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      in Television

      For a Tony Nominee, an Apartment With a Sense of Drama

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      Kathryn Gallagher’s Upper West Side home ‘was never supposed to be a one-bedroom apartment.’ But that’s why she likes it.When Kathryn Gallagher was 11, the career demands of her father, the actor Peter Gallagher, forced the family to leave the Upper West Side of Manhattan for Los Angeles. A decade or so later, the demands of her own burgeoning career — specifically, a role in the 2015 Broadway revival of “Spring Awakening” — meant a move back to Manhattan. And she knew precisely where she wanted to land.“I was like, ‘If I’m going to live in New York, it has to be the Upper West Side, which is home, and which is where the best bagels are to be found,’” said Ms. Gallagher, now 28, a current Tony nominee for her performance in the musical “Jagged Little Pill” and a Season 2 cast member of the Amazon series “Modern Love,” based on the New York Times column. “This is my neighborhood.”Initially, she rented a studio apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up building near Central Park West, the fulfillment of every “young-woman-in-the-big-city” dream she ever had. There were tall windows, exposed brick, crown molding and just the right degree of scruffiness. But what with the three or four (or more) daily walks required by her dog, Willie Nelson, the trips up and down the stairs became burdensome.Kathryn Gallagher, 28, who is nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the musical “Jagged Little Pill,” lives in a one-bedroom rental in a townhouse near Riverside Park.James GallagherKathryn Gallagher, 28Occupation: Actor and songwriterDesign for living: “It’s very helpful for have a mother who’s an interior decorator. I inherited my mom’s sense of style, but added 50 points for zany wackiness.”Ms. Gallagher is an avid student of life. Her conversation is studded with phrases like “lessons hard learned,” “a journey of learning” and “learning curve.” So it will come as no surprise that when she went hunting for a new apartment two and a half years ago, she had absorbed enough wisdom to hold out for something that was close to ground level but with the raffish charm of the walk-up.She found such a place — a one-bedroom with high ceilings and period detail on the parlor floor of a townhouse near Riverside Park — at the end of a long, rainy day of searching with her mother, Paula Harwood, an interior designer.“The moment I walked in, I was like, ‘When this was a single-family home, this was where they gathered after work to smoke a pipe and have a whiskey, and there were books lining the walls.’ I created a whole fantasy for the life that was lived in here before,” Ms. Gallagher said.“This is a one-bedroom apartment that was never supposed to be a one-bedroom apartment,” she added. “I think of it as a library and a lounge. I love it.”It’s true that there’s more vertical than horizontal space, and Ms. Gallagher, an eager cook, has “a criminally small” kitchen. But, really, what’s a dearth of counter space when measured against the vintage mirror over the fireplace, the fireplace itself, the Tiffany-style ceiling pendant, the French doors separating the living room from the bedroom, and the massive wood front door?“I’m obsessed with the door,” Ms. Gallagher said. “No one is messing with this door. This door has seen many things.”“I love having meteorites and beautiful stones all around the apartment,” she said. “And I like having things around, like my tarot cards, that make me happy and connect me to something.” James GallagherIn pulling the apartment together, Ms. Gallagher came to an important realization: Mom really does know best. It was Ms. Harwood, after all, who inveighed against the folly of trying, as she put it, to move in overnight. “She was like, ‘You won’t know what you need for six months. Don’t buy everything at the beginning,’” Ms. Gallagher said.Only recently, for example, did she have radiator covers made. “I was like, ‘Of course I need them.’ But it took me a long time to realize they were even an option,” she said, noting that she’s using the newly available flat surfaces to hold books. “I’m really excited about that.”The one thing she did insist on soon after signing the lease was a red velvet sofa. “And my mother was like, ‘Are you sure?’” Ms. Gallagher said. “‘Because if you get a red velvet couch, everything else has to be chill. You can’t get an orange chair and a purple rug.’”As if. The red velvet, tufted, Tuxedo-style sectional makes its strong statement, while a leaf-patterned rug in shades of sage, cream and blue provides appropriately quiet support. “It’s the kind of couch that, if this were the 1920s, someone with curls in a long silk robe would be sitting on it smoking a skinny cigarette and drinking a martini,” she said.In the interest of filling out the scene she has so earnestly conjured, an Art Deco bar cart with mirrored shelves is just a few feet away.In moments of uncertainty in life and in work, Ms. Gallagher’s first instinct is to nest. “I never imagined spending so much time in the apartment,” she said. “But since the pandemic, I’m finding I just love it more and more, and have found little ways to personalize it, by putting things that make me happy in every corner.”The list includes tarot cards, guitars and journals. Atop and around the fireplace are large quantities of crystals and candles, as well as vases that once contained congratulatory opening-night bouquets, then candy canes during Christmas season, and now dried flowers.Nick Cordero, an actor known primarily for his theater work, died last year of Covid-19. Friends, including Ms. Gallagher, poured the contents of a whiskey bottle into the Hudson River in tribute to him. The empty bottle now sits on the mantel of Ms. Gallagher’s fireplace. James GallagherOn the wall behind the sofa hangs a photo of Ms. Gallagher’s maternal grandmother, who was a member of the now-defunct ballet company at Radio City Music Hall; an original piece by Erté, a gift from that same grandmother; and a needlepoint likeness of the four principal female “Jagged Little Pill” cast members, stitched by Ms. Gallagher’s dresser, Dyanna Hallick.On a wall in the bedroom is a handwritten card from Alanis Morissette, whose music forms the basis of “Pill”: “Kathryn: thanks for your courage and willingness and grace and power and vulnerability. Love Alanis.”Peter Gallagher, who is “super handy,” according to his daughter, took on the role of picture-hanger and also installed a clothes rod in an armoire from the family’s old apartment, to turn it into a coat closet for Ms. Gallagher.“I had my dad on FaceTime when I was re-caulking the bathtub and when I was putting in an air-conditioner,” she said. “I think he was prouder of me for installing the A/C than he was of my Tony nomination.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Movies

