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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 Television

      Three Hollywood Stars Recast Their Lives Deep in the Heart of Texas

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      As the pandemic upended Tinseltown, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Haylie Duff and Becca Tobin made a pact to abandon Los Angeles and join the mass migration from California to Texas.During the blockbuster plot twist that was 2020, three Los Angeles-based actors and longtime friends wrote themselves a scene that was playing out in cities across the United States. Early into lockdown, Becca Tobin, best known for her role as Kitty Wilde on the Fox series “Glee,” formed a pandemic pod with her fellow actors Haylie Duff and Jamie-Lynn Sigler, gathering for regular backyard confabs about shifting priorities, family demands and their future in Hollywood.“We had been able to work from home successfully and set up our careers from anywhere,” Ms. Tobin said. “And we were all kind of ready for a change.”Ms. Tobin, 35, Ms. Duff, 36 and Ms. Sigler, 40, had all moved to Los Angeles in their 20s for work and, like so many others, spent much of 2020 wondering if they wanted to live somewhere else. Hollywood the town and Hollywood the job had been cleaved apart, with acting classes going online, self-tape auditions replacing in-person, and the offscreen demands of the job — red carpets, award shows, interviews — going virtual or extinct.“We found our conversations shifting more toward life,” said Ms. Sigler, who made her mark playing Meadow Soprano on “The Sopranos.” “And then we started to fantasize about what it would be like to live in different cities, and would we ever want to leave L. A.?”They were far from alone. For the first time in more than a century, California lost people last year, according to population estimates released by the state in May. Some of that was a result of Covid-19 deaths, falling birthrates and the Trump administration’s efforts to limit immigration. But for many, it was simply a matter of finding better prices in greener pastures.The three made a pact to relocate their “quaranteam,” leaving Hollywood together for a new city where they could keep working but enjoy a less hectic, and less expensive, life.“It reminded me of being in high school and being like, ‘You’re gonna go home tonight and shave your legs, right? Because I’m going to do it, too,’” Ms. Tobin said of the agreement. “Like adult peer pressure.”During the summer, Ms. Duff, the native Texan in the group, had visited her parents in Houston and felt the pull back home. The older sister of the actress Hilary Duff, she has been acting since she was a teenager and had always planned to move back to Texas eventually, and after the trip, she cut her family’s five-year plan to a five-month plan. As more friends relocated, there was “an energy around people choosing to make a change in their life, for a positive reason, for a self-care reason,” she said.The friends considered different cities they had heard of people moving to, like Nashville or Atlanta, but they kept coming back to Texas. “We liked the idea of being in a progressive city, but not necessarily something so overly populated,” Ms. Tobin said.The obvious choice was Austin, the booming southern crossroads of culture and technology, where they could more or less split the distance between Los Angeles and New York. It was a madcap move in the rush of a red-hot sellers market, a once-in-a-century chance to pause, then fast-forward.Austin’s housing market, already in a decade-long development frenzy, wound up defying the pandemic and roaring back to life. In May 2021, the median sale price in the Austin metro area hit an all-time high of $465,000.Stacy Sodolak for The New York Times“Even though we were together so much during quarantine and Covid, it really chipped away at us as a family, like many families,” said Ms. Sigler, who had only been to Austin once, for a film premiere at the South by Southwest festival. “Coming to this new city all together on this adventure offered a lot of repair for us, as well.”Ms. Tobin, a Georgia native who had lived in Los Angeles for 12 years, said of Tinseltown: “As easy as it was to come, it was as easy for me to say goodbye.”The three families made a common checklist, headlined by ample outdoor space and good public schools. They “hit the Zillow hard,” Ms. Sigler said, lobbing listings at one another from film sets and playgrounds. In October, they embarked on a house-hunting tour with partners and children in tow (Ms. Duff has two daughters; Ms. Sigler has two sons), and settled on a neighborhood about 20 minutes northwest of downtown Austin.When they arrived in the spring, the culture shock came by way of small-town hospitality and everyday conveniences. “You mean I can get in my car, drive five minutes and not fight people when I’m in the grocery store to get in a lot?” said Ms. Tobin, who arrived in April after filming a TV reboot of the 1989 film “Turner & Hooch” in Vancouver, British Columbia. “Oh, and you don’t pay for parking anywhere.”In decamping to Austin — home to an ever-expanding ecosystem of film festivals and production studios — they were joining a wave of high-profile Californians like Tesla founder Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan, as well as the other roughly 70,000 people who moved to the area last year, according to U.S. census data, making it the fastest-growing metro area in the United States.