NEW YO RK INTERIO R DESIGN 1935–1985 VOLUME I
INVENTORS OF TRADITION
Judith Gura
Acanthus Press V I S UA L LI B R A RY
Published by Acanthus Press LLC 54 West 21st Street New York, New York 10010 800.827.7614 www.acanthuspress.com Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify the owners of copyright. Errors of omission will be corrected in subsequent printings of this work. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part (except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publisher. Images for this book were obtained with the support of a grant from a publications development fund established by the New York School of Interior Design for publications related to the academic program of the college.
Copyright © 2008, Judith Gura Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gura, Judith. New York interior design : 1935-1985 / by Judith Gura. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-926494-51-0 (alk. paper) 1. Interior decoration—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. 2. Interior decorators—New York (State)—New York. I. Title. NK2011.N48G87 2008 747.09747'10904—dc22 2008010976
ENDPAPERS: “Victoria” wallpaper, © Mario Buatta, for Sterling Prints FRONTISPIECE: Bedroom with raised ceiling and skylight. Empire furniture, grand canopy framing bed on platform, hand-painted concrete floor, Kips Bay Show House interior, 1980s. Robert Metzger, designer. Courtesy of Phillip H. Ennis
In the 1980s and 1990s, some of the brightest stars of the interior design world—and others who had not yet had their chance to shine—were lost to AIDS. This book is dedicated to their memory.
R OOM
FOR J ON
T HORNWOOD , N EW Y ORK (W EST S IDE )
Albert Hadley Mixed media, 2008
Limited edition of 400 numbered copies No.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments Preface 11 Introduction 13
IN THE PARSONS STYLE 59
9
Eleanor McMillen Brown 60 William Pahlmann 66 Melanie Kahane
THE HISTORY 16
72
Michael Greer 78 Billy Baldwin
THE LEGENDS 27
84
McMillen Inc. 94
Elsie de Wolfe 28 Ruby Ross Wood 30
THE EUROPEAN TRADITIONALISTS 105
Rose Cumming 32
James Amster 106
Elsie Cobb Wilson 34
Ellen Lehman McCluskey 114
Nancy McClelland 36
Yale Burge 120
THE FIRST LADIES 39 Elisabeth Draper
126
40
Mrs. Henry (Sister) Parish II Dorothy Draper
Joseph Braswell
52
44
THE ANGLOPHILES 135 Irvine & Fleming 136 7
Mario Buatta
THE CHAMELEONS 249
144
David Easton 150
Stephen Mallory 250 Albert Hadley 258
THE COMPOSERS 159 Carleton Varney 160
Mark Hampton 270 Peter Marino 280
Zajac & Callahan 166 Harrison Cultra
176
David Eugene Bell Jed Johnson
PORTFOLIO 287
186
194
THE SHOWMEN 203 David Barrett 204 Denning & Fourcade Ruben de Saavedra
212 226
Tom Britt 236 Robert Metzger 242
Ron Bricke, George Clarkson, Elissa Cullman, Susan Zises Green, Marian Hall, Michael La Rocca, Tonin MacCallum, Kevin McNamara, Juan Pablo Molyneux, Richard Ridge, David Lawrence Roth, Smyth Urquhart Marckwold, George Stacey, Alexandra Stoddard, Stephanie Stokes, Thedlow Inc., Bebe Winkler
Biographies 305 Photography Credits
317
A NOTE ABOUT DATES:
A NOTE ABOUT IMAGES:
Research for this book was conducted in libraries, archives, and designers’ and photographers’ files, as well as interviews with living designers and industry observers. Where discrepancies occurred between sources, I have used dates and biographical details from the oldest original sources.
Many projects by the designers profiled in these pages were never photographed or were photographed only for exclusive publication. Over the years, film has been lost, damaged, restricted by copyright, or withdrawn by client request. What remains is the best work of some designers and a limited selection from others. In choosing projects, historical merit was given precedence over image quality. The number of pages devoted to each designer are not intended to suggest their relative importance, but reflect the availability of relevant photographs.
10
PREFACE
T H E S E V O L U M E S T R A C E the course of residential design in New York City as seen in the work of its most prominent practitioners during five decades when that city’s designers set the styles for the rest of the country, and beyond. They also recount the history of the institutions, organizations, and support systems within which the designers worked. The story of these innovators, tracing the evolution of the profession itself, owes much of its uniqueness to the city in which it took place in the years between 1935 and 1985. Although the majority of New York designers initially drew inspiration from European precedents, they did not espouse any single style. And in spite of their different personalities and different ways of doing business, they were inextricably connected. Despite this, they were inextricably connected. Most lived in the area of Manhattan from Turtle Bay through the East Sixties, in elegantly outfitted town houses and apartments. They went to the same parties, ate at the same restaurants, and shopped the same resources—especially in those first decades, when the interior design profession was a small and close-knit group. But what they shared most, apart from geography, was an assurance and sophistication born of the invigorating climate of the metropolis that,
during these decades, was the creative center of the nation and the Western world. While the broadening worldview of both the city and the profession gradually diffused this unanimity, New York interiors of this era are its unique reflection. Whether apartment, town house, weekend retreat, or suburban estate, whether traditional or contemporary in style, the cosmopolitanism and electricity of New York inform them. The rooms here, and the designers who created them, could not belong to any other place or time. The names of most designers featured in these pages will be familiar, as will others in the biographical listing. Many are still in practice, but there are dozens more, equally talented, who pursued their careers out of the limelight. Some chose to evade celebrity; some were too shy to seek it; others were constrained by issues of privacy. My apologies to those whose recognition must be limited to the appreciation of their clients, though some would say that is all the recognition they need.
11
INTRODUCTION
A P R O F E S S I O N O N T H E C U S P of being licensed, a practice that equivocates between defining itself as art or artifice, a vocation for the serious and an avocation for the dilettante . . . interior design is an amalgam of all this, and more. Its origins are as vague and heterogeneous as its activities. While the art and craft of decorating can be traced back to the first human who painted on the walls of a cave, the seeds of the profession we know today took root little more than a century ago in that most cosmopolitan of cities, New York. It was there that Elsie de Wolfe fashioned herself a decorator, and a handful of enterprising women followed her to become the first members of a diverse and intriguing group that coalesced into what might be referred to as the New York School of interior decorating. The designation “New York School” describes the community of designers practicing in the city during the decades covered in these volumes. A “school” is a theoretical construct, suggesting a cohesive group of likeminded colleagues. The reality is more complex. Like the artists with whom they share their nomenclature, the designers were a diverse community of individualists pursuing parallel and often contradictory paths, but they were like-minded in their enthusiastic commitment to the new profession. In the aftermath of World War I, the United States emerged as an international power, with New York City its financial hub. At the same time, the city
had supplanted Paris as the center of the artistic world. With the rise of Abstract Expressionism, New York became headquarters for the avant-garde, encouraging the arts of dance, musical theater, literature, and poetry. With a climate welcoming diversity and sympathetic to nonconformists and eccentrics, it was the ideal environment in which to nurture a new creative practice. New York, therefore, formed the nucleus of the nascent design universe. By the mid-1930s, the city had every resource an interior decorator could desire. There were similarly minded practitioners in related arts, with a supportive network of antique and art dealers. There were elegant spaces in which to work, particularly the new luxury apartment buildings transforming Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, and later Central Park West— the result of an unprecedented post-World War I (and pre-Depression) building boom. There were the best (and for some time, the only) design schools, the necessary materials, the skilled craftsmen, and the influential national media. Finally, and perhaps most critical, New York had the largest demographic of prospective clients—a culturally sophisticated, wealthy elite who understood the value of a beautiful home in establishing, or reinforcing, social status. As this narrative begins, decorating was generally viewed as a frivolous pursuit of society women for a narrow circle of friends and acquaintances. 13
INVENTORS OF TRADITION
That picture was accurate, but it was about to change. The “lady decorators” were joined by others, like Eleanor McMillen, Dorothy Draper, and later Mrs. Henry (Sister) Parish II, who built enduring business organizations. The young institution that would become the Parsons School of Design began to turn out professionally trained decorators, among them the aforementioned McMillen, William Pahlmann, Michael Greer, and Melanie Kahane, who would dominate the field and nurture (in practice or by example) the stars of succeeding design generations, like Albert Hadley, Mark Hampton, Mario Buatta, and many others. As decorating evolved into the more sophisticated practice of interior design, professional schooling became the norm rather than the exception, although even in more recent years, the occasional maverick, like Jay Spectre, Jed Johnson, or Ward Bennett, has succeeded on the basis of talent and hard work alone. Between 1935 and 1985, the New York design community thrived, nurtured by inspiring educators and a changing social milieu. The city lured aspiring talent from many different backgrounds and locations who came to study and stayed to practice. Those who were celebrated in New York achieved national recognition, setting styles that would be adopted by designers and fashion-conscious consumers far beyond the city’s boundaries. After World War II, when men entered the field in greater numbers, the shift in demographics helped to change its image from one of frivolous “women’s work” to that of a serious and increasingly lucrative profession. And when Billy Baldwin became the first male “superstar” decorator, many were inspired to follow his lead. By the third quarter of the century, interior designers were an established and highly respected elite, as socially prominent as many of the clients they served. As the city and the profession flourished, apartments, penthouses, and town houses were joined in the 1970s by residential lofts, a new genre of downtown Manhattan living space that would be emulated in gentrifying neighborhoods around the country. Decorator showrooms proliferated, show houses 14
and exhibitions promoted the art and its practitioners, and glossy magazines and books brought national recognition to New York designers. Even more vital to the growth of the profession was the expansion of its market: a new generation of baby boom urban professionals broadened the potential client base from a restricted social circle to anyone with the financial means to hire a designer. Moreover, these clients, generally younger and less bound by tradition, were likelier to be receptive to more modern styles. In the early years of decorating, there was comparatively little variation from one practitioner to another. For a group so undeniably diverse in birthplace, background, and education, the first generation of New York decorators was remarkably consistent in aesthetic approach. Infused by a strong undercurrent of Eurocentrism, the interiors they produced from the 1930s until the 1950s and beyond most often reflected the styles of 18th-century France, Italy, and England. As the profession began to mature, many designers remained tied to European tradition but there were others who sought more contemporary expressions and a flexible few who straddled the line, drawing from both sources. Between midcentury and 1985, then, the range of New York style gradually evolved from single-mindedly traditional to inclusive, eclectic, and bracingly original. Both designers and their clients at first resisted modernism, a radical departure from the familiar that was seen as too severe, too simple, and to the unconverted, less luxurious than traditional styles. Not until after World War II, encouraged by the postwar building boom and a more democratic clientele, did pioneers like Benjamin Baldwin and Ward Bennett and innovators like Joseph Paul D’Urso and the teams of Bray-Schaible and Bromley Jacobsen create cutting-edge modern interiors that were just as elegant as periodinspired rooms. By the 1970s, more glamorous strains of modernism coexisted with minimalism, and the New York School had split into factions—not warring, but divergent—one committed to modern design, the other retaining its traditional bias. As the decades in this narrative drew to a close, New
INTRODUCTION
York designers were producing interiors that might be elegantly traditional, strikingly modern, or a comfortable coalescence of the two. By this time, too, interior design was evolving as a profession. New York designers remained innovative and influential, but they were no longer the only leaders; other creative centers had emerged, particularly on the West Coast, and skilled designers were practicing in all of the country’s major metropolitan areas. Still, the starting point of this burgeoning industry was the nucleus that formed and flourished between 1935 and 1985 as the New York School. The range of styles developed by the New York School did not evolve in chronological sequence. Rather than a family tree, the growth took the form of a loosely linked network of vines, intersecting at some places and separating at others. The designers profiled here have been arranged in groups according to design approach or style direction: the illustrated projects point to their common bonds. Some of the designers had strong personalities or prominent platforms to showcase their talents; some had the good fortune to capture the attention of the media; others assiduously pursued celebrity. But each of them was chosen for a particular reason: as interpreter of prevailing fashion, as a pioneer of new concepts in design, or as an exemplar of a specific style or trademark look that merits documentation.