      Marsha Mason’s ‘New York Loft in a Hayfield’

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      After more than two decades in New Mexico, the actress and director is back on the East Coast, with new digs and a renewed focus on the theater.From the front, Marsha Mason’s house in Washington, Conn., is modest as can be — low slung, with small windows — no reason to stop and covetously gawk.“It looks very unassuming,” said the similarly unassuming Ms. Mason, 79, a four-time Oscar nominee (including for 1973’s “Cinderella Liberty” and 1977’s “The Goodbye Girl”), who plays Arlene on the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie,” now in production for its final season.But stroll around to the back, and it’s a different story altogether: an expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass framed in gray cedar, and a terrace with a seating and dining area that runs the width of the rectilinear structure, making the great outdoors feel part and parcel of the great indoors (and vice versa).Think of the house and the eight-acre setting as Ms. Mason’s Act Three.After more than two decades in Abiquiu, N.M., where she built a 7,000-square-foot house and an art barn, and started a business that specialized in organic medicinal herbs, Ms. Mason was eager to downsize and refocus her attention on theater work — in particular, directing.Marsha Mason, a four-time Oscar nominee and two-time Golden Globe winner, lives in a custom-built contemporary house in Washington, Conn. Much of the furniture in the house comes from her previous residences. Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesMarsha Mason, 79Occupation: Actor and directorSense of direction: “I feel that getting more serious as a theater director came out of building houses. It’s all about preproduction.”To be sure, she has lovely memories and no regrets.“When I moved to New Mexico, the movie business was changing. It was getting very youth-oriented, and roles weren’t coming as much as before,” she said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. In some ways, I was having a little bit of an identity crisis. What Abiquiu was about was me maturing and becoming a full-blown human being, in that I had my show-business work and a lot of other, different work.“It was an interesting place during all those years,” she added. “Gene Hackman lived there while I was there. Jane Fonda lived there. And my friend Shirley MacLaine lived up a mountain across the road. She’d come down to my house for Christmas dinner on a golf cart dressed as Santa.”“I knew I wanted this house to have a great room,” she said.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIn 2014, Ms. Mason sold the 247-acre property and returned to the New York area, where she had typically owned or rented an apartment even after moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s with her second husband, the playwright Neil Simon. (The marriage ended in 1983.)This time, she decided to hang her hat in western Connecticut, where she had friends in the area. Briefly under consideration was a large house with many bedrooms, many nooks and many crannies. “Then I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to have something of that size again,’” Ms. Mason recalled. “But I asked the owners if they would sell the hayfield that was attached to the house, and they agreed.”It took a while to conceptualize this, the fourth home she would be building from scratch. (The others were in New Mexico and Los Angeles.) But Ms. Mason was clear on certain points long before the heavy machinery rolled in: She wanted it to be all on one floor and of manageable dimensions. She wanted solar panels (but didn’t want to see them), radiant heat, a great room, a “really nice bathroom” and a guest room on the opposite side of the house from her own quarters.“The design grew out of all that,” Ms. Mason said of the resulting 2,600-square-foot contemporary, which she is fond of characterizing as a “New York loft in a hayfield.”A photo of Ms. Mason and her friend Paul Newman hangs in the laundry room. The two bonded over their love of car-racing.Tony Cenicola/The New York Times“I find that, in general, it’s the details that set things apart — what kind of door you choose or what kind of sconce,” she said, offering the example of the bright red bookcase that on one side houses a television screen and, on the other, serves as gallery space for several paintings. “I knew I wanted to do certain things like that.”The house is a study in contrasts: plain exterior and — thanks to a trove of furniture and art from around the world and from various stages of her life and career — vibrant, eclectic interior. Here, a 19th-century Spanish chair; there, a sofa from Design Within Reach. Over there, a country French bureau.Twenty-five years ago, when Ms. Mason was being honored at a film festival in Egypt, she did some shopping and brought back a game table with parquetry inlay and mosaic chairs. Those made their way from New Mexico to Connecticut. A pair of spindle chairs with rush seats and leather cushions were bought for the Bel-Air house that she shared with Mr. Simon. After the couple split, she kept the chairs, which have since been outfitted with crushed-velvet pillows.The Tulip dining table and chairs were bought post-divorce when she moved into a co-op on Central Park West. They’re now in a corner keeping company with a vivid abstract and a painted wood sculpture of a mother and child that was part of the décor during her years with Mr. Simon.Three wood female figures from Thailand and a wooden head of a merry-faced king from one of Ms. Mason’s trips to India are displayed atop the Stûv fireplace that dominates the great room. A Ganesh statue sits sentry in the hall outside her bedroom.Ms. Mason bought the game table and chairs in Egypt 25 years ago, when she was being honored at a film festival.