What I Remember (14): Apartments

WHAT I REMEMBER:
APARTMENTS

George and Effie in 404 Riverside apartment, 1998.

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS
George was very proud of his apartments – not only in how he decorated them, but in how he found them. In the last piece he wrote for Booknotes in 2008 before his death three months later, he reminisces about how he found his first apartment in New York (and also adds a hopeful, non-sequitor about his excitement and hopes for the future with the election of Barak Obama).

When the Chicago ad agency I worked for transferred me to New York in the early ’50s, I had to find an apartment for my wife and our infant Nick (and another in the hopper) and I wanted to replicate our Chicago Hyde Park (pre-Obama) environment: near a university, and a body of water, and, for affordability, also near a ghetto. A study of Manhattan neighborhoods, pointed to Morningside Heights, and always having found our Chicago apartments, through walkabouts, I continued the practice in New York and spent weekends walking into every building on Riverside Drive from West 72nd Street to 120th Street asking doormen, supers, and emerging residents, “Are there any apartments available here?” I hit the jackpot at 114th Street with a classic two-bedroom, full dining room, eat-in kitchen, views! at slightly more rent than our Chicago apartment, even though it was one floor above the lobby (not an ideal New York location).
A circular shower
And that was our first Manhattan home; four years later, we moved in the same building up to a seventh floor three-bedroom where my retired and ailing parents moved in with us (and the one out of the hopper, our second son Tom, was now toddling around, and there was another one in the hopper, Peter to-be!), and the views were much more enticing.

During the next decades, our walkabouts brought us to our final two Drive apartments, a bit more upscale, a bit larger, and a bit more wonderful (one was even featured in the Sunday New York Times Magazine section and later played a significant role in Nora Ephron’s movie You’ve Got Mail, appearing as Jean Stapleton's apartment).

Time Marches On, and we’re now a block and a half from the Drive—but, happily, with a backyard garden to weed and hoe come spring. On October 1, I went through a residential move that found me in a West Harlem “below grade” one-bedroom apartment—thanks to an offer that couldn’t be refused from niece Anemona and Josh, her husband, who had eight years previously bought and moved into a West Harlem townhouse with a finished below grade apartment, which they had been using as an “attic” dumping ground. The offer included welcome access to a garden, and, the move, alas, created many dozens of mysterious cardboard boxes encasing almost half a century of family and career memorabilia—photos, term papers, letters from early departed co-workers, friends, relatives, et al., phew!

As for the recent election, if it hadn’t interfered with my typing, we’d have kept our fingers perpetually crossed. But, with the wonderfully welcome results, here’s wishing all of us the best of all our hopes! There indeed was a Lincoln, young, inexperienced, oratoricaly blessed; and there really was an FDR and a JFK—how more elite could you get? And now, there really is a Barack Obama. Hooray, America!

Living room at 404 Riverside Drive.APARTMENTS FOR MOVIES & TV
George was thrilled when his apartment at 404 Riverrside Drive was used in the film You've Got Mail. With that in mind, he probably wrote the following press release/ad to announce the availability of his then-current home, 468 Riverside Drive, as well as that of a family friend, for photo and film shoots. Alas, nothing ever came of it.

For your editorial consideration.

Two Manhattan West Side Greek-themed apartments.
(a la Athens penthouses? Greek Island villas?)

Stephen Green-Armytage, a friend and a professional photographer with varied interior photography experience for both editorial and advertising projects, here, using available light and informal camera set-ups, is responsible for the enclosed reference photographs.

The Soter Apartment
Located in the Concord, 468 Riverside Drive.

George Soter (former ad agency creative executive) and his wife Effie (former social worker) both have roots in Greece’s Peloponessos (Effie was born in Athens).468 Riverside Drive

Their backgounds and interest in Greece lead to a longtime moonlighting venture, an upscale Greek boutique on East 49th Street, that enabled them and their three sons to have annual buying-and-exploring trips to Greece for over three decades. And, incidentally, to turn their three successive Riverside Drive apartments into echoes of interiors they had seen in Athens and on the Greek Islands. An example of this is evident in their present apartment’s dining room walls which display a large assortment of plates from around the world, typical of the itinerary and wealth displays in seafaring captains’ and sailors’ island mansions.

The Soters' art collection includes paintings by Greek artists Vassiliou, Sikeliotis, Kopsidis; Greek-based American expatriate painters Dorothy Andrews and Luis Orozco; a neon sculpture by Chryssa; a circa 300 AD Hellenistic marble; Greek furniture (including a Thonet rocker from George’s grandparents village home); and a large collection of antique embroideries and costume elements, and wood, metal, and ceramic folk objects.

The Samios Apartment.
Located at the Piano Factory Apartments, 454 West 46th Street.
Corinne Samios, a professional textile designer, has Greek roots in the island of Kythera and the Asia Minor city of Izmir (formerly Smyrna).

A frequent visitor to Greece--when employed by Brunschwig et Fils as chief print stylist, she spent a protracted period in Athens researching the historic art and folk objects of the Benaki Museum for preparation of the company’s print and wallpaper series, “The Benaki Collection.” (Textiles and fabrics from this collection adorn “Periyiali”--Manhattan’s first upscale Greek restaurant.)

404 RSD dining roomHer interest in Greece and her family background (her father was an accomplished artist, a number of his oils are on her walls), come to the fore in her one-bedroom apartment cum atelier. Its dramatic white Greek Island stairway in the living room leads to the loft storage space and also acts as a changing display stand of favorites from her many Greek collections which encompass ceramics, watermelon objects, folk figures, embroideries, old prints and assorted Athens junk-shop rescues and memorabilia.

The apartmment’s small balcony, high ceilings, light-filled rooms, and the interior garden court further convey a mid-20th century urban Greek ambience.404 RSD living room
404 Riverside Drive 10-S floor plan.