The first volume focuses on the years 1935 to 1965, when a concern with decoration and ornament drove the design of New York interiors. There were avowed traditionalists who looked to 18th-century France and Italy for design inspiration. There were Anglophiles who saw the English country house as the paradigm of elegant style. There were explorers, showmen, individualists, and versatile talents whose design vocabulary drew from multiple sources, crossing over periods, and reinterpreting traditional styles in modern colors and nontraditional room arrangements. The second volume deals primarily with the years 1965 to 1985, when spatial considerations dominated the planning of interiors. In these years, modernism prevailed, its adherents include individualists, purists, sybarites, synthesizers, and those whose work reflected their architectural training. The design of interiors was becoming more diverse, and more individualistic, than any time in the profession’s history. All the interiors shown in both volumes, style notwithstanding, reflect a merger of two sensibilities: that of the designer and that of the client. It was to meet his or her needs, after all, that the profession was originally created, and for whom it continues to exist. As a 1965 decorating book put it, “Interior decoration is the mid-20th century’s contribution to the arts of living.”
15
THE HISTORY
THE SCHOOLS: LAYING THE FOUNDATION By 1935, interior decoration was already an established business in America, although not quite yet a profession, and New York was the heart of the industry, as it was for most of the nation’s creative activity. The general perception of decorators held them as talented people, generally women, working for an elite clientele from a narrow social circle—one to which the decorators usually belonged. Their chief responsibility was to purchase and resell antique furnishings, and to arrange them in their clients’ homes. This role had gradually extended to choosing color schemes, fabrics, and window treatments, and ordering the materials, but restructuring rooms or reconfiguring space were unheard of. One of the most celebrated practitioners of the time, Rose Cumming, referred to her trade as “the frivolous sister of the architecture profession,” describing what was probably the general opinion at the time, and for some years to come.i Full-service interior decoration has precedents in the work of 18thcentury English architect Robert Adam, but modern histories usually date its origins to about 1905, when Elsie de Wolfe, a New York actress, proclaimed herself a decorator. To be entirely accurate, however, the history
16
of professional interior design in New York—or in the United States, for that matter—begins not in the early 20th century with de Wolfe, but in the late 19th with William Merritt Chase and the institution that would become Parsons School of Design.ii The celebrated painter, concerned at the lack of professional training for artists, established the Chase School of Art (chartered as the New York School of Art) in 1896, with locations on East 23rd and East 14th streets in Manhattan.iii The curriculum focused exclusively on painting, drawing, and sculpture until 1904, when Chase hired an instructor named Frank Alvah Parsons, whose studies in art education at Columbia University had included a design component. Parsons began to teach a course in interior decoration—the first of its kind at any school in the country—to a class of five students.iv When Chase retired in 1907, Parsons became coadministrator and then sole director of the school. He established interior decoration as a full department and added the first professional departments for costume design and commercial illustration (now graphic design). To reflect the broadened curriculum, the school’s name changed in 1909 to the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, incorporated by the Board of Regents of the State of New York. To enhance the institution’s credibility and prestige, two celebrated decorators
THE HISTORY
of the time, de Wolfe and her competitor Elsie Cobb Wilson, were named to the advisory board in 1917. By 1928, the school’s bulletin was using the abbreviated name Parsons, but the name change would not be official for another two decades.v The curriculum’s direction reflected Frank Parsons’ design philosophy. The first textbook on the subject was his own 1915 book, Interior Decoration, Its Principles and Practice. In it, he identified key principles of decoration— color, form, balance, scale, texture—and covered the periods of art history, emphasizing French and, less prominently, English styles. Parsons held that good taste was “an actual asset in life” that could be acquired with proper instruction. His personal prestige contributed to the school’s public image— Parsons was in great demand as a lecturer at public venues in America and abroad, and from 1911 until his death in 1930, he conducted a popular annual lecture series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.vi Just a few years after the New York School of Fine and Applied Art began training interior designers, an architect named Sherrill Whiton created a home-study course in the new field. Mail-order education was then a widely used and acceptable way to acquire professional training, especially in artrelated fields, where formal education was in its infancy. He rented an office on East 40th Street and in 1916 published his first “Home Study Course in the Decorative Arts.” When growing numbers of students started to come by, expecting to find an actual school, Whiton decided to found one. The New York School of Interior Decoration (now the New York School of Interior Design), chartered by the Board of Regents, opened in 1924 on the corner of 57th Street and Madison Avenue.vii The first class had 90 students. It was unique in being a one-subject college, teaching interior decoration exclusively, and offering courses open to laymen as well as to those seeking professional training. The New York School of Interior Decoration’s curriculum, like that of Parsons, emphasized a foundation in classic tradition, particularly the styles of 18th-century France. The early
faculty were specialists drawn from a field of practitioners that included architect Edward Durell Stone, Michael Greer, and Inez Croom. Established decorators Ruby Ross Wood and Nancy McClelland were on the advisory board. In 1937 Whiton published the first edition of his book, Elements of Interior Design and Decoration, which would become a standard text for interior design programs across the country. The book would go through four editions before being revised and rewritten by Stanley Abercrombie in 2001. Gilbert Werlé, a graduate of the school, became assistant to Whiton and served as dean from 1932 to 1973.viii Parsons had meanwhile taken on an international aspect. William Odom, a protégé of Frank Alvah Parsons, joined the faculty after his graduation in 1909, and became head of the interior design department a few years later. At Parsons’s behest, he established a Paris facility for the school in 1921 with 22 students, mostly from England and the Continent. Americans were able to study at either location or split their three years’ training between the New York and Paris branches. The exposure to French culture as well as French design critics (including Jean-Michel Frank, who purportedly conceived the rough outline that became the Parsons table) reflected the school’s emphasis on traditional European styles. The 1921 school bulletin said that “France, more than any other country, has been the center of artistic inspiration since the 16th century,” citing the importance of studying and working with period decorative art and noting that the adaptation of its finest examples was “our national problem.” It also stressed the importance of learning the principles of classical art and architecture. “Though the school firmly advocates the creation of original modern styles, it recognizes the importance of basing these on an academic and classical foundation that alone can give permanency to any art expression.”ix An unqualified success, the Paris school moved to elegant quarters in the historic Place des Vosges. Odom enlisted an elite international circle of 17
INVENTORS OF TRADITION
patrons to support Parsons, both for financial backing and to further enhance its prestige, and these valuable contacts facilitated the addition of travelstudy programs in Italy and England. A few years later, America’s introduction to modernism in the form of French Style Moderne owed much to Parsons teacher Virginia Hamill, who was later a stylist for the prestigious Lord & Taylor department store. Hamill masterminded that retailer’s 1927 and 1928 exhibitions featuring the new designs emanating from across the Atlantic. Parsons attracted many young women, both single and married, who either had time on their hands or needed to earn a living and welcomed the opportunity to study a vocation that was acceptable in a time when careers for women were not the norm. The number of male students, at first a fraction, increased dramatically after World War II, by which time the field was being viewed as both a creative challenge and a potentially profitable career. As the parameters of the decorator’s role expanded, the schools pointed out “what is now becoming generally understood, that the interior is primarily concerned with its architecture.” Acknowledging the first stirrings of modernism and “the problem which the new movement has created,” Parsons asserted, “it will therefore continue to base its courses of instruction on the unchanging fundamental principles of life and of its expression. But it will also attempt to interpret the ‘Modern Art Movement’ from the standpoints of function and beauty as they are related to modern practices and to economic possibilities in the professional fields which it represents.”x By 1924 Parsons had graduated more than 200 students in architecture and interior decoration, and the faculty of 66 was supplemented by visiting critics and trade specialists.xi The earliest graduate to become a celebrated designer in New York was Elsie Cobb Wilson, a favorite of William Odom, who was both mentor and overseas agent for her business; he later did the same for Eleanor McMillen. 18
Thus began the flow of influence from one generation to the next that created the dominant, traditionalist branch of the New York School of decorators. When Frank Alvah Parsons died in 1930, Odom succeeded him as president, maintaining the curriculum and the philosophy that had made the school so successful. Pratt Institute, established in 1887 as an art school, had design classes in its curriculum almost from the beginning. The 1888 catalog listed courses in harmony of color, historic ornament, and principles of ornament and applied design, but they were part of a program in drawing. Two years later, the school instituted a two-year applied design course with instruction in decorative principles and practical application that “aims to fit pupils to become professional designers.” The course of study listed decorative designs and color schemes for rooms, but did not specifically mention interior decoration.xii As Parsons and the New York School of Interior Decoration expanded their programs and enrollment, Pratt continued to offer a variety of design courses without a specific program of study in interior design. It was not until 1946 that Pratt hired Konrad Wittman, a German architect and designer—who like so many others, had fled National Socialism in Europe—to set up a full department of interior design. He organized separate programs of daytime and evening classes and hired instructors, most of whom had backgrounds in architecture.xiii When Wittman died in 1951, Eleanor Pepper, an architecture graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, replaced him, perpetuating the school’s emphasis on the architectural aspects of design, which tended to treat interior decoration as a subset of architecture. This was antithetical to the orientation at Parsons, which emphasized drawing and the more decorative aspects of designing interiors. By 1964, Pratt offered a four-year course leading to a bachelor of fine arts in interior design. Harold Leeds, an interior decorator who had studied architecture, was on the faculty, as were various other practicing designers and architects, including John Pile, an architect and furniture designer who
THE HISTORY
had worked for George Nelson. Pratt’s program focused on commercial and institutional as well as residential design; it would move in a direction that produced designers of an entirely different type—those whose design vocabulary was distinctly modernist. A sea change in the burgeoning profession, and its separation into divergent schools of traditional and contemporary, came after World War II. There were several factors at work. First, there was an increase in design school applicants, spurred largely by an influx of men, including many veterans returning from armed service to pursue government-funded college and career studies under the G.I. Bill of Rights. Their numbers shifted the composition of many design school enrollments from a female to a male majority.xiv Second, it had become apparent that, in addition to its creative appeal, decorating could be profitable: postwar prosperity spawned a wider market of consumers interested in home decoration and able to afford professional help. And finally, the wave of modernism that had begun in Europe before the war was making its way to America. Academic standards in the schools gradually began to reflect these developments, though most curricula remained essentially unchanged: loosening the ties of tradition would take time. In 1944 Parsons changed the title of the course from architecture and interior decoration to interior design and the following year initiated a four-year program, in affiliation with New York University, culminating in a bachelor of science degree. This was during the leadership of perhaps the most influential of the Parsons directors as an arbiter of public taste, Van Day Truex, who headed the school from 1942 to 1953. A 1925 graduate of the Paris branch, Truex had lived and traveled extensively throughout Europe, returning to New York only to take over the presidency. He later became design director of Tiffany & Co., and John Loring, one of his successors, referred to him as an “impassioned traditionalist, with an ability to talk to the modern world.”XV His passion for all things European, however, and his
absolute insistence on the rightness of his own standards, kept the Parsons program on a steady course that favored traditional period styles. Most graduates retained strong ties to the school; some, like Albert Hadley, a 1949 graduate, returned to teach there. In November 1955, Interior Design magazine devoted an entire issue to celebrating the school’s approaching 60th anniversary, an acknowledgment of its stature.xvi Throughout the period covered in these volumes, nearly all of the most celebrated and publicly recognized interior design professionals had attended Parsons. A less public but equally important figure during what has been called “the golden era of Manhattan design”xvii was Stanley Barrows, who taught at Parsons for 22 years, from 1946 to 1968. Admired not only for his superb taste but for his emphasis on the importance of learning design history, Barrows is cited as a seminal influence by designers like Mario Buatta, Albert Hadley, Tom Britt, and Ronald Bricke. When Parsons later came under the direction of administrators rather than tastemakers and the quality of its program suffered (though not, for some time, its reputation), Barrows left to head the interior design department at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). As public interest in decorating grew, schools offered a number of adult education courses for those hoping to enter the profession as well as for amateurs. In the 1960s, consumers could sign up for classes in design history at the New York School of Interior Design as well as at New York University, Hunter College, and the Traphagen School of Fashion.
