This landmarked 1846 townhouse gets a jolt of new life, thanks to a fleet of French design trophies.
This story starts with Pierre Paulin’s 1969 Multimo sofa, a sinuous form with petal-like backrests. “We wanted to secure that piece—period,” says one young collector, explaining how he found his way to New York’s Demisch Danant gallery. At the time, he was in the early stages of furnishing his family’s new Brooklyn home, a landmark 1846 town house by Richard Upjohn, the architect of Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan. Although said shopper had grown up around 18th-century American antiques, he was developing a taste for postwar French design. When he learned that cofounder Suzanne Demischtook on the occasional interiors job, a light bulb went off.