OLD MEETS NEW IN VILLE-MARIE
Blend of antique and contemporary
Cynthia Weston and Harvey Horowitz are a retired couple in their 60s. Weston, who hails from Chicago, was a professor at McGill University, while Horowitz, a Montrealer, was a management consultant. When they were working, they lived for many years in a “lovely old home” in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, but in 2015, they traded that in for a modern penthouse in the Golden Square Mile.
Their reason for moving was partly because of a change of lifestyle (they spend much of the winter at their condo in Florida), but also because they wanted to be closer to downtown and live in a more contemporary home. According to Weston, although they loved their old house — it was built in 1920 — it was crammed full of antiques, some inherited from their parents. The couple held on to their favourite pieces, but before they moved, they gave a lot of the vintage furniture to their family.
Their new abode is a 2,800-square-foot condo with two bedrooms (one is Horowitz’s home office), two bathrooms (plus a powder room), an open living room and dining room (but partly separated by a floorto-ceiling wall unit) and three terraces, which offer views of the city. Throughout the condo hang large, wide-angle, giclée prints of desert landscapes — stunning images created by Horowitz, who is an accomplished art photographer.
Q How did you decide what to get rid of and what to take with you?
Weston: It look a while. We had a lot of sorting to do, but before moving the remainder of our belongings into our condo, we had to do some renovations.
Q Such as?
Horowitz: The bathrooms were a priority. They were very dated. We redid the electrical wiring and the plumbing. We also opened up the living room, making it bigger by demolishing the den that was there before. The kitchen was in good shape, but it had linoleum tiles, so we changed those to ceramic. The master bedroom was nothing like it is now. (It has built-in wood-fronted closet doors and drawers with burnished steel handles.) It had mirrored walls. A different era!
Q Did you move into the condo while all this was going on? W: Oh no. We actually put our furniture into storage and went off to Florida. The renovations were left in the hands of our architect, Bernie Rosen.
Q And when you returned? W: We took our furniture out of storage and moved in.
Q But you said you weren’t too happy? W: The apartment wasn’t the problem. It looked great. But the furniture just didn’t suit the space. H: The couches were all wrong. W: They were very big and kind of took over the living room. We lived with the furniture for a while and moved things around multiple ways, but nothing seemed to work. That’s when we decided to hire an interior designer.
Q How did you go about finding one? H: One day we were driving around Griffintown when we came across a high-end furniture store called Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. That’s where we met Louloua Maleh. She’s a design consultant with the company. W: After she’d seen our home, she understood exactly what we were trying to do and how we could work in the pieces we loved and blend them with new purchases.
(Weston leads me around the apartment, pointing out the things that came from their former home and how they harmonize with the new furnishings — 95 per cent of which, according to Horowitz, came from Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams.
(In the living room, there is a high-back tan leather reading
chair — a recent purchase but a classical style — which can be pushed away easily because it stands in front of a door to the fire escape. Between the chair and Horowitz’s grand piano, atop a set of glass shelves, stands a lamp with an alabaster base, which came from Weston’s side of the family.
(The living room is free of the offending couches and now has two seating areas with several much smaller couches and two glass-topped coffee tables. Between the two seating areas are a couple of off-white tub chairs which can swivel around to accommodate TV watchers — the television is at the dining room end — or people who want to look out over one of the couple’s three terraces.
(The dining room has a large oval table on top of which is an assortment of brass candlesticks artfully arranged on top of a circular, glass tray. The floor — it’s maple — is covered with an Oriental rug. One of the walls is dominated by a huge mirror with an ornate gilt frame.)
Q Is the mirror another new purchase? W: No. That came from my mom. It was actually a painting and she replaced it with the mirror. That was one of those pieces that was hard to place, but Louloua integrated it so nicely. It’s one of my very favourite things!