Multi CULTURAL
The 1,100-square-foot studio displays works by friends and known artists, including a modern (male) take on the odalisque by American abstract expressionist Joseph Glasco and two works by Françoise Gilot, depicting her children with Picasso, Paloma and Claude.
Multi CULTURAL
A small bronze from Brazil, a baboon skull, and a c. 1970 photograph of Melvin Dwork form a still life beneath the mid-century Italian lamp.
Impeccably ARRANGED
A 27-inch-high marble-top table serves as both dining area and study. The TV fits into the deep sill of the only window lacking a view.
Impeccably ARRANGED
Shelves from a previous apartment fit precisely into the alcove behind the bed, designed by Dwork, upholstered in Edelman leather, and covered in Rogers & Goffigon wool.
Impeccably ARRANGED
Dark walls ground the art.
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self contained

Melvin Dwork’s Tribeca studio reveals the designer’s meticulous, multilayered approach to modern life
Type: 
Interior Design
Author name: 
MELVIN DWORK
Type: 
Produced By
Author name: 
ELIZABETH SVERBEYEFF BYRON
Type: 
Text
Author name: 
MARJORIE E. GAGE
Type: 
Photography
Author name: 
JOSHUA MCHUGH

If there is an art to living in Manhattan, it lies in the ability to manipulate a modest amount of square footage into a space that’s intimate, yet somehow larger than life. It’s a technique that designer Melvin Dwork mastered long ago. Fueled by a fascination with the innovative designs emerging from Italy and France in the 1940s, Dwork came to New York from Kansas City to study at Parsons, and never looked back. For the past three and a half years, he has split his time between a house on Shelter Island and this 1,100-square-foot studio loft in the former IRS office building at 50 Murray Street, a rectangular space with a view that takes in the entire northern grid of Manhattan, from concrete and yellow cabs to cloud cover.

“It is always the same, but always changing,” says Dwork, of the scene outside his wall of windows, “and the mood in the apartment changes with it.”

Light reflects off walls painted Benjamin Moore’s eye-tricking Dark Pewter—appearing by turns gray, teal, or deep green—directing attention to a collection of drawings, prints, African art, personal photographs, and primitive sculptures assembled over a lifetime. “The present builds on the past. It’s important to invest in beauty and quality and to hold on to things with meaning. Rooms stripped of soul don’t interest me,” says Dwork. “I am old-fashioned in that way—an old-fashioned modernist.”

Resources:

Interior Designer Melvin Dwork, 50 Murray St., NYC 10007; 212.480.3908. Françoise Gilot, francoisegilot.com. Daybed was designed by Melvin Dwork, 50 Murray St., NYC 10007; 212.480.3908. Edelman Leather, LLC., 979 3rd Avenue, 2nd Fl., NYC 10022; 212.751.3339; edelmanleather.com. Fabric was Bechamel 938001-35; Petrol; 100% wool by Rogers & Goffigon Ltd., 979 Third Ave., Suite 1718, NYC 10022; 212.888.3242. Dark Pewter, 2122-10 paint color was from Benjamin Moore, benjaminmoore.com.