Loft on Lispenard Street

An interior photograph of a home. A low table sits on the floor on the right of the image. A large plant, books, pots, and sculpture of a figure's head sit on the table. To the left of the table is a geometric chair. On the wall behind it is a row of large drawings of buildings.
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Smith’s loft was designed by close friend Rosemary Peck.

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Peck spotted battered wooden shipping pallets one night on the way home from dinner with Smith and used them as functional focal points in Smith’s apartment. Here we see one of the repurposed pallets utilized as a coffee table. The table held a large potted plant, an arrangement of Japanese vessels, an African bust, and a small stack of books—later moved elsewhere for a 1978 work by Christo (a wrapped copy of the book Modern Art by Sam Hunter and John Jacobus).

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Smith arrayed his wall with prints from Christo’s series (Some) Not Realized Projects (1971). 

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Alvar Aalto chair

Willi Smith’s loft apartment on Lispenard Street in New York City was adorned with works of art from across the African continent, alongside contemporary and modern art and design that he acquired from friends such as Dan Friedman, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Martine Barrat, and from the New York gallery Fifty/50.

Interior of Willi Smith’s Lispenard Street loft. Photographed by Rosemary Peck, 1986

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