City Modern Home Tours: Manhattan

The weeklong City Modern festival concluded with a bang over the weekend with the Manhattan Home Tours. The five destinations on the Saturday afternoon tour spanned from Chelsea to Union Square to Alphabet City, each offering a distinctive take on modern interiors and architecture.

The first stop was a triplex on West 23rd Street, an extensive renovation/expansion project that took a typical Manhattan apartment and turned it into an open, modern, and sometimes playful space. Next up was a Chelsea townhouse on West 21st Street, a renovation that successfully integrated historical details with modern sensibilities. Not far from Chelsea was a Union Square duplex on 5th Avenue, a once-bland home transformed into a sleek, clean, and bright design with a dramatic centrally located staircase. In Nolita, a Bond Street apartment boasted a 50-foot-long great room with dramatic lighting, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a large backyard (at least by Manhattan standards). Our final destination was the Flowerbox in the East Village, a garden-themed apartment that brings the outdoors in courtesy of a wall of ivy and a reflecting pool in the living room.

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The owners of this Chelsea Triplex were planning a remodel and when the apartment next door went on the market they bought it and drastically expanded their renovation plans. The architecture and design of the home was completely transformed during the yearlong project spearheaded by Alex Scott Porter, of Alex Scott Porter Design.

A main goal of the remodel was to open the apartment by raising the ceilings. The owners were surprised with how much space they had to work with. The kitchen blends in seamlessly with the living room on one side and the open terrace on the other.

Here's terrace that extends from the kitchen.

The rock pattern on the steps to the bunk bed in the kids' room comes from small pieces of carpet.

Here's the master bedroom.

One of the third-floor terraces.

The second terrace on the third floor.

Eager visitors to the Chelsea townhouse designed by architect Julian King queue up outside the residence.

The parlor floor of the duplex leads to a garden. The apartment's historic details, like the plaster trim, were restored in the renovation.

The kitchen is decidedly more modern, with large glass doors opening onto the patio.

Another shot of the kitchen doors.

The master bedroom blends in seamlessly with the outdoor space in response to the owner's wish to incorporate nature into the renovation.

The master bath.

The only separation between the master bath and the backyard is this sliding glass door.

Architect Jospeh Tanney said this Union Square duplex on 5th Ave. looked like “a suburban townhouse” when the owners bought it. The idea was to open the space up and refine some of the existing details. Tanney bleached the original oak floors twice and whitewashed them to achieve the light shade shown here.

On the main floor there are eleven windows with exposures on the south, west, and east. (They already existed in the space pre-renovation.) Well-hidden storage occupies the space below the windows. There's also more storage behind no-hardware doors on the lower floor, creating a clean, streamlined look.

The kitchen features Corian cabinets and countertops.

The staircase is easily the most dramatic feature of the apartment. It was already there when the owners bought the space (including those raised walls), the architect just opened it up and integrated it as an important feature of the home.

Here's the dramatic view down the spiral staircase.

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