Ralph Walker designed Stella Tower in 1927 for the New York Telephone Company and named it after his wife. The building, at 425 West 50th Street in Hell's Kitchen, is one of the great Art Deco structures in Manhattan: handcrafted brick masonry, dramatic setbacks, ceilings ten to fourteen feet high, floor-to-ceiling casement windows. Converted to fifty-one luxury residences, it was exactly the kind of place that had always seemed like a dream.

An Austin couple made it real. Their first New York home had to feel small but beautiful: handcrafted, design-forward, tactile, usable, never precious. Cravotta made no structural changes. This was entirely furniture, rugs, art, and drapery — the same tools used in any room, deployed with the discipline the building demanded.

The exception was the den, given a dramatic painted treatment that reoriented the room's entire character and made it feel like the heart of the apartment. For a couple spreading their wings after years of wanting this, the space needed to feel like it belonged to New York and to them simultaneously. It does.

Photography by Antoine Bootz.

Read less