Duplex on Park Ave, New York 10021

A Park Avenue Duplex where Less-is-Most-Defiantly-More

Located on the eighth and ninth floors of a prestigious neo-Georgian apartment building, this duplex overlooks the corner of Park Avenue and 76th Street on New York City’s Upper East Side. The design reveals the grandeur of the historic building, designed by George and Edward Blum in 1910, while bringing seamless modern technology and a sophisticated, elegant, and contemporary sensibility to the interior.

The alteration exemplifies a careful renewal of a classic Park Avenue apartment from an unequivocally modern point of view, designed with entertaining in mind. The 2,150 square foot apartment features impressive ten-foot ceilings on both levels and an entry directly off a private elevator lobby. The unit’s unique footprint staggers the upper and lower floors and connects them with a grand staircase. Because of the buildings U-shape, the unit enjoys exposures on four sides.

The original, reconditioned glazed French doors allow for formality and, when open, for a loft-like room proportion that accommodates lavish entertainment throughout the lower level’s central gallery, living room, and formal dining room. The honed marble fireplace surround, a new minimalist insertion, contrasts the original plaster mouldings and complements the clean, white plastered walls and rich, wide-plank American walnut flooring. The original, gracious grand stair leads to the restructured upper level that contains two private two-bedroom suites.

The expanded and fully renovated kitchen provides all the amenities of a commercial grade kitchen, perfect for hosting charity fund-raising cocktail parties or sit-down dinners for as many as sixty people. The cooking station’s seamless full height stainless steel splash folds into a flush mount ceiling ventilation system above. Located opposite the cooking station, a television is hidden, ghost-like, behind a full height dielectric glass panel that minimizes glare, but is reflective enough to create a mirror reflection, so that, when off, it is invisible.