Having a Ball Living in a Former Ballroom

Jack Shainman and Carlos Vega's apartment had to have space for "big art."

- WENDY GOODMAN

It was dreary. I mean really dreary,” gallerist Jack Shainman says of the loft, which occupies part of what was once a ballroom in an 1872 building near Madison Square that he and his artist-husband Carlos Vega bought a decade ago. The apartment hadn’t been inhabited for years and was filled with unclaimed furniture scattered around the dark musty space that retained the trimmings of ’80s living: gold-painted tin ceilings and pipes, ruddy natural brick walls, and, in one corner, a narrow spiral staircase that led to the primary bedroom with its uninviting brown hot tub.

“It was very unattractive,” Vega agrees, “but immediately the scale was the most exciting thing.” The loft has 2,057 square feet and 16-foot ceilings. They wanted space, both for themselves and for their rotating art collection.