SheltonMindel Combines Two Upper East Side Apartments Into a Vibrant Triplex Home
By Jane Margolies
It sounds like something straight out of a movie (think Yours, Mine and Ours) or a TV show (The Brady Bunch). Man with three children from a previous marriage meets woman with two of her own. They fall in love, decide to tie the knot, and plan to live as one big family, happily ever after. Then the fairy tale meets New York City real estate.
Each of the kids had his or her own room in their previous apartments, so their parents wanted the same—or better—for them in what would be their new home. The newlyweds looked and looked for a six-bedroom apartment. “There was no such thing,” the husband reports.
So the couple decided to make one of their own. They purchased the duplex penthouse in a condo tower under construction on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And they bought the apartment below it, too, for a grand total of nearly 7,500 square feet. It fell to SheltonMindel to combine the units, which meant not only completely reworking the layouts of both apartments into a cohesive whole but also coaxing the developer and his contractor to go along with the new program. “Coercing is more like it,” deadpans architect Lee F. Mindel, a member of the Interior Design Hall of Fame who founded the firm 41 years ago with the late Peter Shelton.
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