fill an afternoon on foot. After the gallery, walk through the complex to see where Design Within Reach and ABC Carpet sit, then eat in the complex or head out into Sunset Park. The neighborhood is also home to Brooklyn Army Terminal, whose huge former warehouses make a good architecture walk if the weather is dry.

If City Foundry does not have the piece you want, Dobbin St. Co-op in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, a multi-vendor vintage shop founded in 2016 and open noon to 7 pm daily, is a looser, cheaper hunt for 1950s to 1980s furniture, and Furnish Green in Midtown is a third option.

Address: 33 35th St (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue), Building 5, Industry City, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY 11232. Hours: open daily 11 am to 6 pm. Phone: 718-923-1786. The Building 7 studio is open by appointment. Prices on this page come from cityfoundry.com collections and move as pieces sell. Karpo APP can help you build the rest of your Brooklyn day around the gallery.