See inside Julianne Moore’s homey West Village townhouse

“For years I dreamed about living in a townhouse in the West Village,” Julianne Moore tells Architectural Digest. And then, fifteen years ago, the Oscar-winning actress and her partner, the writer/director Bart Freundlich, made it happen.

Two renovations later, Moore let AD take a peek into her Manhattan digs, which, by their assessment, gives of an air of “surprising normality.” (That’s a compliment.) AD elaborates: “The rooms possess the kind of engaging homeyness that emerges, seemingly without effort, in spaces where someone has paid close attention to proper scale, proportion, and period detail.”

“The first time I walked into this [townhouse], I knew this was it—I fell in love,” Moore tells AD. At the time, the five-story home was divided into apartments, but there was “enough character left that we could bring the house back to its Greek Revival roots without destroying the soul and texture of the building,” Moore explained. Thus, renovation number one, a collaboration between Freundlich’s architect brother and his partners and Moore herself.

Architectural Digest

But the house didn’t reach true home status until renovation number two, when they flipped the living spaces. “We originally put the kitchen downstairs, where it’s supposed to be,” Moore told AD. “That’s where we always ended up, crammed on a love seat, watching television. We never gathered in the living room on the parlor floor.” The solution: rearrange. They moved the living room downstairs, and brought the kitchen up. “I cannot recommend more strongly putting your kitchen somewhere with lots of natural light. It changed everything. Now we use the whole house,” Moore said.

The resulting space may be somewhat less historically accurate, but AD assures us all that the effect is anything but jarring. And it’s true: Moore’s townhouse is warm and inviting, with a heavy emphasis on organic forms, midcentury shapes, and a never-ending parade of thoughtful details.

For more photos of the townhouse, check out Architectural Digest.

François Dischinger and Alexi Lubomirski courtesy of Architectural Digest

Architectural Digest

• The New York City Townhouse Julianne Moore Calls Home [Architectural Digest]
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