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New York Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Moody, Gothic Writer's Home on Long Island
COASTAL STYLE HASN'T always been synonymous with whitewashed, sun-soaked spaces. In fact — as Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer, the husband-and-wife design team known as Roman and Williams, learned a decade ago while working on Nantucket's circa 1850s Greydon House hotel — shadowy interiors were the norm along America's Northeastern shore until the mid-20th century. 'It wasn't like, 'How can there be more glass?'' says Alesch. 'You wanted to protect the interiors and the fabrics.' Alesch, 59, and Standefer, 61, who started their careers as production designers in the 1990s and have since imagined everything from celebrity homes to hotels and their own restaurant and store, La Mercerie, in SoHo, were entranced by that dark and moody seaside aesthetic. And so in 2019, when they were hired to make over a Hamptons retreat for a pair of writer-directors, they decided to go dark. From the outside, the home is a classic Cape Cod, complete with cedar shingles, fluffy bushes of panicle hydrangea and a white picket fence. Inside, however, it's dominated by a palette of almost-black aubergine, stormy blue and deep teal green and furnished with Turkish carpets, English antiques and copious woodwork. 'It's Beach Gothic,' says Alesch. 'It breaks right through that classic blue-and-white thing.' Built in 1885 as a three-bedroom cottage, the 2,000-square-foot house was stripped down to its studs after Alesch and Standefer discovered extensive wood rot beneath a 1990s renovation. With nothing left of the original interior, the pair were free to recast it as a generous one-bedroom informed by vintage steamships and the Carpenter Gothic movement, an Americanized blend of Gothic Revival and vernacular styles that emerged in the mid-19th century. It was about rural construction: 'a carpenter, a stack of wood and whatever gutsy, beautiful details they could make out of it,' says Standefer. Embracing that idea, Alesch covered almost every wall and ceiling with custom tongue-and-groove beadboard and added flattened arches to the doorways, creating the sense of being inside an antique ocean liner. That nautical feel is underscored by the high-sheen finish on the walls and ceilings, which are painted in bespoke shades produced with Farrow & Ball and Fine Paints of Europe. 'We talked a lot about noncolors — those weird shades that are only found in nature,' says Standefer, who took inspiration from the flora of the surrounding property, a 1.5-acre lot with raised vegetable beds and cutting gardens surrounded by fields of Queen Anne's lace and grasses. The entryway to the house is lacquered a smoky algae green and is defined by a central staircase with a deep purple lacquered banister and square finials carved by Alesch in a manner 'typical of shingle-style homes in Massachusetts,' he says. To the right, a 225-square-foot media room clad in walnut-stained wood features a fireplace lined with glossy hand-cut tiles in variegated hues of sage and evergreen by the Connecticut-based manufacturer Bantam Tileworks; a Roman and Williams custom-designed ottoman upholstered in a 1920s Turkish Oushak rug; and a custom roll-arm sofa covered in flame-stitch velvet from Watts 1874, a 150-year-old British maker of textiles, wallpaper and clergy vestments. Behind the media room is a 390-square-foot living-dining area painted a menacing teal inspired by the North Atlantic during a nor'easter. It's centered on a small, Georgian-style mahogany dining table and bookended by two intricate built-ins designed by Alesch: on one side, a window seat upholstered in gold velvet from Pierre Frey with antique embroidered lumbar pillows from Pakistan's Swat Valley; on the other, a paneled reading area with custom shelving. Between them stands a floor-to-ceiling dishware cabinet that Alesch and Standefer designed specifically to display a rare 70-piece set of Herend china, hand-painted with orange-red flowers, that Standefer purchased at auction. They chose the china first and then the color for the room, much as museums choose wall colors to set off objects in an exhibition. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Wall Street Journal
07-02-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Celebrities and Design Nuts Love This Luxury Store in Manhattan. You Can Shop It From Anywhere.
The New York City design firm Roman and Williams had a global portfolio of homes, hotels and restaurants under its belt when it opened its SoHo shop in 2017. Custom pieces always shaped its interiors, from the glamorous Boom Boom Room lounge atop the city's Standard Hotel to residences for the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow. The shop, Roman and Williams Guild, extended its wares' reach beyond its elite clientele. Design nuts soon converged on it. Guided less by one style than a love of craft, history and nature, the Roman and Williams team uses a modern eye to nudge traditional forms into the here and now, explains Robin Standefer, who with husband Stephen Alesch founded the studio. 'None of the pieces speak too loudly,' said Standefer of their own designs as well as those on offer from artisans around the world.
