Elizabeth Lawrence Creatively Melds Past and Present in This Stunning New York Residence
Hired by a client whose family she has worked with for years, the Williams Lawrence partner conceives a Manhattan apartment that feels both comfortingly familiar and refreshingly new
The role that genetics plays in our aesthetic tastes and how we choose to live—versus the influence of environmental factors—is a fascinating subject. The question of heritability is especially intriguing with multiple offspring from the same parents. Why does one sibling go for a strictly neutral palette, while another is bonkers for color? How is it that glossy surfaces are alluring to one sister and anathema to the other? Where did a passion for contemporary photography come from?
Elizabeth Lawrence, partner of interior design legend Bunny Williams in the firm Williams Lawrence, has been working with a tight-knit Manhattan family for decades, marveling at both the similarities and differences in each member’s approach to his or her interiors. Over the course of more than a dozen collaborations, Lawrence and the family—a long-married couple and their five adult children—have developed a distinctive design language, with dialects specific to each individual.
The latest in that long line of projects is a renovation of an Upper East Side prewar apartment that the oldest daughter, an active philanthropist, shares with her financier husband and their four children. For her, the priority is always color, pattern, and texture. “When I was a child my mother was constantly having to tell me to stop touching things in stores,” she says. “I had to put my hands on everything.”
For Lawrence’s part, such a long and fruitful history has its advantages. “My client was nearing the end of high school when I first began working with her parents, which is so wonderful, because I know exactly what she is talking about when she makes references to her childhood home. We don’t have to say too much to understand each other at this point,” explains the designer.
Updates to the five-bedroom residence began with some changes carried out by M. Damian Samora, a partner at Ferguson & Shamamian Architects, to give the spaces a more gracious flow to suit a young, modern family. “We flipped the kitchen from the north to the south side of the apartment, which allowed us to configure the entertaining spaces to overlook Fifth Avenue and Central Park, with the bedrooms on the quieter, north-facing side,” says Samora.
Throughout the apartment Lawrence inserted reminders of the antiques-filled rooms the homeowner padded around in as a child, while keeping things fresh and original. At one end of the elegant living room, antique chairs inherited from the client’s parents surround a classic birdcage dining table. Nearby, a Federal-style, scroll-arm bench is paired unexpectedly with an eye-catchingly patterned mixed-media painting of a reclining woman by Mickalene Thomas, one of the many contemporary artists in the couple’s collection. Other pieces are by Andy Warhol, Candida Höfer, Kehinde Wiley, and George Condo, as well as less-celebrated names. “I have watched my client’s passion for collecting grow over the years to the point where she now teaches me about the emerging artists she discovers,” says Lawrence.
At the living room’s other end, anchored by plump custom sofas, the 1860s English marble mantelpiece is surmounted by refined 1960s Jansen sconces and a mirror by John Rosselli (Bunny Williams’s husband) that incorporates a reproduction of a radiant vintage Line Vautrin work. Here, too, the art keeps things loose, especially a nearly floor-to-ceiling Lyne Lapointe artwork saturated in cherry red and pink, hanging adjacent to mother-of-pearl striped curtains and a turquoise ginger jar turned lamp.
Parenting books often remind us that offspring are not mini versions of their parents, and while inspired by her mother’s and father’s collecting, the homeowner has her own ideas about living with art. It took guts to hang a vibrant Richard Mosse and an explosive Kikuo Saito on traditional de Gournay chinoiserie wallpaper panels in the fearlessly furnished dining room. Lawrence outfitted the space with a custom cobalt lacquer dining table surrounded by guilloche-framed French chairs from the ’50s placed atop a contemporary rug boldly patterned with asymmetrical swirls.
Clearly, the client hasn’t shaken her attachment to the antiques she grew up with, and Lawrence jokes that “there were occasionally lighthearted suggestions that we sneak certain tables out of her parents’ house to use here.” The designer did not have to abscond with her client’s childhood bedroom curtains, which were pulled out of storage and now hang in the couple’s bedroom, also a sophisticated mix of old and new. “I love that Elizabeth knows how to work with my nostalgic tendencies,” says the homeowner.
I love that Elizabeth knows how to work with my nostalgic tendencies”
Just off the bedroom is the knockout dressing room, where Lawrence devised bespoke powder blue closets inset with panels of Le Manach floral fabric. On evenings when the client and her sisters go out together, they sometimes gather here to get dressed and talk. It’s a scene not unlike one from their childhood—siblings with their own sense of style, feeling right at home.
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Fall Issue under the headline “Right at Home.” Subscribe to the magazine.