When Brian Coleman purchased a small New York pied-à-terre eight years ago, he vowed to keep the decor simple—out of character for the West Coast editor of the magazine Old House Interiors and author of seven books about design.
“Obviously,” he says, “that didn’t happen.” The ornate West Village apartment is featured with 14 other residences in his book, Extraordinary Interiors: Decorating with Architectural Salvage & Antiques (Gibbs Smith, 2005), which shows how much can be done with pieces formerly destined for the dump. Once tenement housing in the late 19th century, his apartment is furnished with elegant old pieces that include a 1920s gas stove and Teddy Roosevelt’s office curtains. Coleman says that the fun in architectural salvage is “the hunt—you can use your imagination to give pieces a second life.” And what about his Seattle day job? “I keep my job as a psychiatrist to support my writing,” he says.
