Of home, love and poetry

In the middle of the Christmas rush, I took a journey to another world. My aunt invited me along to look at apartments with her. She is planning to downsize from her townhouse on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, to a three-bedroom apartment in a full-service building. A full-service building is a sugar-plum dream to someone who has lived in lofts and bungalows most of her adult life—me.

Our first stop was a surprise. We met her broker in a relic of a Third Avenue apartment house near Gramercy Park. Could this be what they meant by luxury high-rise? It was not. The developer was renting space in the building to present the new apartment building designed by Phillippe Starck, the French designer of everything from watches to restaurants.

go to column