Recommended Free Tools
PC Slower Than It Used to Be?
Free scan · Windows 10 & 11
Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?
The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Free scan · under a minute
Windows Errors? Fix Them Before They Spread
Free scan · no reinstall
ThatPainter is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn More
A couple who had long lived with art in an Upper West Side apartment found a different kind of possibility in a 19th-century West Village townhouse. The house offered height, depth, and multiple levels, but it also imposed landmark scrutiny and the awkward circulation of an old narrow building. Architect Jean-Gabriel Neukomm and designer Andre Mellone treated those constraints as part of the design brief: the renovation would make the collection legible from room to room without erasing the building’s character.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Free tools Windows power users keep installed
One-click scans. No signup required.
The result, documented by Architectural Digest on November 12, 2025, is less a decorated townhouse than an art-led sequence of spaces. Daylight enters through large rear window walls, a sinuous stair links the floors, and carefully calibrated gaps give major works their own visual territory. As one client put it, “The art looks so much better than it’s ever looked before.”
The project began with a failed apartment search
The owners had spent years in a single Upper West Side apartment, where their collection had become familiar through repetition. During the pandemic they first rented a single-family property in the West Village. When a search for a prewar apartment did not succeed, they bought a nearby 19th-century townhouse instead. The address and the owners’ names have not been made public.
#1 Best Overall
- COMPLETE 5-PIECE BRUSH SET FOR EVERY PAINTING TASK — Includes 1 Inch Flat, 1.5 Inch Angle, 2 Inch Flat, 2 Inch Angle Stubby, and 2.5 Inch Angle brush giving you every size professional painters use daily. Get all 5 for less than the price of a single brush from hardware store brands — professional grade performance at a fraction of the cost. Perfect for walls, trim, cabinets, doors, furniture, and detailed cutting-in work on any project.
- ZERO BRISTLE LOSS — GUARANTEED BY PRECISION ADHESIVE BONDING — Every bristle is locked in place with precision-set adhesive that keeps them in the brush — not in your paint job. The coated steel ferrule provides structural support while the adhesive bond ensures clean performance on every stroke. Premium SRT synthetic filaments load more paint and release it evenly for a smooth streak-free finish on walls, ceilings, and trim. Works with latex, oil-based paint, primer, sealer, and wood stain.
- INCLUDES THE ANGLE STUBBY MOST SETS LEAVE OUT — Professional painters know the 2 Inch Angle Stubby is the go-to brush for tight cabinet interiors, window sashes, inside corners, and detailed trim where standard angle brushes are too long. Combined with the 1.5 and 2.5 inch angle sash brushes you have precision cutting-in covered at every scale — baseboards, crown molding, door casings, and ceiling lines.
- FLAT BRUSHES FOR BROAD SMOOTH COVERAGE ON ANY SURFACE — The 1 and 2 inch flat brushes deliver even coverage on walls, furniture, shelving, doors, fences, decks, and wood surfaces. Ideal for applying primers, stains, varnishes, polyurethane, and specialty coatings. Solid wood handles provide all-day comfort and control for both professional contractors and weekend DIY homeowners tackling interior or exterior painting projects.
- TRUSTED BY PROFESSIONAL PAINTERS AND CONTRACTORS NATIONWIDE — Pro Grade delivers professional-grade results at a price that makes sense for crews who go through brushes on every job. Ideal for property managers, remodeling contractors, apartment turnover crews, maintenance teams, and commercial painting operations. Backed by thousands of verified reviews from working painters. Washable and reusable for multiple projects.
That change of building type altered the design problem. An apartment generally offers a concentrated horizontal plan and a shared set of building systems. A townhouse distributes life vertically, with rooms that can be narrow, deep, split-level, or disconnected from one another. The house also had a protected street presence. Any intervention had to satisfy landmark scrutiny while making the interior work for contemporary family life and a collection that includes large paintings, freestanding sculpture, and works whose impact depends on distance.
Mellone described the premise plainly: “A town house, on top of all its romantic ideals, is a difficult design challenge.” The project’s solution was not to neutralize that difficulty, but to organize it around movement, light, and scale.
Windows Errors? Fix Them Before They Spread
Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallCrashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?
Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minutePreservation at the front, transformation at the back
The historic brick façade remained
The front brick façade was preserved, maintaining the townhouse’s relationship to the West Village streetscape. That decision establishes a useful division between public history and private adaptation: from the street, the building retains its 19th-century identity; inside, the plan could be reworked with much greater freedom, subject to landmark review.
