Upstairs From His Favorite Italian Restaurant

Ryan Lawson designs other people’s places differently from how he did his own Village apartment.

- WENDY GOODMAN

The Living Room

A vintage coyote bench by Mario Lopez Torres sits by a custom elm screen by David O’Brien of Hawk & Stone that hides the air conditioner. The wood sculpture with two bumps on the wall is by Alma Allen, as is the bronze spiral coffee table. The Hem sofa against the wall is covered in deadstock linen velvet by Glant. “The fabric was sitting in the factory storage for the past 40 years, and only 30 yards existed in the whole entire world, and I bought it,” Ryan Lawson says. The large landscape painting is by Arch Connelly.

AFTER LIVING IN a Soho loft-3,000 square feet, light-flooded by 16 windowsfor seven years, Ryan Lawson had to find a new place when his landlord died and the building was sold. He wanted to move to the Village, but all the apartments he saw "were like total sad caves," he says. He walked out of one and into one of those classic restaurants that haven't changed in decades-one that he loved. "It was 5 p.m., and I thought, You know what? I'll just have a martini."

What followed sounds like the opening of a Dawn Powell novel. Lawson describes sitting at the bar chatting with the owner of the restaurant and the building about his real-estate conundrum, and it turned out there was an empty apartment just upstairs. He asked to see it then and there.

"So Franco the bartender put a napkin over my martini," says Lawson. Despite the fact that "the entire place had fluorescent lights and was painted the exact color of a Band-Aid," and the refrigerator covered one of the windows, he told the owner, "I'll take it."