We just had to know.
“I consider it a large apartment in New York for someone who isn’t wealthy,” says Dylan Landis, in answering our curiosity about how someone who writes about beautiful houses for a living lives herself.
Landis talked us through a quick tour of her Upper West Side digs, a vintage co-op she shares with her husband, journalist Dean Baquet, and their 10-year-old son, Ari Baquet.
In all, they have 1,200 square feet, spread out over five rooms, which includes the family’s hub–a combination dining room, library and homework space for Ari.
Space being at a premium here (as it is in most New York apartments), Landis did what many decorators love to do. She used intense color on walls to assert a striking individuality–and to divert any sensation of “small.”
The color story starts in the 16-foot-long entrance hallway where walls are coated in a “dark Chinese red” oil paint (Benjamin Moore & Co. 1323). Landis loved the color so much that she kept the walls bare, completely devoid of artwork.
“It is not a hall anymore. It is a color experience,” explains Landis, who brought the color in during a recent renovation of the front part of the apartment. “It sets the stage. It tells you right away that you are stepping into something with a little drama.”
The drama continues into the living room, which is bathed in a sunny English country yellow (Benjamin Moore & Co. 311), and then hits a crescendo in that multipurpose dining room. Tiny at just 11 feet square and perpetually dim–care of one narrow window jammed into a corner–the dining room’s graceless architecture disappears in a burst of pulsing violet paint (Pratt & Lambert Paints 1103/Violet Harmony). Walls seem to vibrate.
“I just had it in my head. I wanted to be transported by this impossibly small room,” says Landis. “It is the most beautiful shade of violet you could imagine. It’s as if you had walked into a sunset.”
Landis stayed bold in her choice of furniture for the room. She filled the room to near capacity with a vintage, lacquered mahogany library table (which stretches 6 feet long with the addition of a leaf) surrounded by four enormous French chairs from the 1930s covered in black velvet. They are the only furniture in the room. Built-in bookcases cover one wall. A crystal chandelier dangles from above.
Trim work throughout the apartment is a consistent snow white (Benjamin Moore & Co. Decorators White) for visual relief from all that color, and hardwood floors in the hall, dining room and kitchen are ebonized (“It doesn’t get more glamorous”).
Furniture throughout is “mainly vintage”–reupholstered, rebuilt, recovered.
There is no sofa in the living room. (Nor is there a TV. The one and only set is in the master bedroom.) Instead, Landis teased a look and a comfortable arrangement for conversation out of two vintage armchairs, a double-width chaise from the 1950s, a loveseat and a long skinny bench.
But perhaps the biggest tease is in a tiny space off the kitchen. The former site of a stackable washer and dryer is now the family’s new, desperately needed half bath. Somehow, some way, her designer and architect managed to squeeze facilities out of a space that measures just 2 feet, 4 inches wide at its widest point by 4 feet, 9 inches long. And then Landis put her own squeeze on the smallness of it all and painted the miniature room in the same big red paint found in the hallway.