THE TRADE: BUILDING A PROFESSION The opening of the 1931 International Style exhibition, curated by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, marked the formal debut of the Modern Movement in America. The new aesthetic captivated architects but made relatively little impact on 19
INVENTORS OF TRADITION
interior designers, who remained loyal to the style directions most comfortable for them and their clients. The pages of decorating magazines and newspapers, even those proclaiming allegiance to “modern,” continued to show interiors that were essentially traditional in feeling. Some published projects that were obviously influenced by French Style Moderne, but these were more often the work of industrial designers than decorators. There was, however, progress on another front: by 1935, the first signs of a true profession were emerging in the decorating world. McMillen Inc., was in business as the first full-service decorating firm, Dorothy Draper’s company was under way, Mrs. Henry Parish II had opened an office in New York, and a young man named William Pahlmann would soon be hired to design model rooms at Lord & Taylor. The prevailing design aesthetic leaned heavily toward formal interiors in the style of 18th-century France, but there were exceptions to the rule: while Eleanor McMillen Brown’s new living room featured soft pastels and an Aubusson carpet, the striking dining room that Elsie de Wolfe Inc. created for a Metropolitan Museum Fine Arts Exposition had a bold, radial-patterned floor in aubergine, gray, and white. The New York Times, commenting on two of the exhibit’s decorated interiors, noted “a tendency to treat period rooms in a freer manner,”xviii although this was a long way from being modern. It is within this framework that New York became the center of a growing industry, nurturing a series of extraordinarily talented and innovative designers who would dictate trends to the rest of the country and whose leadership would drive the field for several decades. Despite their allegiance to tradition, not all New York designers worked in the same style, nor were they in any real sense a cohesive group. They did, however, share the cultural sophistication of their urban environment and easy access to materials and craftsmen, both in the city and abroad. In addition to the availability of a wealthy and willing clientele, they benefited from a support system concentrated almost exclusively in New York: a burgeoning 20
network of trade associations, national media, and public exhibitions that gave prominent exposure to the work of the New York designers. These factors contributed to the growth, the considerable success, and the enduring influence of this unique community. Formed in 1914 by “ladies of taste” who met for tea and to sew for the Red Cross in the home of Gertrude Gheen (like de Wolfe, a former actress turned decorator), the Decorators’ Club was the first design association in New York. The founders wanted a club whose primary purpose was to foster professionalism and quality education in their field. Incorporated in 1921, the club had 38 charter members. Open by invitation only, the select group had presidents including Elisabeth Draper, Mildred Irby, Eleanor Pepper, Melanie Kahane, and Sarah Tomerlin Lee. Of the membership, one representative commented, “if it was anyone important, you can assume she would have been a member.” The group organized decorating clinics, presented scholarship awards, and staged public design and art exhibitions at their headquarters at 745 Fifth Avenue. In 1931, the profession being substantial enough to merit a national organization, the American Institute of Interior Decorators (AIID) was established with 342 members at a conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, then the manufacturing center of the American furniture industry. (Manufacturers understood the importance of supporting a profession whose clients, even during the Depression, had money to buy furniture.) AIID national headquarters, briefly in Chicago, moved in 1933 to New York, reinforcing the city’s centrality to the industry. The New York chapter was incorporated independently and 25 years later still had the largest enrollment.xix As further indication of the city’s dominance, 13 of the first 20 national conferences took place in New York. In addition to providing members a community of like-minded professionals and a mechanism for sharing ideas, AIID organized events to enhance its public visibility, acknowledging the need to seek clients from beyond the small pool of
THE HISTORY
friends and acquaintances that had been sufficient in a field with fewer competitors and more modest aspirations. In the course of refining both mission and nomenclature, the American Institute of Interior Decorators became the American Institute of Decorators (AID) in 1936 and the American Institute of Interior Designers (still AID) in 1961. Disagreements over membership issues led to a split in the organization and the establishment of a parallel group, the National Society of Interior Designers (NSID), in 1957. The two reunited in 1975, and from that time on, much of the organization’s attention has focused on improving professional standards and securing licensing.xx As the number of decorators grew, the network of New York–based resources that served them also expanded. Fabric firms, concentrated in the area around Madison Avenue and 53rd Street, included Scalamandré, Brunschwig, Elsie McNeill (importer of Fortuny fabrics), F. Schumacher, and Arthur H. Lee (later Lee Jofa). Among the antique shops clustered around East 57th Street were those of Frederick Victoria, Joseph Lombardo, and Rosalind Rosier, as well as those operated by decorators who were also shopkeepers, like James Amster, Yale Burge, and David Barrett. This network of businesses organized ways to promote their interests and products. The most significant of these was the Resources Council, incorporated in 1958, to represent companies servicing the design industry. Its board of directors included New York designers William Pahlmann, John Wisner, Eleanor Le Maire, and Walter Dorwin Teague (an industrial designer responsible for a number of high-profile public interiors, including several at the New York World’s Fair of 1939). The Council was nominally a national group, but as New York was the largest market for the products of the member firms, most of whose headquarters were located there as well, many of its major activities took place in the city. Among them was a series of annual exhibitions of new products, usually involving elaborate displays by prominent designers. Continuing from 1959 to 1965, the exhibitions were
attractive public showcases for both designers and products, and were organized in cooperation with the New York chapter of the American Institute of Interior Designers. With the inauguration of the Decoration & Design Building at 979 Third Avenue in April 1964,xxi designers had a one-stop shopping center, incorporating showrooms for many to-the-trade sources in one 18-story, 320,000square-foot building. Opening with 66 tenants, it represented the first consolidation of the industry and was a model for similar facilities that would later be developed in major cities across the country, spurring both the expansion and the fragmentation of the design community. Just two years later, the building announced an addition. Smaller showroom buildings prospered as well, including the Decorators Art Center at 305 East 63rd Street and the Decorative Center at 315 East 62nd Street. These to-thetrade-only locations were convenient for designers and helped create an air of exclusivity that reinforced the profession’s newly minted glamour. With prestige, however, came a less felicitous effect: by reinforcing its elitist origins, it threatened to intimidate the broader base of consumers who were vital to its growth.
