Most people buy furniture for their house. Christopher Florentino, aka Flore, bought a house for his furniture. The Brooklyn-born painter, whose work draws on graffiti and street art, has had a lifelong obsession with midcentury modern, amassing furniture from the period since he was a teen. His collection finally found a home when he discovered a Gene Leedy–designed 1963 ranch house in Winter Haven, Florida, on Instagram.

Leedy, a founding member of the Sarasota School of Architecture, fostered a regional Gulf Coast twist on modernism, defined by courtyards, local sandstone, glass walls, and bringing the outdoors in. It was these features, combined with the home’s pristine condition, that made the Ellison Residence, as it’s known, the ideal habitat for Christopher and his furniture.

In June, he closed on the house without having stepped inside. Here, he takes us through his first few months living there.

Christopher Florentino: I’ve been drawn to midcentury-modern design since I was young—the lines, the materials, the colors. I started collecting furniture when I was 16, and I needed a showcase for all my pieces.

The way Leedy designed this house is pretty cool. If I’m standing on one side of the house I can see all the way through to the other wall. It’s so open. Everything is completely symmetrical, and everything has access to the outside. The whole back wall is glass, and at night, when you’re looking from the pool into the house, it looks so big. It’s very Frank Sinatra.

The house is all original: cabinets, doors, walls, fixtures, hardware, the cork flooring. I did some renovations, but it was mainly polishing. I have the original stove and I make eggs on it every morning.

I curated the space as if in 1963 there was an artist who went out and purchased all brand-new furniture by designers like the Eameses, Alexander Girard, and every single person who worked under the Herman Miller brand.

I look at everything like a painting. I wanted the house to be a palette dominated by primary colors, like a Picasso or a Miró. Keeping that palette very “period” was just as important as the pieces I chose. Everything is color-blocked. I have an orange Knoll Womb chair next to a blue Ray Wilkes Chicklet sofa, a yellow velvet lounge chair next to a bright red George Nelson Coconut chair, a yellow Andy Warhol flower print on one wall and a red one on the opposite wall.

I source pieces mainly on the internet—eBay, Craigslist, 1stDibs. I get pretty creative. There was this lady selling a mirror on eBay and I saw, in the corner of the photo she posted, an Eames “surfboard” table in the reflection. I emailed her and said, “I’ll give you $600 for the table right now—I’m sending an Uber to your house.”

If you can find a great upholsterer, you can bring pieces back to life. I found a reproduction Eames lounge chair outside an apartment building in Miami. It was upside down in the trash and in bad shape, but I was like “I can’t walk past this.” I had an Uber XL pick me up in the alleyway and I threw it in the back. I took it all apart, polished it, sanded it, and had it upholstered in yellow velvet. Now it’s pretty sweet.

Collecting is sometimes about luck, but mainly about persistence. In the kitchen I have an original, limited-edition Andy Warhol “Flowers 1967” rug. I’d been hounding this lady forever about it. She finally emailed me, “Listen, you’re the most annoying-est young man I’ve ever met in my life. I will sell you the rug for $450.” You’ve got to be super annoying, but polite, because this is their holy grail. They’ve held on to it for so long and now they’re finally ready to sell it.

Now that I have this house, I send photos of it to sellers, saying, “Look where it’s going to go. You have it in a warehouse, but I’m going to sit on it. It’s going to be among friends, in a house.”

Living here is like living in a piece of art. I find myself walking around a lot, sitting in different rooms, experiencing the light in each one. The shadows that the roof casts when the sun is going down, the way the rain draining off it sounds like waterfalls—all these little components that went into building it are special to me. When you wake up every day in a place where you have to live and create, why not make it somewhere special?

Make It Yours

Christopher Florentino talks weekend projects and furniture-hunting scores.

My House Q&A: Street Artist Flore’s Unlikely Midcentury Haven in Florida

Project Credits:

Designer: Christopher Florentino

Also Appears In

The Ellison House