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"View Slideshow\n\nCollectors of Louis XIV and XV furniture, Candice and Steven Stark have a reverence for history. It's part of what attracted them to the Manhattan pied-a\u0300-terre they bought several years ago in a landmark 1920s building on Park Avenue. But despite its refined bones, the 3,500-square-foot apartment was so tattered and out-of-date that the couple had little choice but to gut it completely. Dusky murals darkened the entrance gallery, peeling paint littered the dressing room, a curvaceous pink bed platform in the master bedroom seemed irredeemably stuck in the Dynasty era, and in the kitchen, cardboard affixed with duct tape blocked an air-conditioner slot. \"The place was falling apart,\" Candice recalls. \"Right away I said, \u2018Rip down this wall and that wall! Punch up the ceilings!'\"\n\nIn truth the Starks had been looking for a wreck, a place they could renovate and make their own since their three children were grown. Candice coveted a downtown loft. Steven preferred to be on the Upper East Side, within walking distance of the offices of Stark, the carpet, fabric, furniture, and wall-covering company where he is president and which his father launched in 1938. The pair found their compromise in the Park Avenue apartment: It was uptown, but its capacious, woebegone rooms made the space ripe for a youthful, airy makeover.\n\nWith that program in mind, the Starks turned to Manhattan designer Trisha Reger, who has collaborated with them on a number of projects over the past 25 years, including their primary residence, a 20,000-square-foot French-style house in New Jersey.\n\nThe apartment's alterations were extensive, but care was taken to largely preserve the floor plan, which consists of public and private zones separated by the entrance gallery. \"Every decision was made to amplify the sense of space,\" the designer says. Ceilings were raised to ten and a half feet, as Candice requested, revealing awkwardly placed structural beams that Reger cleverly blended into handsomely configured coffers. Doors were heightened and aligned with windows, so natural light could flow deep into the rooms. Reger also installed triple-glazed windows, which Steven calls the renovation's smartest improvement. \"We're on the second floor,\" he explains, \"but we don't hear any noise from the street, even in our bedroom.\"\n\nReger's most radical move was to combine the formal living and dining rooms\u2014which previously had separate double-door entrances off the gallery\u2014into one sweeping expanse. She jettisoned the living room's 18th-century-style marble mantel in favor of a custom-made limestone replacement with an Art Moderne profile. Accented by a piercingly blue canvas by abstract painter George Chaplin, a propeller-like David Weeks Studio ceiling fixture, and antique and modern furniture, the space has the \"hip feel of a cocktail lounge,\" says Reger. \"The Starks can have a dinner for 16 or a party for 100 here.\"\n\nBecause the apartment represented a new chapter in their lives, the Starks wanted the interiors to be dramatically different from those in their Francophile New Jersey mansion and their much more casual Hamptons beach house. \"My concept was blond and platinum,\" Candice says. \"I didn't want color, but I wanted shimmer and shine.\" Adds her husband, \"We wanted the place to have a younger spirit, the look of today.\"\n\nBy layering sumptuous textures and materials\u2014velvet, mink, and leather among them\u2014in a muted palette of creams, taupes, and grays, Reger created an atmosphere that is unabashedly chic yet unexpectedly cozy. A minimalist work on paper by Donald Sultan meets a rococo console in the entrance gallery, and a rippling gold wall sculpture by Aldo Chaparro faces a pair of Louis XV gilt-wood chairs in the living area. \"The mix of old and new was really important to us,\" Candice says. \"When you have antiques with contemporary art, you get a feeling of warmth.\"\n\nSerendipity determined the scheme for the master bedroom. While stripping the walls' pink-moire\u0301 fabric, Reger discovered two windows that the previous resident had concealed in order to accommodate a grandiose headboard. Inspired, designer and clients reclaimed the windows and placed the bed in the middle of the room like an elegant isle. Three of the walls around it are given over to closets paneled with Ultrasuede.\n\nSince the Stark apartment would be used frequently for entertaining as well as for charitable events, special attention was lavished on the powder room and the kitchen. The former is a veritable jewel box, from the Swarovski crystal\u2013encrusted sconces to a privacy curtain composed of sparkling links of hand-blown glass. The kitchen has the same cool vibe, its rift-cut-oak cabinetry set off by a white-glass-top island that doubles as a breakfast table. \"We designed this room with caterers in mind, so there's plenty of counter space,\" Candice notes.\n\nMost of the time, however, the pied-a\u0300-terre operates as a romantic refuge for two. \"This is our sanctuary,\" Candice says. \"I could happily live here full-time.\"**\n\nDesign Wisdom*\n\n Open Up:* By knocking down the wall between the living and dining rooms, Reger established a multipurpose great room capable of accommodating small dinners or large cocktail parties.\n\nElevate: Raising door headers gives the illusion of higher ceilings.\n\nCome Clean: The snap, crackle, and pop of wood-burning fireplaces may be romantic, but \"gas is so much cleaner,\" says Reger, who retrofitted the apartment's fireplaces to reduce mess and maintenance.\n\nMaximize Space: Adding floor-to-ceiling built-in closets allowed the master bedroom to do double duty as a dressing room.\n\nCreate a Sanctuary: Installing triple-glazed windows practically eliminated outside noise.\n\nGet Tech-Savvy: A state-of-the-art Sonos stereo system picks up any radio station in the world via Wi-Fi and uses wireless speakers. \"It will make everything else obsolete,\" Steven predicts.\n\nView the Starks' gorgeous New York renovation."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/trisha-reger-steven-stark-manhattan-apartment-renovation-article>