Zabriske Townhouse

New York City
1983

This townhouse renovation is a restoration with updated detail. The new stoop combines both traditional stonework and a modern bridge of steel diamond-plate. All materials are rugged enough to survive on the street and refined enough to suggest what's inside.

The interior is planned with a twentieth-century sense of openness and picked out with occasional rich touches (cherry pyramids with brass caps, oak columns, pilasters and doors, marble mantle and foyer). Organized around a new lightwell (the well does not yet extend through the upper floor for budget reasons), the carved glass pattern on the dining room doors is an abstract reminder of what is yet to come.