The Art Goths on Sutton Place’s East 57th

Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg

Candi Levine’s mother, Joan, dined in the circus and the Bernardin; bought from Bergdorf and B. Altman; And sent her daughter to the city to learn French to the French high school. Where others would she choose to live, apart from the epicenter of the chic elite of the city (at least in 1960): Sutton Place. “She was very arrogant,” says Candi. Candi never took it. She is a painter who has never careful about the galleries; A masterful home cook with a taste for North African, French and Mediterranean dishes; And she only wears black for 35 years – a habit that she shares with her husband, Mark Levine. “We are not really city people,” she said. But in 2004, decades after the departure of Candi, she and Mark moved their family to the apartment of the East 57th Street, transforming a frills, carpet, two -world bedrooms in a space filled with their avant-garde furniture, abstract paintings, and vintage Alessi. “I would not say that there are many apartments in town that resemble ours,” said Mark.

Candi and Mark Levine
Photo: graciousness of the Levine family

Mark was an escape from the suburbs when he met Candi in high school. Together, they were interested in design, then fashionable – to study at the New York Institute of Technology. Candi focused on interior design, Mark on architecture. After graduating, Candi stayed at home to take care of their daughter while Mark did fast work in the plumbing industry. They lived everywhere in Manhattan-with the exception of a three-year passage in Aix-en-Provence and a spell in Southampton, in the house of the weekend of the Grandpa of Candi.

There, Mark took over the garage and started making furniture. “I liked Picasso Three musicians And always thought that they looked like chairs, so I made my chairs look like in Picasso Three musicians“, He said, explaining four angular seats with a hard back and that are embarrassed like puzzle pieces to become a bench. After studying Frank Lloyd Wright, Levine made a meadow style wardrobe and a table. And Inspired by Michael GravesLevine made her daughters a pair of postmodern doll houses: a smooth white tower that closes like a wardrobe and a simplified pantheon, its sides were opened and its painted Sarcelle columns. Candi tended to be near a brush, painting acrylic dream figures, sometimes on Mark’s furniture. None of the two has ever sold their work, rather giving it to his friends and family, nor by hindering him rental at the rental and in the East 57th.

A Candi painting on a cabinet door (left) and a table of Wright style locking squares, designed by Mark. Adriane Quinlan.

Mark built dolls in Michael Graves’ style. “When we were at university, he was the hero of everyone,” said Levine. Adriane Quinlan.

In 2004, Joan moved – leaving for Florida after a series of divorces. The address was not ideal, but the city center prices increased at the time, while the interview of the 17-story cooperative had remained miraculously low. (The rental building became cooperative in 1970 and Joan’s father, a doctor, bought the place for $ 23,000, or $ 193,000 today.) With vague plans to move one day in France, Candi And Mark decided to make it work for the interval and tear the carpets, removed curtains and put the personalized pieces of Mark – including a radiator cover in the primary room and a shelf in the corridor, Both built in part from pipes which he bought thanks to his plumbing work. A corridor coat was improvised, ingeniously, from suspended industrial hooks. “It was comfortable,” said Mark. “And he continued to get more and more from our aesthetics. We always change things and evolve. »»

Mark built lamps outside plumbing materials and has made an industrial rack that treats coats like meat slabs. Adriane Quinlan.

The couple, who only carries black, painted their tidy dressing room and their ceiling a very French lavender nuance. From left to right: Photo: graciousness of the Levine familyPhoto: Adriane Quinlan

The couple, who only carries black, painted their tidy dressing room and their ceiling a very French lavender nuance. High: Photo: Gracieuse of …
The couple, who only carries black, painted their tidy dressing room and their ceiling a very French lavender nuance. High: Photo: graciousness of the Levine familyPhoto: Adriane Quinlan

The couple’s girls slept in the large primary bedroom, dividing the space by a vintage wall of doors, while their son put a room from the living room by a screen covered with one of Candi’s paintings. The kitchen has been improved and painted in deep red, including the ceiling. Candi learned to cook and cook tagines or cock to wine for dinners with friends – including a neighbor who pointed out, when she entered for the first time, that the place “seemed a bit not Like this neighborhood.

The couple entertained friends in a large airy living room, where the arrangements and the floors are original in the 1959 building. “There are good bones, spacious rooms, a lot of natural light,” explains the Becki Danchik broker. “But art was a subject of discussion.”
Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg

When the children left, Joan returned. She had Alzheimer’s disease and Candi took care of her. The apartment Joan had once known was now unrecognizable – rebuilt like his daughter. But that didn’t seem important. “We had a very complicated relationship, but my mother completed a lot about me,” said Candi.

Finally, the downtown moving plans turned into plans to move to Aix-en-Provence, where they bought an unexpected advantage of Joan’s insistence on French. Candi would not have guessed that, 65 years later, she still lived in her mother’s apartment, but life turned out to be beautifully, in any case: to raise her own children where she had grown up, taking care of His mother in a house they both knew and, more recently, playing with her granddaughter here. “Time has just moved us away,” she said.

Price: $ 1.05 million ($ 2,478 of monthly maintenance)

Specifications: 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

Extras: The building has a terrace, a garage, storage and a buyer is welcome to make an offer on furniture.

10 -minute walking department: Whole Foods, PJ Clarke’s, Andrew Haskell Green Park

Listed by: Becki Danchik, Coldwell Banker Warburg

Outside the living room, a door passes in front of a memorial with the beloved Pomerane of the family, with truffles, and in the kitchen, which the family improved around 2004.
Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg

Candi learned to cook here and took cooking after a trip to France. As for why she painted the whole red place, she had a simple answer. “I just like red.”
Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg

Over the coast of the kitchen, Mark separated from part of the living room so that their son can have intimacy. After moving, Levine kept three of the walls and transformed the place into his office, which is lit by a lamp he made from industrial parts. “They made it work for them,” said Danchik, their broker.
Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg

The master bedroom with a suite bathroom and northwest light. Mark built the cover of the radiator, a chest of drawers by the window and the angular night tables.
Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg

The second room, now used for customers and as a shared art studio. After Candi’s advance, Mark took painting and contributed abstractions (bottom left).
Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg

In love with France, Candi chose a Provencal yellow for one of the two bathrooms.
Photo: Coldwell Banker Warburg / Romy Rodiek

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