The house grew in both directions
The renovation expanded down to create a proper basement and up to add a penthouse office set back from street view. These moves increased usable area without placing a conspicuous new volume on the front elevation. The setback matters architecturally: it lets the owners gain a dedicated work space while keeping the upper addition visually quiet from the street.
Rear glazing supplies the main wash of daylight
Large window walls at the rear bring light into the double-height family room and the adjoining kitchen. The glazing is not presented as a technical daylight study, and the available project account supplies no measured performance data. Its design role is clear, however: the rear of the house becomes the brightest shared zone, while the collection gains changing natural light and longer sightlines through the family spaces.
Rank #2
- Great Value Pack Artist Paint Brushes: Soucolor 20 brushes in 10 sizes professional paintbrushes set — no shedding, holds paint well, cleans easily, Acrylic, watercolor, oil, gouache, Halloween pumpkin decoration & face painting, rock painting, ceramics. Fantastic high quality gifts for creative, artistic siblings to share!
- Awesome Set of Paint brushes: Professional paint brushes can cover all of your needs. The multi-purposed brushes are ideal for Watercolor, Oil, Gouache, enamel, Acrylic Painting, Body, Nail, Face Painting, Miniature, Model, Wood, Glass, Cup, Ceramic, Fine work, Art class, Craft Art Painting, DIY Art Crafts etc.
- Soft and long-lasting: The bristles are soft and strong, with nickel metal ferrules and blue wooden handles. After cleaning, the bristles will become soft and fluffy again and will not fall off.
- Easy to clean: it’s very convenient to Wash well in soap and water. Retain shape after drying. the brushes hold up very well. Nice selection to beginners and professionals. Keep them clean and they last a long time.
- Halloween Pumpkin Ceramic Crafts Supplies: A Great painting gift for family, friends, kids, girls, women, student, classmate, teacher. For using in school, travel or used in the home and office.
A circulation system designed for changing views
The sinuous stair is the organizing device
Rooms are arranged off a sinuous staircase with plaster balustrades and a continuous hammered blackened-steel railing. Rather than treating the stair as a purely functional connector, the design makes it the house’s visual spine. A person moving between floors encounters art obliquely, at different heights and distances, instead of seeing every work at once from a single central hall.
The railing’s hammered surface introduces a tactile note against the plaster. That contrast reflects Neukomm’s description of the approach: “We balanced large-scale moves with a spirit of tactility.” The large moves are the basement excavation, rear window walls, double-height volume, and penthouse addition; the tactile register appears in the stair hardware, plaster, steel, and the deliberate handling of furniture and display elements.
Terrazzo creates continuity at the entry level
Terrazzo flooring runs from the entry through the dining and living rooms. In a vertically organized house, a continuous floor material helps the first level read as a connected route rather than a chain of unrelated chambers. It also provides a visually calm ground for furniture, sculpture, and the changing color of paintings.
Central placement gives On Kawara works a dedicated encounter
On Kawara canvases line the central stair. Their placement makes the act of climbing part of the viewing experience: the works are encountered in sequence, with the body moving past them rather than approaching each one frontally in a static gallery wall. The stair therefore performs two jobs at once, distributing people and giving time-based, serial work an appropriate rhythm.
Art was planned before the rooms were finalized
The collection drove planning from the earliest design sessions. The clients and designers moved cutouts of key works around plans and elevations to test possible placements. This analog exercise addressed practical questions that a furniture plan alone cannot answer: whether a canvas would be legible from the intended approach, how much wall a sculpture needed to breathe, and what one work would face across a room.
Rank #3
- 【All sizes of art brushes】: The 10 sizes of multi-functional brushes have various shapes, making the mixing color easier, which is very suitable for artists, students, teenagers, children and painters at all levels. Wonderful Present ideas for friends and family who like painting!
- 【general brush set】: Professional paint brush can meet all your needs. Multifunctional brush is very suitable for watercolor, oil, gouache, acrylic painting, body, nail, face painting, miniature, model, ceramics, arts and crafts painting, etc.
- 【high quality process】: It is designed with anti falling bristles, anti-rust nickel ferrule and solid wood handle. You can use the brush to focus on the painting and always be creative.
- 【easy to maintain】: After using the brush, it is very convenient to clean the brush with warm soapy water and reshape the tip of the brush. Air dry the brush and place it on top of the top for long use.
- 【100% satisfaction guarantee - buy now】1 packs of set brushes, you can also get friendly customer service, any questions feel free to contact us, within 24 hours to help you! There is no risk in buying our paint brush kit.
