NEW YORK – Kips Bay opens the doors today on its 50th showhouse in New York, and in its first downtown location.
Twenty-one designers transformed the eight-bedroom, 9,300-square-foot brownstone – currently on the market with Brown Harris Stevens for $16.5 million – into a retreat for the senses.
Designers, a mix of both first-timers and veterans, including three on our sister publication Designers Today‘s 2025 Power List, went big for this milestone showhouse, with long built-ins to inspire entertaining and conversation, color and pattern drenching to bring on the bold, and calming designs meant to provide (mostly) tech-free sanctuaries (Pavarini Design’s Zoom Room being one exception).
For her bedroom on the third floor, Alexa Hampton wanted everything to work together in a rhythmic and layered way, rather than focus on a particular item, she said. “All grace notes are vital to the room, but none are distracting.”
An Oscar de la Renta dress was her starting point, and she and her team worked with Twenty2 to create a wallpaper design and two fabric designs based on the dress. The room is pretty, with modern touches. The original fireplace was covered with a pink paper surround and the mirror on the wall above is actually a photograph of a mirror laser cut on Plexiglass. For many of the room’s furnishings, she raided her own home, including the canopy bed that belonged to the Duchess of Marlborough and later her parents for 40 years.
For his fifth Kips Bay showhouse, Vicente Wolf wanted to divert from his signature style of neutral modernism and drew inspiration from artist James McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room, a bold blue, green and gold space. The challenge for his Kips Bay room on the fourth floor was that it was mostly a passageway from one room to the next, he said, so he worked to “capture people’s eyes” and add “a sense of romance and drama.” That included high-gloss walls and ceiling in Benjamin Moore’s North Sea Green, a painted floor with stripes, metallic gold sisal wallcovering from Studio Zen, and teal and seafoam fabrics from Savel Inc. and The Romo Group. Instead of using cut flowers in the space, he included artwork of flowers instead, he said.
Next door, Pavarini Design’s Zoom Room delivers a sleek home office space for anyone doing podcasts, Zoom calls and high-level meetings. One can sit in a Versace chair at Dakota Jackson’s handmade Arabesque desk while on camera, with Pierre Frey’s Cosma patterned fabric (paired with The Shade Store’s privacy blinds) in the background. The room’s centerpiece is the Sensa natural stone panel by Cosentino that’s backlit for drama. Scalamandre fabric-wrapped walls and a Stark Carpet rug dampen sound.
Leyden Lewis’ aim with his Salon Analogue on the third floor was to enable people to “disconnect from technology,” and inspire conversation. Lewis last participated in Kips Bay 26 years ago, when he used red leather flooring for his space. For this showhouse, he laid down red micro cement flooring as an homage to his earlier design. Three existing Tai Ping rugs were cut into the flooring for the main space, which includes Lewis’ Wabele “03/Inward” fireplace surround, part of his collection with Trueform Concrete.
Corey Damen Jenkins looked to one of his favorite childhood books – Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There” – for inspiration for his dining room on the second floor. The room was “bereft of architectural significance,” so he commissioned local artists to craft elaborate plaster moldings, including modillions, rosettes and friezes, throughout the space. Using a round Ben Soleimani dining table in the center – round tables are “better for conversation,” he said – and paired with antique dining chairs he found in Paris and reupholstered, the space becomes a formal, traditional dining room. A massive Baccarat Le Roi Soleil chandelier finishes the space.
While Christopher Peacock is known more for creating grand, traditional kitchens, he wanted to do something different for this home’s kitchen, giving it a more modern, downtown vibe. The space includes a 12-foot island and countertops using Cosentino’s Sensa natural stone in Orinoco black – “I’ve been wanting to use this countertop for a while” – along with his own Peacock’s Motra custom oak cabinetry and hardware.
Adjacent to the kitchen is the garden terrace designed by Jamie Drake, who created three seating areas for the two-level space. Influenced by architects Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn and designer John Saladino, he included a 22′-foot long floating banquette with a Made Goods dining table and Serena & Lily armchairs.
Andrea Schumacher’s first-floor Pink Rhino Club room – the name a nod to the whimsical rhinoceros-shaped dry bar in the space, a piece from Sylvan San Francisco – referenced her childhood in Nigeria and love for Morocco and was imagined as a modern speakeasy. The design started with wallcovering from her upcoming collection with The Vale London, based on original artwork by her grandmother, Elizabeth Monath, who studied under Salvador Dalí and Fernand Léger. Monath’s artwork was also used throughout.
The showhouse is open to the public through Oct. 19, and benefits the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, which serves more than 11,000 children and teens throughout the Bronx with essential after-school and enrichment programs.
