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Rural Restoration Blog: Stairs & Hallways
Our guest blogger, the interior designer Carey Maloney, who along with his partner, the architect Hermes Mallea, is a principal in the (M) Group, now tackles the halls and stairways of The House, one of four nearly identical 19th-century Livingston mansions overlooking the Hudson River.
We are great believers in the importance of halls and stairways. They are not wasted spaces, they are not secondary spaces, they are KEY spaces.
Be it a small entry vestibule, a grand front hall, or a bedroom corridor, these spaces give a house a sense of progression and connection. We all spend plenty of time in hallways; they have to be functional (easy and comfortable to traverse), beautiful, and welcoming.
To us, the challenge always is to keep them bright. Halls are often internal; if not completely window-less, then often window-deprived.
The Hall in The House (left) is a traditional center hall—it runs the length of the house with major doors at both ends, each with a large, glass overdoor. The staircase shoots straight up to a landing that has a big window, then there’s a short run up to the bedroom hall, which is generous (this whole house is generous)—tall, wide, and light-filled
Light is sooo important. Consequently, color is important too. For The Hall(s), we chose a pale yellow—a sort of ‘cheese’ color. It is a warm color and as with most Donald Kaufman’s work, it is enigmatic. The pigments create lots of ‘movement’ in the color – from pale yellow to cheddar cheese. It’s bright without being obvious.
There are lots of doors off both floors of this hall, hence lots of trim. Remember, we used the same trim paint in all the rooms on the main floor and up the staircase. Continuity is our motto (actually, it’s one of our many mottos).
The wood floors are wonderful—stripes! We love them. For the stair runner, we went with a Stark Carpet that is great with our color scheme and also is very very forgiving. The pattern and palette forgives dogs (beware claws and loop carpets), muddy shoes, and general wear and tear. We skipped the brass stair-rods option—we have plenty going on without them.
The landing window needed softening but we didn’t want to loose one ray of light or so much as a scrap of the view. I stumbled on this curtain fabric at Christopher Hyland. This stuff is not my norm—it is completely synthetic and has almost a glitter to it (!) that could have made me itch. And it is embroidered with shiny paisleys. But, it is MAGIC in this space. Light streams through, only slightly filtered. Since it is man-made, it is sun-resistant (sunlight destroys silk—over time it literally dissolves). We did the curtains all loose-y goose-y and very full. With something this sheer you need to bulk it up. I love them. The Family share our obsession with India and everyone is into this Bollywood froth. (FYI-saris are really long—18-to-27 feet. When you go to India, buy lots—beautiful, cheap, and they pack flat. One time, we hung them from trees for party decorations—a long story involving bows and arrows. We found the handsome radiator cover—iron with a marble top—in Hudson. Perfect fit.
When you arrive upstairs, the walls are 90% doorways—to bedrooms, stairs to the third floor, closets. Since there was no room for furniture, we splurged and spent all of our (well, our client’s) money on a large, beautiful rug, a 19th- century Turkish Oushak. We love it.
An aside: Nothing bums me out (or freaks me out) like a long, dark Ian Schrager-type hotel hall. I don’t know what their designers are going after, but if spooky and threatening is the goal, they succeed. Our personal prize goes to the Hotel Costes in Paris. When we stayed there, the whole place was pitch dark—I had to hold my loafers up to the television to see if they were brown or black. One night, due to one of the power failures that were chronic, management lit the hall “festively” with votives on the floor along the walls between doors. I don’t know about you, but open flames througout an 18th-century building filled with reveling (read: drunk and drugged up) fashionistas…I tossed and turned all night waiting for the sirens.
This Front Hall depends on hanging “pendant” lighting and upstairs on the bedroom floor on wall sconces. If this had been new construction or a gut renovation, we would have let modern recessed equipment highlight the art, and use antique pendants strictly for decoration. With lighting, success hinges on a multi-faceted approach–ambient lighting, task lighting, art lighting—and all must be controlled with separate dimmers.
Other Halls We’ve Done
This Park Avenue apartment is on a low floor so it gets terrible light. Hermes gutted it, raising and squaring off the important doorways and making the many secondary doors (mostly closets) into “jib” doors (doors with concealed hinges, that are paneled to blend with adjacent paneled walls.) We painted both walls and woodwork in the 
highest gloss available (Dutch Lac, the same paint used on all those beautiful, shiny, Amsterdam front doors). The bedroom halls are hung with about 50 watercolors by Arthur Rackham (scary fairy-tale illustrations were a specialty). Hanging art eliminates the doors (at least visually…) and makes the space more peaceful.
This townhouse staircase serves as a vertical hall – six floors of oval stairs opposite open landings. Each landing features large contemporary art. Whenever you leave a room you enter either this stairwell or the rear stairwell (open iron work and 5 floors and painted grey/blue) and there is always the sense of air and light. This is the challenge of New York townhouses, with windows usually only in the front and back, so skylights and stairwell lanterns (glass roofs) are key. Handrails (at least special ones) are carved on site—the guys worked on this one for over 8 months.
This front hall and staircase in Greenwich features a very large, antique oriental rug that was cut and pieced to make a runner. Really pretty and really indulgent. The house originally sported a straight ‘square’ staircase that blocked the windows strangely and was completely lacking in finesse. So Hermes proposed a new more fluid stair. Sounded like a good idea… but executing Hermes’s design was very, very difficult—there’s lots of cranky geometry to deal with. Many trips were made to see the stairs as they were being built in a workshop in Connecticut. Then the stairs were delivered completed and literally corkscrewed through the front door.
Opposite the stairs is an open hall with a beautiful rug and views out to a reservoir. Louis XVI style sconces from Stair Galleries flank the doors to the living room and family room. The view is the art.
Finally, in a New York apartment the front hall was designed to look as if it had always been there. The building is a Deco masterpiece – the lobby was done by Dorothy Draper and is fantastic. Hermes designed a Deco-esque staircase out of nickel, silver, and bronze. The Roman stella is mounted on a Makassar (sometimes called a Coromandel) ebony base that I designed and Stair Restoration in Claverack made. (Lighting sculpture ain’t easy—in addition to light from the front, we often light it from the rear too…). The doors in this hall are large and the paneling deceptively complex. To insure the cabinetry didn’t overwhelm the room, we used one color of a flat finish paint and let the light and shadow do the work—no need for multi-colors or multi finishes.
In the same entry, just opposite the staircase, the Georgia O’Keefe over the Chinese altar table (above), was a bone of contention: Ms. O’Keefe had her stuff framed by a local Santa Fe framer with cheap white gold clamshell. I whined and whined and finally the client let me reframe it in white lacquer (the original frame went into storage). Historically correct isn’t always better. Trust me, this is one of those instances. The bronze bust (above, left, in the adjacent living room) is Roman and can be seen these days at the Met, where it is on loan.
Books
Two of my all-time favorite staircases feature glass rails. Check out The Country Houses of John F. Staub by Stephen Fox to see the Cullen house’s crystal rails with cast aluminum lyres, circa 1934—what Depression? I am a native Houstonian and there John Staub rules. He worked from the 20’s through the 50’s, and his houses are the best in town (and it is a town with great houses…).
Frances Elkins and her brother architect David Adler worked in the same period in Michigan (and all over). Their staircase for the Kersey Coates Reed’s is a triumph. Again, crystal rails but made less serious by the Moroccan runner. That runner is too chic…Bear in mind, this was 1929. Check out Frances Elkins by Stephen Salny to see more of the siblings’ landmark work.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/02/09 at 12:05 PM • Permalink