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesBehind the antique rosewood desk in the office are shelves with assorted trophies, among them two Golden Globes. And perhaps because distraction is always welcome when you’re folding towels and sheets, a wall in the laundry room is given over to framed award citations and photographs of Ms. Mason’s stepdaughters, of her with her father, and of her with Paul Newman. The two became fast friends through their shared passion for auto racing. “He eventually invited me to Lime Rock, here in Connecticut, his home track, and I drove one of his GTs,” she recalled.“The sink where I wash up after I do my gardening is here in the laundry room,” Ms. Mason said. “So I see these pictures every day.”Moving into the house necessitated winnowing, she said. Many things were jettisoned or left behind for the new owner in Abiquiu.“This place,” she added, “reflects my sense of aging and ‘what do you need?’ not ‘what do you want?’ It’s about a few nice pieces as opposed to a lot of nice pieces — the whole psyche of simplifying.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Music

      For Chloe Flower, the Décor Always Serves the Music

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      With a few exceptions, the composer and social media influencer’s walls are bare. But who needs art when you have Liberace’s piano?The test of a first-rate intelligence, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time while still managing to function.Chloe Flower (neé Won), the composer, pianist and influencer can relate: For the past three years, she has lived happily on the 63rd floor of New York by Gehry, an apartment tower in the financial district. And yet, she is also “really scared of heights.”But Ms. Flower, 35, the spirited, couture-clad presence at the keyboard when Cardi B performed “Money” at the 2019 Grammys, is nothing if not pragmatic. The music videos she shoots in her two-bedroom rental — the cityscape a key element — have helped her build a robust following on social media.“I took one for the team because of Instagram,” said Ms. Flower, whose repertoire includes hits by the likes of Drake, Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar, played in the style of Bach and Beethoven — or, as Ms. Flower characterizes it, pop-sical. “But really, when you look out the window and straight across, you don’t have a sense of depth.”Chloe Flower was born Chloe Won, but was nicknamed Flower as a child, and flowers are always close at hand. An arrangement sits atop the bedazzled Baldwin concert grand, a loaner from the Liberace estate.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesChloe Flower, 35Occupation: Composer and pianistSpecial Delivery: “During Covid, I was buying cabinets online from Restoration Hardware, and I forgot to remove the bed I had put in the shopping cart. When the guys from the shipping company arrived, they said, ‘We have your bed,’ and I said, ‘What bed?’ So now I have an accidental blue bed.”Also, up there in the stratosphere, Ms. Flower is at a considerable remove from ambient street noise. She was, thus, able to record most of her self-titled debut album at home. It’s due out July 16.Location. Location. Location. So goes the real estate mantra. To which Ms. Flower responds: Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? “Whenever I’m looking for an apartment, I’m never concerned where it is, because I’m either working from home or working in a studio,” she said.“I prefer certain areas of New York, of course,” added Ms. Flower, who previously rented in Union Square and Gramercy Park. “But New York has everything everywhere. Same with Los Angeles.”In fact, she was living in L.A. when she and her boyfriend, Michael Sepso, a New York-based entrepreneur, decided to move in together and began looking for suitable quarters.It was the musician Questlove who introduced his pal Ms. Flower to New York by Gehry. He is a tenant, “and when I saw his place, that was it,” she said. “I was, like, ‘Wait. Hold on. The view.’ I was so excited.”One attraction was the bay window in the living room, which “makes the apartment feel much bigger,” Ms. Flower said of the space, which is almost 1,400 square feet.Much of it is ceded to the Steinway Spirio|r, a piano that can record and play back performances, and to a Baldwin SD10 concert grand with a transparent lid and a cladding of hundreds of glass tiles, a loaner from the estate of Liberace to add flash to those Instagram videos. The man known as Mr. Showmanship often took it on tour. “Aesthetically, it doesn’t look like any piano you’ve ever seen. It’s really, really cool,” Ms. Flower said.“I love Liberace,” she added. “I know he’s not a traditional classical pianist, but he used his flair and drama and passion to break into the mainstream pop world. I like to celebrate him.”Ms. Flower loves having friends and family visit. Pre-Covid, everyone in her orbit referred to the second bedroom, now an office-slash-workout area, as Hotel Chloe. But visitors don’t have too many places to perch. There are no easy chairs, and Ms. Flower ditched her purple Ligne Roset sofa two years ago, when the Liberace joined the Steinway.“It was beautiful,” she said. “But when I had to choose between a second piano and a couch, it was, like, ‘A piano, of course.’”To be sure, there are other things in the living-and-dining room: a wood dining table; a teak tree-trunk console, a Yamaha keyboard, a pair of sculptural bookshelves, a vase or three of flowers, and many white candles. Ms. Flower buys them by the dozen from Amazon, lighting and shuffling them around as the spirit moves her.