Gracie Square

At Gracie Square, a traditional prewar apartment was transformed into a study in restraint, proportion, and material contrast. Inspired by classical French interiors merged with contemporary minimalism, the renovation creates a home where history and modernity are held in careful tension.

The apartment’s original character was not erased. Instead, it was refined. New plaster mouldings bring rhythm and depth to the walls, while custom crown profiles restore a sense of architectural continuity throughout the residence. The detailing is deliberately crisp and minimal, evoking Parisian paneling through a contemporary lens. In the entry gallery, this language becomes especially powerful: pale walls, chevron floors, and framed artworks create a luminous sequence that feels part residence, part private gallery.

The living room continues this dialogue between softness and structure. Expansive windows open the room to the river and city beyond, while a custom African St. Laurent stone fireplace anchors the interior with depth and gravity. Its dark, veined surface contrasts with the quiet plaster walls, creating a focal point that is both sculptural and architectural. Patinated steel doors with reflective black glass add another layer of contrast, introducing a modern industrial precision against the apartment’s classical envelope.

Throughout the home, technical systems are absorbed into the architecture. Linear diffusers are concealed between the plaster mouldings and crown mouldings, preserving the clarity of the rooms. Lighting, hardware, doors, and millwork are handled with the same discipline.

The kitchen and powder room offer two distinct expressions of material restraint. The kitchen is minimal and precise with custom steel and glass upper cabinets, open shelving and lower cabinetry, and integrated door panels clad in reflective etched glass. The powder room, by contrast, is immersive and monolithic, entirely clad in marble with a custom sculptural sink carved as part of the room’s architecture.

The completed residence feels calm, collected, and quietly luxurious. It is a home shaped by contrast: old and new, soft and hard, classical and modern, decorative and restrained. Above all, it is an apartment that understands atmosphere — a Manhattan residence transformed into a contemporary Parisian interior, where every detail serves the larger composition.