THE MEDIA: CREATING AN IMAGE The increasing sophistication of the magazines that covered the field reflected the changing status of design as an accepted profession. The most influential design-trade publication of the postwar era was Interiors, which began in 1888 as Upholsterer and changed its name to Upholsterer and Interior Decorator, then to Interior Decorator, and then in 1940 to its final name.xxii The magazine, particularly under editor Olga Gueft beginning in the early 1950s, became an important platform for promoting professional design, with a large proportion of its coverage featuring the work of New York designers. Interiors became an enthusiastic supporter of modern design before 21
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most of the design community was prepared to embrace it. As early as August 1948, its portfolio of the year’s best work did not show a single traditional interior. The other leading publication was launched in 1932 as Decorator’s Digest, the official publication of the American Institute of Interior Decorators. In 1937, it became Interior Design and Decoration, acquiring its present name, Interior Design, in 1950. Devoted primarily to traditional interiors, its pages in the early years reflected the fact that the leading decorators, not to mention the rest of the country, continued to suffer a national inferiority complex— favoring European design over anything homegrown—and, as noted, declined to embrace the winds of modernism that were, by the middle years of the century, changing the climate of design. Although Herman Miller and Knoll were offering innovative modern furniture by American designers and importing that of Bauhaus masters as well, most designers continued to use traditional furnishings for residential interiors, even as offices and commercial spaces became increasingly modern. When Interior Design and Decoration resumed publication in April 1949 after a seven-year wartime suspension, its focus remained on traditional design; editors explained that “we like modern too but we feel an obligation to show only sane modern. . . . America just seems to live in a more traditional way.”xxiii It was at about this time that a distinct specialty emerged called “contract” or “commercial design.” Although many designers handled all types of projects, specialized firms sprang up to cater to this highly profitable segment of the market. The first of these was the Knoll Planning Group in 1943; other pioneer firms were Saphier, Lerner, & Schindler; Designs for Business; Associated Space Design; and Space Design Group, all based in New York.xxiv By the late 1970s, contract and then hospitality design were flourishing sectors of the industry. Understandably, consumer magazines did not take much note of decorators in the early years of the business: few of their readers were likely to be 22
potential clients. As the profession grew in size and its practitioners in stature, however, decorators’ names began to appear in print. By midcentury, a number of general interest magazines were publishing decorating stories (Family Circle, McCall’s, and Redbook), and Better Homes & Gardens, American Home, and Good Housekeeping were dedicated to the subject. The most influential publications to feature professional designers were House Beautiful and House & Garden.xxv Hearst Publishing’s House Beautiful was founded in 1896, and its most influential editor was Elizabeth Gordon (Norcross), who reigned from 1941 to 1964, during which time she became the country’s most powerful arbiter of taste.xxvi In her condemnation of International-style modernism—she dismissed it as totalitarian and a threat to individualism— she undoubtedly contributed to consumers’ reluctance to move away from the security of traditional styles.xxvii With influence equal to that of the editors-in-chief, decorating editors worked directly with designers; they determined story themes and styled interiors for photography. Frances Heard, who began at House Beautiful in 1929 and retired in 1970, had perhaps the longest tenure, but others like Arthur Leaman (House & Garden, 1954–1966) and Lester Grundy (House Beautiful 1940s–1970s) were in a position to make designers into nationally recognized names.xxviii They chose the designers whose projects were photographed . . . and who created studio room settings that suggested decorating ideas and color schemes to consumers all across America. Since all the major shelter magazines, with the exception of Better Homes & Gardens (in any case a more middle-market publication), were headquartered in New York, the designers they featured were heavily skewed to practitioners in that city. Of the best of the magazines (and their elegant European counterparts), Albert Hadley commented, “That’s where I got my education . . . they weren’t catalogs, they were an art form.” A corollary effect of increased consumer interest in decorating was the publication of what became known as “coffee-table books” filled with
THE HISTORY
illustrations of beautiful rooms for readers to admire and perhaps to be inspired by. The Finest Rooms by America’s Great Decorators (1964), one of the earliest and most selective of these, presented the work of just eight decorators: Billy Baldwin, Eleanor McMillen Brown, Rose Cumming, Marian Hall, Mrs. Henry “Sister” Parish II, George Spacey, Ann Urquhart, and Michael Taylor. Taylor, a San Francisco newcomer, was the only non-New Yorker. (Save him, all the “greats” were traditionalists, although Baldwin was less strict in his approach than the others.) In 1965 came two books that were primarily showcases of New York residences: Decoration U.S.A., a compendium of work mostly from the pages of House & Garden, and The New York Times Book of Interior Design and Decoration, reprinting interiors culled from the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. Both these books indicated a growing variation in styles, as designers began to blur the lines between period and more contemporary design. In an era when New York hosted several major newspapers, editors like Betty Pepis, Harriet Morrison, and Rita Reif reported frequently on design events and their participants. Their columns and comments were reprinted in smaller papers across the country.
THE SHOWCASES: MEETING THE PUBLIC In 1936, Lord & Taylor, the New York department store, hired William Pahlmann, a Parsons graduate, to head its decorating department. Pahlmann introduced a new concept—fully decorated model rooms—to showcase the store’s furniture collections, and more importantly as it turned out, to introduce design ideas to shoppers.xxix The success of Pahlmann’s model rooms spurred many imitators in the next two decades. The Decorators’ Picture Gallery, the antiques dealer Stair & Company, the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, the National Arts Club, and the Midtown Gallery were all venues for regular exhibits of interiors by the most prominent designers of the time, including Pahlmann, Melanie Kahane, Eleanor McMillen Brown, and Elisabeth Draper. The department store model room—displaying the art and artifice of the interior designer (at no charge)—in a retail marketplace reached its peak first with Henriette Granville and then with Barbara D’Arcy at Bloomingdale’s. D’Arcy’s extravagant, attention-getting interiors, beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing for over two decades, were launched with great fanfare (and media coverage), establishing the store as a trendsetter in decorating style—the style originating in New York.xxx
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THE FIRST LADIES
EN T E R I N G
THE FIELD
at a time when it was one of few acceptable occupations for women,
these ladies pioneered a new level of professionalism. Despite the fact that, like the majority of early practitioners, none of them was trained in design, they became celebrated arbiters of American taste. Dorothy Draper treated decorating as a serious, profit-centered business, setting her sights primarily on commercial projects, including hotel design, and popularizing her highimpact color and pattern as America’s first celebrity decorator. Sister Parish decorated her own home and then those of her friends, creating interiors with an “undecorated” look, as well as a firm that would endure for almost 70 years. Elisabeth Draper typified the tasteful traditional interiors that were considered appropriate for refined, upper-class American homes—and for those attempting to emulate their style.
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MRS. HENRY PARISH II
T H E PA R A D I G M of the designer-by-instinct, Sister Parish—as she was known in life and in business—was one of the most influential of the early designers who turned a debutante’s avocation into a serious career. She had no training but her own taste, and the advantage, like others of her time, of social connections that provided clients. She was different from the others, however, in creating a particular look that became inextricably linked to the interiors she designed, and to her eponymous firm. It has best been described as the “undecorated look,” an inventive, American country home ambience in pastel color schemes, with squashy chairs and sofas, a plethora of pillows and prints, and casual bunches of fresh flowers. Born Dorothy May Kinnicutt in 1910 in Morristown, New Jersey, she was reared in upper-crust circles, in family residences in New York and Maine. Married to Henry Parish II, she took up decorating when the Wall Street crash made it necessary to supplement her husband’s income; decorating was then one of the very few options available to a young married woman of her class, for whom most careers were considered unsuitable. She began working from her home in Far Hills, New Jersey, moved to New York to work when her husband was in the army, and opened her own office in 1933. Parish drew her clients from her own acquaintances, and her personal taste, rather than the prevailing fashion, drove her style. 44
Having spent summers since childhood in the family home in Maine, she became interested in local crafts, and hired women to do needlepoint and rugs for the interiors she designed. Parish rooms were a bit old-fashioned, with uncoordinated arrangements of furniture and the comfortable ambiance of old money, combining Victorian clutter and homey charm. Influenced by the English country house genre popularized by the London decorating firm of Colefax & Fowler—she briefly worked with the company in the late 1940s—Parish transformed the style and made it her own. First published in 1967 and endlessly photographed, her home in Maine became the archetypical example of a particular look, credited to Parish, which prefigured the American country style that became overwhelmingly popular in later decades. The most familiar trademarks of the Sister Parish interior are painted or stained floors, a mix of furniture covered with chintz fabrics in several patterns, stacked-up needlepoint pillows, crocheted throws, and hooked or rag rugs. She accessorized with wicker, quilts, baskets, and painted lampshades, and her color schemes recalled country gardens. Understated in their luxury but very accessible and unpretentious, the rooms she designed appeared to have evolved over time, but were in fact always planned with considerable care.
Sister Parish was invited by Jacqueline Kennedy to help decorate the White House family quarters, bringing a personalized touch to the formal interiors. She was honored by her profession as a charter member of the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 1985, and described as “the most famous of all living women interior designers.” Albert Hadley came to work for her in 1963, and the following year, the firm was renamed Parish-Hadley Associates. Parish-Hadley was a training ground for many designers who graduated to important independent careers, including Harold Simmons, Kevin McNamara, Bunny Williams, Mariette Himes Gomez, Brian McCarthy, Mark Hampton, David Easton, and David Kleinberg.
Entrance hall with painted furniture and swagged frieze, designer’s own apartment, Upper East Side, 1970s 45
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Living room, John Hay Whitney house, Long Island, late 1960s 46
MRS. HENRY PARISH II
Bath with flowered fabric and painted chairs, Whitney house, Long Island, late 1960s
Feminine bedroom with hooked rugs and crochet and needlepoint accents, Whitney house, late 1960s
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Living room with Aubusson rug and French furniture, designer’s own apartment, Upper East Side, 1970s 48
MRS. HENRY PARISH II
Living room with country-house colors, chinoiserie-painted panels, and mixed-period furniture, designer’s own apartment, 1970s 49
MRS. HENRY PARISH II
Handwoven Irish carpet, mismatched fabrics with hand-painted “birdcage” screen covering window, designer’s own house, Maine, 1977 51
IN THE PARSONS STYLE
AS DECORATING BEGAN its evolution into interior design, these were the most influential of the first generation to attend the celebrated design school. They forged a path that dozens of taste setters would follow, training many and inspiring many more. What they had in common was reverence for a tradition of period design; where they differed was in their particular pathways to success. Eleanor McMillen Brown, an early graduate of the school, established the first and longest-lived decorating business to be run by a woman. William Pahlmann transformed department store model rooms into showcases of style that influenced thousands of consumers; they also propelled Pahlmann into the public eye. Melanie Kahane moved from fashion into decorating, bringing with her a flair for color and an unerring sense of how to stand out from the crowd. Michael Greer elegantly revived Directoire style, making it the must-have look of his era. And Billy Baldwin, though not an alumnus, was closely linked to its graduates and its traditional bias. His exceptional charm, irreverent approach, and uniquely original talents made him a national celebrity, and the first male decorator to enjoy that distinction.