“I love their glow. I like the way they look when they’ve burned down,” she said. “They’re romantic and I think they set a mood, especially at night against the city lights.”But the décor must always serve the music. “When I’m composing, I don’t like to have a lot of distractions, and clutter is distracting,” she said. “I like the space to be clear, so I feel I have a clean slate.”Ms. Flower wrote her latest composition, “Tamie,” on the Steinway.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesConsequently, with the exception of a gilded mirror and a TV screen that doubles as a canvas to display digital art, the walls are bare. So are most surfaces.The annotated piano books and sheet music that Ms. Flower has had since childhood — “if there were a fire, I’d take them out first” — were briefly on a shelf in the living room.“But they just looked a little messy, a lot of loose paper,” she said, so she consigned them to a Restoration Hardware cabinet in the couple’s bedroom. She even turned down the offer of a candelabra from the Liberace estate because it would block the view — a key source of inspiration during the creative process.Ms. Flower describes herself as a homebody. But she would be that much happier at home if it had a dedicated recording studio and sufficient space to show off some of her mother’s artwork.“And,” she said, “there’s a third piano I want to buy. I asked my boyfriend, ‘What if we got rid of the dining table?’”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Television

      Krysta With a Y Plays Liza With a Z

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      For Krysta Rodriguez, who stars as Liza Minnelli in the new Netflix series ‘Halston,’ acting and decorating aren’t that far apart.Krysta Rodriguez got her first look at New York City through the windows of the motor home that was ferrying her family around the country on an extended road trip. Along the way, there was a stop to take in a show — the 1990 Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.”“And that set me on the path to where I am today,” said Ms. Rodriguez, now 36, whose CV includes the musicals “Spring Awakening” and “The Addams Family,” as well as a number of television series, among them “Smash” and “Quantico,” and Netflix productions like the post-apocalyptic comedy-drama “Daybreak” and the five-episode bio-drama “Halston,” which debuts on May 14.Ewan McGregor stars as the fashion designer whose minimalist cashmere and Ultrasuede women’s wear became synonymous with 1970s elegance, and whose hard-partying ways became synonymous with ’70s decadence. Krysta with a Y plays Liza with a Z, one of Halton’s best friends.Ms. Rodriguez, who lives in a two-bedroom condominium in Harlem, has designer chops of her own. “My mom is a realtor in California, and I’m her decorator,” she said. “When I was growing up, we would buy and renovate houses and sell them, which I didn’t love because it always meant that you were moving into the worst house in the neighborhood, and then leaving the best house. It wasn’t great for status at school.”She added: “But then I found myself decorating everywhere I went.”Krysta Rodriguez, one of the stars of the new Neflix series “Halston,” recently redid her condo in Harlem, in a homage to the 1970s designer. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKrysta Rodriguez, 36Occupation: ActorNew stages: “I’m launching an interior design business. I’ll always be an actor — I love acting — but I think there are parallels with the two professions: You inhabit a character the way you inhabit a space.”Whenever Ms. Rodriguez is in a Broadway show, for example, she paints and furnishes her dressing room, then leaves it all behind for the next presumably grateful trouper. During the “Daybreak” shoot in Albuquerque, while some of her castmates opted for luxury apartments, she went for an adobe house, moved all the furniture into one room and outfitted the rest of the rental to her own taste. “I have a passion for beautifying,” she said.Ms. Rodriguez was cast in her first Broadway musical, the short-lived “Good Vibrations,” in 2005, while she was an undergrad at New York University. The roles that followed enabled her to buy a tiny studio apartment in Chelsea. She held onto it for seven years before selling in 2017 and buying the sunny, high-ceilinged condo in Harlem, and moving there with her boyfriend. (The relationship has since ended.)The space, almost 900 square feet, put an end to ever so carefully maneuvering around this object or that piece of furniture, so much a part of life in Chelsea.“Things fit, and that’s been a big upgrade for me,” said Ms. Rodriguez, who has renovated the bathroom, adding a Japanese toilet (“it is so civilized,” she said), and replaced several bifold doors. The washer and dryer are now concealed by an old sliding door from a piano factory. “I love that it’s a little stained and has a patina,” she said. The front closet has a carved Moroccan door.“The dressing room is very not neutral,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I want it to feel very glamorous.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOf course, now that Ms. Rodriguez is the apartment’s sole occupant, her needs are the only ones that must be addressed, her sense of style the only one that must be accommodated. “I can explore the space in a new way,” she said.Inspiration for the do-over came during the “Halston” shoot. She had always thought of the 1970s as the Dark Ages of design: shag carpeting and a baffling celebration of orange. But while on set she discovered a more chic aspect of the decade, an aesthetic that was glamorous and tactile, tidy and streamlined, monochrome and luxe.“I remember thinking, ‘This is my style,’” said Ms. Rodriguez, who committed fully, even buying into the discrete charms of fluffy rugs.