Second Generation
By Elizabeth Blish Hughes
When a design executive and his family bought the Manhattan house that architect Edward Durell Stone renovated for his own family in 1956, they updated it by looking into the building's past.
When a Manhattan couple with two rambunctious boys moved into an Upper East Side town house, they wanted to preserve and restore everything they could of the 1890s building in a landmark district: dark, elaborately carved mantelpieces; curving banisters worn smooth by time; and the lacy façade of cast concrete grillage, added in 1956 by architect Edward Durell Stone when he bought the place.
It was that juxtaposition of sensibilities that made the project "on the one hand more complicated and on the other hand easier," says Philip Galanes, the designer, whom the couple knew through mutual friends. "It was a Victorian house with a transformative layer applied to it in the fifties." That transformative layer is what persuaded the couple to buy the property, which stands out (literally, as Stone extended the façade five feet) from others on the block. The couple - he's a design executive, she's in finance - understood the significance of the house, which has sparked controversy for almost 50 years.
The husband was excited to find pieces that Stone had designed, such as the panels for dropped and cutout-patterned ceilings (stored in the basement by the previous owners) and chain-mail hangings.
"Disparate elements," the designer says, "created permission to go into a range of periods. The context was already laid for a mix." The clients agreed, and hired architect Hicks Stone, who had grown up in the house, to renovate and update his father's work. The crumbling façade had been removed in the 1980s, but the Landmarks Commission required its restoration, so it was in good shape. Discarded elements came up from the basement. As work went on, the clients edited their art collection, using pieces they loved to anchor the design of the family home. The result is a boisterous centenarian seen through a prism of Manhattan sophistication of a kind peculiar to movies like Auntie Mame and The World of Henry Orient, a world of timeless repartee, dry martinis, and outrageous good fun.
In the kitchen, a golden saucer light fixture bubbles with space-age optimism. Lacy sliding screens hide in the walls. Pulled together, they mask the kitchen from the family area and the dining room, which, like the kitchen, is floored with light-reflecting patinated marble tiles Durell Stone laid. In the family corner, a Harvey Probber settee is the perfect place for the two boys to watch TV.
Just beyond, in a space defined by David Hicks wallpaper, are a Mira Nakashima and Philip Galanes dining table, Jacques Adnet dining chairs, and a photograph by Thomas Struth.
The eye feast is even richer in the living room, with its '50s sectional sofa, a Probber club chair, Lady chairs by Marco Zanuso, an Ico Parisi console, and a Kittinger coffee table. Galanes kept the room focused by using the dark original wood trim as a frame and lighting fixtures appropriate to the original building. The study has a stunning dropped ceiling of mahogany-framed screens. "It is a testament to Edward Durell Stone," Galanes says. "It is just chunky enough, and there is just enough light that it feels like a comforting part of a nest." Here, as throughout the house, Galanes and the clients trusted their collective sensibility, selecting Gio Ponti chairs, a nineteenth-century German chaise, and a Wormley desk.
Only on the top floor can the eye rest. In the master bedroom, sliding glass doors combine with the façade's lattice to act like shoji screens, letting in light but keeping the world at bay. This refuge of a room is dreamy, and each piece in it is simple.
The owners revel in the house's airiness. "Stone really created one of the first loftlike spaces," the husband says.
"He did so while combining his interest in Moorish and Islamic architecture with modern design in a Victorian shell - a pretty wild and provocative mixture of influences that predated his followers." The house attracts gawkers, but the owners don't mind. "We feel," the husband says, "that we are custodians of a very special piece of architecture."
Elizabeth Blish Hughes is a writer based in New York and San Francisco.
NUTS & BOLTS
Hicks Stone's renovation of his childhood home including restoring his father's work and adding a few new ideas. "After growing up there, I can't imagine anyone who knows the place better," he says.
Saving Façade
Edward Durell Stone first used the patterned architectural screen block in 1954 on a New Dehli embassy, then in 1956 for this town house. Since the façade didn't hold up well in the urban environment, Hicks Stone had a screen block custom-cast in a brighter, finer concrete aggregate mix that should stand up to the elements for decades.
Window Walls
Hicks Stone updated the sliding window walls that open to the patterned façade and the outside air. "Glass curtain wall technology has gotten so much better over the years," he says. Monsey Glass replaced the original with insulated glass in aluminum frames.
Light Space
Throughout the house, recessed downlights by Lightolier are controlled by simple Lutron panel dimmers. The overhead light is augmented by desk and table lamps.
Eye-catcher
Pattern continues inside. A shoji screen that Durell Stone had installed at the entrance to the kitchen was painted white and the rice paper backing removed to allow more light into the room. "Dad was close with Frank Lloyd Wright, and they shared an enthusiasm for elements of Japanese design," Hicks Stone says. "A local shoji fabricator told me this was a prize pattern."
