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"View Slideshow\n\nFor years New York interior designer Pamela Banker and her husband, David, knew exactly how they wanted to live: in a large country house close to the city, with a pied-\u00E0-terre in Manhattan. But things didn&amp;#39;t quite turn out as planned. Instead, between work and friends, the city kept them in its thrall, while their &amp;quot;wondrous old carriage house&amp;quot; in the country was too often empty\u2014&amp;quot;just waiting for us,&amp;quot; as Bank-er puts it.\n\nSo she and her husband, who&amp;#39;s a financial adviser, faced up to the fact that their lives were, after all, city lives. They sold the big place and bought a cottage for occasional weekends instead. In New York, they set out to acquire more space. As a designer, Banker knew what she was after: &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#39;t want to buy an apartment that had been fixed up and glitzed up, not in my taste. I loved the idea of buying something that needed help anyway, regardless of taste.&amp;quot;\n\nWhat needed help\u2014but not dramatically\u2014was a seven-room, 2,200-square-foot residence on New York&amp;#39;s Sutton Place. The prewar building had all the right credentials, having been designed in the late 1920s by Rosario Candela. &amp;quot;The good news was Candela&amp;#39;s architectural detail,&amp;quot; Banker says. &amp;quot;There were good doors, good floors, good hardware and good, solid plaster construction. And the light is wonderful\u2014every room has a view, which is unusual for a New York apartment.&amp;quot;\n\nHer mandate was simple: &amp;quot;to keep the good old bones, to only enhance the architectural detail and to do away with anything extraneous, without losing the period feeling.&amp;quot; She reconceived the apartment herself, working closely with a trusted contractor. Making the job easier was the fact that little renovation work had been done to it over the years; the sole exception was the acid-green kitchen, which had last been revamped in the 1970s, Banker guessed.\n\nBanker once described her design work as &amp;quot;a classical, historical approach to contemporary, comfortable living,&amp;quot; a description that still applies. For a number of years she ran her own firm in New York; she then spent four years at Mc Millen before joining Parish-Hadley Associates as executive vice-president. &amp;quot;Albert Hadley called me after Mrs. Parish died and said, Okay, kid, it&amp;#39;s time to come with me,&amp;#39;&amp;quot; Banker reports. &amp;quot;In the decorating world he&amp;#39;s sort of the great guru, so, of course, I went.&amp;quot; In September of last year, though, after Hadley announced plans to retire and close his firm, she decided to revive her own, and she now heads up Pamela Banker Associates.\n\nFor her residence, Banker created rooms with a strong identity, developed through color and theme. Starting with the elegant, silvery entrance hall, each room has the capacity to surprise. And the rooms&amp;#39; sheer inventiveness also extends to their functionality. Almost every one seems to have many purposes, from the kitchen/breakfast room to a guest bedroom/dressing area/study.\n\nIn the living room, where no major construction was undertaken, Banker opted for a Regency mood; as in that period, many of the room&amp;#39;s pieces have a gentle whimsy. (The era is also evoked by the contemporary Regency-inspired mantelpiece, which replaced one that Banker describes as a &amp;quot;very-not-great Louis XV&amp;quot; reproduction.) Complementing these items are some Asian touches, including a matching pair of Ming figurines.\n\nTen nineteenth-century Japanese paintings of birds of prey project a minimalist quality in spite of their four-foot scale. &amp;quot;I think they&amp;#39;re very tranquil,&amp;quot; Banker says. &amp;quot;Especially in a room where you want things to be all of a piece. You don&amp;#39;t want things to jump out and hit you.&amp;quot;\n\nOne thing that does surprise is the room&amp;#39;s canvas floor cloth. Banker smiles as she recalls the startled expressions visitors assume when they first step onto its pile-free surface. She came up with the idea for purely practical reasons. &amp;quot;I had a budget that I was going through very fast. I suddenly remembered these eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century floorcoverings.&amp;quot; Working with Diana Cook Reed\u2014&amp;quot;one of my favorite decorative artists&amp;quot;\u2014Banker scoured books on Regency design for a suitable pattern and coloration. She chose a pale palette for the cloth, in keeping with the room&amp;#39;s light fabrics and ivory-lacquered walls.\n\nTo step from this space into its vibrant, Chinese-ed neighbor\u2014a combination dining room and library\u2014is to feel that you&amp;#39;ve left one world and entered another. Banker removed two windows in the room to heighten its almost hermetic atmosphere. &amp;quot;I wanted it to be peaceful,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;There were two windows facing north, which I closed up because it was just too busy.&amp;quot; The consequent loss of light seemed incidental, since the room still has a wide window facing west. Like the living room, the space has an Eastern cast. Several elements in it come from India, including a bright red cloth painting that depicts the life of the Hindu god Krishna. Two prints of a temple at Deogarh, in Bihar, &amp;quot;carry out the Indian theme,&amp;quot; she says.\n\nShe came upon a couple of the dining chairs that Albert Hadley designed for his partner, Sister Parish, in the Parish-Hadley warehouse, and she so admired their simple lines that she had eight more made to match. Hadley has had an enormous effect on her career. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve been greatly influenced by Albert,&amp;quot; Banker avers. &amp;quot;In my years with him, I began to see things as he does, through his eyes. I&amp;#39;m definitely a better decorator because of him.&amp;quot;\n\nPerhaps the most dramatic transformation took place in the kitchen. The key to its metamorphosis, Banker realized, was right before her eyes. &amp;quot;The lower steel cabinets were there. I&amp;#39;d always wanted to do a steel kitchen, and all I had to do was get the upper cabinets made and put in steel appliances.&amp;quot; Granite-and-steel counters were also added, as was a new floor. To avoid major construction, she kept the plumbing and wiring as they were, leaving the room&amp;#39;s configuration unchanged.\n\nThere, as throughout the apartment, windows were replaced with tradition-al paned ones &amp;quot;to conform to the rest of the fa\u00E7ade.&amp;quot; (They afford a wonderfully modernistic-seeming view of the Queensboro Bridge. &amp;quot;I consider the bridge my sculpture,&amp;quot; Banker says.) In a wing off the kitchen, an intricate warren of tiny rooms was entirely reconstructed, yielding a new guest bedroom, bath and laundry area.\n\n&amp;quot;This is where I completely changed things,&amp;quot; Banker says of the master bedroom, which she jokingly calls &amp;quot;my command post,&amp;quot; since she fields business calls in it from almost the minute she&amp;#39;s awake. With a view to expanding the room&amp;#39;s dressing area, she lengthened a hallway, then carved out a new entrance. With the square footage gained, she fashioned a dressing area, consisting of a hanging closet, a dressing closet and a bath.\n\nThe bed was positioned to catch the best view of the East River, with its passing tugboats and, in the distance, the low buildings of Queens. &amp;quot;I love to wake up to this,&amp;quot; says Pamela Banker, a lifelong resident of the Upper East Side, for whom Sutton Place once seemed to be at the edge of the earth. &amp;quot;Having the water in one&amp;#39;s life is terrific,&amp;quot; she adds. &amp;quot;That morning sun glittering on the water is just the prettiest thing.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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