30 ARCHDIGEST.COM
T
he Manhattan ballrooms that became pillars of
the Gilded Age are few and far between these days.
(Temple Emanu-El now occupies the site of Mrs.
Astor’s legendary one.) But on the second floor of
a Beaux Arts building uptown, one grand salon
serves as home to Remy Renzullo, a decorator with
a soft spot for aristocratic interiors. While the space’s scale has
not quite survived—it was carved into apartments long ago—its
ambience remains, with lofty ceilings and original stained glass.
There are few better suited to occupy the one-bedroom than
Renzullo. Though still in his 20s, he is an old soul, with a hush-
hush clientele that might well have been pulled from The Four
Hundred, were the society record still around. (He is currently
decorating residences for art-world scion Al Acquavella and his
fashionable wife, Mollie.) Fittingly, he happened upon the dwell-
ing not online but at a dinner party hosted by two friends who
occupied both this unit and the one next door, then combined. “I
told them, ‘This is my dream apartment. If you ever move, let me
know,’ ” he recalls. “One day they said, ‘It’s yours if you want it.’ ”
Three years since moving in, he’s made it every inch his
own. The great room doubles as entertaining space and office,
with walls painted in Etruscan red. “My painter jokes that I
only like muddy colors,” says Renzullo. “If a room is dark, own
it.” Furnishings are a charming hodgepodge of heirlooms and
auction finds. The sofa, covered in a Bennison fabric, was crafted
by his furniture-maker father and originally sat in Renzullo’s
Connecticut childhood home. An 18th-century Spanish farm table,
meanwhile, regularly reveals both beautiful breakfastscapes and
piles of fabric swatches. Artwise, he is drawn to the Spanish
and Italian Baroque. “For a young person with a budget, there’s
more value to collecting Old Masters than contemporary or
DISCOVERIES
1. RENZULLO WITH HIS
DOG, WALLIS, IN THE
GREAT ROOM, WHERE A
17TH-CENTURY CARL
BORROMÄUS ANDREAS
RUTHART PAINTING IS
DISPLAYED ABOVE A
SOFA CLAD IN BENNISON
FABRIC, AND BURMESE
LAMPS WITH PLEATED
SHADES SIT ATOP
VICTORIAN SIDE TABLES.
2. THE MANTEL WAS
PAINTED TO MIMIC
ANTIQUE DELFT TILES
IN TORTOISE
TROMPE L’OEIL.
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