“My apartment is an homage to Halston and Liza,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I wanted it to feel like the place you go after the party where you danced all night long. That was Halston’s townhouse — the swinging place to be.”At Chez Rodriguez, revelers at some post-pandemic, wee-small-hours gathering will disport themselves on the tufted, off-white-velvet sofa, lie on the off-white shag-wool area rug or lean against the sculptural, camel-colored Ultrasuede poufs. Paintings by Keren Toledano hew to the room’s limited color palette. Overhead lighting and sconces were recently installed; they have been outfitted with Philips Hue bulbs, “so I can choose different colors to set different moods,” she said.The floating white-lacquer wood shelf in the living room displays the building blocks of an artsy jet-set life: a reproduction vintage record player, retro barware, a functional vintage Polaroid camera, a bowl of foreign currency and an ashtray complete with a “Halston” prop cigarette.“I’d rather have fewer things, and have them in the space where they belong, rather than storing shoes in the oven because there isn’t enough room elsewhere,” Ms. Rodriguez said. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe apartment’s second bedroom embodies the more glam, anything-but-neutral side of the ’70s. She painted the walls plaster-pink, and there’s a vanity table, a rust-colored velvet bench and — hello, Studio 54 — a rust-colored disco ball.The space has been carefully thought out, from the entryway — vintage metal chair slung with a shag cushion; mirror with white-plaster frame — to the corners of the room, “where people can sit and hang, and feel fabulous,” Ms. Rodriguez said.“I want everything to feel very much of a piece. I am curated. I am meticulous,” she added firmly. “I am not eclectic.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Television

      A ‘Blue Bloods’ Regular on the Importance of ‘Yes’

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      For the actor Vanessa Ray, what makes a one-bedroom near Lincoln Center home are a few essentials: Bill Nye, blankets and one three-letter word.Vanessa Ray has lived in New York City on and off for the past decade, renting or subletting in the theater district, on the far reaches of Upper West Side, in Brooklyn and, more than once, in Lincoln Square.“I had always watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television, and when I was starting to pursue being an actor, I was like, ‘I’m going to shoot my shot in New York,’” said Ms. Ray, 39, who plays feisty policewoman Eddie Janko, now a regular around the Reagan dinner table, on the long-running CBS police procedural “Blue Bloods.” (The Season 11 finale airs May 14.)It was the beginning of a great love affair.“This is where my heart is,” said Ms. Ray, who was raised in Portland, Ore., and subsequently moved to Los Angeles where, thanks to roles on “Pretty Little Liars,” “Suits” and “Blue Bloods,” she owns a house in the hills. “I love California. When I have three months off, I go and soak up the sun and swim in the pool, and then I come back here to real living.”Ms. Ray is very big on the affirmation of “yes” signs. She is equally big on photos of family and friends. Haley BondVanessa Ray, 39Occupation: ActorLip service: “When I was first on ‘Blue Bloods,’ I was subletting a place in the theater district. You walk around there and you run into just about every actor you know. I was dating different people, and one guy went to kiss me on Ninth Avenue, and I was like, ‘You can’t kiss me on Ninth Avenue. That’s saying something. Let’s take it to 10th Avenue when it’s a new relationship.’”Not long after her 2015 marriage to Landon Beard, a Los Angeles-based musician who comes to New York as frequently as possible, Ms. Ray took it into her head to try Brooklyn on for size. It didn’t fit, even if the two-bedroom she rented in Williamsburg, near McCarren Park, was an easy walk to the “Blue Bloods” set in Greenpoint.“I was going through a tough time emotionally, and because of that I knew I needed to return to Manhattan,” Ms. Ray said. Fortunately, one of her best friends, Jessica Waxman, is a real estate agent. Ms. Waxman presented three or four options, all near Lincoln Center and all near her own apartment, so the two women could easily meet for morning coffee and walks in Central Park.The light tan sectional, bought several years ago at Crate & Barrel, was Ms. Ray’s first big furniture purchase.Vanessa Ray“Jess was like, ‘OK, Vanessa, you need a kitchen that’s big enough to cook all the things you like to cook and big enough for me to watch you while you’re doing it,’” Ms. Ray said. “She also knew I needed outdoor space and a view of some kind.“I like to wake up and look outside and think, ‘I’ve got to get in it. I’ve got to get out there,’” she said. “That’s the driving force of any success I’ve had in New York.”A year and a half ago, Ms. Ray moved into what she describes as “a nice, healing space”: a one-bedroom apartment with a balcony in a full-service postwar building, where she can see the Hudson River from the windows in the living room and bedroom.In the entryway, there is a photo of Ms. Ray and Mr. Beard walking on the beach in Santa Monica in the early days of their courtship, and another of them on their wedding day in Pala, Calif. Make no mistake. They look very happy.But (and you’re reading it here first): She has a thing for another guy, a science guy. His portrait — and it’s a big one — also hangs in the entryway.