Alexa Hampton Renovates a Manhattan Apartment in the Pierre Hotel
Alexa Hampton Renovates a Manhattan Apartment in the Pierre Hotel
In New York’s landmark Pierre Hotel, designer Alexa Hampton gives and apartment with aging 1960s décor a gracious update.
By Christopher Mason
Photography by Scott Frances
In the master bedroom, the bed is upholstered in an Elizabeth Eakins fabric, with bedding by Leontine Linens, and the bench is from H. M. Luther. The dresser and mirror, both from Objets Plus, are matched with table lamps from Florian Papp, while the armchair, covered in a Christopher Hyland fabric, is accented with a throw by Loro Piana; the carpeting was custom made by Beauvais.
This article originally appeared in the November 2013 issue of Architectural Digest.
Among the perils of buying a prewar New York apartment are the ravages wrought by previous generations of ambitious owners, who have ripped out original moldings or installed newfangled—but rapidly obsolete—features to keep in step with changing fashions.
“Often there have been so many unfortunate renovations that it’s like peeling an onion,” says Manhattan designer Alexa Hampton. So when she and one of her clients, a Brazilian businesswoman, first visited a generously proportioned seven-room apartment at the Pierre hotel on Fifth Avenue, they were pleasantly surprised to discover that most of the interiors hadn’t been touched for nearly half a century.
In the living room, Hampton removed the built-in cabinets and introduced lighter, more modern curtains and shades fabricated by Anthony Lawrence-Belfair, which supplied most of the window treatments and upholstery used throughout the residence. A mirror from James Sansum Fine and Decorative Art and sconces by Marvin Alexander are mounted above the marble mantel; to its left, a Fernand Léger painting overlooks a sideboard from Florian Papp. By the far window are a pair of 18th-century Chinese screens and a cocktail table, all from Gracie; the matching curve-back chairs are from H. M. Luther.
The faded decor—an amalgam of postwar formal and groovy, with Austin Powers–style zigzag fabrics, a psychedelic mirrored bathroom, and thick-pile cut-design carpets—had remained intact since the late 1960s. “It was very dated, but there was wonderful potential,” Hampton says.
The client intended to use the apartment as a pied-à-terre and wanted it to function like a hotel suite in terms of comfort and convenience, but she also wanted it to feel very much like a home. She vetted every detail in advance and specified that she wished to avoid making unnecessary changes. “My client was very organized and impressive,” Hampton says, “and she was determined not to dillydally.”
They agreed that the entry hall, the most trafficked space in the apartment, seemed overly grandiose with its ornate inlaid-marble floor and dark-wood paneling. At Hampton’s suggestion, the paneling was removed in favor of coffee-tone walls, and low wainscoting was added to accentuate the high ceiling.
One section of the living room displays a trio of artworks by Léger; the sofa at right is upholstered in a Claremont fabric. The consoles flanking the doorway, as well as the vases gracing them, are from Objets Plus. The room’s old thick-pile carpeting was removed and replaced with an elegant custom-made rug by Beauvais Carpets.
The marble floor, one of the only smooth surfaces amid a sea of dense carpeting, was also jettisoned. In its place, Hampton advocated parquet de Versailles, and she replaced several of the carpets throughout the public rooms with a complementary herringbone parquet to create a sense of continuity. “A big shift in flooring materials can be jarring in a small space,” she notes.
From the entry hall, a recessed area led to a charm-free corridor to the bedrooms. Working with her contractor, the construction firm S. Donadic, Hampton partitioned off each end of the hallway with new doorways, creating private vestibules for the bedroom areas and introducing a sense of rhythm and symmetry.
The apartment’s layout was actually quite harmonious, so only a few structural changes were deemed necessary. To remake the gloomy formal library into a cheerful guest room, the team painted it blue, dismantled a window-obscuring arch to let in more daylight, and walled over a door to the living room to offer visitors greater privacy. It seemed logical, meanwhile, to recast the library’s wet bar as a bath. But when Hampton was denied the building permits, she came up with a different idea: She put in a jib door leading to the front-hall bath and turned the bar into a closet.
The dining room was reconfigured to include bookshelves and a TV area; a set of Art Deco side chairs from Karl Kemp Antiques in a Pierre Frey fabric surrounds a 19th-century Irish table, and the chairs at left are by Hickory Chair.
Large formal dining rooms often go unused as such in New York City, where most people entertain on a smaller, informal scale. In this case a space fit for banqueting was transformed into a combined library, dining area, and television room, with russet-stained cerused-oak bookcases and paneling. A circa-1820 Irish dining table that can seat six works well for family repasts.
With mirrored walls and dramatic lighting, the apartment’s master bath was long overdue for an update. “It had a disco vibe that made you want to start dancing,” Hampton quips. The mirrors were torn out and replaced with book-matched marble.
The old kitchen, with its metal cabinets and peach-and-green linoleum floor, was like a time capsule from The Brady Bunch. Hampton’s revamp included cream-color cabinetry and white marble counters and floors. “We made it much sleeker,” she says.
The room is painted in a Farrow & Ball blue, with curtains of a Brunschwig & Fils fabric; the floor lamp is from Karl Kemp Antiques, and the bedding is by Leontine Linens.
Like many old-fashioned apartments on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the living room came with built-in vitrines and shallow alcoves originally meant for displaying china and knickknacks. Hampton seems to be allergic to such decor dinosaurs: “Niches make me crazy,” says the designer, who excised the bulky vitrines and made the walls flush. The room’s mantel was a floating marble shelf hung above a streamlined marble surround. “I think it was hip at the time,” she says wryly. The offending set was substituted with a neoclassical carved-marble mantel that echoes the room’s graceful geometry. The designer finished the space with a gray palette punctuated with pops of rust-red, including a pair of chinoiserie screens. These dashes of color, Hampton notes, are scattered judiciously. “You don’t want too many objects of similar shape or color clustered together,” she says.
When it came to bedrooms, the client wanted to unify the decor. So Hampton deployed the same geometric carpet in different hues to match the color scheme of each room: two shades of green for the master, yellow and blue for two respective guest rooms. The former maid’s quarters, described by Hampton as “a squirrelly back room with a sink,” was also converted into a guest bedroom with bunk beds for visiting grandchildren.
The final step in the makeover was to hang the client’s impressive collection of works by Fernand Léger and Joan Miró, as well as some leading Latin American artists. “An apartment should never look like a decorator ran amok,” Hampton says. “With the artwork, the space is a real reflection of my client—as it should be.” 💥
The master bath’s mirrored walls were replaced with slabs of crema delicato marble; the sink and tub are by Kohler, with fittings by Dornbracht, the sconce is by Marvin Alexander, and the towels are by Leontine Linens.