“Once you come here, it’s hard to leave,” said Ms. Duff, whose film roles include “Napoleon Dynamite” and “The Wedding Pact,” and who spent time this year shooting a movie in Fort Wayne, Ind. She noted that each of the friends booked gigs not long after closing on their Austin homes, which felt like a nod from the universe.“I almost feel more connected to my craft and why I love acting,” said Ms. Sigler, who had just returned from recording dialogue at a studio in downtown Austin for an ABC pilot she shot in Los Angeles. “When the calls come in, it’s a beautiful surprise. I’m still on things and I’m still a businesswoman and it’s still my career, but I don’t feel the pressure around it because we took a stand for ourselves and we made decisions for our families.”With its bohemian charms, natural splendors and lack of state income taxes, Austin has been courting California’s twin economic engines, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, for years, all while trying to maintain its cherished “Keep Austin Weird” credibility. According to Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, about 90,000 Californians moved to Texas in 2018 and 2019. The pandemic has only deepened the romance. Austin enjoyed a P.R. blitz of high-profile corporate relocations and expansions last year, with tech giant Oracle moving its headquarters there from Redwood Shores, Calif., and Mr. Musk announcing Tesla’s $1 billion “gigafactory” on the southeast edge of town.The housing market, already in a decade-long development frenzy, wound up defying the pandemic and roaring back to life. In May 2021, the median sale price in the Austin metro area hit an all-time high of $465,000, according to the Austin Board of Realtors. High-end home prices spiked 24 percent, according to Redfin, the most of any area in the country.Still, anyone used to California prices sees Texas as a bargain, said Scott Michaels, an Austin real estate agent with Compass, who described cutthroat, all-cash bidding wars that drew 40 to 60 offers on a single property. “It’s a challenge because we’re competing with people moving from out-of-state, and there’s just not a lot of inventory on the market,” he said.For Ms. Sigler, who is from Long Island, Austin’s square footage and outdoor space were revelatory. “There was a lot of like, ‘Oh my God, look what we can get for this. Look at the life we can give ourselves,’ you know, compared to what we’re able to afford here in L.A.,” she said. “I just feel like we’re taking a big, deep breath since we got here.”Apartment towers sprout on the shores of Lady Bird Lake, luring workers in entertainment, tech and other high-profile industries from cities across the U.S. “It’s an incredible burst of prosperity for the city, but it’s also just terrifying from a housing affordability standpoint, what that means for people living here,” said Jake Weggman, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin.Stacy Sodolak for The New York TimesMs. Sigler and Ms. Duff started their careers as teens but wanted a different lifestyle for their children in Austin, where space and nature are plentiful, and paparazzi aren’t. “That was a big choice for us, wanting our kids to stay young,” Ms. Duff said.Austin has been contending with growing pains since the early 1980s, during its first hint of what locals call Silicon Hills, said Natasha Harper-Madison, the city’s Mayor Pro-Tem. Born and raised in East Austin, Ms. Harper-Madison said the changing cityscape was best described by her mother: “She said, ‘I really like my neighbors. I just wish I didn’t have to lose so many of the old ones to get new ones.’ And I think, in large part, that’s how folks feel. It’s not any sort of absence of the desire to welcome people to our communities. It’s the exact opposite. In fact, people want to preserve and sort of steward the evolution of their communities.”Despite some natal cries of “Don’t California My Texas” from both ends of the political spectrum, what’s fueling the migration are the states’ similarities. Sitting on the border with relatively sunny climates, “they’re both super diverse, in every possible way — ethnically, economically, geographically,” said Jake Weggman, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin.“It’s an incredible burst of prosperity for the city, but it’s also just terrifying from a housing affordability standpoint, what that means for people living here,” Mr. Weggman said.Ms. Tobin has sensed some side-eye when she tells locals where she’s from, but she tries to put them at ease. Voting and donating are two ways to do it, she said, and she has contributed to causes that support homeless outreach and abortion rights through local nonprofits like Mobile Loaves & Fishes and the Lilith Fund.“I get it, they don’t want us to L.A. their Austin,” she said. “My husband and I personally are going to really try to do our best to help out in the community and get involved where we can.”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 New Way of Looking at Vacation Rentals

