Photo: Joshua McHugh
Loring McAlpin had been living in a bright sixth-floor loft on Great Jones Street for more than 20 years when a building went up next door that blocked his view. “I had the whole apartment, like six windows, and I lost all that wonderful east light,” he says. The artist, activist, and film producer saw it as a chance to do something he’d always wanted to with the space upstairs, part of which he owned.
“I thought, Oh, I can finally renovate the top floor, which will allow me to have skylights and more western light and maybe even a garden,” he says. And so, in 2013, he began a decadelong renovation effort with the architect David Bers, whose clients have included Lena Dunham and Isaac Mizrahi.
“It was a crazy duplex originally, one of those rambling lofts that defines New York,” Bers says. The two floors had been split in half by the former owner, who lived on part of the sixth floor on the south side and part of the seventh floor on the north side. The upstairs and downstairs of each apartment were connected by interior staircases, “kind of like a scissor,” Bers adds. He demolished the stairs and separated the floors at the request of McAlpin, who had last renovated in 1992 with the help of a young Bill Sofield, then a few years away from opening his own acclaimed architecture practice.
McAlpin sold the downstairs earlier this year. He kept the seventh floor. There, Bers designed an open kitchen and set a Japanese-style tub and shower in the bedroom.
The garden required serious structural work, including supports to allow large trees to be planted and a water feature. McAlpin finally got his outdoor space and filled it with perennials, shrubs, and grasses. To get there, Bers installed a staircase behind the new living-room fireplace. “The idea was that you would climb it like a boulder,” he says. “You ascend and then you’re in the treetops.”
The Bath “I saw this room as a conservatory or orangery,” says Bers, who designed it as part of the bedroom. “We used the same cement tile throughout, but we used it monochromatically, like an Arts and Crafts tile.”
Photo: Joshua McHugh
Photo: Joshua McHugh
The Dining Area The vase collection includes pieces by Palshus, Ted Muehling, Robert Glück, the Natzlers, and the Owens family of Jugtown Pottery. The DUOS 36 Double Pull pendant lights are by Florian Schulz. The table is by Chris Lehrecke.
Photo: Joshua McHugh
The Pottery Among the vases are pieces by artisans from Jugtown Pottery, which was collected by McAlpin’s great-grandmother in the 1920s (and by his grandparents subsequently).
Photo: Joshua McHugh
The Living Room “The hearth is the centerpiece of the place. It grounds the whole loft,” says Bers. The Akari lantern is by Isamu Noguchi. On the mantel are works by Muehling. “The loft represents decades of assembling, scavenging, and collecting,” McAlpin says.
Photo: Joshua McHugh
The Breakfast Area The adjacent abstract painting is by Angela Dufresne. The sculpture, “Four-Faced Liar,” is by Dorothy Cross, “one of my oldest and best friends,” McAlpin says. “The Captain’s Chair by Wharton Esherick is perhaps my favorite piece of furniture.”
Photo: Joshua McHugh
