When designer Victoria Hagan’s clients reached out to let her know they were planning to renovate their Carnegie Hill penthouse, she didn’t need to visit to imagine it. Hagan had raised her own family a floor below and knew the building intimately. “You can see for miles on Park Avenue, both south and north,” says Hagan. “It’s really very special.” The clients, whom Hagan had designed a home for previously, had also engaged Hagan’s longtime collaborators. Ferguson & Shamamian Architects, so it was a project that began with a deep level of trust. “We push each other—and I think that’s nice in the creative process,” says Hagan of her many years working with the firm.
The Park Avenue aerie was an opportunity for both firms to work on a unique scale for the city. “It’s a space you want to dive into and enjoy,” says Hagan. “We were all excited to create that kind of space.” The layout, however, would need to be tweaked for contemporary family living. M. Damian Samora, a partner at Ferguson & Shamamian and the lead architect on the project, flipped the public and private spaces, moving the bedrooms to the cross street and placing the public rooms along Park.
Today, visitors step off the elevator into a large, open living-dining space flooded with sunlight. “It’s almost like loft living on Park Avenue,” says Samora. “It’s rare to have a room that size in Manhattan, especially with these incredible western views,” adds Hagan. The clients chose to forgo a separate formal dining room, but gained a huge kitchen with eastern light that feels plucked out of a country home and a casual family room—choices that Hagan says reflect how we live our contemporary lives. “Apartments weren’t designed like this years ago,” says Hagan.
A Christian Liaigre coffee table anchors the family room, which features a custom sofa sporting a Kravet fabric.
In the living room, an Alexander Lamont coffee table complements a custom settee covered in a Romo fabric.
Chairs from Holly Hunt surround a dining table from Victoria Hagan Collections. Custom sofas are covered in a Coraggio fabric.
The primary bedroom’s curtains feature a Romo fabric; the bed covering is from ALT For Living.
A stylish bathroom sanctuary.
But the magic lies not just in the volume and views. Every detail and material was carefully and collaboratively considered—from the trim embroidery on the drapes to the mother-of-pearl wallpaper in the dressing room. The clients wanted the apartment to feel like a refuge from the city, which Hagan delivered with her signature polished, yet comfortable, style. For the décor, Hagan says that she was inspired by light and spectacular views. “This is an apartment for all seasons,” she says. “With views of the park and down Park Avenue, you see the change of seasons in Manhattan, and there are different parts of this apartment that really compliment those different seasons.” The cozy wood-paneled library that acts as the connection between the two wings, for example, is ideal for winter with its wood burning fireplace (a grandfathered-in feature that Samora cleverly borrowed from the adjoining room by flipping the firebox’s orientation). While the family room, wallpapered in grasscloth and accented with a lively leaf green color, calls to mind spring.
The outdoor spaces celebrate the seasons too, thanks to Hollander Design’s magic. “They really wanted the terraces to be an extension of their interior living,” says Stephen Eich, a partner at Hollander Design. “It was important that it felt like it was all designed by one set of hands.” Eich created a classic evergreen base, lining the terrace with boxwood and spills of English ivy, which are interplanted with bulbs or annuals quarterly, further reinforcing the strong feeling of the seasons passing.
The indoor-outdoor connection is enhanced by the many steel-framed windows and French doors, which materially feel like they could have always been there, but are, in fact, entirely rearranged and greatly enlarged. Samora and Hagan describe them as a bridge from the building’s gothic exterior and the inside, but Hagan adds they also “make a really strong contemporary move on the interior.” With the great room’s French doors flung open to the terrace, the homeowners really have the best New York. As Hagan says,“The ability to have this grand, special loft-like space in New York City? I think that’s the dream.”