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      A number of home improvement shows now focus on where you stay when you’re away from home.After more than a year of staring at the walls, Americans are booking vacations again. To help them pack, home-improvement television is offering a summer lineup of shows about where to go and where to stay.TV, it seems, wants to get out of the house as much as the rest of us.Netflix is premiering “The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals” on June 18, showcasing quirky and unusual spots around the globe — a Mexico City apartment building shaped like a snake, an igloo in Finland, a lighthouse in Alaska. HGTV has renewed two of its vacation shows for second seasons, both airing in June — “Renovation Island,” about a couple remodeling a rundown resort in the Bahamas, and “Vacation House Rules,” about how to fix up your vacation rental to make it more profitable.And when Magnolia Network launches digitally on July 15 as a joint venture with Discovery Inc., it will feature a lineup (available on Discovery+ and the Magnolia app) of shows aimed at rusty vacationers, giving us a refresher on what’s out there and what goes into making a vacation rental shine. Among the on-the-road offerings are “RE(Motel),” which profiles funky roadside motels; “Van Go,” a series about Brett Lewis, who turns people’s vans into tiny mobile homes; and “Inn the Works,” which follows a young innkeeper as she fixes up a retreat in Big Bear Lake, Calif.Lindsey Kurowski, the scrappy star of “Inn the Works” on Magnolia, staining wood as she and her siblings restore a resort in Big Bear Lake, Calif.Magnolia NetworkBut even as these shows whisk us to faraway places, the focus is less on the sights we can see and more on making temporary homes away from home. As we venture out as tourists again, they aim to help us experience travel through the places we book through Airbnb or other sites.“It’s likely no accident that what resonated with us were stories of travel and possibility and wanderlust,” said Allison Page, the global president of Magnolia Network, about how so many travel shows made their way onto a network led by Chip and Joanna Gaines, the darlings of HGTV.The timing for these shows is unexpectedly fortuitous. The network was supposed to launch last October, but was delayed by the pandemic, and its cable television debut, where it will replace the DIY Network, is still on hold until January 2022. Its lineup couldn’t be more on trend, offering viewers “this fantasy that feels attainable: that they could get in their car, shed this sedentary period of life and find something beautiful,” Ms. Page said.In an email, Ms. Gaines, Magnolia’s chief creative officer, said, “I know for us, these shows have served as timely reminders of what makes life so beautiful: family, adventure, and possibility. When you hear these stories and watch how they unfold, you can’t help but want to go out and create or experience something special.”Of all the shows, “The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals” feels like the one made for this moment. The first episode was filmed in Bali in January 2020, set to the crowded, dynamic backdrop of a prepandemic Indonesia. But in the episodes that follow, mostly filmed after the pandemic began, the world feels strangely empty. Then again, who needs other people when you can stay in a 4,300-square-foot floating mansion in Miami, or a 6,000-square-foot lodge carved out of a cave in the Ozarks?The hosts, Luis D. Ortiz of “Million Dollar Listing,” YouTuber Megan Batoon and travel writer Jo Franco, explore a world on pause. They marvel at their destinations, yet they rarely encounter a hotelier, let alone another guest or local, in their travels. One episode features a luxury private-island resort in the Bahamas, a destination as opulent as you would expect for $15,000 a night. You get the feeling that this island isn’t the only place that’s deserted.On an episode about treehouses, the hosts of “The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals” stay in one on an alpaca farm in Atlanta.Netflix“We were in these middle-of-nowhere places having the time of our lives,” said Ms. Franco, 28. And maybe that’s a good thing. Our collective anxiety about late-stage pandemic travel could lead to “a really interesting shift in the way we travel now,” she said. “We can dive into the experience, we can get more secluded, we can feel private and safe.”Unlike Anthony Bourdain, who introduced a generation of viewers to rich cultures through the street food found in teeming markets and cramped cafes, this version of travel offers a vacation centered around where you stay, not what you do. Covid restrictions may be loosening, but many travelers are still looking for shelter that’s at a safe social distance.