Urban Masterpieces
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

When masters of the universe decide to change homes, they place a call to New York architect Charles Gwathmey: Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jerry Seinfeld, and Michael Dell are just a few of his clients. Mr. Gwathmey and his longtime partner, Robert Siegel, are best known for the sprawling mogul mansions they’ve erected in East Hampton and the Pacific Palisades. But a new book, “Gwathmey Siegel Apartments,” edited by Brad Collins (Rizzoli, 276 pages, $65), makes the case that the apartments the architects have designed in their hometown of New York City are just as impressive, if not more so.
In his introduction to the book, architecture critic Paul Goldberger points out that the renovation or redesign of a New York apartment poses a series of obstacles and constraints – low ceilings, inconvenient columns, plumbing chases, fire stairs, and the confines of a pre-existing space – that an architect doesn’t encounter when building a freestanding house. In the New York apartments he’s designed, Mr. Gwathmey has had to work with what’s already there, whether he’s working in a formal Park Avenue prewar apartment, a downtown loft, or a new Midtown tower.
“Gwathmey Siegel Apartments” traces the architect’s work over more than three decades, beginning with his 1969 apartment for Faye Dunaway in the El Dorado and concluding with an 8,000-square-foot apartment that he designed in 2003 in a hotel building on Central Park South.
Some of Mr. Gwathmey’s apart ments, which were the height of fashion and innovation at the time of their design, now look rather dated – particularly those from the 1980s. The endless built-in furniture and cabinets, walls of mirrors or windows, and marble floors seem overblown and reminiscent of ’80s excess. His 1983 apartment for Steven Spielberg includes a built-in grand piano in a wooden enclosure that looks pointless and silly: Even Mr. Goldberger notes that Mr. Gwathmey was probably “gilding the lily” in this case.
But other apartments are strikingly sumptuous, simultaneously creating a feeling of grand opulence and human scale comfort. One of Mr. Gwathmey’s most ingenious designs is for the 6,000-square-foot “Gymnasium Apartment,” located in the former gymnasium of the original New York City Police Headquarters Building. Mr. Gwathmey retained the space’s original oval shape, with its 25-foot-high barrel-vaulted ceiling and steel trusses, once home to a running track, to create a soaring living space, while adding a master bedroom suite and a balcony library. He inserted a series of large skylights into the dramatic structure, infusing the whole space with light.
It is fitting that Mr. Gwathmey was chosen for the 1992 renovation of the Guggenheim Museum, because many of his clients’ apartments are, in effect, art galleries. In “Gwathmey Siegel Apartments” we often see Mr. Gwathmey’s designs showcasing enormous works by Roy Lichtenstein, Cy Twombly, Franz Kline, Emery Roth, and Alberto Giacometti, some of his clients’ most prized possessions. It is a testimony to Mr. Gwathmey’s mastery that his designs perfectly complement these masterpieces.