Our Main Staircase

The staircase in our 1909 building is one of its signature design elements. It moves up through our building from the basement to the fourth floor where Marcia's apartment was located. 

On the fourth floor, the stairs are about six feet wide. As you move down through the building, the stairs get wider and wider, causing a funnel-like effect to bring the light through the building. You can get an idea of the size of the openings by the dark spots on the blueprint below. 

There is a skylight at the top of the stairs which we opened several years ago. Read about it here. Opening the skylight made a world of difference to the staircase which had always been very, very dark. 

Each set of stairs is actually three sets, intersected with two landings, as you can see in the image above. From the basement to the third floor, the stairs are Calacatta marble in grey and white pattern. The landings are one-inch by one-inch marble tesserae tiles, surrounded by black marble. 

Originally, there were windows along the south side of the staircase, which would bring in both air and light. When we connected the two buildings, we used that space to add bathrooms and an elevator. You can see that on the blueprint on the right of the first floor.

Because you could suddenly see the whole aspect of the staircase when the skylight was uncovered, we decided to hang some portraits in the stairwell. You can read about it here. 

I recently made a little video about our staircase, which you can watch on YouTube.