Ask any New York interiors insider to define the city’s style, and the answer is likely to vacillate somewhere between uptown elegance and downtown cool. But in one Gramercy Park townhouse apartment, Neal Beckstedt managed to blend the best of both worlds, uniting competing elements with an aesthetic that could best be described as Manhattan by way of Paris. “There’s an eclecticism about French design that is so attractive,” the designer says, noting the home’s varied influences and Gallic-feeling bones. “We wanted to convey this sense of internationalism while keeping the design rooted in New York.”
It helps that his clients were a young French couple with impeccable taste. “They’re very cultured and worldly and beyond chic, so the apartment is a reflection of them,” Beckstedt says. Riffing on their fashion-forward cues, he transformed the fourth-level space, refinishing the original parquet flooring, adding molding—“Wall paneling was a recurring theme,” he says—and heightening thresholds at the entrances of each room to impart an airy atmosphere of grandness. Furnishings and décor also hew to the concept, from the Empire-style chandelier that hangs above the dining table to the billowing tasseled drapery in the living room to the embroidered Louis XVI fauteuils in the library. In the newly configured master bedroom, a gilded trifold mirror with faux-mullioned panes conceals the new marble bath and De Gournay–covered study while oozing Old World charm—a look that continues in the adjoining solarium, where vintage fabrics that the couple found on a trip to Morocco appear on the throw pillows. “I consider myself a modernist, but I love craftsmanship, whether it’s from the 16th century or from today,” Beckstedt says.
A seating area in the master bedroom is anchored by a vintage Nadun armchair, which was refitted with a Hermès floral fabric, and a secretary from Chelsea Textiles. The table lamp is a vintage Jacques Adnet from the 1930s.
But in Paris as in New York, no home is complete without an infusion of contemporary style, color, and shape. The master bedroom also features a sleek new fireplace surround cut in honed travertine and a tulip-like armchair by India Mahdavi, while a cozy library reading nook defined by built-in bookcases is anchored with a geometric rug by House of Luv. Vladimir Kagan’s sinuous Serpentine sofa creates softness against the angularity of the living room’s rectilinear paneling and windows. Throughout the home, crisp white walls give way to unexpected shades, from the oxblood-lacquered library to the polished fior pesco marble backsplash in the kitchen—a textural contrast to cabinetry coated in Farrow & Ball’s salmon-hued Setting Plaster.
For Beckstedt, it was a mix that began as something conceptual but also resonated in a natural way. “I wanted to capture the couple’s youth and energy and spirit, and these more playful details felt sophisticated while offsetting the formality and traditionalism of some of the elements,” he says. That duality of design is perhaps best illustrated in the powder room, a vibrant space that expresses its joie de vivre with ornately patterned Hermès wallpaper, a genre-bending Gio Ponti mirror, and a whimsical brass hippo faucet by P.E. Guerin. “French design isn’t as uniform as American design,” the designer says, highlighting the home’s combination of masculine and feminine, old and new. If this apartment is any indication, it’s also a lot more fun. But Parisian as it is in spirit, the result is a home that feels personal and unique—and undeniably New York.
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