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By
Design
How one very stylish event benefits many girls and boys.
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Nancy A. Ruhling |
Above and below, New Canaan, CT-based photographer
Monica Rich Kosann’s portraits of the Kips Bay Boys
& Girls will be on exhibit during the 34th Annual Kips
Bay Decorator Show House.
For more than three decades, the Annual Kips Bay Decorator
Show House has been Manhattan’s first rite of spring.
As the daffodils are popping their tiny towheads through their
minklike cloaks of snow, the Show House throws off winter’s
chill by opening up its doors and inviting the world to the
country’s most glamorous and prestigious design event.
Each year, two dozen or so celebrity designers – everyone
from Mario Buatta to Charlotte Moss and Thom Filicia –
work their magic on an Upper East Side townhouse, creating
room settings that not only raise the bar on design but also
set the standard for style for years, even decades, to come.
And, by design, they do it all for the kids. The money raised
– the event usually clears an average of $800,000 –
is used to finance after-school and weekend programs for some
10,200 children, ages 6 through 18, in the southeast Bronx
who are members of the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. Perhaps
the most famous alum is Jennifer Lopez, who hung out at the
club for three or four years when she was growing up. And
national club spokesman Denzel Washington credits the Mt.
Vernon, New York, club with changing his life.
“For the designers, being invited to participate is
like winning an Emmy or an Oscar,” says Mrs. W. Ward
Carey, who is chairperson of the Show House committee. “We
do it all because we love Kips Bay, and we love the kids.
Each designer gives so much; it’s a family of people
who care about the kids.”
This year – the Show House’s 34th – the
design family will include not only Buatta, who has designed
rooms several times, including one for the first Show House,
and Filicia, but also Moss, Susan K. Gutfreund, Katherine
Newman Associates, Shaver-Melahn Studios, Richard Mishaan
Design, Campion A. Platt, Larry Laslo Designs, Charles Pavarini
III Design Associates, Barbara Ostrom Associates and Kondylis
Design and Costas Kondylis and Partners Architects, among
others.
“It’s showbiz,” says Buatta, who was dubbed
The Prince of Chintz and became a household name after he
designed a blue-and-white bedroom for the 1984 Show House.
“The designers try to do special, over-the-top things
that are to be shown off. It’s an incredible vehicle
for the young designer to show what he or she can do because
there are no constraints imposed by budgets or clients. It
certainly helped launch my career.”
The five-story, approximately 20,000-square-foot neo-French
Renaissance townhouse – the former ballet studio of
Rebekah Harkness, whose 1960s school was known for the excellence
of its male dancers – literally presents the biggest
design challenge in the Show House’s history: At 50
feet in width, it’s twice the size of a typical Manhattan
townhouse.
“Some of the rooms are 40 feet by 50 feet,” Carey
says, “so we’ll divide them so they are people-size.
The space reads like the Guggenheim, but our rooms are square,
not circular, and there’s a skylight at top. It’s
a gorgeous space – it’s divine, it’s spectacular.
In terms of design, it’s a wow! Even if you didn’t
have the designers’ rooms, you’d pay just to see
it.”
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A five-story, neo-French Renaissance townhouse will
be the setting for the Decorator Show House.
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Kips
Bay Decorator
Show House Events |
April
19
President’s Preview and Dinner
April 24
Opening-Night Gala
April 25 – May 23
The 34th Annual Kips Bay Decorator Show
House, NYC
Kips Bay Boys
& Girls Club
718.893.8600; www.kipsbay.org/show_info.html |
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This particular mansion’s history is as rich as its
architectural details. The limestone house, which is on the
market for $55 million, is owned by Jaqui Safra, who comes
from a banking family, and longtime companion Jean Doumanian,
a film, Broadway and Off-Broadway producer whose projects
have included some of Woody Allen’s movies. Allen, who
cut a jazz album at the house, also made it the scene of a
star-studded 1979 New Year’s Eve party whose guests
included Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Mick Jagger and
Andy Warhol. Built in 1896 for shipping tycoon Nathaniel L.
McCready, it has had an illustrious set of jet-set owners,
including IBM founder Thomas J. Watson. Harkness, a Standard
Oil heiress, converted the space into the Harkness School
of Ballet, which was open from 1964 to 1974.
The 15,000 people who travel from around the world during
the 28 days the Show House is open come to get design ideas;
many of them take away not only ideas but also antiques and
one-of-a-kind custom furnishings that include everything from
chandeliers to oil paintings that are sold in the Show House
shop.
Dan Quintero, executive director of the Kips Bay Boys &
Girls Club, who says the club “made the biggest impact
on my life” when he was growing up in the Bronx, attributes
the continued success of the Show House to its troupe of longtime
loyal volunteers. “The Show House brings in about 20
percent of our operating budget,” says Quintero, whose
three children are club members. “Some people have been
involved for 20 or 30 years.”
They include designers like Robert Couturier and Tony Ingrao,
who have been participants in the Show House and who are co-chairing
this year’s gala, and people like Betty Evans, Polly
Fownes, Kathryn Collins and Ann Mott. And like Victoria Lindgren,
who was taken by her mother to the inaugural Kips Bay Show
House at age six. “My mom, Nancy Stone, was and still
is on the women’s committee,” says Lindgren, who
is chairman of the women’s committee and co-chair of
the shop committee. “I would run around the house during
setup, and once the Show House was open, if there was a child’s
room, I got to sit in it like a prop. I also would lick stamps
for the invitations.”
As a child, she was captivated by all the glamour surrounding
the event and its opening-night gala, which usually is attended
by 600 of NewYork’s social set. As an adult, she finds
that the smiles on the faces of the children make it all worthwhile.
That’s what it’s all about, she says: Watching
the Show House come together and the children grow. “That’s
what I love about this whole thing,” she says, adding
that Daniel Pacheco, last year’s Youth of the Year,
joined the club because his parents couldn’t take care
of him after school. He has just won a full scholarship to
New York University. “When you volunteer, you see what
goes on behind the scenes at the Show House – the before,
the during and the end. It’s great to see how it all
comes together.”
As far as those 10,200 kids, Carey says they, her second family,
make her “feel as proud of them as I do of my own grandchildren.
When I go to visit them in the Bronx, I feel like they are
an extension of my own home.”
For Lindgren, too, the project is personal. “I’d
like to see my daughter get involved,” she says. “Last
year, when she was eight, I brought her here for the first
time, and I’m going to bring her again this year. She
thinks it’s great fun.” |
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Photo
credits:
Black and white photos: MONICA RICH KOSANN; last photo,
JURIS MARDWIG |
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