New York Interior Design 1935-1985, Vol. 1: Inventors of Tradition

New York City has always been home to the chic and urbane a place where Andy Warhol entertained in his French Empire salon and where Babe Paley served martinis and cigarettes in her taxicab-yellow living room. Who made this city the center of cosmopolitan interior design as we know it today? The answer is found in the lavishly illustrated profiles of the nearly 100 interior designers featured in the two-volumes of New York Interior Design 1935 1985.

Over 600 photographs assembled by author Judith Gura present a visual biography of the city s interior innovators. From the refreshed Francophilia of Eleanor McMillen Brown to the high-tech minimalism of Ward Bennett, New York Interior Design unfolds a glittering panorama of New York s old world duplexes, river and park-view towers, and its minimalist downtown lofts.

Volume I, Inventors of Tradition, highlights the careers and showcases the work of the designers who translated and then transformed European period styles into a new vocabulary for America. In addition to the work of celebrated tastemakers Billy Baldwin, Mario Buatta, and Albert Hadley Gura uncovers the interiors of once-influential, now-obscure designers whose work played an important role in the development of the New York look. Among these practitioners are William Pahlmann, the pioneer of contemporary eclecticism; the glamorous Melanie Kahane, with a fondness for shocking pink and tasteful pizzaz; and the epitome of the southern civility, Joseph Braswell, who believed that a beautiful environment could make its occupants into better people.

Inventors of Tradition is accompanied by Volume II, New York Interior Design, 1935-1985: Masters of Modernism, which examines the work of the designers who moved away from European tradition, incorporated new materials and cutting-edge technologies, and pioneered the architectural approach to interior decorating.