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WILLIAM PAHLMANN
W I L L I A M C A R R O L L P A H L M A N N , one of the best-known designers of his time, was also one of the first generation to be professionally trained. Urbane and exceedingly photogenic, he was otherwise the antithesis of the well connected “lady decorators” whose talents were available only to the very rich or the social elite. Coming from a modest background, Pahlmann gained fame by displaying his skills on a more democratic stage, creating the first ongoing program of department store model rooms. In these spaces, absent the limitations set by a real-life client, he opened the eyes and engaged the imagination with innovative design ideas, adventurous color schemes, and objects from exotic foreign places, at a time when international travel was in its infancy. Born in 1900 in a small town in Illinois, Pahlmann grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where his early design efforts were limited to planning floral arrangements for a local church. After graduating from high school, and while working at his first job as a traveling salesman, he pursued his interest in drawing by taking a correspondence course offered by Arts & Decoration magazine. In 1927, Pahlmann moved to New York and enrolled at what would later become the Parsons School of Design, supporting himself by performing in Broadway musical theater. He progressed from chorus roles to assistant stage manager, but design remained his preference, and when in 66
1929 he was offered a scholarship to the Parsons Paris branch, he took the opportunity to study and travel abroad. Pahlmann returned to New York in 1931 to open his decorating business. His career-making opportunity came in 1936, when he was hired to head the decorating department of Lord & Taylor, then a prestigious Fifth Avenue department store. Pahlmann garnered national attention for the store and himself by designing a series of fully-decorated model rooms, a concept previously seen only in museums, international fairs, and special department store exhibits. His interiors were designed around themes, often keyed to the objects and accessories of a foreign country; those featuring Sweden and Peru were among the most successful, drawing thousands of visitors to the store each month. Pahlmann’s rooms were distinctive in avoiding the all-in-one-period decorating that was the usual practice at that time, particularly for Parsons-trained decorators; his style was invariably described as “eclectic,” although his term for it was “modern Baroque.” He combined antiques with modern furnishings, mixed accessories in unconventional ways, made use of new-concept concealed lighting, and devised unusual color combinations that encouraged individuality in interiors. At a time when most Americans found modernism somewhat cold and uninviting, his interiors looked modern—even by today’s standards—
but were softened by traditional and casual touches that made them appealing to the average consumers for whom they were intended. His innovations included the use of ordinary mattress-ticking as wall covering, shag carpets, dark walls, framed art in wall arrangements over sofas, and seating pieces that were comfortable rather than stiff. His ideas were widely copied and his reputation grew. After joining the U.S. Army Air Force in 1942, Pahlmann headed to a military-base camouflage school, designing models of entire towns to conceal aircraft. On his return to civilian life he reopened his design office and profited from the exploding postwar economy and the ensuing housing boom. Americans, newly interested in decorating their homes, began to acknowledge the importance of the interior designer, then called the decorator. Pahlmann’s prewar celebrity bore fruit in his growing residential practice, and he took on hotels, stores, and restaurants, among them, the Four Seasons (with Philip Johnson), Bonwit Teller, and Tiffany & Co. He also designed furniture: seating units and tables on rolling casters that allowed people to rearrange their furniture to view the television sets that were beginning to populate American living rooms. Pahlmann designed fabrics, wall coverings, carpets, and lighting fixtures, and almost single-handedly started a vogue for “accessorizing” as the most effective way to give a room character. At the height of his career, Pahlmann wrote a syndicated column on decorating called “A Matter of Taste,” served as decorating editor for Harper’s Bazaar, and spoke frequently on design panels and at trade events. The Pahlmann Book of Interior Design (1955) was an unpretentious compendium of practical, sometimes irreverent decorating advice, with comments like, “we don’t live in museums, and we don’t live in the 17th
and 18th century,” and “furniture is to be used, and an antique chair that you can’t actually sit on is just in the way.” In 1979, he was named the first ASID Designer of Distinction. Pahlmann’s persona was not as down-to-earth as his writings: his elegant demeanor and polished manner (thanks, in part, to his theatrical background) made him a charming and sought-after guest and a central figure in the New York design community. In his own homes, he accumulated a characteristically eclectic collection of furniture and objects. William Pahlmann left two significant legacies: he introduced variety into interiors that had been dominated by formal European styles and his celebrity helped build prestige for the profession he practiced for more than half a century.
Living room with textured ‘picture wall’ arrangement over textured cabinets, designer’s own apartment, Midtown East, 1948 67
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Classical daybed, folding table, and metal chairs for dining in passageway, designer’s own apartment, Midtown East, 1948 68
WILLIAM PAHLMANN
Entrance hall with modern carpet and European antiques, designer’s own apartment, Park Avenue, 1959
Guest bedroom set for dining with antique Chinese daybed and fold-up seating, designer’s own apartment, 1959
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BILLY BALDWIN
H I S N E W Y O R K T I M E S O B I T U A RY referred to Billy Baldwin as the “Dean of Interior Decorators.” Although he was not the only one to claim that title, Baldwin must nevertheless be ranked as one of the most talented designers of his generation, and perhaps the most influential: his irreverent approach and receptiveness to new ideas helped shift the direction of American interior design away from its strict reliance on European taste. Equally important, in a profession whose most celebrated practitioners were women, he was the first male “superstar” decorator, paving the way for others to follow. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, he began his career in that city. His education combined professional school with on-the-job training. Baldwin enrolled at Princeton University in 1922 to study architecture, but dropped out after only two years, preferring to spend his time in museums and galleries. He worked briefly for his father’s insurance agency and as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, before finding his vocation in a job with C. J. Benson, a Baltimore decorating firm, where he began to establish a reputation. Word of his talent spread and when, in 1935, Ruby Ross Wood, one of the leading decorators of the time, offered him a job, he moved to New York, the center of the burgeoning profession. In interviews over the years, 84
Baldwin gave credit to Wood for refining his taste and teaching him “the importance of the personal, the comfortable, and the new.” Parsons records do not list him as a student, but perhaps because of his extraordinary celebrity, a “legend” arose associating him with the school; he never referred to it in articles or interviews, but a 1989 roster of “Alumni Notables” in the Parsons archive lists him as a 1940 graduate. Baldwin served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, returning thereafter to Wood’s office, where he remained until her death in 1950. In partnership with Edward Martin Jr., Baldwin took over the firm, which changed to Baldwin & Martin; it became Baldwin, Martin & Smith when Arthur E. Smith joined them in 1966. Baldwin and Martin retired in 1972 and Smith continued to practice as Arthur E. Smith. A walking advertisement for high style, Baldwin was small of stature but impeccably turned out, although his taste in decorating was surprisingly down-to-earth. Despite his roots in traditional design, his attitude was essentially modern. He favored comfortable upholstery, simple cotton fabrics, chintz slipcovers, and walls of bookshelves filled with jacketless volumes. His trademarks included woven cane and rattan furniture, armless slipper chairs upholstered to the floor, corner banquettes, dark-lacquered or shirred-fabric walls, tall brass étagères, and cone-shaded swing-arm brass
wall lamps. His interiors were extensively published in design magazines and books beginning as early as 1946, when his own apartment in Amster Yard garnered considerable attention for its striking leaf-green lacquered walls and combination of contemporary and traditional furnishings with quirky accents. A later iteration, in tones of gray, was similarly noticed. Baldwin’s interiors were refreshingly uncluttered: he designed rooms that were elegant and visually appealing without being fussy or overdone. His color schemes, particularly in his later work, often reflected the moods and palette of Henri Matisse, whose paintings were said to be the greatest influence on his style—clear, bright colors, painted furniture, and bold floral patterns, often with suggestions of the outdoors in the colors, furnishings, and materials. “I always say I love color more than people,” he was quoted in the New York Times in 1977. Rather than follow historical European styles, as was the custom with most decorators of the time, Baldwin—like his contemporary William Pahlmann—embraced eclecticism. He was fond of combining antiques with contemporary pieces in arrangements that were appealingly informal, and very much in an American vernacular. He believed that “perfection was boring,” and wrote that the only rule in design is “the rule to break all the other rules.” He is justly credited for his role in initiating a more
individualistic, less rigid approach to the design of interiors in America. Edward Zajac, Baldwin’s assistant for eight years, is only one of the many who cite Baldwin as an early inspiration. Baldwin traveled in a sophisticated social milieu, with a high-profile roster of urbane, wealthy clients and friends in both the fashion and design worlds. His books, Billy Baldwin Decorates (1972), Billy Baldwin Remembers (1974), and Billy Baldwin: An Autobiography (1985) made him known to a broad consumer public. In 1972, Baldwin retired to Nantucket, Rhode Island, but continued to keep in touch with friends and colleagues in the design community until his death in 1983. The combination of luxury and simplicity in Baldwin’s interiors places him in the ranks of those who anticipated modern design and among the most respected members of his profession. Designer Keith Irvine is not alone in his belief that “Billy Baldwin was the best decorator there’s ever been in America.”
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Living room with lacquered-green walls, Coromandel screen, and modern upholstery, designer’s own apartment, Amster Yard, 1947
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Sitting room with shirred-fabric walls and mirrored overmantel, St. Regis hotel, 1960s
BILLY BALDWIN
Library with Baldwin-designed brass-and-ebony bookcases and tortoisehell-vinyl walls, Cole Porter’s apartment, Waldorf Towers, 1955 87
INVENTORS OF TRADITION
Drawing room with hand-painted Chinese wallpaper and 18th-century antiques, Cole Porter’s apartment, Waldorf Towers, 1955
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BILLY BALDWIN
Living room with Matisse-inspired fabric, Parsons table, and Moroccan carpet, Upper East Side apartment, 1965
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Gloss-brown walls, brass bookcases, and cotton fabrics, designer’s own studio apartment, Upper East Side, 1965
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Floor plan of Baldwin’s studio showing divisions into office, sleeping, and entertaining areas
BILLY BALDWIN
Living area of designer’s own apartment with trademark slipper chair and mix of furniture styles, 1973
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Living room with contemporary art, overstuffed upholstery, and striped flatweave carpet, Upper East Side apartment, 1970s 92
BILLY BALDWIN
Master bedroom with graphic carpet, flowered chintz, and ceiling-mounted bed canopy, Upper East Side apartment, 1970s 93
M C MILLEN INC.