“I love Bill Nye,” said Ms. Ray, who bought the likeness at a vintage shop in Portland. “I was home-schooled as a kid. Bill Nye did a segment on ‘The Mickey Mouse Club,’ and he was always doing stuff and blowing things up. It got my brother and me excited about science, and we’ve really leaned into it over the years. If I could meet Bill Nye, I would be speechless.”When it comes to blankets, she can’t possibly say no.Vanessa RayUntil then, she’ll take what she can get. Some years ago, when her “Blue Bloods” co-star Will Estes met Mr. Nye at an industry event, he scored an autographed coaster for Ms. Ray. It’s tucked into a corner of the picture frame.When Ms. Ray became a series regular in 2013, she latched onto a very substantial tan sectional from Crate & Barrel. “This couch is huge. It’s practically a twin bed,” she said. “It was the most expensive thing I had ever bought in my life.”Perhaps in the interest of getting her money’s worth, Ms. Ray has brought it along to every apartment she has rented in the intervening years. “I will say, I don’t need a lot,” she said. “If I have a couch and a blanket, I’m pretty thrilled.”Those who know Ms. Ray will laugh at the above declaration about “a blanket.” She has, at last count, about a dozen blankets in the apartment, all stashed in baskets — among them, Mexican blankets, Pendleton blankets, camp blankets and a white polyester number from Restoration Hardware of surpassing softness and coziness.“My husband is like, ‘Enough blankets, babe,’ but I like to switch things up,” she said.She feels the same way about kitchen towels. She has them for every holiday: Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Halloween. “I’ve got them all,” Ms. Ray said. “I think I was a school receptionist in another life.”Her collection of essential kitchen utensils is, by contrast, positively austere. The most frequently used are a citrus squeezer (she squirts lemon on pretty much everything) and a couple of pairs of tongs: “You can stir with them. You can sauté with them. You can toss a salad. You can flip a steak. You can use them to get something out of the oven real quick.”Those tools are stored in the drawer of a butcher-block-topped kitchen cart that also holds a Nespresso machine and an Aicook juicer, a recent acquisition. “This is the key spot,” Ms. Ray said of the cart. “It was the perfect size. The story of my life is that I’m always one inch off, but this really nailed it.”Ms. Ray doesn’t require many kitchen tools, but she’d be utterly lost without tongs and a citrus squeezer. Vanessa RayWatching over her in the kitchen are photos of her grandfather, a master of the barbecue, and her uncle, Scott Smith, who taught her the joys of spices and sushi.If the kitchen is the apartment’s center of activity, the living room is a place for reflection. There, Ms. Ray sits on a pouf near the TV cabinet, writes in her journal and reads. If affirmation is what she’s after at the end of a tough day, she need look only as far as the table next to the sectional, where “yes” is spelled in wood blocks.“I have ‘yes’ signs everywhere,” she said. “When I first moved to Los Angeles, I had a friend who did that growing up, and I was like, ‘I want to do that, too, so I can remember to stay positive.’”There’s another ‘yes,’ in brass letters, in the bedroom. Ms. Ray and Mr. Beard are currently in talks about getting a neon ‘yes’ sign. “But,” she said with a sigh, “we haven’t said yes to it yet.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      The ‘Sentimental Excess’ of Sarah Stiles

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat I LoveThe ‘Sentimental Excess’ of Sarah StilesThe actor, who stars in the Netflix series ‘The Crew’ and is a regular on ‘Billions,’ is like a slightly goofy sitcom neighbor with an otherworldly home.Sarah Stiles’s Otherworldly Style14 PhotosView Slide Show ›Katherine Marks for The New York TimesMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSarah Stiles’s first address in New York was the Stratford Arms, an Upper West Side building that serves as campus housing for students at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Fittingly, the experience had its share of theatrics.The year was 1999. Ms. Stiles’s parents, though long divorced, jointly shepherded her from “the hippie woods of New Hampshire” to the urban jungle of West 70th Street. “And when we got there, there was a giant inflatable rat in front of the building, and people were picketing,” said Ms. Stiles, 41, a star of the new Netflix comedy series “The Crew” and a recurring cast member — Axe Capital trader Bonnie Barella — on Showtime’s “Billions.”The room at the Stratford Arms was too small to accommodate a standard twin bed, and at the time, some of the building’s nonstudent residents were being treated for mental illness, she recalled.“There was a guy who would scream ‘Maria’ at me every night in an angry voice,” said Ms. Stiles, a two-time Tony nominee — for her performance in the play “Hand to God” and her showstopping turn in the musical “Tootsie.” “Things could only go up from there.”The Upper West Side apartment shared by Sarah Stiles, a two-time Tony nominee and a star of the new Netflix series “The Crew,” and her husband, Jeff Dodson, has an otherworldly feeling. She prefers the term “sentimental excess” to describe her style.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York TimesSarah Stiles, 41Occupation: ActorHome comforts: “I’m the kind of person who makes a home out of anywhere I go. If I’m working regionally or shooting a movie far away, I bring things like photos.”And they did. After bouncing around the boroughs, followed by a brief marriage that landed her in Washington, D.C., and a lot of couch-surfing when she returned to New York, Ms. Stiles got the fairly steady use of a two-bedroom rental not far from that Upper West Side residence hall. Now she lives there full-time — and officially — with her husband of almost six months, Jeff Dodson. (The second bedroom has been outfitted to accommodate Mr. Dodson’s two daughters, Lily and Addy, who spend part of each week there.)“This place has major history for me,” Ms. Stiles said.It began almost 20 years ago, when she visited the apartment as a plus-one for a game night; her future first husband was a pal of the host. Soon, Ms. Stiles became the host’s pal, too. The friendship survived the breakup of her marriage, and Ms. Stiles often used the apartment as a crash pad.