A renovation 47 years in the making—and a mother-son dream team

Inside cookbook author Dorie Greenspan's Upper West Side apartment

Five decades is a long time to call anywhere home—whether that's a city, a house, or an apartment. But New York City has a way of making days feel like hours and years feel like months; all of a sudden, the buildings across the street seem new (they probably are), the restaurants may have switched ownership (definitely), and the soles on those once-new shoes have worn out.

For prolific award-winning cookbook author Dorie Greenspan, and her husband Michael, a chance encounter in 1971 led to the Upper West Side apartment that has anchored the couple in the city—and been the place they've reinvented, lived in, and loved over the past 47 years.

Dorie and and her son Josh, of Studio 639, who redesigned the apartment.

The city, of course, was a very different place in the '70s—except for a few things that never seem to change: "We were looking all around in the West Village and [found] nothing we could afford," Dorie says. On the way for dinner at her cousin's apartment on the Upper West Side, Dorie, on a whim, asked a man in front of a building across the street if there were any apartments available inside—and, to her delight, there was one, on the seventh floor.

She and Michael saw it the next week and fell in love with it—but there was a small hitch: it was for sale, not for rent. For Dorie, this was a leap; she came from an itinerant Brooklyn family, and felt that two bedrooms were more than luxurious. She recalls Michael assuring her that it was "the kind of apartment you could live in for a long time." So they made a gamble, with the help of both of their parents.

"We were leaving for Europe, we left money with a lawyer we had met, and said, 'we hope you can buy us this apartment,'" Dorie explains. Off they went, and when they returned, her parents picked them up with news. "They said, 'well, you've got the apartment, but not the one you looked at,'" she says. They ended up with an apartment on the 15th floor which was in a somewhat different condition than the one on the seventh.

A vintage Ward Bennett for Lehigh sofa, upholstered in Maharam fabric and purchased at Black & Gold in San Francisco, sits next to a Callimaco floor lamp by Ettore Sottsass for Artemide. Three works on paper by Hernandez & Fernandez from Galerie Victor Sfez in Paris and a vintage 1929 French advertisement for Nitrolian by Cappiello hang on the walls.

"It was an absolute wreck," Dorie laments. "The walls were peeling, the paint was coming down from the ceiling in huge curls, and the kitchen hadn't been touched since the building had been built in 1929." But it was theirs, she says, and they were daunted, but excited. "We were moving into a big apartment in Manhattan, filled with light and possibility."

However, they needed to figure out. An architect they had known while living in Connecticut introduced them to designer Norman Diekman, who in his life worked for Phillip Johnson, Lee Pomeroy, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, and Ward Bennett. They couldn't afford his work, so they improvised. "We ended up working together over a very long period of time, during which I made a lot of dinners, he made some sketches, and Michael built what he sketched," Dorie says, noting that the room that is now her office was his workshop—and where he kept a radial arm saw. "He built the butcher block counter [that's] still in the kitchen. He knocked down walls. He lowered the ceiling in the hallway where you come in."

In the hallway, which is painted with Farrow & Ball Babouche, lighted coves in the ceiling add a bit of drama.

In the second bedroom, which is painted in Benjamin Moore Harbor Gray, a vintage Onos 55 counter balance pendant by Florian Schulz hangs above a custom black-walnut bed. Atop the bed is a blanket by Area Home and linen sheets from Restoration Hardware. A 1979 lithograph by Mel Bochner hangs in the foreground. Marble-and-rebar side tables by Philippe Starck (designed in the '80s for the Paramount Hotel) flank the bed.

When the couple's son, Josh, was born, they didn't stop working on the apartment; they continued to tweak it as he grew. For example, a formal dining room was split up by a glass wall, and this new space became Josh's first bedroom, then evolved into a reading room, and, later, a TV room.

Fast-forward to Josh's return to the city from college, and the apartment was regularly empty, as Michael was no longer operating his business from home, and Dorie was spending more time at their home in Connecticut (the couple also spends a significant portion of the year in Paris).

The apartment had been spare but warm and welcoming "in the eight years my parents lived there before I was born," Josh says. But over time, it had become a hodgepodge, changing as needed and as the couple could afford more. Then, Dorie and Josh started a cookie business, Beurre & Sel, in Essex Market, and the home became a de facto storage unit and mail room. By this time, Josh was living downtown, and the apartment was being used sparingly.

In Dorie's memento-filled office, an early George Nakashima Straight Chair is joined by Vintage "Formosa" perpetual wall calendars by Enzo Mari for Danese on the wall (right).

