BIG DEAL; An Old Chagall Haunt, Repainted (original) (raw)
Home & Garden|BIG DEAL; An Old Chagall Haunt, Repainted
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/16/garden/big-deal-an-old-chagall-haunt-repainted.html
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BIG DEAL
- Nov. 16, 2000
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November 16, 2000
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Section F, Page
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MICHAEL JACKSON rented it last, but a previous tenant of the Beaux-Arts town house at 4 East 74th Street was an artist of a different stripe.
Before Mr. Jackson, who rented the 14,000-square-foot red-brick mansion from August 1999 to February 2000, there was Marc Chagall, who lived on the top floor shortly after arriving in New York in 1941. He and Bella Chagall decorated their apartment ''with hangings and Marc's paintings to look something like a Paris studio,'' Sidney Alexander said in his 1978 book, ''Marc Chagall.''
''Here Chagall began reworking some of the canvases he had brought to the States, and after a day's work would walk for miles,'' he wrote.
Today, the house is empty, but still full of original detail: an unusual oak staircase whose railing bows out in the hallways, windows of stained and leaded glass and 11 fireplaces (one in the master bathroom). It's on the market for $20 million, and it has been glossed up.
The present owners, who granted this reporter entry only on condition that they not be identified, bought the town house nine months ago and renovated it for the second time in five years, relining fireplaces, redoing doors with French polish and stripping off recent layers of paint.
The place gleams. Floors have been polished to the nth degree. The enormous kitchen is fitted out with the now requisite six-burner restaurant stove and a brace of stainless-steel Viking dishwashers. (A country table that seats eight faces gardens behind Fifth Avenue town houses.) An elevator runs the full six floors.
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