“I think a well-designed vacation rental can offer people a lot of comfort to know that something can be safe, if they are fearing Covid,” said Ms. Batoon, 30, a designer whose YouTube videos frequently focus on do-it-yourself home-improvement projects.While “The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals” is all about where to stay, shows like “Inn the Works” focus on the elbow grease involved in turning hotels into places you would actually want to visit. “Inn the Works” chronicles how Lindsey Kurowski enlists her three siblings to help her restore a historic lodge with 13 cabins near the Bear Mountain ski resort in Southern California.In the first episode, as she and her siblings discuss how to renovate the lodge, Ms. Kurowski approaches two guests as they arrive, asking for their understanding about the state of renovation. “In return, I will give you guys a discount,” she tells them. After they shrug off the construction noise and an extension cord that will run out of their room, she hugs them (the first episode was filmed pre-Covid), saying, “I’m so lucky!”The rest of the series was filmed during the pandemic, as Ms. Kurowski continued to rent cabins while a crew filmed the renovations of the four-acre property. “Maybe that isn’t my smartest idea,” Ms. Kurowski, 33, told me. “It’s not ideal to stay at a hotel that is being renovated.”Despite the mess and the pandemic, Ms. Kurowski said the hotel “has been insanely busy” over the last year, which she attributes to the stand-alone cabins that make for an ideal socially distanced destination. She has since bought a second inn, a motel in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, near where she grew up.Vacationers are looking for something different in the places they stay, and it’s not just the pandemic that is driving the shift. Instagram and home-improvement television have managed to turn even our getaways into something demanding the photogenic quality of a big reveal. Ms. Kurowski, who also produces events for corporations, sees the value of “some styling tricks” and a well-staged photo.“People are changing the way they travel, the way they book hotels, everything is different,” she said. “People want bang for their buck, they want the most amenities they can get. They want a personalized experience.”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 Theater

      National Black Theater Plans Next Act in a New Harlem High-Rise

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      The pathbreaking company plans to replace its Harlem home with a 21-story building with apartments, retail and a new theater.It was more than 50 years ago that Barbara Ann Teer rented space in a building at 125th Street and Fifth Avenue in Harlem that would serve as the home of a nascent organization called National Black Theater.The theater blossomed into an important cultural anchor, presenting productions by, and about, Black Americans when their stories rarely appeared on mainstream stages, and hosting artists including Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Nina Simone, Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou. When the building was destroyed in a fire in 1983, many feared that the theater was doomed, said Sade Lythcott, Teer’s daughter. But Teer had another idea: She decided to buy the damaged 64,000-square-foot building on Fifth Avenue, with a vision of revitalizing it and trying to use real estate to help pay for the theater’s work.Sade Lythcott, the theater’s chief executive, sees the development as a continuation of the plans that her mother, Barbara Ann Teer, made after founding the theater.Braylen Dion for The New York Times“She saw it as the next piece of this temple to Black liberation, which is ownership,” said Lythcott, the theater’s chief executive. “Ownership would allow the real estate to subsidize the art, which was a model that would disrupt the standard practice of nonprofit theater funding.”The move did not solve all their problems. There were struggles over the years, and a series of financial disputes that at one point left the theater on the brink of losing its home, but the work continued. Now National Black Theater is getting ready for its next act: It is replacing its longtime home with a 21-story building that will include a mix of housing, retail and, on floors three through five, a gleaming new home for the theater.Lythcott and other National Black Theater leaders see the $185 million project, and the partnership they are entering with developers, as a new chapter with the financial and institutional backing to allow them to live out the dream of Teer, who died in 2008: to nurture a space where Black artists can thrive, and the company can work to bring a deeper sense of racial justice to the American theater industry.