The renovated kitchen, painted in several shades of white and gray from Benjamin Moore, includes a butcher-block counter built by Michael in the couple's first years in the apartment, as well as wood-and-mirrored glass cabinets he fashioned. The sink fixture is from Grohe, and a 1979 whisk sculpture by Curtis Jere leans against the wall in a corner (right).

The dining room, painted in Benjamin Moore Winter Gates, is anchored by a vintage Paul Evans table for Directional that Dorie and Michael purchased in the '70s. Vintage Marcel Breuer Cesca chairs assemble beneath a vintage 1930s French pendant the couple transported from their former Paris apartment. A 1978 work on paper by Daniel Brush hangs on the wall.

"It had ceased to be a full-time home, and so it wasn't really being treated like a full home," Josh explains. But once the cookie business closed in 2013, Josh spent his time healing from an Achilles tendon tear by getting into designing interiors. He now operates as Studio 639.

Luckily, there was a project waiting just for him, one he had a lot of history with already. After all the packing peanuts, plastic tubes, and cartons in the space had been removed, Josh says, they could finally see the old apartment again. Dorie wanted to spend more time in New York, in a space she could "live in and work in and love again."

A portion of the formal dining room was walled off with glass and reinvented over time for different uses. Today, it houses a vintage sofa by Ward Bennett for Brickell upholstered in Maharam fabric, a Noguchi Table, a vintage floor lamp by Raymor, and two 1966 works on paper by Arthur Aeschbacher. A Rachel Comey blanket is draped over the sofa's back.

One of the renovated bathrooms sports a sink by Villeroy & Boch, fixtures by California Faucets, and a custom-designed mirror by Josh and built by Michael.

"I've known this designer for a very long time!" Dorie says, laughing. "I think this must have been hard, because [Josh] knew the apartment so well and he knew the 'client' so well." Josh also had to reconcile what he saw as his vision for the apartment with what his parents loved about it. Another factor was the couple's age, which they hadn't needed to consider when planning their initial renovations in the '70s.

For Josh, hearing his parents talk about the apartment in the '70s was at odds from what he recalls growing up. "We found some old black-and-white photos of the apartment, [and] some of the drawings that Norman had made," Josh explains. "It was very different than the apartment that I remember."

He decided that since his parents had such great memories of the space, that he wanted to mine those memories for the new design. Dorie recalled a calm, spare space that was warm and welcoming, always filled with friends for dinner or drinks.

"It was very touching to my husband and me to know that Joshua wanted to, in a sense, give us back our apartment, the one that we had loved," Dorie remarks. "There was this hope that the apartment would return to being a gathering place as it was before."

Light pours into the bedroom, which is painted in Benjamin Moore White Dove. A vintage Gerald Thurston for Lightolier light—bought at Harvey's on Beverly in LA—hangs in the center of the room. The oak built-ins along the south-facing wall (left) were made to match the built-ins along the east-facing wall (at right).

Blankets from Area Home and sheets from Brooklinen grace the bed, and vintage Jacques Bliny sconces bought at a flea market in Paris flank a 1970s lithograph by Zao-Wou Ki. The floors throughout the home are original and have been refinished in a custom mixed Monocoat.

They started work in the summer of 2016 and finished in the spring of 2017. A platform that had extended from the living room to the bedroom was chopped up, one portion used in the master bedroom as a dedicated area for the bed and another part cut to fit into half of the living room.

The couple hung onto meaningful portions of rooms—like that butcher block Michael had built so many years back and the mirrored kitchen cabinets he fashioned—while bringing the rest of the kitchen to a place that was more contemporary and functional for Dorie's work. They renovated two bathrooms, one nearly from scratch, and added lighting to the arched ceiling in the bright-yellow hallway (which once had a drop ceiling; that had to go).

As for the furnishings, Dorie and Michael had accumulated various pieces over time that were touchestones to them, and Josh wanted to figure out how to honor and complement them with new pieces they brought in. A vintage Paul Evans table for Directional that Dorie and Michael purchased in the '70s stayed, as did a lithograph by Zao-Wou Ki. Josh found vintage items to complete each room's refreshed look at auction, on eBay, at flea markets, or at vintage stores, like the Philippe Starck-designed side tables, maroon Knoll Platner chairs, and a sofa designed by Ward Bennett.

"Whenever I open the door now when coming home, [the redesign] makes me feel happy to be here," says Dorie. "It feels new, and yet so much like home," she adds. "[Josh] managed to do this wonderful knit, holding onto what was important to us—and gently moving us into to this new space."