Emporium Design Adds Elegance to a New York Loft
While best known for a slew of a high-profile cocktail hotspots such as Boulton & Watt, Drexler’s, and the Blind Barber, New York’s Emporium Design is perhaps less lauded for their residential work. But founders Robert Stansell and Timothy Welsh are hoping to change that with their meticulous Horatio Loft in Manhattan’s West Village.
Jay Livingston, chief marketing officer of BarkBox, enlisted the duo after seeing their recently defunct cult-fave Carson Street Clothiers boutique in SoHo. Having purchased a 1,300-square-foot space in a century-old warehouse with a dated renovation, Livingtson wanted to combine the raw, authentic look of both Carson Street and the original prerenovation warehouse with an open, modular configuration and contemporary amenities.
Emporium began by “gutting the loft down to the studs,” Stansell says. They kept the original brick walls unearthed during demolition, while adding wirebrushed wooden flooring, and the Hudson Company ceiling beams salvaged from an upstate barn.
With the elevator opening onto an original steel and hand-blown glass sidewalk vault cover found covered in concrete in the buildings cellar, the designers demarcated the space with a central corridor beyond a custom blackened steel framed bench and coat rack unit. Sliding barn doors open or close to create an axis among the loft’s two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The corridor then culminates in an open living and kitchen area.
Those contemporary amenities are especially prevalent in two bathrooms, where Waterworks fixtures and heavily veined Calacatta gold marble meets antiqued brass detailing or distressed subway tile, raw concrete, and more blackened steel.
The living and kitchen area add industrial and mid-century touches to the mix with Urban Electric LED pendant fixtures hanging above the island’s Restoration Hardware stools, which in turn lead to reupholstered Jens Risom lounge chairs and a vintage brick fireplace.
“It was difficult to satisfy Jay’s ambitious program in a not-so-huge footprint,” Welsh concludes. “But we had a lot of fun with this project.”