“What we’re building today really has been informed in all ways by this blueprint that Dr. Teer put into place starting in 1968,” Lythcott said. “It feels like what our community of Black artists and the community of Harlem deserve.”To realize the development project, National Black Theater has partnered with a new real estate firm, Ray, which was founded by Dasha Zhukova, a Russian-American art collector and philanthropist. Also joining the project are the subsidized housing developer L + M, the architect Frida Escobedo, the firm Handel Architects, and the design firms working on National Black Theater’s space, Marvel, Charcoalblue, and Studio & Projects.The planning for the new development has come at a turning point in the theater world. With theaters closed for more than a year because of the pandemic, many institutions have been called on to turn inward and interrogate their own histories of racism and inequity, with many prominent voices calling for change when theaters reopen. It is the kind of discussion National Black Theater has been involved in for decades. This year Lythcott has advised Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on reopening the arts and, as chair for the Coalition of Theaters of Color, has spoken up about racial justice in arts budget negotiations.Before they decided to work together, Lythcott and Zhukova had to have a frank conversation early on about a high-profile misstep in Zhukova’s past.On Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 2014, an online fashion magazine published a photo of Zhukova sitting on a chair — designed by the Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard — that was constructed from a cushion arranged atop a sculpture of a partially clothed Black woman laying on her back, in some sort of bondage. Zhukova apologized for the photo, saying that using this artwork in a photo shoot was regrettable, “as it took the artwork totally out of its intended context.”Lythcott learned of this photo just before she met Zhukova for dinner for the first time — in fact she was Googling Zhukova on her phone at the restaurant before they met to discuss the development project. At the dinner, Zhukova brought up the incident first, Lythcott said, explaining that she would understand if the episode cast too much of a shadow on the project. But Lythcott wasn’t fazed by it, she said, because it was clear all that Zhukova had learned from the incident.“Perhaps that chair was the best thing that ever happened to Dasha,” Lythcott said, “because it was catalytic in expanding the lens by which she sees the world.”In an email, Zhukova said that she was “deeply sorry” for the photo and said that it had started her on a “journey of continued learning and education.”“I am so grateful that Sade sees the person I am trying to be on my continued journey toward personal growth,” she wrote.Barbara Ann Teer, center foreground, founder of National Black Theater, with the cast of one of her productions in 1970.via National Black Theater ArchivesThe new building being planned, for 2033 Fifth Avenue, is slated to include 222 units of housing, an event space and a communal living room where people might eat, work and hang out; a news release says “amenities will include health and wellness programming.”The development project is more than a decade in the making, with several false starts. Lythcott and her brother — Michael Lythcott, who is the chair of the National Black Theater’s board — see it as a realization of their mother’s dream, while recognizing that she might not have taken some of the paths they chose.“She never would have partnered with someone like Ray; she never would have had financing from Goldman Sachs,” Michael Lythcott said, noting that Teer had wanted full control over the building, and preferred to keep involvement limited to those inside the community.But it is all a means to an end that their mother energetically championed throughout her life: an “ecosystem by which Black people in particular are full-throated, full-voiced, fully rooted in their own liberation,” Sade Lythcott said.By the time construction starts this fall, theater in New York is likely to be back in full force. While the new building is going up, National Black Theater will use the Apollo Theater’s office space and two of its performance spaces. And by the time construction is slated to end, in spring 2024, National Black Theater leaders hope that the space will become a place to convene, both for art and the kind of community interaction that was sorely missed over the past year.“In the wake of this pandemic,” said Jonathan McCrory, National Black Theater’s executive artistic director, “there’s going to be a kind of psychic grief that is going to need to have a healing center.” More

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      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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      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