Color and Pattern Take Center Stage in This New York City Apartment
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This may be the first apartment for Lucinda and Theodore May, but it is less starter home and more so a lifelong achievement. “I grew up in a prewar building in New York and ever since I was a little girl, I have been obsessed with floor plans and lobbies,” confides homeowner Lucinda May. Handily, that fascination played out well into adulthood where May worked as director of communications for Peter Pennoyer Architects. At the tony, classicist firm, she gained access to Pennoyer's elegant point of view and his architectural library (over 10,000 volumes!) while also crossing paths with her future decorator, Lizzie Bailey. At the time, Lizzie worked for Pennoyer’s wife, Katie Ridder, an acclaimed decorator renown for joltingly colorful projects juxtaposed with traditional elements.
In 2019, when Lucinda and Theodore May began apartment hunting, Lucinda narrowed the search down by floor plans and locations, leading them to this building with a limestone facade designed by Pleasants Pennington on the Upper East Side. As if the lobby decorated by Dorothy Draper wasn't enough on its own, the apartment appealed even more. May says the traditional floor plan had, "separate public entertaining spaces and private living areas flowing through a large entrance hall, plus original casement windows throughout and lots of built-in bookshelves." She adds, "It overlooks St. James Church which is always pin-drop silent unless the choir is practicing.” With the dream apartment secured, the Mays sought to make it perfect for them with the help of Lizzie Bailey, principle of Story Street Studio.
“Lucinda and I already had an endless, years-long text chain with images of things that we both loved,” says Bailey, who recognized the influence that this Manhattan prewar building should have on the decor. “My partner, Laura Stanley, and I have developed a design vocabulary rooted in traditional decorating that never reads as overly serious,” says Bailey. The decorator says she aimed to “establish an overarching perspective” to the May's home and use bold color and unexpected art to “inject a youthful edge into the somewhat formal spaces.”
Bailey says that the Mays were open minded when it came to her design ideas: “I learned to quit saying, ‘you might think I am insane’ when proposing a crazy-sounding idea like upholstering a headboard with a whippet-printed fabric, but Lucinda was always up for it.” Those wild ideas both play up and lighten up the serious antiques that May and Bailey worked diligently to collect. Case in point: the Egyptian Revival cabinet spotted in an auction catalog that’s now located in the May’s foyer. The library’s sofa fabric (Pierre Frey’s Monuments d’Egypte) cheekily salutes the auction win. Lucinda also brought a wish list of wallpapers and fabrics to use in the apartment, which Lizzie wove throughout with ease. Katie Ridder’s Scraffito wallpaper gives the foyer an architectural backbone and Bailey says the golden yellow colorway is “like Vitamin D, despite there being no natural light," while the painted floor anchors the space “like a rug that can be easily mopped.”
The cobalt living room (Benjamin Moore’s Bermuda Blue with a custom glaze on top) features lemon-yellow silk draperies repurposed from Lucinda's parent’s home, a fuchsia strie velvet sofa, and a faux-bois painted fireplace mantel. Adjacent to the saturated living room and striking foyer, Bailey turned the library into a strong, but quiet sitting room filled with tonal plums and greens. “Sometimes it’s best to lean into a dark room and make it clubby and cozy,” says Bailey. Off of the main rooms, Bailey eased up on the color palette. She says, “[though] the private spaces are more subdued...this apartment is phenomenal for entertaining.”
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