It’s hard to imagine how inspidly cookie cutter this Manhattan apartment used to be. To be fair, the apartment, which is located in a 1925 neo-Renaissance-style building, boasted all the accolades of a Park Avenue gem (the world’s fourth most expensive street): views of Central Park, newly renovated window finishes, state-of-the-art kitchen appliances. Just nothing special.
That is, until interior designer Georgia Tapert Howe stepped in. “Really, it was just a white box,” says the designer, who was given permission by its owners—a couple with two children and a penchant for pattern—to enter the apartment with reams of wallpaper options and paint swatches. “There wasn’t a single surface I didn’t touch,” Tapert Howe declares.
Tapert Howe’s aim was to work within the footprint established by its original architects, Electus D. Litchfield and Rogers a century ago, to transform the family’s five-bedroom residence into a sophisticated mix of already acquired artwork and newfound objects—Something that reflected them.