An 1880s tenement, reimagined in the Victorian design of the age’s upper crust
. Photo: Daniel Osborne In 1998, Brian Coleman and his partner purchased a teensy previous tenement home on West 10th Street– an ideal pied-à-terre for a couple from Seattle trying to find a place to toss down their luggage. A minimum of, that was the strategy. Coleman ended up spending a years and thousands of dollars stripping paint, sourcing antiques, and wallpapering or trompe l’oeil– ing every square inch. “You ‘d believe with a little 350-square-foot space, How much can you get in?” states Coleman, who is now selling after almost 30 years. “But there’s a lot you can do with it.”
Every living room needs a mouse with
a pizza . Image: Adriane Quinlan And Coleman did a lot. The structure dates to the 1880s, when the upper crust was embracing the Victorian aesthetic movement with its maximalist parlors packed with spindly furnishings, gilt frames, and pattern-on-pattern-on-pattern. In the living room, Coleman added gold paint to an original marble fireplace, stained wood floorings a deeper shade of brown, and took modern glass out of the window frames in favor of wavy antique panes. Crown moldings were painted a deep green, and so was wainscoting, created to frame panels of 1890s linoleum. At auction, he bought a set of gold silk curtains that had been shown at the Japanese pavilion of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, then relocated to one of Teddy Roosevelt’s workplaces, and flew in his preferred draper to fit them perfectly. Then there’s the ceiling, where a trompe l’oeil painter put in a pattern of sunbursts modeled after a Minton tile. On a corner of a built-in settee just off the fireplace, Coleman requested painted grotesques, comparable to some he had actually found in a British insane asylum, then included a reasonable painting of a mouse-size mouse consuming a couple of crumbs of pizza. “The main point was to make it enjoyable and whimsical,” says Coleman. “I am a firm follower in Victorian excess.”
The furnished living-room with Roosevelt’s drapes. Image:
William Wright A psychiatrist by profession, Coleman invested the 1990s immersed in splendorous antiques as he gradually turned his 1906 Arts and Crafts– design home in Seattle into a pseudo-Victorian, ultimately adding a turret painted with the phrase Quo Amplius Eo Amplius, or “More is More.” The home is now a regional landmark, and Coleman’s fixation became a side gig modifying Old House Journal. He has actually because written 23 books on the decorative arts– a task that has actually taken him from a French château owned by a family firm that makes the world’s finest linens to Sedona, where he’s now photographing mansions for his next book. “It’s a very dangerous occupation,” he jokes. “You see all these beautiful homes and you start wanting what they have for yourself.”
Rate: $700,000 ($1,238 in regular monthly maintenance)
Specifications: 1 bed room, 1 bath
Extras: Roof-garden access; laundry, storage and bike-parking in building
10-minute strolling radius: Julius’ bar, Rosemary’s, Citarella
Listed by: Taylor Bos, Douglas Elliman
In New york city, journeys to the Chelsea Flea showed up a 1920s stove with a trompe l’oeil green marble finish and a brass butler’s sink. They wound up in the small kitchen area, where Victorian drawer pulls and knobs elevate modern-day wood cabinets, framed by Sanderson wallpaper. The microwave is concealed by double doors framing small portraits of William Shakespeare and Lord Byron. And the ceiling isn’t pressed tin; it’s traditionally precise copper, which Coleman discovered to be too glossy. So he had it glazed with a thin sage green. “These are things you do not see at any rate point,” says his broker, Taylor Bos, who pointed to about a dozen other examples of Coleman’s compulsive details: outlets with hammered-copper plates, a sink from a Victorian schoolhouse, 1870s door hinges with teensy pagoda finials that swing available to reveal a Japanese geisha and her concubine. Above the bedroom door, a rectangle-shaped glass transom window centers on a rondelle of stained glass carved to show a finch on a branch. And then Bos jiggles a brass pole and the window lifts open like magic– or, rather, like transom windows were designed to turn open, before we sealed them shut or pulled them out totally.
Trips of the little space have lasted as long as 45 minutes. “The longer you’re here, the more you pick up on things,” states Bos. En route out, he reveals an antique peephole, which swings to the side to expose a trompe l’oeil eye staring back, then closes the door and shows how to use the doorbell. It twists, like a type in a lock, and makes a bell-like clang. “I simply love that,” he states.
The Irish phrase “May The Hinges of Friendship Never Rust “is painted around the living-room ceiling in a style meant to imitate the Godfrey Sykes tiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s dining hall. Picture: Daniel Osborne
The windows between rooms are a feature of tenements, where proprietors were required to enhance air flow. The system had the transom windows and original walls when Coleman first saw it– a rarity. Image: Daniel Osborne
The ceiling is pushed copper with a green glaze. The 1920s range was brought back and now has a working gas range and electric oven. The painted glass portraying Shakespeare and Byron conceals a microwave. Photo: Daniel Osborne
< img data-src="https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/52e/36d/f9d871d5e01c68dd4123d47b5024724183-019dd9ac-c60a-73ae-a9c9-719df1bf83bd.rvertical.w570.jpg" width=" 570 "height= "712"src ="https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/52e/36d/f9d871d5e01c68dd4123d47b5024724183-019dd9ac-c60a-73ae-a9c9-719df1bf83bd.rvertical.w570.jpg"/ > A built-in bench designed on one that Coleman saw in a museum program of decorative arts from the Arts and Crafts movement, which overlaps with the Victorian visual movement. Photo: Daniel Osborne
The bedroom. Coleman changed a modern accordion door with an arched antique door
. Photo: Daniel Osborne Paintings by the artist Candace Cole fill the back bedroom walls and the door of the restroom. The Victorians considered storks to be signs of good luck, Coleman says, and put them throughout. Image: Daniel Osborne
The 1870s door hinge to the restroom shows a scene from Japan and has finials sculpted to appear like spinning pagodas. Photo: Adriane Quinlan
Victorian tile of sunflowers in the shower stall are surrounded by hand-cut mosaic, influenced by the city’s subway stations. “However a tidy train station,” he states. Image: Daniel Osborne
< img data-src ="https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/adb/b9b/df910cda9c24d208d00aa4f0df4f9ef78c-019dd9ac-c6c5-7f53-943f-bfc1e48cf03b.rvertical.w570.jpg"width="570"height="712"src ="https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/adb/b9b/df910cda9c24d208d00aa4f0df4f9ef78c-019dd9ac-c6c5-7f53-943f-bfc1e48cf03b.rvertical.w570.jpg"/ > A schoolhouse sink developed for a tiny corner and an antique corner cabinet. Photo 
: Daniel Osborne 
Sanderson wallpaper in the kitchen. Image: Adriane Quinlan Gold-leaf foil backs a glass cabinet with painted pictures of William Shakespeare and Lord Byron and antique hardware. It conceals a microwave. Image: Adriane Quinlan
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