F O U N D E D I N 1924 by Eleanor McMillen Brown, McMillen Inc. is the oldest design firm still in existence that was both established by and continually headed by a woman. Through the six decades covered in these volumes, the firm maintained a reputation, shared by that of Parish–Hadley, as designers-of-choice for some of the wealthiest and socially elite clients in the country. Catering to successive generations of old-money clients as well as others seeking the cachet of working with the venerable firm, McMillen expanded in both personnel (no longer primarily female) and design approaches, but McMillen’s continuing prestige remained rooted in its wellbred, impeccably rendered Eurocentric interiors. Brown remained active throughout this period, only gradually ceding control to younger associates. Among those was Betty Sherrill, a New Orleans–born art major at Sophie Newcomb College who moved to New York as a young married woman. She began taking courses at Parsons when she found herself looking for an “acceptable” avocation to occupy her spare time. Taking time off to start a family, she never finished the program, but she convinced Eleanor Brown, who had been one of her instructors at Parsons, to hire her. Sherrill joined McMillen in 1951, and became one of the early and relatively few serious professionals to successfully combine work, marriage, and family. Through her social contacts, she developed a 94
network of well-connected clients for whom she designed executive offices as well as multiple residences in New York and around the country, helping to expand McMillen into the burgeoning field of contract design— banks, law offices, and similarly upscale projects that reflected the same kind of affluent sophistication as McMillen-designed apartments and houses. Sherrill’s style, albeit grand, was more inviting than Brown’s, with livelier colors and an eye for visual appeal taking precedent over pure pedigree in furnishings. The range of McMillen’s work broadened over the years to include contemporary interiors as well as the elegant traditional designs that were its trademark—a style described in 1974 by a New York Times reporter as “well-bred, not trendy.” They were awarded high-profile commissions such as Blair House, the Presidential guest house, and were invited to participate in numerous show houses that provided platforms from which to launch the talents of a younger generation of designers. Ensuring its enviable success, McMillen clients have passed on the “family firm” to as many as four generations of blue-blood clients. Peruvian-born Luis Rey joined McMillen in 1972 to head the drafting department, the only area of the company where women were not in the majority. Rey was trained as an engineer and his design approach is more architectural than decorative. As a result, his interiors show a precise
attention to well planned space and finely executed details. “The most expensive part of design is the mistake,” he once noted in an interview. Betty Sherrill became president of McMillen in 1975. After Mrs. Brown’s retirement in 1986, Sherrill purchased the firm with Luis Rey and Marie Louise Gertler, and it continued to thrive under their direction. Professional training remains a priority—most of the company’s designers followed the founder’s tradition of graduating from Parsons. McMillen alumni who have gone on to important careers of their own include Garrick Stephenson, Kevin McNamara, and Alexandra Stoddard. As former employee Mark Hampton once commented in explaining McMillen’s success, “Whatever style they work in, everything is right. They have a great sense of how people want to live.”
Living room with brilliant geometric patterns, Upper East Side, ca. 1980
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Traditional furniture with leopard-print upholstery and carpeting, Sherrill dining room, Upper East Side, 1968 96
THE COMPOSERS
TRANSLATING EUROPEAN TRADITION with a lighter hand, these designers were freethinking adventurers rather than adherents of a preferred period style. Their interiors explored the permutations of old and new, formal and casual, plain and fancy. The results, endlessly varied, combine elements in settings that are both comfortably familiar and refreshingly different. David Eugene Bell used the department store as stage, designing rooms in many moods with equal versatility and a sense of drama. Carleton Varney deftly preserved the Dorothy Draper legend while creating an up-to-date, sophisticated design identity of his own. Parsons classmates Ed Zajac and Richard Callahan turned the pattern-on-pattern look into an art form that brought them attention and acclaim. Harrison Cultra restored his own house with single-minded dedication and tasteful results, leading him into a career designing beautiful interiors for others. And Jed Johnson catapulted to celebrity through his links to the colorful art world, but proved deserving on his own merits.
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CARLETON VARNEY
T A K I N G O V E R A F I R M established by one of the most famous designers of the century, Carleton Varney carried on the image of the legendary Dorothy Draper and created a colorful one of his own. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, he graduated from Oberlin College in 1958, with a major in Spanish, having spent his junior year at the University of Madrid. He began a career as a language teacher, but his interest in fine arts quickly led him in another direction, and when he met Dorothy Draper, he accepted a job in her office. He pursued his art studies to earn a master’s degree in fine arts from New York University in 1969. When he was just in his 20s, he and Leon Hegwood, then president of the firm, purchased Dorothy Draper & Company from the founder. They retained her name and expanded the company’s reach to work on the type of hospitality projects for which the Draper firm had become internationally known, in addition to residential interiors. Varney continued working
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on the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, one of Dorothy Draper’s most celebrated projects, retaining its original character as he updated it for the taste and needs of the current generation. Varney has managed the delicate task of preserving the Draper legacy while moving beyond it. His work, particularly in hotel and resort projects, often pays homage to the legendary designer, but is otherwise attuned to his more worldly taste. His interior designs are not as theatrical as Draper’s, and better suited to a more sophisticated generation of travelers. They are generally traditional in furnishings and rich in color, featuring a variety of patterns and fabrics. Varney’s use of antiques and period accessories reflects his art education and his eclectic taste. In addition to his peripatetic design work, Varney found time to write a design column and a number of books, among them, The ABCs of Decorating (1983), and others about Dorothy Draper.
Entrance hall with strong colors and painted checkerboard-pattern floor, designer’s own apartment, Trump Tower, ca. 1980
Dining room, repeating overscale floor of entry, ca. 1980
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ZAJAC & CALLAHAN (EDWARD ZAJAC AND RICHARD CALLAHAN)
A M O N G T H E M O S T O R I G I N A L D E S I G N E R S of their generation, Edward Zajac and Richard Callahan built on a strong base of history to create a trademark style. The interiors that brought them into the public eye in the 1970s and ’80s were a radical departure from the movement toward modernism that was drawing other young designers. Instead, they looked back to the previous century in a fondness for multiple patterns, adventurous colors, and a complex interplay of accessories and accent furniture. Born in Camden, New Jersey, Ed Zajac was a pre-dental student at Temple University when induction into the army interrupted his schooling and changed his life. As the Korean War was drawing to a close, he was assigned to research schools to be recommended to soldiers soon to be discharged, who would be eligible under the GI Bill of Rights for paid postmilitary service education. In the course of his research, Zajac came across a brochure from Parsons School of Design. “I hadn’t thought about being a designer,” he comments, “but I liked the idea of traveling in Europe,” so he applied and was accepted. His classmates at Parsons included Richard Callahan, Tom Britt, and Angelo Donghia, all of whom traveled together in Europe during the six-month term abroad. At Parsons, Zajac thrived on the rigid program, the emphasis on drawing (“Drawing columns helped me know how to detail a lampshade”), and 166
the training under teachers like Stanley Barrows. After graduating in 1958, he worked at McMillen, where Natalie Davenport became a mentor. “McMillen was like being in the army,” he said, “with Mrs. Brown the general.” After two years, he was offered a job with Billy Baldwin, and became his primary assistant. Impressed by his glamorous lifestyle, Zajac was equally struck by Baldwin’s superlative design skills, and remained there for almost eight years, reluctantly leaving to pursue an independent path. Richard Callahan, born on Long Island, graduated from Parsons and worked for the venerable French-owned decorating firm of Jansen, then Valerian Rybar, and finally John Gerald, before joining Zajac to form a partnership in 1966. They enjoyed almost immediate success, with pattern-on-pattern interiors that seemed to be randomly assembled, but required meticulous planning—each pattern was calculated to cancel out the other, with complementary motifs, scale, and colorations. The most readily recognized Zajac and Callahan rooms are fantasies of variegated designs and lively color combinations, with eye-catching objects like the intricately framed decorative mirrors that Zajac designed and produced. Their interiors were intriguing and animated, but not overwhelming, and they brought the designers considerable attention. Zajac and Callahan designed rooms more traditional
than contemporary, but they were rarely interested in meticulously recreating the past. They preferred to reinterpret the past, always with a touch of humor. Most of their interiors were lavishly accessorized with an eclectic assortment of objects that somehow blended congenially. Creating a genre altogether their own, however, was a mixed blessing, as the designers would have preferred to be known for their versatility. “Everyone hired us to do only that,” Zajac commented. Nevertheless, the trademark style brought them clients and considerable attention from the media, including eight House & Garden covers in a two-year period. Of the two, Zajac was the more unrestrained and multi-tasking; he designed and manufactured accent mirrors as well as a collection of wallpapers. Zajac also designed an ingenious collection of fabric modules (borders, panels, arm pieces, etc.) that assembled into precisely patterned upholstery. “It’s a curse, to be famous for doing only one thing,” said Ed Zajac about the partners’ celebrity as masters of the pattern-on-pattern look, noting his wish to try his hand at modern interiors. Nevertheless, their masterful juggling act created rooms that were a happy confluence of styles, but very much their own. The partnership ended in 1985, and Zajac formed an independent practice. Skirted seating and Asian accents, the designers’ own apartment, Greenwich Village, 1980s
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INVENTORS OF TRADITION
Entrance hall, the designers’ own apartment, Greenwich Village, 1980s 172
ZAJAC & CALLAHAN
Mirrored parlor with Napoléon III chairs and boldly patterned screen, designers’ own apartment, 1980s
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HARRISON CULTRA
M O S T I N F L U E N T I A L I N T E R I O R D E S I G N E R S enjoy relatively long working lives, but Harrison Cultra was not one of them. His premature death at the age of only 42 cut short a career that might otherwise have attained international renown. However, his accomplishments merit note as skilled, tradition-minded interpretations of classic style. Cultra was born in Urbana, Illinois, and attended the University of Arizona, after which he studied fine art at the Sorbonne in Paris. Settling in New York in 1965, he went to work for the venerable Rose Cumming, whose flamboyant persona and adventurous style influenced many other young designers. In 1971, he formed a partnership with English expatriate Georgina Fairholme, who had worked with Colefax & Fowler and shared his fondness for the traditional country-house style pioneered by that firm. Their partnership ended in 1974. Cultra’s own home, Teviotdale, was one of his projects that drew national attention. It was a pre-Revolutionary structure built by the father-in-law of Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, and later owned by the Fultons. Cultra purchased the almost irretrievable structure and spent three years restoring it, salvaging what could be rescued and painstakingly restoring the rest. He then made the house available for public viewing. His work was also seen and admired in the first edition of the Kips Bay 176
Decorator Show House in 1973, along with that of David Barrett, Ellen Lehman McCluskey, and others. A volatile personality with red hair to match, he designed rooms that followed fashion, yet were marked by a strong sense of scale and a fondness for lively color. In the late 1970s, The New York Times described him as a “rising young star.” Cultra had a fine eye for color and a strong sense of scale. The rooms he designed were clearly traditional, without belonging to any one period. They were sumptuous without being ostentatious, and most importantly, they looked comfortable to live in. In 1981, Cultra hired Stephanie Stokes, a Colorado native who had studied Asian art at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Although she always had an interest in architecture and design, Stokes had worked on Wall Street, been a journalist and photographer in the Far East, and partnered in building projects in Indonesia, before journalistic assignments for Architectural Digest spurred her to seek a career in design. She worked for Mark Hampton for a year before joining Cultra, whom she met on an interview assignment. When Cultra died, they had barely begun work on a major project, an historic Connecticut home. With only preliminary sketches and a rough idea of Cultra’s concept, Stokes took over and finished the project, before establishing an independent practice of her own.
