Architect Gene Sisco has designed dozens of residential and commercial buildings over the past couple of decades, but only recently did he turn to working on his own home. Two and a half years ago, Mr. Sisco bought a two-unit early-1900s townhouse on East 68th Street and gut-renovated the lower three levels of the house. “I bought the entire building and added two new additions in the rear up top,” Mr. Sisco said. He rents out those additions. “The top two floors provide some income, and I have all the privacy of a single family home.”

The home is designed in an art deco style, with neat, symmetrical lines and mostly antique furniture. “I wanted to do an elegant Park Avenue, New York style, but to invigorate it with art deco styling,” Mr. Sisco said.

The main floor – known as the garden floor of a townhouse – is entirely open, except for the kitchen and foyer area. “I wanted it to be open, and as full of light as possible,” Mr. Sisco said. “One of the problems in designing a townhouse is the lack of natural light. Most of the lighting is recess lighting that focuses on the paintings.” The kitchen receives almost no natural light and is painted in a deep red color. It has one window into the foyer, so the light that it does receive is from that area.

“First of all, it was never going to be a bright, white, sunny, airy kitchen, and there is a subterranean window,” interior designer Larry Laslo, who helped design Mr. Sisco’s home, said. “I chose the color because my client doesn’t cook that much, it was dramatic, and it goes well with the cherry cabinets.This was just always going to be a cozy little kitchen.”

The kitchen and the foyer lead to a large open room that includes a dining and living area. Two Doric columns on either side of the space create an archway between the two spaces and help define the two rooms. “I wanted to create a sense of space for the townhouse – townhouses are not very wide – and I wanted the design to look symmetrical,” Mr. Sisco said.

There are oversize moldings in the dining room ceiling that create a classical feel. “I like blending modern deco motif with a classic look because it creates a very warm feel,” Mr. Sisco said. An Arts and Crafts-style Raymond Subes chandelier hangs over the French Dominique dining room table, bought at a Sotheby’s auction. “The dining room chandelier is very rare,” Mr. Sisco said. “It is one of a kind.”

The fireplace is surrounded by a wall mirror, installed to make the narrow townhouse appear wider. A 19th-century American landscape painting of a sunset in the Adirondacks hangs in the middle of the mirrored wall over the fireplace, opposite a set of Japanese chests and a 17th-century religious painting.

Another 17th-century religious painting, “Allegory Scene with Figures,” hangs in the living room over one of two couches designed by Mr. Laslo. Across from the light-blue satin-covered couch, behind an identical couch, are two wooden griffins that came from the roof of an 18th-century house in Shanghai, China. Glass sliding doors at the end of the living room open into the back yard.

Mr. Sisco has kept his garden patio area neat and simple, like the rest of the house. The white concrete floor is bordered with topiary privets, a white privacy lattice that Mr. Sisco hopes will be covered with vines one day, and a few pieces of outdoor furniture. “I decided to have a ‘hardscape’ urban backyard, rather than it looking suburban,” Mr. Sisco said. “It is a very serene and contemplative environment – and it’s easy maintenance.”

One of the main attractions of the garden, and Mr. Sisco’s greatest architectural feat, is a skylight for the bottom level of the house that resembles one of the glass pyramids at the Louvre. There is also an enormous concrete and steel sculpture, “Steps,” by Ilan Averbuch, a sculptor based in New York, erected at the rear of the garden. This is the first sculpture of Mr. Averbuch’s to be in a residential home. The 18-by-12-foot sculpture had to be dismantled and brought into the garden by a crane.

Mr. Sisco views the garden as an extension of the floor. “The room gets extended at night because we have lighting on the sculpture,” Mr. Sisco said. “In a townhouse you are always dealing with spatial issues.”

The multi-purpose basement is also completely open, except for the bathroom and a kitchenette. There is an entertainment area, where a print of an Alex Katz painting of three girls hangs; a workout space underneath the garden skylight where a contemporary Monet look-alike painting by Matthias Meyer hangs, and a wine cellar. “This would make for a great teenager’s studio apartment,” Mr. Sisco said.

Upstairs, the third-floor master bedroom boasts a crystal chandelier from an old bank in Rhode Island, and features the oldest piece of art in the house, a religious 14th- century Russian painting. But although the house holds artifacts and art from all over the world, the dominant country, at least for furniture, is France. “I like French deco very much – the clean lines, attention to detail, and not a fussy mannerism,” Mr. Sisco said.