To find high-end furniture in New York, look up
The back staircase to the furniture showroom at Nickey-Kehoe in New York on April 29. PHOTO: ASHOK SINHA/NYTIMES
New York's new designer decor showrooms are hidden away from foot traffic, making shopping for furniture feel like visiting a speakeasy. PHOTO: ASHOK SINHA/NYTIMES
To find high-end furniture in New York, look up
NEW YORK – Thirty years ago, a New Yorker with a sharp eye and a strong back could still find and rescue an Eames chair from a midtown dumpster.
Those with greater means, and less patience, might buy marble pedestal tables and Swedish flat-woven rugs at furniture dealers, like Lin-Weinberg Gallery and Wyeth, that were wedged between ice cream shops and eyewear boutiques in the city's walkable neighbourhoods.
Recently, though, rising rents and a desire for intimacy have pushed high-end decor upstairs and out of view.
Always a treasure hunt, shopping for designer furniture in New York has become more like grabbing drinks at a speakeasy: If you know, you know.
In 2022, Mr Alan Eckstein, 39, moved his furniture showroom, Somerset House, from a storefront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn – where he could expect 300 visitors on weekends – to a cheaper warehouse on a desolate block in Long Island City, amid small residential buildings and across fro m a gated carpark.
The grandson of a decorator , Mr Eckstein got into the interior design business six years ago, amassing inventory at the Design Within Reach Outlet, at auctions and flea markets, and via Craigslist. He began using the pieces to decorate listings for local real estate brokers .
Furniture store Somerset House in Long Island City in April.
PHOTO: ASHOK SINHA/NYTIMES
Shoppers at his warehouse find his inventory displayed for sale in artful groupings. The brick walls are freshly painted ecru, and new oversize picture windows splash sunlight onto the furniture, like a 1950s coffee table with fanciful Jacques Blin tiles on top and some inevitable scuffs on its wood legs (US$8,200 or S$10,600) .
In July, Somerset House will be moving again, this time to double in size. Mr Eckstein has come to appreciate 'being off the beaten path' and has chosen an even less accessible Long Island City address he calls 'even more speakeasy'.
In lower Manhattan, Mr Nick Ozemba, 33, is a co-founder of the concept space Quarters, where you can order designer furniture or a cocktail in a hospitable environment. It is far from 'a white-box space', he says.
Indeed, the entrance on Broadway uses a fire stair, leading some who pop up to Quarters on the second floor to fear they have trespassed in a private home.
Ms Felicia Hung and Mr Nick Ozemba, are founders of Quarters, a furniture store that sells luxury furnishings and serves cocktails in a polished second-floor space on a 'rugged' block of Broadway below Canal Street in Manhattan.
PHOTO: ASHOK SINHA/NYTIMES
In 2023, Mr Ozemba rented 8,000 sq ft on what he termed a 'rugged' block south of Canal Street . Then he gut-renovated the raw loft with his Rhode Island School of Design classmate and business partner Felicia Hung, 34. They opened the fully furnished model rooms and an adjoining vest-pocket bar to the public a year ago.
'We wanted it to feel cosy and moody,' Ms Hung says. Current merchandise ranges from a Roma Heirloom Tomato-scented candle by Flamingo Estate (US$60) to a new In Common With flush-mount chandelier of fused glass and leopard wood (US$42,000).
The partners have hosted intimate parties for Loewe, Birkenstock and Tom of Finland to attract a fashionable clientele.
But running a store that looks like a rich friend's home has not been without hiccups. Guests once climbed onto a bed display. And a thief stole a decorative tiger figurine.
Near Quarters, the presence of the new Lawson-Fenning furniture showroom is announced only by the small print on the building's intercom directory. 'You really have to know where you're going,' Mr Glenn Lawson says.
He and Mr Grant Fenning, 57, opened this Manhattan outpost of their original Los Angeles showroom in a 4,500 sq ft Lafayette Street loft in February.
The new Lawson-Fenning furniture showroom is located in a loft that was once used as an apartment.
PHOTO: ASHOK SINHA/NYTIMES
'We're not hitting you over the head with design,' says Mr Lawson, 52. The loft was once used as an apartment, and its finishes looked dated. The renovation by New York interior designer Josh Greene, 45, has earth tones and rusty marble kitchen counters, a spa-like bathroom and a powder room.
Mr Lawson says the decor signals a shift in style for his company, towards the polish and panache of 1930s New York. 'We're actually looking at Art Deco chairs and lampshades with fringe,' he says. As in California, he will sell contemporary ceramics and vintage-inspired sofas off the floor .
The Temple Studio showroom in Manhattan.
PHOTO: ASHOK SINHA/NYTIMES
In the Flatiron district, an abandoned tech office was filled with desks before it became Temple Studio, which opened this spring to show fabrics and rugs from independent makers.
'You had to have your magic glasses on' to see the potential, says Ms Kate Temple Reynolds, 44, who opened the studio with Ms Amarlies Gonzalez, 48. She calls the 4,500 sq ft penthouse an art gallery for textiles. 'We wanted to be a charming, hidden spot.'
The drab building lift opens to reveal showroom walls hung with Alice Sergeant's riotous hand-printed brocade in pink and ochre. Hooks and shelves brim with saturated colour and adventurous patterns. 'We show people how to layer and combine them without clashing,' she says.
West Out East founder West Chin in the duplex furniture showroom in Manhattan.
PHOTO: ASHOK SINHA/NYTIMES
Around the corner, furniture store West Out East has a duplex loft. Mr West Chin, 56, a residential architect, was born in the Bronx, where his father was an architect of social housing.
In 2014, he opened a Long Island location for European furniture and branded it with his distinctive first name plus the local shorthand for the area, where he digs clams on the beach and has a house. The Manhattan location opened in 2021.
In the Flatiron location, the layout is curated like an apartment, making it easy to envision the pieces in a home. 'This is a duplex my clients would buy on a higher floor,' he says.
Furnishings from Living Divani, Boffi and Porro live in the second-floor loft for a year before moving to sister locations in East Hampton, New York; Miami; and Westport, Connecticut. Everything is functional and liveable, he says, for children who eat ice cream on the couch, and for their parents who drink red wine.
He flies his shop's logo over the sidewalk, on an oversized flag, but some customers venture upstairs only after their designers insist. 'The city has no idea we exist,' he says. NYTIMES
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