Creating a home to suit your lifestyle isn’t always easy, but these three properties are proof that visionary owners can bring to fruition truly unique spaces.
Actress, Meg Ryan isn’t the first celebrity to live at at 84 Mercer Street. Ryan bought the 4,100-square-foot converted SoHo loft from another actor, and before that a big name artist called the prime spot home. “I was amazed by the volume,” Ryan told Architectural Digest about the first time she stepped into 84 Mercer. “It was like so much of New York: cinematic. That’s what attracted me.”
Ryan, who undertook a gut renovation, is no stranger to the process—she’s renovated eight apartments and is looking for her ninth. Her renovation of 84 Mercer maintained a bit of the loft’s original feel by creating large-scale spaces, such as the 40-foot entry gallery with large windows overlooking Mercer Street.
‘I love renovating,” Ryan told Architectural Digest. “I think it’s tied to living the actor’s life. As an actor, you are so rarely in control. You’re always saying words that someone else has given you, standing in a room that someone else has designed, to create a reality that someone else wants to see. But with decorating I am in control; it’s a chance for me to bring my vision into the world.”
The star of such film as “When Harry Met Sally” and “You’ve Got Mail” set the scene for her vision with a wall of floor-to-ceiling French doors leading from the gallery into a large, light-filled living room with 12-foot ceilings. Her favorite room is the grand, home-sized kitchen, which includes details like industrial lights purchased from a salvage shop in Maine and marble shelving. Ryan also put her stamp on the master bedroom, which has eight custom closets, a media room and the detailed tile work found throughout. It’s all tied together with a very cinematic color scheme: black and white with neutral accents.
A Grande Dame in Brooklyn Restored
On one of the prettiest blocks in Brooklyn Heights, a grand townhouse had been chopped up into seven apartments, its porch ripped off and condition dwindling by the day, until its new owners would happen by. “We found this house by literally knocking on doors, and I knew we could restore it to its former glory,” one of the owners says.
The owners over a two-year period completely rebuilt the six-story manse at 146 Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights’ prime historic district. They maintained the facade but otherwise began from scratch, respecting the home’s 14-foot-ceiling and architecture, while inserting the latest home technologies and energy efficient systems.
Well-known passive design architect Baxt Ingui led the two-year renovation, which recreated moldings, curved floor-to-ceiling parlor floor windows and other period details from the 1920s home. The parlor floor’s triple-pane windows were imported from Switzerland, so miraculously, no traffic or street noise can be heard from inside the home. Despite the grand proportions, the home uses 15 percent of the utilities of a typical house. This past winter the heat didn’t need to be turned on until December.
Above the sixth floor, the expansive rooftop is fully outfitted for entertaining with built-in appliances, several seating areas, landscaping by Palm Beach firm Nievera Williams and views of the East River and Manhattan’s modern skyline that might make you forget you’re standing atop a piece of history.
Modernist Vision
In Chelsea, architect Lee Mindel, a partner in the modernist firm Shelton, Mindel & Associates, transformed a penthouse at 143 W. 20th St. into a light-filled dream with plentiful entertaining spaces inside and out. When Mindel found the 12th floor penthouse atop a former hat factory more than two decades ago, it lacked windows on the east and west sides. Mindel climbed a ladder to discover expansive views of the Hudson and East rivers. His renovation of the space made sure to cut windows on either side to emphasize the feeling of living on an island surrounded by water.
Now, the apartment’s large windows grant panoramic views of the two rivers, as well as landmarks, such as the Empire State Building and 1 World Trade Center. The architect assembled a major collection of 20th century furniture and art, but kept the apartment’s overall aesthetic minimal with a white-walled canvas to allow the view to shine. Since Mindel entertains often, he cleverly added sliding panel walls to the bedrooms and kitchen so those rooms can be closed off to parties without disrupting circulation.
While the apartment itself is rectangular, it now includes several rounded spaces and curving lines, inspired by the city’s round water towers, quite a few of which can be seen from within. Mindel calls the curved spaces “friendly” to the rooms around them, particularly the rounded, 16-foot entry hall.
Adjacent to the entry hall, Mindel designed a curved, stainless-steel staircase leading up to the piece de resistance: a glass-enclosed sitting room with an arched window for taking in the city lights at night. The rooftop also features a rectangular terrace facing south with generous potted trees adding lush greenery—a green island oasis.
His next home is now under construction in the Herzog & de Meuron building at 56 Leonard St. “I’m ready to reinvent myself,” Mindel says.
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