Designers sometimes compare renovating a historic home to searching for buried treasure. They scan interiors for special architectural details hidden beneath old paint and carpets. In a Manhattan brownstone, this metaphor became literal.
The Upper West Side Gothic townhouse in question was originally built as a church in the 1890s. When the new residents, a couple with two children, reached out to designer Jenna Chused of Chused & Co. on Instagram, they were looking for a quick update on a compressed timeline: three months, start to finish. They wanted to open up the space to make it suitable for hosting large dinner parties without creating a cave during the family meal.
Chused quickly set about finding and ordering furniture before moving on to the actual house. When she and her team began lifting the painted wood floorboards in the entryway to replace them, they were confronted with a surprise: a multicolored mosaic that had been hidden and in good condition for countless years. She decided to run with it.
“It was there when we originally built it, and we polished it and it’s beautiful,” Chused says. And as if by magic, the furniture (mainly antique Italian) that Chused had already ordered matched the mosaic perfectly.
The entrance area with the newly exposed floor mosaic.
The dining room required less chance and more complicated planning. Chused had to ensure that the space was suitable for both intimate dinners and large events. Part of her solution included a dining table with custom add-ons—a piece that eventually became the designer's favorite in her home. She bought a 1940s Paolo Buffa dining table in Italy that seated eight people. Then Chused designed two side tables from the same wood – for large parties they fit perfectly into the dining table and expand it to 16 seats.
“I always love it when I design a piece of furniture that has multiple uses,” says Chused. “Design is about solving problems. That's one part I love about the process.”
The dining room with two custom side tables (pictured right) that fit into and extend the main table.
Above the table, Chused looked for the right lighting setup to match the room's high ceilings. She found Max Ingrand's Dahlia chandelier for Fontana Arte at auction, got it for less than the standard price and stayed within the client's budget. “I wanted it to be super luxurious, so I looked for some of these pieces in unknown places,” says Chused.
The emerald green that Chused and the client chose for the walls (after going through several samples) “ended up informing the rest of the house,” Chused says. All other rooms in the house are in conversation with this spectacular space.
“The dining room is the star of the house,” says Chused. “That was the most important room.”
Check out the interior of this historic New York townhouse
Chused and the clients chose the patterned wallpaper in the office because it echoed the emerald green of the dining room. The living room became a warm, inviting space that contrasted with the “midnight jewelry box” colors of the room next door. And even upstairs, the bedrooms are decorated in similarly cozy jewel tones, like an emerald armchair in the otherwise neutral main room.
In total, the project only took five months from start to finish. Now, between the paint, wallpaper, mosaics and fabrics, the Gothic house's interiors are surprisingly cheerful. “I really think this is a love letter to color,” Chused says. “Try different colors, cover the room in color, but nothing so dramatic that it shocks you. It feels like a hug.”
Annie Goldsmith is a senior editor and digital director at ELLE Decor, where she covers design, culture, style and trends. She previously held positions at The Information, where she covered technology and culture, and at Town & Country, where she wrote about news, entertainment and fashion. Her work has also appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone and SF Standard.