Many New York City families are eager to live downtown—art galleries, restaurants, and stylish boutiques galore!—but with that move south often comes the need to embrace life in a cavernous loft space. Designer Alexander Doherty and his client, a couple with a young daughter, had something else in mind. “I imagined a very subdued series of rooms, which brought strong uptown architecture from ages gone by to a contemporary downtown location,” Doherty says of their 3,100-square-foot apartment, a brand-new build in the West Village.
Adding grand architectural details that look like they’ve always been there set the tone for the space. “Getting the proportions right made everything feel organic and authentic,” Doherty explains. It was in Paris, in an Italian clothier’s shop, that Doherty spotted the wall treatment that became the starting point for the elegant paneling seen throughout the apartment. In fact, the City of Lights, where the designer has a curated roster of dealers and craftsmen, was the birthplace of many of the home’s standout pieces, including the living room’s stone fireplace mantel and the sleek Danish rosewood cabinets framing it.
To balance the residence’s classical, masculine bones, Doherty brought unexpectedly modern artwork into the mix. “A 17th-century mirror hangs above the fireplace, but two photographs by a French photographer are on the flanking walls,” he says. The finished space, like the others in the apartment, feels plucked from a brownstone on the Upper East Side—until you look out the windows, that is. Perhaps it truly is possible to be in two places at once.
