Inside Ward Bennett’s New York Apartment
Interior designer, Ward Bennett has been recognized as one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. Many believe his work defined Modernism. His notable clientele included David Rockefeller, Tiffany & Co., Chase Manhattan Bank and many others.
Today we’re discussing his remarkable apartment in the Dakota Building. Bennett himself referred to the building as a “Manhattan A-frame.” The historic Dakota was constructed between 1880 and 1884 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Bennett’s renovation of the 1884 building began by purchasing a series of maids rooms in 1962. The rooms were located at the very top of the building directly beneath the roof. Bennett gutted one of the spaces while the rest were centered around an airshaft.
The buildings flagpole became a primary concern as it ran and interfered through his office, proving to be an obstacle that Bennett would geniously tackle. He was able to work around this feature by anchoring a circular table in the center of the space.
From The Times Print Archive (1996):
“The designer, Ward Bennett, calls it a Manhattan A-frame, and indeed it does resemble that style of vacation house with its characteristically steep-pitched roof. But rather than clinging to a mountainside near a ski resort, this one-room A-frame is perched atop the Dakota, one of New York's most celebrated apartment houses, and its views are not pristine wildernesses and moonlit landscapes but the woods and meadows of Central Park and the skyline of Manhattan.
The sheer, clean lines of this modern structure strike a bold contrast to the filigreed Dakota, whose 19th-century exterior was described by one architectural critic as ''an elaborate, eclectic composition, sort of a mix of Germanic, chateauesque and English Victorian details.'' But the stark A-frame is not esthetically offensive or jarring, for it is incorporated into a soaring, two-story gable of the same shape. Originally used for storage, the gable is flanked by the water tanks used to run the building's hydraulic elevators.
Mr. Bennett, a designer acclaimed for his spare, clean-lined, yet meticulously detailed interiors, also lives in the Dakota. It was his own apartment, a remodeled tower adjacent to the gable, that inspired his neighbors, a couple who are both professionals in the art world and who own an apartment on the Dakota's top floor directly below the gable, to think of expanding upward when they decided they needed a retreat where they could consolidate their ever-expanding collections of art, artifacts and books.
They asked Mr. Bennett if he would design for them a room in the manner of his own apartment - providing that they were allowed to purchase the gable in the cooperative building. He agreed, the gable was duly purchased, and an aperture was created to allow access from the lower floor. Today a spiral staircase connects the modern 13-foot-by-15-foot room to the more traditionally decorated apartment below.
Linking the apartment with its new addition was the easiest structural challenge that Mr. Bennett faced. In order to take full advantage of the view, the sloping south wall of the steel-framed, masonry gable was replaced with an anodized, aluminum-framed glass wall. And because the structure is on the windswept and sun-baked roof, it had to be outfitted with auxiliary heating and airconditioning, with the mechanical equipment carefully concealed.
Once these obstacles were overcome and the structure completed, Mr. Bennett permanently divided the small room into two spaces and furnished them primarily with leather-and-steel furniture of his own design. The conversation area is next to the glass wall. On the other side of the room, where a book-lined wall dominates, there is a large marble-topped table supported by a fixed stainless-steel column. The kid leather, steel-framed chairs surrounding it are lower than the usual dining height, and the table is correspondingly 26 1/2 inches high, a height that Mr. Bennett finds ideal for dining or relaxing.
The lighting for the white room is provided by movable, matte-black quartz fixtures affixed to structural elements. The lights are on a rheostat, or dimmer, and can be turned up for reading or down for relaxing in the evening light. Says Mr. Bennett: ''The main objective for the night lighting was to get the interior light to match the outside city light. The lights of Central Park are also quartz and they reflect on the white walls. The idea was to balance the two light sources in order to produce a candlelit effect.''
The space is completed with the display of the owners' extensive collection of museum-quality Indian art and artifacts. For those who appreciate irony, the venerable Dakota's A-frame seems just the right place to house such a collection, for the Dakota's unlikely moniker springs from from the fact that, when the building was erected in 1884, its location was so far uptown on Manhattan's West Side that it might as well have been in the Indian territories.”
Featured in INTERIOR VIEWS | Erica Brown ©1980
DISCLAIMER: THE MILLIE VINTAGE DOES NOT OWN ANY RIGHTS TO THESE PHOTOS. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL IMAGES AND COPYRIGHT BELONGS TO THE ORIGINAL OWNERS. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.
MORE LIKE THIS
FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM
