Truly Terrific: An 1850 Chelsea Townhouse

The founder of a dozen art and antiques bought a townhouse from 1850 and never stopped collecting real estate.
Photo: Niall Schroder

Antiquities have never stayed in the townhouse of Smith for a long time on the 24th rue Ouest. A paint of a shipwreck would be washed when the tide brought a demanding manifold The Smith gallery On Madison Avenue. A metal rabbit, stuck on the top of a rusty vest, slowly scanned the living room until Sanford Smith Has trade with one of the American dealers he had known from the Chelsea chip. Only a few parts have survived long enough to be considered on the market: a shaker dining table, useful for feeding three boys; a curve Paul Evans Desk where Sanford has taken calls; And a sculpture three feet high of a rooster, which a picker had given as a warranty for a loan before his death. Sanford and Patricia Lynch Smith were not sentimental; They bought what they thought were able to sell for the benefit and used the same meaning to find the beautiful townhouse in Chelsea where they and their sons lived and worked, even after a divorce, for 55 years.

A 19th century lamp that once hung in a Western brothel is still suspended in the Smith family house.
Photo: Niall Schroder

The antiques entered the life of the couple very early: Sanford, born in Brooklyn, met Patricia at the university, and they spent their weekends visiting her parents in Connecticut, where they were entertained with auction. On an lark, they started to sell what they found at Chelsea Flea on the 26th street and spend more time in the neighborhood; Friends lived on the 24th street in a London terrace Towers apartment. When a panel is mounted at the bottom of the block to no. 453 Advertising a rental, the Smiths moved. Years later, in 1968, the couple Bought n ° 447 for $ 65,000 With a plan to divide the 1850 building to make room for tenants who could help repay the mortgage. Two units on the ground on the third and fourth floors were above the duplex of an owner with rooms at the garden level and living spaces on the floor of the living room.

Smiths rushing to the front with friends.
Photo: Gravie of the Smith family

Sanford supervised the work itself, serving as a general entrepreneur and renovating just enough to make the place habitable. While the money arrived, the antique pulses of Patricia turned to the house – Mijous carpets were raised to reveal original boards from the 1850s With hand -wore nails, and the old brick fireplace has been cleaned without too much noise. The couple quickly asked for monuments to give a quote to the house, even Write the report (“The first owner of this dignified house was Julia Ann Gray, wife of George Gray…”). The plate installed to mark the building square on the national register was stolen six weeks later. It was the Chelsea of ​​the 1970s, and the neighborhood was a bit wild – the couple’s son Ian almost remembers having been attacked for his childhood roller skates until the attacker’s girlfriend intervenes: “She said:” Oh, he is cute. Don’t do that. “”

Smith used his Flair to organize events to establish an annual fundraising on the 24th street selling wholesale flowers in favor of the embellishment of the block.
Art: Mimi Vang Olson / Photo: Gracieuse of Ian Lynch Smith

The couple’s companies flourished during these years. In 1979, Sanford founded The Fall Ancient Show, one of the first to focus on American pieces, which would take place for 20 years and to turn ten other fairs focused on shortpoints or rare books, photographs or works on paper. Sanford billed sellers for space and buyers for tickets. The money he attracted financed a major renovation at the 24th Street House, during which the family abandoned their tenants and transformed the place into a single -family house. Antiques flowed in and out While the couple was waiting for the market to improve and the right buyer passes. During a home visit in 1984, a journalist The Christian scientific monitor spotted “Western art, Navajo carpet, Queen Anne’s chair, hand trunks from the 1920s and 1930s, designed by the architect, designed by the architect, shaker furniture, Grenfell carpets, 19th century weather valves, marine paintings and military miniatures.”

The sale of these items has become more a hobby for Sanford while the fairs he directed. The money that happened was now substantial enough to start a new collection: real estate. He bought another place on the 24th rue Ouest and let him out of the tenants, then jumped one of the rare surviving synagogues of the East Village. In the 1990s, now separated from Patricia, he bought a baccalaureate in a converted garage from West Village in 1930, then a house in Chelsea to live with his girlfriend, Jill Bokor, A magazine editor. “Sandy would buy houses in three minutes,” said Bokor, who watched him make offers after a single walk. Like any experienced collector, he knew what he wanted. “Before the war, the pre-a pre-a war if possible,” she told me. “He cared about certain things, but it was more – he was doing a Ka-shing In his mind. Then there were the holiday homes in the North fork and the Berkshires and two townhouses of the Upper West Side (Also listed This year).

On the death of Smith, his portfolio included 166 West 88th Street and 310 West 92nd. Niall Schroder.

On the death of Smith, his portfolio included 166 West 88th Street and 310 West 92nd. Niall Schroder.

The house of 447 West 24th remained with Patricia, who had an open door policy, letting loved ones crash into the mother-in-law’s apartment at the garden level and the organization of her sons and their college friends upstairs. “There was something in the house that was incredibly open,” recalls Ian Smith. Finally, Patricia expressed a guest book to keep track of the comings and goings.

Smith goes to his office on the 24th Street last year, shortly before his death.
Photo: Guitage Ian Smith

Sanford and Patricia remained friends until the death of Patricia in 2003. He even returned after the split – or his business then worked at the living room with his staff at the front and his large office at the back. “It was like a working antiques store,” said Bokor, that Sanford Tapped most of the business Prestigious fair, Art + Design Salonwho was going to win sponsorship Luxury fashion houses and furniture brands. It was a clientele perhaps less used to navigating around the heaps of old bowling pins and typewriters, vintage televisions and tuning for panels. “We were not delighted to invite people,” she says. But executives in costumes of thin and Rolex creators would always meet Sanford, always dressed in an old LLBEAN shirt and a timex, sitting in front of his office with a statue of a rabbit and one of the babies of her grandchildren. “It was a mess,” says Bokor. “But it was the kind of mess that was his culture, which was his house.”

Smith behind his desk by Paul Evans with an ink washing in 1944 Marsh Reginald behind him showing crowds in front of the display panels of Coney Island that Smith also collected. One announced “the youngest mother in the world”.
Photo: graciousness of Jill Bokor

When the row increased in the 1850s, the reverse could have been designed to correspond to what was then known as “Millionaire’s Row” on the 23rd street. The houses had to face a line of two floors “chalets” which were built for the families of workers, then shaved in the 1920s to build the London terrace towers.
Photo: Niall Schroder

Patricia Lynch Smith appreciated the patina of the house and renovated to preserve the floors, moldings and original chimneys.
Photo: Niall Schroder

Smith built the spaces of his young family, adding a sandbox in the backyard and, later, this bridge in the living room.
Photo: Niall Schroder

Looking at the living room at the living room when the space was used as a Bureau of Sanford L. Smith + Associates.

The fair as it is marketed, without the congestion of Smith’s affairs.
Photo: Niall Schroder

Paul Evans’ office where Smith worked surrounded by some of the goods that have survived a collection life. They set up earlier this year, selling some of the same dealers with which Smith had worked regularly.
Photo: Guitage Ian Smith