HOUSE PARTY
Designer Tracy Stern and developer Jerry Turco add glamour to a once-gritty townhouse
C ANDLES flicker at the top of a black metal staircase lined with tubular neon lights and provocative artwork. Ascending the steps feels like entering an exclusive club — which is exactly the vibe Tracy Stern and Jerry Turco wanted for their newly renovated Hell’s Kitchen townhouse.
“We’re down the street from the back entrance of Studio 54,” says Stern, a fortysomething interior designer and entrepreneur from Miami, who spearheaded a redesign of the home with fiancé Jerry Turco, a developer in his fifties who grew up in Nutley, NJ. “We wanted this cool, clubby atmosphere where we could entertain friends and family.”
Turco has lived part-time in the 3,000-square-foot, five-story building since 2000; the couple also jets between homes in New Jersey, Florida and Idaho. But as they neared their February engagement, Stern wanted to give the house a zesty upgrade from the leather-heavy look favored by Turco. A graduate of the New York School of Interior Design, Stern was excited about putting her own stamp on the erstwhile bachelor pad. “I put my love and heart and soul in every project I do, but with this one, it was even more special because it was ours,” she says. “I wanted gritty and glamour. Jerry’s this rugged guy, and I’m this girly girl.”
“Like Princess Grace [Kelly] meets Robert De Niro,” Turco adds. “I wanted the two to meet in a way where the space could be both magical and handsome,” says Stern.
Her vision manifested itself in wildly patterned wallpaper, furry throws and spiky midcentury lighting fixtures. But while Stern’s taste may be whimsical and eclectic — her closet is filled with everything from custom couture to cowboy boots — she loves nothing more than to roll up her sleeves and dive into a project.
“Jerry told me on an early date that I was a hard worker. To me, that was so much more romantic than him saying I was sexy or beautiful,” says Stern, who yanked out the beige carpet on the lower-level landing and laid out black linoleum by hand to create the mood-setting entryway. “The entrance is everything.”
The extreme makeover took only a week and cost just under $50,000. Renovations like these aren’t just personal for the couple — they’re professional, too. In 2017, Turco and Stern redid 24 Florida homes, most available to rent on Airbnb. “We always try to separate work from living, and say, ‘Okay, we won’t talk about design or developing,’ ” says Turco. “But it never works. We love Home Depot and Lowe’s. They are part of our love story.”
For their Hell’s Kitchen hideaway — located in a cute brick-clad structure on a
nondescript street with a hair salon on the ground floor — Stern and Turco began with a redesign of the second level. It holds the kitchen, the living room, and a nook with a small library and office space. First, Stern anchored the space with boldly shaped lights that help divide the L-shaped open floor plan into areas with separate functions. She also chose a retro-style Bertazzoni orange range for the open kitchen. It gives the space a burst of color that is amplified by bright pillows on the couch and works on the wall of the step-up living room. The kitchen island pays homage to pop art, with a mounted double-pan scale anchored in the center that, inspired by Andy Warhol, has Campbell’s soup cans on each side.
Another point of pride for Stern and Turco is a birdcage-turnedbookcase in a sunny corner of the living room, where Stern displays titles, like Marcel Proust’s “Swann’s Way,” Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” and Truman Capote’s “Summer Crossing,” that have proved influential-. “I had wanted a birdcage bookcase for years, and had seen one I had fallen in love with in Paris, but it was $8,000,” says Stern. “But I found this for about $800 on the UK-based Web site Vintage Vibe, and bought it immediately.” In another nook, Stern and Turco display their vinyl collection and a new guitar.
The next floor is the couple’s calming gray master bedroom, which Stern has yet to revamp fully. Another level up reveals the guest room, with a psychedelic anchor wall — the wallpaper comes from Stern’s own line — behind matching twin-size canopied beds. The funky space serves both a guest bedroom and crash pad for Stern’s and Turco’s children (Stern has a daughter, Chloe, 18, and a son, Hunter, 20, while Turco has a daughter, Sophia, 16).
At the foot of each bed is a Philippe Starck Mademoiselle chair — both procured by Stern from a trash pile on the Upper East Side, where she lived pre-Turco. “I love when things are a little distressed. They look like they have a story,” says Stern of her decision not to get the chairs reupholstered. The “undone” theme carries on: In the corner, a dramatic velvet curtain cordons off a black lacquer vanity, bedecked with a slightly chipped oversize mirror. Another highlight: the skateboards mounted on the wall — one signed by artist Damien Hirst and a polka-dot one designed by Stern. (She used to skate herself.)
Finally, the house’s top floor evokes a sleek wine bar, with an oversize low-slung couch, a fireplace, and floor-to-ceiling northand south-facing windows. This den space — which has two patios, one with a picture-perfect view of the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park — is where Stern and Turco entertain.
Despite the all-black walls and furnishings, the space is airy and light. “Our painters thought we were crazy, and asked me at least three times if I was sure we wanted to do black,” says Stern, who adds that the decision actually makes the room feel lighter and more open than its previous gray. “To me, black mixes all the colors, allowing objects in a room to pop. I think of black as a curtain or frame to really let us focus on the windows, looking outside at the evolving streetscape below.”
Stern also says that the new digs — and the parties the couple throws about once a month — have opened the eyes of her Upper East Side friends. Initially reluctant to cross the park — much less travel below 60th Street — they are swayed. Stern adds, “Once they get here, they don’t want to leave.”
Neither do Stern and Turco. “When it’s snowing, we feel like we’re in a snow globe,” says Stern of the black lounge. “We’ll start a fire, sit on the couch and just watch the world go by. It’s like our own private film.”