That process also prevented the common late-stage mistake of treating art as a finishing layer. Wall dimensions, sightlines, circulation clearances, and the scale of architectural openings could be evaluated with the collection in mind. The completed arrangement shows the consequences of those decisions.
| Work or artist identified in the project account | Placement or relationship | What the placement accomplishes |
|---|---|---|
| Robert Motherwell | A large canvas above the steel fireplace | Sets a strong focal point over a major architectural element and gives the painting a clear field of view. |
| Lynda Benglis | A contorted sculpture opposite the fireplace | Creates a three-dimensional counterweight to the horizontal presence of the Motherwell canvas. |
| On Kawara | Canvases along the central stair | Turns vertical circulation into a measured, sequential viewing route. |
| Mary Heilmann | A painting in the double-height family area | Allows a work to hold its own against a tall volume and the daylight from the rear glazing. |
The fireplace wall establishes a deliberate opposition
The large Robert Motherwell canvas sits above a steel fireplace, while a contorted Lynda Benglis sculpture faces it. The pairing sets up a conversation between a broad, planar work and an object that projects into the room. The fireplace supplies an architectural anchor; the sculpture prevents the composition from becoming a single frontal tableau.
The double-height family room accommodates scale
A Mary Heilmann painting occupies the double-height family area. Placing a significant work in a room used for daily life, rather than reserving every major piece for a formal salon, keeps the collection integrated with the household. The height of the room gives the painting visual breathing space, while the rear window walls bring a natural-light condition unlike the more controlled atmosphere of the entry-level rooms.
What the collection says about the house’s point of view
The collection spans contemporary and 20th-century art, with a stated focus on minimalism, Arte Povera, and canonical female artists. The project account also identifies works by Suzanne Jackson, Thaddeus Mosley, Sam Gilliam, Norman Lewis, Lee Bontecou, Bridget Riley, Ed Clark, and Suzan Frecon. Those names indicate a collection interested in material investigation, abstraction, process, and artists whose work can challenge the architecture around it.
The designers did not force every work into one display formula. A monumental painting receives a fireplace wall; sculpture gets an opposing field and the ability to cast changing shadows; serial canvases occupy a route; and a painting in the family room is allowed to meet the scale of a double-height interior. The collection is consequently read as a set of relationships rather than a row of isolated acquisitions.
Rank #4
- Bates paint brushes come in a convenient 6 pieces with 3 flat and 3 angled bristle styles, including (1”, 1.5”, 2”) flat and (1.5”, 2”, 2.5”) angled bristles, perfect for tackling any surface painting or staining job.
- The sturdy natural bristles of each brush are designed to hold more paint, creating a smoother finish with fewer streaks and saving you time on the job.
- The lightweight wooden handles provide extra comfort and ease during long painting processes like walls, trims, cabinets, and doors.
- These versatile brushes are ready-to-use, easy to clean, and can be reused multiple times, making them economical as well as reliable tools for any painting project.
- Bates paint brushes can be used for both oil-based paints as well as latex stains and are ideal for home or commercial projects such as decks, fences or DIY painting jobs.
Furniture supports the art without turning the house into a gallery
Furnishings combine existing pieces with new, bespoke, and vintage items. The mix keeps the rooms domestic and avoids the uniformity of a commercial exhibition space. Each named element has a specific architectural role rather than functioning as a generic shopping list.
- A custom glass-and-steel room divider introduces separation while preserving visual continuity and borrowed light.
- Vintage bookcases by Jacques Dumond add storage and a crafted vertical rhythm without competing with the principal art walls.
- A cocktail table by Joaquim Tenreiro provides a sculptural low object in the seating composition.
- Paavo Tynell pendants contribute focused pools of light and a softer counterpoint to the blackened steel at the stair.
- Gae Aulenti garden seating brings an outdoor-associated form into the interior furnishings vocabulary.
The principle is selective specificity. Mellone said, “Real thinking goes into every piece.” In this house, that means furniture is chosen for proportion, material, and its effect on sightlines as much as for function.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How the renovation balances domestic use and conservation
Landmark review shapes what can change
Preserving the front façade and setting the penthouse back show how the project negotiates public oversight. The house could be substantially reorganized inside, but additions visible from the street required restraint. That distinction is especially relevant in historic districts, where a visually quiet intervention can be more viable than an overtly expressive one.