INVENTORS OF TRADITION
Dining room with crisp sheer curtains and spare neoclassical furniture, Long Island house, 1981 180
JED JOHNSON
O P U L E N T R E S T R A I N T , the title of a book about the life and work of Jed Johnson, is an apt description for the design approach taken by a man who lived in a celebrity-infused atmosphere and became a star himself. He was entirely self taught in matters of design, but gifted with an extraordinary eye for the finest objects and an instinctive ability to combine them in ways that were unexpected, intriguing, and original. Born in Alexandria, Minnesota, Johnson was one of six children, including a twin brother named Jay. He grew up in California with no particular inclination toward design. It was a fortuitous trip to New York in 1968 that determined the course of his life. He and his brother Jay hitchhiked across the country, and after a chance meeting with Andy Warhol, he was hired to work at the fabled Factory. As charming and attractive as he was innately talented, Johnson became the companion of the artist, a famously insatiable collector of a cornucopia of styles from kitsch to fine antiques. Much of Johnson’s design education came in his travels with Warhol, and in arranging the rooms of the East Side town house that Warhol purchased in 1974. Johnson designed the interiors to showcase superb examples of American antique furniture, exhibiting different periods in different rooms. This attention-getting project helped establish him as a designer, but his independent career was launched when a 194
famous fashionable friend visited, and asked Johnson to decorate his apartment. He opened Jed Johnson Associates in 1978, and began to acquire a stable of high-profile clients, initially through contacts made at the Factory but later through his own growing reputation. Johnson appreciated quality antiques of every period, and worked in a range of styles from American Colonial to Art Deco. He was attentive to detail, and fortunate in working with affluent clients, many of them serious collectors; he helped them add to their treasures in well-planned, wide-ranging shopping expeditions in New York, London, and Paris. Graced with an encyclopedic memory, he could recall objects he had seen on previous trips even years before. He loved textiles in unusual weaves and patterns, and sought them out. Arthur Dunham, one of his design associates, recalls the meticulous research that Johnson put into every detail of every interior. Without bearing a particular trademark, Johnson’s interiors were clearly the work of a connoisseur of fine objects with a keen sense of proportion that guided his arrangement of them to the greatest advantage. As his business expanded, Johnson hired architect Alan Wanzenberg, who was then working at the office of I. M. Pei as a part-time employee. In 1981, the two men combined their skills and established a partnership. The practice was very successful, and soon expanded to a staff of more than 40. Wanzenberg
and Johnson furnished their own West Side apartment with a superb collection of Arts and Crafts furniture chosen to complement the Gothic architecture of the space; this project too received considerable press attention. By the time he came into the field, it had advanced to the point where formal design education was an expected part of any aspiring designer’s background. An outstanding exception to the rule, Johnson held his own on the strength of native talent and welcome opportunity.
Entrance hall with eclectic furniture arrangement, Andy Warhol town house, Upper East Side, ca. 1980 195
JED JOHNSON
Sitting room with Art Deco furniture and modern art, Warhol town house, ca. 1980 197
JED JOHNSON
Mix of neoclassical and folk objects, Warhol town house, 1980s
Bedroom with canopied Empire bed and handwoven rugs, Warhol town house, 1980s
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THE SHOWMEN
THESE DESIGNERS refused to place limits on personal vision, responding to rules by denying their very existence. Not for the faint of heart, their interiors are designed to be noticed, drawing attention with grand scale, bold color, and spectacular objects. Characterized by verve and individuality, the rooms they design belong to no particular period but their own. David Barrett, in his shop and in his room designs, developed a trademark style that captures the imagination with quirky accessories and fanciful objects. Robert Denning and Vincent Fourcade designed interiors of outrageous luxury and extravagant style. Tom Britt drew inspiration from classical elements, applying his Parsons training to create grand entrances and astonishing interiors. RubÊn de Saavedra’s highly charged interiors exuded glamour, and Robert Metzger injected his ebullient personality into eclectic spaces with a deft mix of furnishings and over-the-top flair for the dramatic.
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DENNING & FOURCADE (ROBERT DENNING AND VINCENT FOURCADE)
I N M A N Y WAY S , Denning & Fourcade were throwbacks to another century. Coming from radically different backgrounds, they merged contrasting personalities and complementary talents to establish one of the most memorable design firms of the late 20th century. The partnership of opposites produced a highly original body of work that was the polar opposite of minimalism, mirroring the status-conscious affluent society of the 1980s. Parisian-born Vincent Fourcade was the cosmopolitan scion of a famous banking family, with absolutely no training, but a superb eye and impeccable social connections. Bronx-born Robert Dennis Besser, the son of immigrant parents, was educated at Music and Art High School in Manhattan. While still in high school, Besser met Edgar de Evia, an aristocratic Mexican émigré working as a medical researcher. Under the tutelage of de Evia, who soon became a successful photographer, Besser virtually remade himself— changing his name to Robert Denning, undergoing plastic surgery, and learning to enjoy a glamorous new lifestyle. Denning worked for de Evia styling fashion and design photographs, and they prospered in real estate ventures as well as in de Evia’s career. The two lived in grand style in a duplex apartment in New York’s historic Rhinelander Mansion (later the Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store) and a weekend estate in Connecticut. 212
The partnership with de Evia ended in 1959 when Denning and Fourcade met, and decided to establish a decorating business. Although neither had direct experience in the field, Denning did have experience designing sets and Fourcade had extensive contacts. It was also convenient that, when de Evia moved to the Connecticut residence, they had the opulent Rhinelander Mansion apartment in which to receive clients. “Outrageous luxury is what our clients want,” Vincent Fourcade was once quoted as saying. And that was precisely what the clients of Denning & Fourcade got. The interiors they designed harked back to the extravagances of the Victorian era. A Denning & Fourcade room is almost immediately recognizable for its unfettered use of pattern and color, its layering of materials, its abundance of objects—and its extraordinary ability to astonish. Their interiors featured fabric-covered walls, yards of drapery and trim, all in the richest and most precious materials, which framed spaces densely populated with rare and costly furniture and carpets, often French. As Fourcade once told and interviewer: “Only in times of need would we use a plain rug.” Encompassing lavish displays of fine art and exquisite objects, the interiors were grand in their excess, designed not so much for convenience as for sheer spectacular effect. Despite the abundance of objects in these rooms, each
was placed to its greatest advantage; like a museum of treasures, an interior by Denning & Fourcade bespoke connoisseurship, superb taste, and the means to afford the very best. Their international clientele comprised old money and the newly rich alike, and Denning & Fourcade created designs for society events as well as private homes. These interiors, and their own equally splendid living quarters, were featured in both European and American publications.
Belle Epoque-style living room, designers’ own apartment, Paris, ca. 1980
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INVENTORS OF TRADITION
Dining room with 18th-century Swedish chandelier, fretwork screen, and 18th-century Chinese wallpaper, Upper East Side apartment, 1983
218
DENNING & FOURCADE
Master bedroom with en suite French cotton print fabric and roof-like canopy bed, Upper East Side apartment, 1983
219
THOMAS BRITT
Narrow dining room with mirrors and architectural detailing, designer’s own apartment, 1980s 241
ALBERT HADLEY
A L B E RT H A D L E Y is among the most versatile of designers, in part because his personal style evolved over a career spanning several decades. His innate abilities blossomed in an unusual collaboration with his aesthetic opposite, Sister Parish, and then moved beyond her distinctive “undecorated look” as he found his own design expression. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Hadley attended Peabody College in his hometown until he was drafted during World War II. In the Army Air Corps, he worked building airstrips, and after his discharge, came to New York to pursue his interest in design, a field whose creative and financial potential was beginning to draw the attention and interest of savvy and talented young people from across the country. On the advice of Eleanor McMillen Brown to get a professional education, he attended Parsons School of Design, with funding from the GI Bill, graduating in 1949, when Van Day Truex was president of the school. Entering the profession in what was perhaps its most stimulating period, he encountered both industry legends like Elsie de Wolfe and Ruby Ross Wood, and newer lights like Billy Baldwin and William Pahlmann. He saw Pahlmann as “the modern Merlin.” The business was beginning to develop a network of sources, and he shopped at antique dealers and the shops of Rose Cumming, Ruby Ross Wood, and Rosalind Rosier. 258
In 1957, he was hired by McMillen: the only male assistant designer there, he worked with Ethel Smith and Grace Fakes, as well as Eleanor Brown. When he left, feeling that the possibilities for advancement were minimal, Van Day Truex introduced him to Sister Parish, a socialite with no professional training who had been decorating the homes of her society friends since the 1930s. “We were an unlikely pair,” Hadley recalled, “but we were on the same wavelength.” With the assistance of Mrs. Brown, who sent over her bookkeeper to help organize the office, he turned the venture, then called Mrs. Henry Parish II, into a proper business concern, and in 1964 the firm became Parish–Hadley Associates. Where Sister Parish designed interiors with a very particular look, Hadley could move in many directions, and the partnership prospered. Hadley’s skill as a designer grew from his ability to absorb both the traditional French-influenced design and the new modernist aesthetic and his concern with the architecture of a space, rather than its decoration alone. With a personal demeanor deftly negotiating the line between gentlemanly and hip, Hadley maintained a similar balance in his designs, moving from elegant traditional to clean-lined contemporary without striking a single false note, and modulating his approach to suit the client, the space, and the milieu. When asked about his preferred personal style, he comments,
“I don’t think of myself as anything . . . I think of myself as today.” Bearing out this attitude, Hadley-designed interiors rarely bear a trademark stamp, but they are always impeccably planned and meticulously detailed. His innovative concepts include red-lacquered and strié-painted walls, and modern stenciled patterns on wood floors. The design community, the media, and a diverse stable of clients took note, and Parish-Hadley became one of the most prestigious design firms in the country, rivaled only by McMillen in its white-glove image and longevity. Like McMillen, Parish-Hadley became the training ground for succeeding generations of designers, including Harold Simmons, Bunny Williams, David Easton, Kevin McNamara, Geoffrey Bradfield, and Brian McCarthy. Hadley’s exceptional skill at sketching was applied to good advantage in presenting his ideas to clients, and his drawings have been exhibited and published. A member of ASID, he was inducted in to the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 1986. In an interview, he recalled his early employer, Eleanor Brown, as saying, “If you get it right the first time, that’s it.” Hadley’s strength is in knowing how to get it right the first time. Entry through full-height doors, sculpted modern space, and 18th-century French furniture, Park Avenue duplex, 1962 259
INVENTORS OF TRADITION
Mirrored entrance hall with metal-and-marble console, Park Avenue duplex, 1962
260
View from living room to custom-designed spiral staircase, 1962
ALBERT HADLEY
Dining room with domed ceiling and overscale round table on radial-pattern carpet, Park Avenue duplex, 1962 261
PO RTFOLIO
RONALD BRICKE
RICHARD RIDGE
GEORGE CLARKSON
D AV I D L AW R E N C E R O T H
ELISSA CULLMAN
S M Y T H U R Q U H A RT M A R C K WA L D
SUSAN ZISES GREEN
G E O R G E S TA C E Y
M A R I A N H A L L (H A L L
AND
T AT E )
ALEXANDRA STODDARD
MICHAEL LA ROCCA
STEPHANIE STOKES
TONIN MACCALLUM
THEDLOW INC.
