Inside a West Village Apartment That Channels 1920s Glamour
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Art: Luke Edward Hall/The Breeder, Athens
It’s the stuff of New York real estate fairy tales. The owners of the apartment next to yours, the one with the highly covetable views you’ve been lusting after for years, come to you because they want to sell, and they’d like to give you right of first refusal.
You strike a deal, and, the next thing you know—well, the next thing after the lengthy planning process, bureaucratic board approvals, endless permitting, and months and months and months of construction dusting and punch-list punching—you’re living in the home of your dreams, with the skyline vistas to prove it. Pure fantasy? Not if you’re arts marketing entrepreneur turned interior designer Erik Gensler.
Shop out the look of the house here⤵
Gensler and his husband lucked into just such a situation not so long ago, and it allowed them to expand their home into the mirror-image apartment next door. Now, the couple can hardly stop staring at the lights of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings that twinkle at them nightly from their dining and living rooms on the 15th floor of a landmarked late-1920s Art Deco building in New York’s West Village.
As Gensler sees it, this “once upon a time” story couldn’t have had better timing. “I had just stepped away from my digital marketing business, and had started an interiors firm, mainly working with friends. I saw this apartment as an opportunity to put my design skills and education on view without a client,” the designer and AD PRO Directory member says. He explains that since finishing the space, his home has become something of a calling card, and a touchstone. Now, when he works with clients, “We often find ourselves referencing things here.”
And there is much here to reference—and admire—beginning with the architectural envelope. For help combining the two apartments, Gensler turned to architect Jim Joseph, of the Manhattan firm Hottenroth + Joseph, who specializes in historic buildings. The interior designer refers to him as “an absolute genius.”
Though the building dates back nearly a hundred years, both apartments had lost the luster of their historic pedigree, stripped of most all original millwork and other evocative details. So together, Gensler and Joseph worked to reinstate the best period elements, adding broad baseboards and tall crown moldings, wall millwork, and ceiling beams.
The scheme also broke down the wall between the apartments to create a more generous sense of space: The former double-duty living-dining areas of the two apartments now each do exclusive duty as the primary bedroom and a formal dining room—the latter exposed to those twinkling skyline views. The other apartment’s primary bedroom, meanwhile, serves as the living room. One former guest room is Gensler’s office, the other, the primary closet. And the second kitchen? It’s an amply sized mudroom—among the holiest of grails of contemporary urban living.
“Jim respected the lines of the rooms, and he followed traditional room layouts, but he designed them in a way that makes them better,” Gensler says, explaining how the architect kept things in check and on point. “He wouldn’t let us do anything that wasn’t something you did in the 1920s. There were a couple of little things I proposed, turning a closet into a bar, for example, and he wouldn’t let that happen. There were no gimmicks.”
As the design team, together with general contractor Michael Vella of Vella Interiors, worked to re-establish an Art Deco–inspired, era-appropriate architectural scheme, Gensler spun out his fantasy decorating narrative. “All of the architectural details are authentic to the period when the place was built, but I also wanted it to feel like a timeless Parisian apartment, and to have the glamour of New York, of Bobby Short at the Carlyle,” he says, referring to the pianist and cabaret singer who held court for Manhattan society grandees at the Upper East Side hotel’s Bemelmans Bar in the latter half of the 20th century and the very start of the 21st.
Ultimately, Gensler says of the interior, “I wanted it to feel like it had been here for a really long time. The bathtubs, the mirrors, the lighting, they were all done with the intention of the place not looking like a new apartment.” One set of early acquisitions that helped him turn this nostalgic intention into a present-day reality were the mantels for the two working fireplaces in the primary suite and dining room: one, a 19th-century Breche marble Louis XV–style piece imported from Paris; the other, a custom piece from Chesneys using a John Soanian Greek key motif.
Gensler loves neoclassicism—with a twist—which can be seen in additional finds including the gilded Louis Philippe mirror in the primary bedroom and the Maison Jansen desk in his study. He also knew he wanted a lot of French Deco pieces, “furniture that [looked like it] was inherited through generations.” So the designer accented European favorites from the middle of the 20th century with some key older pieces, including the living room’s Louis XV chairs and heirlooms from his mother, plus newer ones like a 1970s lacquered-brass Guy Lefevre for Ligne Roset coffee table.
Thinking about his work on this home, Gensler turns reflective. “I think I channeled all the energy I’d put into running my company for so many years into this apartment.” And now? Well, after all that hard work, he and his husband now get to enjoy their fairy-tale ending.
Shop it out:
Cosmopolitan Bar Cart (33")
$1595.00, Williams & Sonoma
Frances Palmer Medusa Vase
$1500.00, Frances Palmer
Parachute Organic Resort Stripe Towels
$89.00, Parachute
Roman and Williams Guild Burnished Brass Oscar Pendant Light
$6000.00, Chairish
French 19th Century Louis XVI Style Giltwood Mirror
$16800.00, 1st Dibs
Parker Dining Side Chair
$5380.00, Ralph Lauren
Pair of 18th century Louis XVI Armchairs, Provincial France
$5103.00, 1st Dibs
Cannes Guéridon End Table
$10050.00, Ralph Lauren
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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