The East Village loft dates back to the 1890's. It had been a carriage house, a furniture warehouse and then an art gallery in the gold rush 1980s. George Gilpin and Gigi Sharp lived in the loft for four years, before deciding to restore the place and turn it into a welcoming and personal retreat from urban anxiety. Over the years they had collected a lot of furniture, mostly 1950s modern. To create the interior where the furniture character would be accentuated James Wagman was invited. An old elevator shaft topped by a leaky skylight was the starting point of the work. A huge sandblasted glass-and-metal panel was attached to the old elevator gears to form a curtain that separates the living-room and the bedroom area. The couple loves having people over, so the one-person-wide kitchen is replaced with a spacious, centrally located room with entrances to the living and the dining areas.