Second Nature: A New York City Apartment Makeover
Small nook turned into a seating area.
We turned a small nook, opposite, into a seating area by adding a cushion and pillows. The window boxes are planted with four types of ivy; the mix of green leaves draws the eye from the interior to the outside world. We chose a soft, neutral paint (Benjamin Moore Historic Color Monterey White), which sets a contemplative mood. A beat-up tree stump from West Elm serves as a small table. A simple drinking glass holds a handful of hosta leaves and flowers. Photo by: Todd Coleman
When I moved to New York City from Southern California nearly 20 years ago, I missed the easy access to nature I’d always enjoyed there. Over time, though, I became attuned to the ways the natural world reveals itself even in the heart of the city—in its rambling parks, its abundant farmers markets, its window boxes erupting with blooms. Still, by the middle of last year, my fourth-floor apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and my daily commute on the subway had begun to feel stifling. It was time for a change.
More than anything, the copious sunlight streaming in through the windows first drew my partner, Daniel, and me to the two-bedroom apartment we eventually purchased in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood. We loved the architectural details that remained in our new home, which was built in 1901, but many had been scrubbed clean over time. Most of the apartment’s original molding had been removed, so we installed matching segments in places where it was missing. We found 100-year-old lighting fixtures appropriate to the era and overall aesthetic. The previous owners had laid down contemporary bleached bamboo flooring, which we replaced with white oak rescued from a barn in Virginia.
Choosing Containers
Garden Design’s style director, Lindsey Taylor, assembled a selection of small containers she thought might work well in the apartment, including: 1. Jamali Garden’s cement urn 2. Campania International’s etched Alessio planter 3. Anthropologie’s glazed Ivory Epoch pot 4. Flora Grubb's palm tree-textured Thai planter 5. Pottery Barn’s galvanized cachepot 6. Terrain’s tin container, part of a set of four that nest in a woven tray 7. Campo de’ Fiori’s Dragonscale planter, covered in living moss that continues to grow over time (available from Jayson Home) 8. Accent Decor’s green Market pot 9. Flora Grubb’s ridged Cypress vase.
Fill any of your new containers with a fine begonia benitochiba, courtesy of Sprout Home. Photo by: Todd Coleman
Then we waited—and waited. The beautiful but largely empty apartment that we now called home daunted us. We didn’t know what to do next. That’s when Lindsey Taylor, style director of Garden Design, introduced me to her friend Shane Powers. “This is exactly the kind of situation he excels in,” she told me. A designer and editor at Martha Stewart Living with an abiding respect for the natural world, he’s worked on interiors for clients all over the world.
For a while the exchanges between Shane and me bordered on the abstract. I cited a particular piece of piano music by Claude Debussy as being what I wanted the apartment to feel like. Shane responded by e-mailing images of furniture and decorative elements he felt expressed the same sense of quiet, comfort, and contemplation. At ABC Carpet & Home we found a sofa and chair upholstered in unbleached loose-weave linen. From Tara Shaw Antiques in New Orleans, we bought an old dining table that was refinished with a textured, distressed-whitewash surface. The convergence of old and new felt perfectly in sync.
An old snapshot of a stretch of New Mexico desert, enlarged and framed, became the focal point of the living room. Photo by: Todd Coleman
From the start, Shane knew he wanted living plants to punctuate the space and echo the leafy treetops visible outside. We installed window boxes filled with different ivies in variegated hues that would keep their foliage year-round. Two urns sprouting snake plants (Sansevieria trifasciata) with striking bladelike leaves anchor one end of the living room, and a rotating assortment of different plants and simple arrangements of cut flowers inhabit various corners and surfaces. We were careful not to overdo it: The aim was not to create a garden indoors but to evoke the feeling of being in a garden.
One particularly meaningful element grew out of an early conference with Shane in which we laid out on a table a collection of fragments—leaves, blossoms, swatches of fabric — that reflected the mood and palette we were going for. One of those scraps was an old snapshot I took on the cross-country trip that carried me from California to New York City years ago of a stretch of New Mexico desert. We ended up blowing up that snapshot, framing it, and positioning it as the focal point of the living room. The image is nature and the contemplation of nature at the same time, a fragment of the past and a poignant emblem of a new beginning. It is absolutely right in our home.
Our sofa, opposite, is covered in loose-weave linen. We opted for window shades made of similarly textured and hued material, a simple pull-down model in a color called Wheat from Janovic. We bought fabric in New York City’s fashion district and asked a tailor to make pillow covers. All told, each pillow cost about $35.
The urn holding the snake plAant is a reproduction from Tara Shaw Antiques in New Orleans. It’s construcAted of lightweight fiberglass and looks weirdly real. We placed it on a small silver-colored tray from Jamali Garden to catch any water spills. We chose to hang only a few pieces of art on the walls, including this antique Korean scroll. Photo by: Todd Coleman
Sourcebok: French furniture reproductions at ABC Home (212-473-3000; abchome.com), antique furniture from Tara Shaw (504-525-1131; tarashaw.com) and advice on interior décor by Shane Powers (shanepowersonline.com).
James Oseland is Editor-in-Chief of Saveur.
Choosing Fabrics
One of the most productive moments in the process came when Shane Powers, a designer who helped us plan our interior, spread swatches of fabric on a table with leaves from our plants and a photograph I took in New Mexico, which we had blown up and now hangs in our living room (see previous slide). Having these items on the table made it easy to choose the fabric we used to cover pillows and cushions. Photo by: Todd Coleman
Choosing Containers
Garden Design’s style director, Lindsey Taylor, assembled a selection of small containers she thought might work well in the apartment, including: 1. Jamali Garden’s cement urn 2. Campania International’s etched Alessio planter 3. Anthropologie’s glazed Ivory Epoch pot 4. Flora Grubb's palm tree-textured Thai planter 5. Pottery Barn’s galvanized cachepot 6. Terrain’s tin container, part of a set of four that nest in a woven tray 7. Campo de’ Fiori’s Dragonscale planter, covered in living moss that continues to grow over time (available from Jayson Home) 8. Accent Decor’s green Market pot 9. Flora Grubb’s ridged Cypress vase.
Fill any of your new containers with a fine begonia benitochiba, courtesy of Sprout Home.
