How a Tiny Studio Apartment Was Transformed into a Swank Sanctuary
This article originally appeared in the October 2014 issue of ELLE DECOR. For more stories from our archive, subscribe to ELLE DECOR All Access.
When Robert Rowe first laid eyes on the unrenovated studio in a prewar building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, an inspiration hit him like a brick from its facade: Mildred Pierce.
If he could transfer to the small space just a soupçon of the glamour of Michael Curtiz’s 1945 noir masterpiece—the Art Deco–meets–Spanish Revival house in California’s San Fernando Valley, Joan Crawford’s chic office in the restaurant in Laguna Beach, the masculine sexiness of the Malibu beach house—he would have the perfect aerie. He didn’t want a literal adaptation, just a feeling, a place to repair to between his many travels as head of international advertising for W magazine, which include managing offices in Paris and Milan.
A photograph by David Haxton hangs above a 1970s stool in the entry; the wallpaper is by Nobilis, and the archway and wall beyond are painted in Benjamin Moore’s Desert Camel.
“It’s a 1938 building with a spectacular Deco lobby, so I wanted to give it the feeling of a bachelor pad of that time,” Rowe explains. “I loved the idea of a bungalow in the city.”
Two years later, he has created 575 square feet of pure atmosphere, the ultimate gentleman’s hideaway where not an inch is wasted or unplanned. Yet with the light across Seventh Avenue flowing in through large windows, there is a sense of openness that makes the place feel especially expansive.
The desk is a custom design, the chair is 1960s Danish, and the Roman shade is in a wool by Maharam.
It helps that the studio has fantastic bones. In the renovation, Rowe kept the arched doorways, and the layout features hallways as well as a raised platform for the bed to give the illusion of separate living spaces. “People sitting on the sofa always ask where the bedroom is because they don’t even see the bed,” he says. “Their eyes just fly right over to the window.” But it is Rowe’s unerring sense of proportion and whimsical mixing of objects that make it a showplace.
Tour This Renovated New York City Studio That Has Style to Spare
The apartment is a primer on how to focus on function and harmony rather than getting caught up in provenance. While there are valuable pieces, including a geometric C. Jeré wall sculpture, and custom furniture designed to fit the limited dimensions, some of Rowe’s most prized possessions were scored on the cheap.
A closet door is painted in Fine Paints of Europe’s Hollandlac Brilliant in black
A perfect example is the amber glass lamp that sits atop a black-lacquer and rosewood sideboard by Bernhardt. Rowe bought the lamp for $99 at Home Depot a half dozen years ago, shantung shade included. The lamp had a place of honor in his last home, a townhouse in Brooklyn, and he plans to take it with him forever. “Every single person who comes in here falls in love with it,” he says. “I get so much pleasure out of having this $99 lamp on top of that nice piece.”
Across the room sits an impressive bust that at first glance looks Roman but, on close inspection, is actually made of papier-mâché. “If it were plaster, that would seem so pretentious. I mean, I live in a studio. But papier-mâché?”
Still, he concedes that there are places where “fun” doesn’t cut it in an apartment so tiny. His bed, with its upholstered headboard and nailhead trim, had to be bespoke, in a size somewhere between full and queen, in order to fit onto the platform and still leave enough room to enjoy the view. And his desk, which doubles as a dining table, was made to fit exactly behind the sofa. “You have to know when to spend money, and when you don’t have to,” Rowe says.
In the bedroom alcove, the bed is upholstered in a 19th-century wool carriage blanket and dressed in linens by the Company Store and a 19th-century paisley shawl; sconces by Robert Abbey flank a 1970s C. Jeré sculpture, the curtains are in a Loro Piana cashmere, and the walls are painted in Benjamin Moore’s Kingsport Gray.
Creating atmosphere without clutter involves seeing every corner of the space as its own little universe, he says, and making hard choices. The rather grand entryway is wallpapered in a faux-bois pattern, has a lacquered ceiling, and is lit dramatically, with a large mirror leaning on a burl wood cabinet to make the area seem even more impressive. Behind his desk hangs a collection of midcentury oils that evoke his childhood outside of Pittsburgh, visions of the ruins of industrialism painted by artists of the WPA, a movement he discovered as a boy while staring at the many murals throughout the Rust Belt city. An ampersand-and-ellipsis wall sculpture made of poured glass by Rob Wynne, whose work is often featured by architect Peter Marino in his designs for Dior stores, is placed beside an ornate Chinese Coromandel screen.
A 1970s cabinet by Milo Baughman holds a lamp by James Mont and a painting by Meghan Gerety.
But the apartment is far from museum-like. In fact, one of his criteria for all his furnishings is that they stand up to real life. Rowe hosts plenty of cocktail parties, often with more than a dozen people balancing their drinks on the 1970s-era chest he picked up when Diane von Furstenberg auctioned off the contents of her storied West Village office and residence complex in 2005.
And Rowe lives for visits from his nieces and nephews, who sleep on an air mattress—wedged perfectly into the space allotted it, of course—and joyfully keep him up all night with their animated stories and playfulness.
“I don’t want them to think it’s unacceptable to jump on the furniture,” Rowe says. “You want something that’s interesting and elegantly turned out without being precious. That seems like a pretty good goal, whether it’s how you look or how you live.”
This story originally appeared in the October 2014 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE
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