A rare Manhattan apartment with the feel of Provence in the city
For interior designer Ceara Donnelley, who began her working life as a lawyer, a return to her native New York City came in stages, starting with this pied-à-terre in a rather plain brick warehouse building in Manhattan's West Village. In 2021, she was living with her two children and two dogs in an 18th-century property in Charleston, South Carolina, and it was the renovation of this first house that was the genesis of her career as a decorator: 'I did my own home and then the projects started coming in,' she says.
With work bringing her more and more to the city of her birth, the idea of a small apartment she could use when she was in town, while maintaining the family house in South Carolina, began to brew. She says that she was not 'seriously looking', but was just poking around a couple of real estate listings when, after dinner in downtown Manhattan with her family, marvelling at a beautiful sunset on the West Side Highway, she opened the Zillow app on her phone and up popped this one-bedroom flat on Horatio Street. ‘I arranged a viewing immediately. As soon as I walked in, I thought, “Wait, I'm not in New York. I'm in Europe. I'm in France. There's a garden.” It was a totally different way of living in New York to anything I had ever known.'
The ground-floor apartment had been renovated for its former owners by architects Fairfax & Sammons in the early 2000s, the plaster walls and exposed wood inspired by rustic Provençal farmhouses. 'I'm very emotional about real estate,' says Ceara. 'I walked in and felt, “This is mine, I have to have it. It is the set for this important chapter of my life.” I didn't even know what that would entail or involve, but I knew I would go to any length to get it.'
Once purchased, Ceara explains that her approach to decorating the space was not dissimilar to the one taken when restoring her historic house in Charleston. 'If you are a caretaker of an important building, you don't gratuitously change the architecture to suit your style. Instead, you adapt your aesthetic to the architecture. This project felt similar. Though the architect's additions are not historic, I worked with the setting they had created and decorated around it. The envelope was beautiful. It just needed a light touch.'
The process of moving was a relaxed affair. Ceara was her own client, and there was no hard and fast start date to living there. 'I sent some things up from Charleston, and I found the sofa at an antique shop and re-covered it in Claremont's ‘Tree of Life’ fabric. The Italian chair by the fireplace was bought at auction one Thanksgiving. I wound up paying three times more in shipping for it, and, while not pristine, it's perfect for the setting. It can't all be shiny, can it? My friend, designer Blake Sams, was invaluable'.
Ceara's family's advocacy of open land and the natural world informs her choices as a designer, too. The roosters decorating the brass chandelier in the sitting room had exactly the feel Ceara wanted for the space. 'They suggest the countryside, yet it's Italian mid-century, so there is this edge and tension that I always like to create with whatever I'm doing.' Above the chimneypiece is a 1980s Donghia scagliola mirror, from Liz O'Brien's gallery in New York.
In the bedroom, off the sitting room, the tapestry above the bed - ‘an abstract Gothic cathedral scene, probably a mid-century piece’ - was in Ceara's family house growing up. 'When I decided to hang it there, I settled on floral linen from D Porthault, which is quite feminine, flanked by Mike Diaz reclaimed yarin pine tables.' A cashmere blanket with insect and plant motifs from Saved NY was the final flourish. The room is lit by a pair of terracotta lamps by Jennifer Nocon decorated with birds and fish and inspired by Henri Matisse's cutouts. A small Pablo Picasso pitcher bought at auction holds flowers, and matches several that Ceara and her four sisters inherited from their parents.
The shallow loft area above the kitchen is reached by a wooden ladder that hangs on the wall, and her children used to escape up there to read or watch events unfolding in the sitting room below. Quirky plaster planters by Tony Duquette, bought at auction and admired for their dramatic appeal, are now displayed on a ledge in front of it.
One area of the project that did need a total makeover was the garden. Ceara enlisted Brooklyn-based designer Harrison Green for the job. 'It is a tremendous amount of space for a New York garden. I told Jacqueline and Damien Harrison about my inspiration - a transformative 40th birthday trip to Paris and a visit to the Delacroix Museum's hidden garden with its unique trellises. They went off after our initial meeting and returned with a presentation.'
Their main inspiration was a picture of Francois Catroux's garden in the South of France - an image Ceara knew and loved. A pair of tall glazed screen doors provide two points of access to the garden - one from the sitting room, the other from the bedroom - allowing light to flood the space.
Recently, Ceara moved back to New York full-time with her children, and her next project is renovating a larger family apartment. What has this place meant to her? ‘A lot of my life is focused on taking care of other people - this flat has allowed me to take care of myself. too’.
Ceara Donnelley: cearadonnelley.com
Dean Hearne1/3Jennifer Noon terracotta lamps frame an inherited mid-century wall hanging above a 'Garden' cashmere blanket from Saved NY.
Dean Hearne2/3A shower curtain in a floral fabric from Ceara's grandmother picks up on the painted frame of a Victorian mirror from Eerdmans that belonged to interior designer Mario Buatta.
Dean Hearne3/3Trellis inspired by the Delacroix Museum in Paris and designed by Harrison Green is the backdrop for vintage Leinfelder garden furniture from Charleston Garden Works.
