House Call: Smart Design in an NYC Houseboat

Photography by Douglas Lyle Thompson

When Gabe Cohen and Jolie Signorile of design company Fredericks & Mae, along with six friends, bought a beat-up old houseboat to dock in Rockaway, Queens, they were in for the rehab story of a lifetime. Come with us on a tour of the finished product. 

A curtained sliding glass door leads to the entry hung with a fishing trap.

The entry’s built-in sofa.

All eight owners of the boat pitched in to paint, reupholster cushions, and decorate the walls–and the work continues.

A built-in daybed (with firewood storage) and woodstove anchor the living room.

The room has a much-used hammock with a view.

Weekends on the boat are spent lounging, grilling fish (given to them by the sanitation workers who own the boat next door), surfing, and making cucumber-mint gin and tonics.

The room opens onto the kitchen sectioned off by a bar. The rope chairs are from Urban Outfitters.

The boat came with a burnt orange sink, so the group kitted out the kitchen with orange and white tableware.

Sophia and Honora, two of the houseboaters, painted the wooden bar in a pattern inspired by the old Rockaway boardwalk (since destroyed by Hurricane Sandy).

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