The vintage Danish furniture shop Lanoba is coming back bigger and better than ever, just six months after a devastating fire.
Lanoba, owned by husbands Lars Noah Balderskilde and David Singh, was one of dozens of small businesses and artists studios destroyed by a five-alarm fire in a historic Red Hook warehouse last fall. They lost every single piece of carefully-sourced and imported furniture in the store.
But hope came quickly. A GoFundMe to help with recovery costs raised more than $62,000. Six weeks after the fire, Lanoba opened a temporary store in space offered up by the Red Hook Cidery, stocked with the contents of a single shipping container that had been stuck at customs when the fire broke out.
On April 11, they’ll celebrate the grand opening of Lanoba’s new permanent home, a 9,500-square-foot showroom at 6 Waverly Ave. in Clinton Hill. They’re excited for a new beginning, but leaving Red Hook wasn’t easy.
“About a year and a half we were in Red Hook. But the community there is so strong, and we really wanted to stay in Red Hook,” Singh said. “We were very happy just to have a temporary space and we were holding out hope we could move back into our original space.”
But the damage to the warehouse was more extensive than had been realized. The building’s owners, the O’Connell Organization, are still working to make it habitable again, and the timeline of construction and inspections kept getting longer. Singh and Balderskilde were grateful for their space at the Cidery, but it was small, and they couldn’t run the store at the scale they needed.
“We had always said we thought we could hold on until January, February,” Singh said. “We held out to February, and then March came along … when it became evident that the building would not be ready, and clear inspections and things like that, it was time to look for a new home and get back to doing business the way we’re used to doing it.”
They relatively quickly found the Clinton Hill showroom. It’s larger than their old Red Hook location, Singh said, with skylights and more space for the workshop where Balderskilde restores furniture. And the neighborhood is perfect for their clients in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Singh said, easily accessible by transit and by bike.
The new Lanoba will be fully-stocked with new pieces. They’ve been rebuilding their inventory for months, Singh said, but with limited space available at the Cidery, have only been able to display about a quarter of it.
“Lars has been working night and day between here and Denmark,” he said. “[He] has actually rebuilt the entire stock and then some. We’re in a larger space now and we brought in four ocean containers plus some additional storage that we had. We’re actually opening with the biggest selection of products we’ve ever had in our history.”
That includes some pieces they’ve never stocked before.
“We have an Arne Vodder sideboard, which is extremely rare, there’s probably a handful left in the world, at most. We have some amazing desks, which are just a quality that is above and beyond you can imagine. There’s so many great, interesting things that I think will surprise anyone who’s come in here.”
The grand opening is set for 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 11. It’s traditional in Denmark to celebrate a new business with Danish hot dogs, Singh said, and Balderskilde wanted to bring that to Brooklyn. So they’ll be serving up Danish dogs with red sausage, remoulade, ketchup, mustard and both raw and fried onions to mark the occasion.
After that, Lanoba will be open for shopping Saturdays and Sundays, 12-4 p.m.
“I think this is the comeback story, of course, and I think it’s also a symbol of all the businesses — there are so many businesses and artists that suffered — that it’s not impossible, you can come back,” Singh said. “It’s not the end of the story, that wasn’t going to be the final chapter, that it burned to the ground. There’s a lot more stories to tell, and we’re excited about that.”
