Inside a Gilded Age Town House With a Modern Edge

In the living room, paneling painted in Farrow & Ball’s Schoolhouse White proves just how much a paint color can shift depending on its context, as here, it appears as a creamy yellow. Johansen added a layer of limewash, then brought in an artist to apply a hand-painted strié faux wood grain finish, adding subtle depth and texture. Still, the showstopper here is the undulating Landscape Sofa by Nina Edwards Anker for Dune, custom upholstered in ultrasuede. “I was always drawn to that piece, even before this project,” Johansen says. “It has that sculptural quality—you walk in and it’s arresting.”

“The clients always wanted to have a live edge table [in the house],” says Johansen. Instead of buying one to fit the bill the designer wanted a challenge, so he created a custom dining table for the kitchen that has a live edge and bowed legs. Fernando Mendes dining chairs surround the table. The horizontal wall sculpture is by John Wigmore.

The wife wanted her children to experience a traditional Japanese kitchen—“easier said than done,” Johansen admits—but he was committed to honoring the spirit of the request. After consulting colleagues with expertise in Japanese design, one detail stood out: sourcing slow-growth pine, prized for its tight grain. “Because those pines grow slower,” Johansen explains, “they have this very consistent, buttery effect.”

The essence of wabi-sabi runs throughout the kitchen. The island, made of black-and-white-streaked marble, was acid-sandblasted to create a soft, tactile texture. “It forms a natural topography,” he says. “When you run your hands over it, there’s a lot of movement.” The floors also offer a textural, imperfect experience—each plank features hand-carved channels.

Johansen describes the foyer as a “living space”—a modular, gallery-like room that can be rearranged. The designer worked with Paola Saracino Fendi, senior advisor at Schwartzman&.

Art: © Sarah Cunningham

Perhaps the most unexpected space in the home is the foyer, where Johansen and the clients agreed that a traditional entryway with a marble floor and center table was too run-of-the-mill. Instead, Johansen fashioned a modular space with a gallery-like feel: “It has an organic simplicity to it.” The designer worked with art advisor Paola Saracino Fendi in sourcing pieces to fit the area and entire home.

Overall, the house has a certain quietness to it, an effect Johansen was after. “We could have made this a beautiful, fancy home that you see all the time,” the designer mused, “but I wanted it to feel haunting—[that when you] walk into this house, you feel like it’s strange, but beautiful. It’s pushing you to think, but it’s also inviting.”