“When ‘Hand to God’ came around, my friend’s roommate was moving out and my friend was spending a lot of time in Los Angeles,” she said. “So, basically, it was my own place for this really incredible time in my life both personally and professionally. I did a lot of growing up here.”In the fall of 2018, two years after she met Mr. Dodson, who is the head electrician at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Ms. Stiles moved from the apartment she loved to the Inwood apartment of the man she loved. Three months later, just about the time she had finished redecorating Mr. Dodson’s apartment, and right before the start of rehearsals for “Tootsie,” her friend called. He was vacating the apartment for good and wanted to sign the lease over to her. “He said that he wanted me to live there with Jeff and Jeff’s daughters,” recalled Ms. Stiles. She was happy to oblige.Ms. Stiles has a thing for squirrels, so the acorn lamp makes perfect sense.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times“We moved everything in, like, a weekend,” she said. “We repainted. We got some furniture, and now it’s our house.”Several years and several rentals ago, Ms. Stiles made an unsuccessful stab at minimalism. Recently, she has contemplated following the example of a friend whose apartment was done in shades of cream and gray. “It was beautiful,” she said.But she knew perfectly well that the red plastic chair that is part of her reading nook in the main bedroom, and the layered, multicolored tasseled rugs and pea-green side chair in the living room would be out in the cold with such a restrained palette. She loves bright colors. She loves bold patterns.Ms. Stiles is the square root of a charming but slightly goofy sitcom neighbor. Her apartment reflects those qualities. The aesthetic may best be summed up as otherworldly woodland: tarot cards and an abundance of crystals mix with tiny figures created from sticks and twigs. A bird made of straw seems poised for flight in one window. In another, there’s a plush pigeon — a gift from Mr. Dodson, who, when he was first courting Ms. Stiles, saved the day when an actual pigeon flew into the apartment. Squirrels and their accouterment are represented in many forms: The base of a bedside lamp, for example, is shaped like an acorn.Ms. Stiles prefers the term “sentimental excess” to describe her style.Paintings by her aunt, her grandmother and great-grandmother hang in the living room and the main bedroom. Every window sill has a vignette, composed in part of drawings by Ms. Stiles’s niece and nephew, keepsakes from friends and tender mementos like the pine cone from a hike Ms. Stiles and Mr. Dodson took the day before their wedding.“This apartment, the way it is with Jeff and his kids and me, is the most comfortable space I’ve ever had,” said Ms. Stiles (in Riverside Park with Mr. Dodson and her stepdaughters, Lily Dodson, left, and Addy Dodson).Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York TimesA map of Oklahoma, Mr. Dodson’s home state, hangs in the bedroom. “Everything is here for a reason, and it all means something to me,” Ms. Stiles said.The apartment isn’t perfect, and she’d be the first to say so. It’s either too hot or too cold. No matter how often she scrubs the bathtub, it doesn’t look clean. Because of a wall, the refrigerator barely opens a foot.And yet. “It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life to feel as safe and comfortable in a physical place as I do in this apartment,” Ms. Stiles said. “The things that my family and I love are here. We don’t think, ‘Oh, we’ll get nicer versions when we have more money.’ We’d choose them regardless.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Gustav Stickley: American Craftsman’ Review: Artisanal Admiration

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Gustav Stickley: American Craftsman’ Review: Artisanal AdmirationThis documentary offers a dry, rote introduction to a designer who became a key figure in the Arts and Crafts movement.The designer Gustav Stickley, center, is the subject of the documentary “Gustav Stickley: American Craftsman.”Credit…First Run FeaturesMarch 4, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETThe documentary “Gustav Stickley: American Craftsman” offers an introduction to a designer (1858-1942) who became a crucial figure in the American Arts and Crafts movement. But the movie itself, directed by Herb Stratford, is so dull and unimaginative in its presentation — talking heads, an overused score that might as well have been downloaded from a free database — that it makes for an unfortunate match of subject matter and form.This hourlong film is pitched at a level of detail that is admirable in theory but ill-suited to dabblers — or to the medium. The Stickley biographer David Cathers, one of many people charged with delivering dry exegesis (he also shares a writing credit on the film), speaks in a calm, unvaried tone as he discusses how “Stickley moved his family from Walnut Avenue in Syracuse to Columbus Avenue in Syracuse” or recounts Stickley’s eccentric late-career quest to develop a perfect furniture finish “that manufacturers could apply efficiently and at low cost.” He might as well be reading from his book.[embedded content]
      It is marginally livelier to hear from the Stickley relative Richard Wiles, who relates being told that a dresser whose drawers he used to smash shut ended up in a museum. The documentary does its baseline job of showcasing what made Stickley an innovator. You leave with a desire to visit The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, his New Jersey estate, as well as the Craftsman Building in New York. And by the end, a viewer could probably identify Stickley furniture with at least 50-50 accuracy.Gustav Stickley: American CraftsmanNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 7 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      For a ‘Cobra Kai’ Star, There’s Nothing a Good Basket Won’t Fix

