What do interior designers and filmmakers have in common? They know how to create an ambience. For an atmospheric Upper West Side apartment with a romantic sense of nostalgia, sister design duo Joan Michaels and Jayne Michaels drew inspiration from a star-studded cast of postwar aesthetic icons, including Alfred Hitchcock, Julia Child and Gio Ponti, to set a dreamy scene.
“She’s worldly, sophisticated and has traveled everywhere,” Joan says of the homeowner, a longtime client who has owned a collection of midcentury houses (including a Richard Neutra) and admires the golden age of American cinema as much as the modernist architects of the 1950s and 1960s. “It was really a marrying of all the things she loves.” Adds Jayne, “We translated her vision to capture all the details of her enchanting personality.”
The challenge lay in expertly fusing these influences while still preserving the apartment’s prewar charm, including details like cove crown molding, narrow-plank wood floors and single-panel doors. Enter architects Peter Allen and Emily Cohen, who worked in collaboration with the Michaels and general contractor Michael Vella to gut-renovate the space, modernizing HVAC and electrical systems, streamlining the flow of the private spaces, and demolishing an unused chimney to expand the kitchen and add a pantry and laundry station. “She brought a lot of ideas and clear preferences to the table,” says Allen of the discerning homeowner. “We worked closely to bring those ideas to life, all while keeping the space functional and honoring the historic fabric of the building.”