This article originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of Architectural Digest.
On the same day that New York City lawyer Neil Westreich retired in 2006, he sold the classic prewar Park Avenue apartment that had been his home for two decades. Then he moved into a rental while renovating a new one-bedroom loft in the Chelsea neighborhood. And around then he also met Michael O’Keefe, a former private chef who is now his partner.
“It was time to change my lifestyle,” Westreich says. “The Upper East Side is lovely, but I was almost always going to another part of the city to work, eat out, attend the theater, even visit friends. Plus I thought, Why not get something fun?” And more centrally located.
He found both of those qualities and more in the Chelsea residence. It featured 3,400 square feet of space, 15-foot ceilings, and enormous windows and was conveniently situated between two multiline subway stations. Carved out of the racquetball courts of a defunct YMCA built back when Teddy Roosevelt was president, the apartment, which Westreich now shares with O’Keefe, offered the adventuresome sensibility he had wanted. Up to a point. While the path of least resistance would have been to wash the impressively proportioned rooms in gallery-white, hang some contemporary art, and call it a day, he instead recruited interior designer Bruce Bierman to infuse the place with a bit of uptown luxury.
After installing robust modern sofas, chairs, and tables, Bierman layered the rooms with traditional items Westreich already owned, such as antique European paintings framed in gilded wood, a crystal chandelier from the 1950s, and a 1742 silver cake basket that was made by Huguenot master metalsmith Peter Archambo and once owned by Imelda Marcos. “There’s something nice about transitioning pieces from one residence to another and seeing them in a totally different way,” the designer observes.
The couple’s sunny new dwelling also has excellent acoustics, which pleases Westreich, an arts patron whose parties have included live performances by singers and musicians from the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where he is a member of the board of directors.
During those events the living room has accommodated as many as 85 guests. “You just don’t usually get that kind of scale in New York City residences, except in some of the grander apartments on Park and Fifth avenues,” notes Bierman, whose design strategies for Westreich and O’Keefe’s home, highlighted below, are as clever as they are inspiring.
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