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat I LoveFor a ‘Cobra Kai’ Star, There’s Nothing a Good Basket Won’t Fix‘I have a hard time saying no to a basket,’ said the actor Courtney Henggeler, explaining her approach to decorating her family’s Long Island rental.Courtney Henggeler’s Evolving Aesthetic13 PhotosView Slide Show ›Adam Macchia for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSmart mothers know better than to bring their young children on trips to the grocery store. The little ones tend to lobby vigorously for things that, in the end, will benefit no one but the family dentist. And they probe, at high volume, matters that Mommy may not want to discuss in public.Courtney Henggeler can speak with some authority on this topic. Not long ago, she was wheeling her cart through the supermarket when her 4-year-old son, Oscar, loudly asked, “Why do we have so many houses?”“People who were listening must have thought we were very wealthy,” said Ms. Henggeler, 42, who co-stars in the hit Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” a spinoff of 1984’s “The Karate Kid.” (She also appeared on “The Big Bang Theory” as Sheldon’s twin sister, and had a recurring role in the first few seasons of “Mom.”) “It’s just that we move around. I film ‘Cobra Kai’ in Atlanta, and we were in a house for three months one year, and the next year we were in another house.”Oscar may be relieved to know that his family — until recently based in Los Angeles, also in a series of rentals — is zeroing in on a permanent address. A year or so ago, Ms. Henggeler, who grew up in the Poconos and in Seaford, Long Island, and her husband, Ross Kohn, a movie producer who was raised in Westchester, decided to move back to New York and settle there to be closer to Ms. Henggeler’s ailing mother.The plan: to rent for a few years and then build their dream house.Courtney Henggeler, 42, one of the stars of the Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” lives with her family in a rented house in Huntington, N.Y. “I love the doors, I love the moldings, I love the big windows,” she said.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesCourtney Henggeler, 42Occupation: ActorIn the pink: “It was very important to me to have a soft-pink bedroom for my daughter. Poor kid. She’s probably, like, ‘I just want a blue wall, Mom.’”“I’d been to a million weddings before I got married, so I kind of figured out what I wanted and didn’t want for my own wedding,” said Ms. Henggeler, who married Mr. Kohn in 2015 and had a second child, a daughter, Georgie, almost two years ago. “I felt the same about houses. I’ve lived in so many that I kind of knew what I wanted.”What she wanted from a rental “seemed kind of absurd, and my husband looked at me as if I had five heads. But I said, ‘We’ll find it.’”They found it — and more — in the form of a brand-new transitional colonial in Huntington, N.Y. It had four bedrooms. She would have settled for two bathrooms, but got four and a half. A light, bright kitchen with a six-burner stove? Check. Crown moldings? (In abundance.) Dark hardwood floors? (Be still, her heart.)“I never knew how important flooring was,” she said. “My previous homes had orange-y wood. I stay up at night looking at wood flooring on Instagram.”The backyard is smaller than she would have liked, as is the sole bathtub. Family baths, a favorite routine, are now on hold. But those deficiencies were offset by the basement exercise room (“I was like, ‘Who am I, with a gym in my house?’”); the radiant-heat floors in the bathroom (“My children are now, like, ‘I can’t live without heated floor, Mommy,’ and I’m, like, ‘Me, too,’”); the central vacuum system (“What a princess I’ve become; I can’t live without this now, either”); and the kitchen’s instant hot-water dispenser.The foyer is “actually my favorite little spot in the house,” she said.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesBut Ms. Henggeler was thrilled practically senseless by the foyer, which she has outfitted with a bench and a pillow. “It’s actually my favorite little spot in the house,” she said. “In the house we left in Los Angeles, you walked in and you were immediately in the living room, and that drove me bonkers.”But wait! There’s more: a mudroom. “I always wanted one,” she said. “I love what people do with them. A mudroom is a functional space, but you can have fun with it.”Her idea of fun, in this case, centers on baskets — on coat hooks, under the bench, holding gloves and scarves and grocery bags. “I have a hard time saying no to a basket,” she said. “It’s probably the thing I bought most of for this house. My attitude is: Let’s make it beautiful.”Mr. Kohn’s outerwear apparently falls well short of that standard. “Ross wants to hang his jacket in the mudroom, and I tell him to put it in the closet,” Ms. Henggeler said.Another example of their differing views on décor: He likes a modern look with clean lines, while she gravitates toward old houses and feminine touches. “I came into the relationship with a lot of sparkly things,” she said.Out of regard for her husband’s feelings, she has designated Georgie’s room her “girlie-girl outlet,” painting it a blush-rose and using it as a repository for treasures from her own childhood, among them a mirror, some books and framed pictures. Ms. Henggeler sums it up nicely: “The room looks like my apartment would look now if I hadn’t married a man who doesn’t want to live in a house with pink.”Ms. Henggeler painted the nursery for her daughter, Georgie, pink — her own favorite color.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesBut she understands the appeal of a different palette. She loves how the slate-gray walls in the dining room set off the collection of Jim Marshall rock-star photographs she inherited from her godfather.She says her aesthetic is evolving — though how exactly she isn’t quite sure, apart from moving in the direction of the California-chic look embodied by the designer Jenni Kayne.She is contemplating the acquisition of a chaise longue for the living room. It will take over the spot that was, until recently, filled by a mattress that she and Mr. Kohn bought for the first home they shared. “We didn’t want to take it to the curb until garbage-collection day, so we put it in here. But our kids loved jumping on it, and it stayed for another seven months,” Ms. Henggeler said.“At the moment,” she added, “I’m in the there’s-nothing-a-throw-blanket-won’t-fix phase of design.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More