View Slideshow

Like a Noël Coward play, the residence had a distinctly 1930s elegance. Set high above Park Avenue, this classic prewar apartment, in the parlance of Manhattan real estate, was designed for entertaining of the most sophisticated sort. From its expansive, beautifully proportioned reception rooms to its tiny maids' quarters, it seemed tailor-made for a stylish life.

But then the 21st century arrived. Whereas the current owners appreciate a sophisticated environment just as much as their earlier counterparts did, they'd be the first to admit, quite happily, that the lives they lead have, at times, more to do with Cheerios than champagne. "It's wonderful to have a pretty apartment, but it has to be functional," as the wife puts it. "Two kids live here."

The owners turned to the architectural firm Ferguson Shamamian to update the space yet retain, even enhance, its quintessential New York elegance. "Our mandate was to make the apartment more livable," says architect Mark Ferguson. "We modernized a 70-year-old apartment into something that a young, modern family would feel comfortable using."

The architectural team, which included Scott J. Sottile and M. Damian Samora, made extensive changes to what Ferguson terms the apartment's "hierarchy of use"—all while respecting its classic Georgian interior. They transformed some of its grander spaces into more practical, multipurpose areas, reconfiguring the kitchen and master suite, where the floor plan seemed antediluvian.

They worked "hand in glove," Ferguson says, with interior designer Sandra Nunnerley, with whom they'd joined forces before. The success of their collaboration is apparent from the very first room. The architects squared off the once-rectangular entrance hall—which Nunnerley refers to as "a pausing point"—allocating the remaining square footage to a much-needed coat closet and powder room. Like other refinements, the entrance hall's circular inscribed ceiling seems inevitable, somehow, as if it should have been there all along. Nunnerley echoed its dramatic swirl in the Swedish alabaster light beneath it and, below that, in a stunning Biedermeier table, made by Josef Danhauser in 1820s Vienna. An octagonal 1960s-era pewter-and-brass mirror, formerly owned by the fashion designer Pierre Cardin, is complemented by the strong verticality of the striped wallcovering, with its silvery lines.

This room, and those that follow, are relatively spare. Art on the walls—including the couple's growing photography collection—is placed restrainedly, with lots of space between. "I like it clean and simple," the wife says. "I'm just not a fussy person."

The living room, in particular, has a minimalist elegance. The architects gave the room new paneling and trim and added a mirrored sofa niche "to bring daylight deeper into the apartment," Ferguson says. What it illuminates has a distinctly 1930s feel, beginning with the effervescent palette. Nunnerley had the walls painted in what she calls "an almost luminous, pearlized shade of gray"; the hue of the furnishings ranges from the palest ecru to a lustrous, lacquery black.

Nunnerley characterizes the furnishings themselves as "my usual mix of things," including a pair of Art Déco chairs, upholstered in shell-colored silk, and a custom fireplace, inspired by one she sighted at Duke Farms in New Jersey, the ancestral residence of the late tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Like many Nunnerley interiors, this one is quietly kinetic, a flow of shape and color. "You see different layers. Your eye is constantly moving," the wife says, pointing out how the circular lines in the wool-and-silk carpet are picked up by a round glass lamp with a distinctive shade in what Nunnerley calls a "free-form" shape.

The cool perfection of this room almost obscures the fact that it's both child friendly—"Nothing is don't touch,' " the wife remarks—and used. "We didn't want one of those wonderful living rooms that everyone walks by but doesn't use," the designer says. "We wanted all the rooms to work on many levels. The days of people not using space are over."

The residence's most dated area was the kitchen. The tiny, contiguous original pantry, kitchen and staff quarters were once the locus of a frenetic, servant-run universe. But that parallel world is now almost as gone from Park Avenue as gaslit streetlamps and horse-drawn carriages. The architects replaced this area—"a real rabbit warren," in Ferguson's words—with an expansive kitchen and adjacent family space that, in the multifunctional spirit that prevails here, doubles as a guest room.

The kitchen area is enlivened by such unexpected touches as a pair of ball lanterns from the 1920s, by the venerable English manufacturer Holophane, and a set of custom bistro chairs. This area and the family room, glimpsed through a wide doorway that can be closed off with pocket doors, are united by a style and palette that Nunnerley describes as "just very calm."

And with that serenity comes chic. "I really wanted the apartment to feel glamorous," the wife muses. And it does. So much so that, when the doorbell chimes, you half expect one of those elegant figures who frequented this very avenue in the 1930s—Cole Porter, perhaps—to step in.