Recommended Free Tools
Family rooms are part of the art plan
The double-height family room and adjoining kitchen receive the benefit of the rear glazing, but they are not treated as leftover service areas. Their position in the plan gives the owners a daily setting for art, daylight, and movement. The Mary Heilmann painting’s placement demonstrates that the collection was considered in rooms of ordinary use, not only in formal entertaining spaces.
Circulation is both practical and curatorial
The stair, terrazzo route, and opposing fireplace composition create a sequence in which people can live normally while encountering works from several angles. This is a different curatorial model from a white-box gallery: thresholds, furniture, and changing daylight remain visible, and the architecture contributes to the interpretation.
Best Value
- 2 Inch Angled Paint Brush for Precision Cutting-In – Designed for clean, sharp lines around trim, baseboards, ceilings, corners, and detailed edge work. The perfect size for control and coverage.
- Value 3-Pack for Pros & DIY Projects – Includes three professional 2-inch angled sash brushes — ideal for contractors, remodelers, and homeowners tackling multiple rooms or repeat paint jobs.
- Smooth Results on Walls, Trim & Cabinets – Great for interior wall painting, cabinet edges, furniture projects, and trim work where a smooth finish and crisp control matter most.
- Works with Latex Paint, Oil-Based Paint & Stains – Premium synthetic filaments hold more paint, reduce streaks, and provide a clean finish with latex paints, oil coatings, and wood stains.
- Works with Latex Paint, Oil-Based Paint & Stains – Premium synthetic filaments hold more paint, reduce streaks, and provide a clean finish with latex paints, oil coatings, and wood stains.
What this project demonstrates for art-led townhouse planning
The West Village house offers a specific method rather than a universal recipe. A collection can shape architecture successfully when its requirements are translated into decisions about volume, wall length, approach, and light before construction is complete.
- Inventory the works that determine the plan. Identify the largest paintings, the most fragile pieces, sculptures that need clearance, and works whose viewing distance matters.
- Test placements physically. The clients and designers used cutouts to compare positions. A similar study can reveal blocked sightlines, undersized walls, or awkward relationships before finishes are selected.
- Assign each major work a reason for being where it is. The Motherwell has the fireplace wall, Benglis has an opposing field, and On Kawara has the stair. A placement should answer a spatial question, not merely fill a blank surface.
- Design movement as part of viewing. A stair, corridor, or change in floor level can create a sequence, but only if works remain safe, legible, and appropriately lit as people pass.
- Separate public-facing preservation from interior flexibility. The retained brick façade and set-back penthouse illustrate how a project can add capacity while respecting a historic streetscape.
- Use furniture to modulate, not obscure, the collection. Dividers, shelving, lighting, and tables should support proportion and circulation without competing with the works that define the rooms.
- Plan daylight and artificial light together. Rear glazing changes the atmosphere of the family spaces; pendants and other fixtures must then provide usable evening illumination without flattening the art.
These steps do not promise a particular visual result, and the published account does not provide construction costs, energy measurements, conservation specifications, or a comparative test against other townhouse renovations. They describe the decisions visible in this project and the questions an owner would need to resolve with an architect, designer, conservator, and local preservation authorities.
PC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Outdated Drivers Are Slowing You Down
One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchRecognition after completion
JG Neukomm Architecture’s own news page says the townhouse was completed in collaboration with Studio Mellone and describes the renovation as breathing new life into an existing building. The firm later reported that the project received a Citation for Materials and Detailing in the AIANY’s 2025 Design Awards and appeared in Beta-Plus Publishing’s World’s Best II – 50 Interiors from around the Globe.
Those acknowledgments align with what is most distinctive about the interior: its material decisions are not separate from the art strategy. Plaster, hammered blackened steel, terrazzo, glass, brick, and woodwork establish a tactile framework in which the collection can be seen at multiple scales. The awards do not supply a performance ranking or a broad comparison; they record professional recognition for this completed project.
The defining lesson: make room for relationships, not just objects
The townhouse’s success comes from allowing architecture and art to modify one another. The preserved façade keeps the building’s history legible. The basement and set-back office make the program workable. Rear glazing gives the family rooms light. The sinuous stair turns circulation into a series of encounters. Bespoke and vintage furnishings keep the result inhabited rather than institutional.
Most importantly, the collection was involved before the walls were final. By moving cutouts, the owners and designers could test not only where a work fit, but what it would face, how it would be approached, and how another work would answer it from across the room. That is why familiar pieces could appear newly seen: the renovation changed their relationships to scale, light, distance, and one another.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
