Tour This Wacky and Wonderful New York Abode

New York City is a place that comes alive with all sorts – every kind of person, every kind of dream, and every possibility made a reality. Today’s fun NYC home is both wacky and wonderful, a reminder of what the City is all about. Expect the unexpected with colour, rich textures, playful accessories and captivating rooms.

It’s no wonder that this home belongs to an art collector, Nancy Magoon. It is located in the Upper East Side and her home is filled with blue-chip pieces and one-of-a-kind designs.

A Contemporary Space in the City That Never Sleeps

Nancy shares her home and life story with Architectural Digest. She explains that she grew up in New York City. As the daughter of real estate developer Jack Parker, owner of the Parker Meridian hotel, she never much needed her own place in the Big Apple. But after the family off-loaded the hotel five years ago, Nancy, who has lived primarily in Aspen, where she serves on the board of the Aspen Art Museum, wanted to establish a New York home base.

She wanted to spend Aspen’s off-season—October, November, April—there, and perhaps a more significant chunk of time down the road. Her checklist was straightforward: “I wanted it to be contemporary, I wanted it to be colourful, and I wanted a place I could buy some more art for.”

Texture Abounds

Once she found the perfect blank-slate apartment—“nobody has ever lived here,” she explains—Nancy tapped Andrew Sheinman of the New York–based design firm Pembrooke & Ives to handle the interiors.

She’d fallen in love with another place the firm had decorated in the neighbourhood. Really, it was the wall treatments that had gotten her attention, which she replicated here. For many, white walls might be an afterthought, but for Nancy, achieving that perfect canvas for her collection was crucial.

In the living room, they went with a high-gloss white, while in other hallways and the bedrooms, they created a textural effect with plaster, working with Fresco Decorative Painting. Each room had to be fully sealed off for a month to get the finish just right.

A Feast of Colour

Her home is anything but bland. There are interesting colours in unexpected places, from captivating abstract art on the walls to weird and wonderful bright accessories like rugs, vases, sofas and more.

In addition to those wall treatments that she loved, Nancy had a few other practical requests. As a regular entertainer, she needed a flexible space that was primed for hosting. The answer was a wide-open living area. A room where cocktail hour could easily flow into a seated dinner (her custom Sebastian Errazuriz table accommodates 10). Sheinman and senior designer Melanie Stack, who worked closely on the project, added pocket doors to the kitchen. This is ideal should she wish to have a more formal event with a chef.

And they jazzed up the bar area with a Jean Prouvé–inspired blue disc motif. But Magoon’s biggest requests were concerning closet space—which she needed quite a bit of. (“I’m a total clothes horse,” she laments.) They decided to dedicate a full room to the job. They coated it in a high-gloss lacquer and filled it with plenty of drawers and hanging space.

Craving New & Exciting Things

With the nuts and bolts in place, she soon began working closely with the designers to bring together art and furniture for the space. Under their guidance, Nancy collected works of design. She did this with the same intensity as she had always collected art. “Almost every piece we showed her was unique,” explains Sheinman of the range of vintage finds and contemporary commissions.

From art-design star Misha Kahn, she got a rug for the living room and an eye-popping headboard for the primary bedroom. They snagged a Studio 65 Mela Morsicata—an apple with a bite taken out of it—for the bedroom. And for the moody dining area, a custom Sebastian Errazuriz tree table was surrounded by Max Lamb chairs. These are bookended by totally bonkers Hass Brothers seats that look like giant tongues. “I’ve outgrown beige and black for the most part,” Magoon explains. “After you live with that for a while, you crave something new and exciting.”