KEVIN MCNAMARA
BEBE WINKLER
J U A N P A B L O M O LY N E U X
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RON BRICKE
Living room, Upper East Side apartment, 1980
Living room, designer’s own apartment, Paris, 1979 288
Bedroom with curtained walls, designer’s own apartment, 1972
GEORGE CLARKSON
Traditional English-style living room, Upper East Side town house, ca. 1975 289
ELISSA CULLMAN
Dining room with scenic wallpaper and neoclassical furniture, designer’s duplex apartment, 1983 290
SUSAN ZISES GREEN
Tudor-style great room with comfortable pattern mix, Connecticut house, ca. 1985
Master bedroom with canopied curtain bed, ca. 1985
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MARIAN HALL (H ALL AND TATE )
Entry hall with classical details, New York, 1935 292
MICHAEL LA ROCCA
Bedroom with overstuffed tufted chaise for reading corner, Upper East Side, ca. 1980
Living room with Chinese Chippendale chair and modern vertical blinds, Upper East Side, ca. 1980
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TONIN M AC CALLUM
Bedroom with floral wallpaper, quilted throw, and wicker chairs, MacCallum’s weekend house, Connecticut, ca. 1980
294
KEVIN M C NAMARA
Living room with lacquered walls, Adam-style mantel, and traditional and modern mix, River House, ca. 1980 295
JUAN PABLO MOLYNEUX
Living room with antique carpets and luxurious, patterned fabrics, Kips Bay Show House, 1984 296
RICHARD RIDGE
Living/dining room in English manor house style, designer’s own Park Avenue apartment, ca. 1980
Bedroom with mixed patterns and textures, designer’s own Park Avenue apartment, ca. 1980
Dining room with 18th-century furniture and crystal chandelier, Kips Bay Show House, ca. 1980
Living room with Gothic chair and English and contemporary mix, Upper East Side, ca. 1980 297
DAVID LAWRENCE ROTH
Living room with mix of floral and geometric patterns, Midtown East apartment, 1973 298
SMYTH URQUHART MARCKWALD (MIRIAM SMYTH, ANN URQUHART, AND DOROTHY MARCKWALD)
Living room with mirrored wall and 18th-century furniture, Park Avenue apartment, 1956 299
GEORGE STACEY
Living room with French furniture, Midtown East apartment, 1953
Living room with artistically arranged fine objects, 1953 300
ALEXANDRA STODDARD
Living room with mix of patterns and solids, Westchester house, ca. 1980 301
STEPHANIE STOKES
Living room with Hermès fabric and horse sculpture collection, Upper East Side apartment, 1981
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Living room with bookcase as backdrop for French and English furniture mix, Park Avenue penthouse, 1985
THEDLOW INC.
Dining room with American Empire furniture, town house, 1935 303
BEBE WINKLER
Living room with classical ambience with mix of styles, Park Avenue duplex apartment, ca. 1980 304
BIOGRAPHIES
AMSTER, JAMES (1908–1986) Lynn, Massachusetts Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, painting/sculpture studies, 1925–1926 CAREER HISTORY: Bergdorf Goodman; Charles of London, New York; Syrie Maugham, London; established Amster & Lamb (later known as James Amster Associates), 1938; restored Amster Yard, 1946 ORGANIZATIONS: American Institute of Decorators, president, New York chapter, 1951 RECOGNITION: American Institute of Decorators, fellow BORN:
BALDWIN, BILLY (1903–1983)
Source award for lighting design, 1977; American Society of Interior Designers, fellow
RECOGNITION:
BARRETT, DAVID Queens, New York École des Beaux-Arts, Paris Served in U.S. Army, Division of Special Services, during World War II CAREER HISTORY: opened shop in Cedarhurst, Long Island, 1950, in New York City, 1958; display design for DePinna, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Franklin Simon, and Macy’s, 1950s; relocated business to New York City and expanded to fullscale decorating, 1959 EXHIBITED: Kips Bay Decorator Show House; Lord & Taylor, 1972 RECOGNITION: American Society of Interior Designers, fellow BORN:
William Williar Baldwin Jr., Baltimore, Maryland Princeton University Served in U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II CAREER HISTORY: C. J. Benson (Baltimore); Ruby Ross Wood Inc., 1935–1950; established Baldwin Inc. (later Baldwin & Martin, with Edward Martin Jr.), 1950–1970; Baldwin, Martin & Smith, with Arthur E. Smith, 1971–1973 AUTHOR: Billy Baldwin Decorates (1972); Billy Baldwin Remembers (1974); Billy Baldwin: An Autobiography (1985) PRODUCT DESIGN: wall coverings for Woodson, c. 1950s; furniture for Luten Clarey Stern, 1974
Texas Washington and Lee University; New York School of Fine and Applied Art, 1940 Served in U.S. Army Air Force during World War II CAREER HISTORY: Joseph B. Platt, 1940–1941; Parsons School of Design, 1946–1968; Fashion Institute of Technology, chairman, interior design department, 1969–1985
BARMACHE, LEON (1907–ca. 1985)
BELL, DAVID EUGENE (1921–2006)
France or Monaco ACTIVE 1930s–1980s Pratt Institute, studied in Paris Served in U.S. Army during World War II PRODUCT DESIGN: Edward Fields (rugs); Cooper Lighting
BORN:
BORN:
BORN:
BARROWS, STANLEY (1914–1995) BORN:
Eugene Weir Bell, Pennsylvania Pratt Institute; New York School of Interior Design Served in U.S. Navy during World War II CAREER HISTORY: Best & Company; Bamberger’s; Macy’s; Bloomingdale’s, 1960–1978; established Design Multiples, 1978 305
BIOGRAPHIES
Kips Bay Decorator Show House American Society of Interior Designers, New York chapter, president, 1981; Center for Tapestry Arts, charter member; American Craft Council, member
Kips Bay Decorator Show House Interior Design Hall of Fame, 1986; American Society of Interior Designers, Designer of Distinction, 1989
EXHIBITED:
EXHIBITED:
ORGANIZATIONS:
RECOGNITION:
BERNSTEIN, MAURICE
BRICKE, RONALD
Cairo, Egypt; emigrated to United States, 1952 Parsons School of Design, 1957 CAREER HISTORY: Jansen (Paris), 1957–1958; Raymond Loewy, 1958–1959; Howard Perry Rothberg, 1959–1961; established own practice, 1961
BORN:
BORN:
New York City Parsons School of Design, 1961 (winner, Parsons design competition) CAREER HISTORY: Burge-Donghia; established Ronald Bricke Associates, 1973 EXHIBITED: Kips Bay Decorator Show House RECOGNITION: American Society of Interior Designers, honorary member
BRADFIELD, GEOFFREY (ca. 1948–) South Africa, emigrated to U.S. in 1977 Selborne College (East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa) Served in South African Army CAREER HISTORY: established own firm in Johannesburg, South Africa; Melanie Kahane; McMillen Inc.; partner in Jay Spectre Inc., 1978; established Geoffrey Bradfield Inc., 1992 EXHIBITED: Kips Bay Decorator Show House ORGANIZATIONS: American Society of Interior Designers BORN:
BRITT, THOMAS (1935–) Kansas City, Missouri Parsons School of Design, 1958; New York University, BS 1959 CAREER HISTORY: Rose Cumming; John Gerald; established Thomas Britt Inc., 1964 EXHIBITED: Kips Bay Decorator Show House RECOGNITION: Interior Design, Hall of Fame, 1990; Architectural Digest, AD 100 BORN:
BROWN, ELEANOR MCMILLEN (1890–1991) BRAHMS, DORA (1897/98–1970) Dora Sonet, New York City Established Dora Brahms Inc., ca. 1930; assisted in decoration of the Oval Office of the White House and served on committee for White House decoration, 1950s–1960s RECOGNITION: American Society of Interior Designers, memorial award in her name for encouraging historic preservation BORN:
CAREER HISTORY:
Eleanor Stockstrom, St. Louis, Missouri New York School of Fine and Applied Art, 1920 CAREER HISTORY: Elsie Cobb Wilson, 1921–1924; McMillen Inc., 1924; sold firm to Betty Sherrill, Luis Rey, and Mary Louise Gertler, 1986 EXHIBITED: Kips Bay Decorator Show House RECOGNITION: Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, 1952 BORN:
BROWN, EVERETT (d. 1996) BRAHMS, RONNIE (1920–2007) ACTIVE
1950s–1980s American Society of Interior Designers
ORGANIZATIONS :
BRAMANTE, LEWIS (deceased)
CAREER HISTORY:
established own office, 1934; branches in New York and
San Francisco Color Association of the United States, founding member; American Society of Interior Designers, president RECOGNITION: American Society of Interior Designers, fellow, designer of distinction ORGANIZATIONS:
Active 1960s–1980s
BUATTA, MARIO (1935–) BRASWELL, JOSEPH (1929–2006) Sheffield, Alabama Birmingham-Southern College; Parsons School of Design, advertising design, 1950 CAREER HISTORY: partner, Braswell/Cook Associates, with Inman Cook, 1956–1966; Braswell & Associates, 1965–1972; Braswell/Willoughby, with Ward Willoughby, 1972–1989; Braswell & Associates, 1989 BORN:
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Staten Island, New York Wagner College; Pratt Institute; Cooper Union; Parsons School of Design, 1961 CAREER HISTORY: B. Altman & Co.; Elisabeth Draper; William Pahlmann; Irvine & Fleming; Mario Buatta Inc., 1963; redecorated Blair House, with Mark Hampton, 1980s EXHIBITED: Kips Bay Decorator Show House RECOGNITION: Interior Design Hall of Fame, 1985, charter inductee BORN: