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Jul 14, 2023

22 Stunning Staircases from the AD Archive

By Alia Akkam Symbols of residential grandeur, sweeping staircases have long been coveted by many a homeowner. But as a peek into our 101-year-old archive demonstrates, there are seemingly infinite

By Alia Akkam

Symbols of residential grandeur, sweeping staircases have long been coveted by many a homeowner. But as a peek into our 101-year-old archive demonstrates, there are seemingly infinite designs to choose from, each one more tantalizing than the next. Whether it majestically greets visitors in a mansion, or is a dizzying spiral ideal for a minimalist New York loft, these 22 head-turning stairways elevate a utilitarian construction element into one of the home’s most magical assets.

The cover of the Fall 1963 issue of Architectural Digest.

An Antiques-Filled Los Angeles Abode

The late Edward F. White, who ran his eponymous Southern California interiors firm for more than 50 years (and led a team of designers in decorating the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room under the supervision of Jacqueline Kennedy,) was behind the design of this Georgian home in Los Angeles. In the entry hall, the graceful curving staircase is complemented by a French chest, custom carpeting, and velvet-flocked wallpaper that sets the tone for the living room’s Louis XVI cane armchairs. A 15-foot credenza, matching mirror in the dining room, and a tufted bar further anchor the family room. The stairs lead to an upper hall, where a commode is situated between two French shell-back chairs upholstered in gold silk damask.

Inside Gracie Mansion.

The Past Inspires a Mayoral Residence’s New Look

When Mike Bloomberg became mayor of New York City in 2002, he tasked local designer Jamie Drake with updating Gracie Mansion in just three months. One of the oldest surviving wood structures in Manhattan, the two-story, five-bedroom Federal House on East End Avenue was built in 1799 by the Scottish-born merchant Archibald Gracie and served as the original location of the Museum of the City of New York before becoming the official home of the city’s mayors since the Fiorello H. La Guardia administration in 1942. For the Gracie Mansion rehab, Drake dug into the past. “The Federal became the period in my life,” he recounted to Architectural Digest. “I pulled 100 books from library stacks and soon each one was sprouting 500 Post-its. Learning all about the pigments and the different processes for making paint at the turn of the 19th century—well, I can see where that might strike someone as dry, but for me it was thrilling to discover just how akin to my own taste the saturated colors of the period were.” Drake’s refresh included painting the parlor a historically accurate patent yellow and hanging an 1810 French chandelier from H.M. Luther Antiques in the dining room. In the latter, back in 1984, Albert Hadley had installed a Zuber Les Jardins de Paris wallpaper. The Susan E. Wagner Wing, added by Mott B. Schmidt in 1966, features a classic navy and gold stairway landing graced with six aquatints from the Hudson River Portfolio, painted by William Guy Wall and engraved by John Hill.

Stairway to Italy.

Mirroring the Landscape in Sardinia

In 1958, the Aga Khan began to envision Costa Smeralda, in northern Sardinia, as a ritzy resort. It wasn’t long after that the late French architect Savin Couëlle was also drawn to this stretch of Italian coast. Soon, he began building villas here that echoed the stunning surroundings, establishing a vernacular that is still closely identified with the island. This house, designed as a holiday escape for Marina Giori, captures Couëlle’s of-the-land vision with chestnut beams, terra-cotta floor tiles, and a pool reminiscent of a lake. Extending underneath an arch is a meditative, Venetian-stone staircase leading to an equally calming primary bedroom. “The colors in the bedrooms are natural—ocher, coral, and sand—which give out a warm light, important when the resident visits in winter,” Couëlle commented to AD.

A litany of materials comes together to create this space.

Arts and Crafts Vibes in the Rocky Mountains

There are no gimmicky ski trappings to fall back on in this 6,000-square-foot addition to a Telluride, Colorado, chalet originally modeled as a miner’s cabin. Instead, architect John Brons and Colombian-born AD100 interior designer Samuel Botero embraced a more romantic aesthetic centered on the Victorian era and the Arts and Crafts movement for this mountainside retreat, mixing, say, stamped-metal ceilings and a late 19th-century Egyptian Revival billiards table. “We didn’t want to do an exact copy of an Arts and Crafts interior,” Botero noted, “but we were definitely influenced by that style: its spirit of detailing and especially its vocabulary of wood.” One example is the steep open staircase that ascends three stories past a subtle indoor waterfall that conveniently helps humidify the dry altitude air.

Concrete carries the day inside this home.

An Architect’s Unconventional Hamptons Hideaway

For his 5,000-square-foot, two-story country home on Long Island’s East End, Lee F. Mindel, cofounder of the New York AD100 architecture and design firm SheltonMindel (then known as Shelton Mindel & Associates), partnered with architect Reed A. Morrison. The result is a modern, reinforced concrete house with a stained-cedar curtain wall. Divided in halves by a wedge of channel glass, the plan is situated to offer views of the water throughout. The light-filled property is stocked with vintage pieces, like a Kaare Klint 1935 leather sofa and a Charlotte Perriand slatted wood table from 1955. Every component is placed with precision, including the stair, which is vivified by laminated wood and leather chairs by Mathias Bengtsson and Arne Jacobsen respectively, as well as a Le Corbusier–designed shelf system. “No ornament, no extra stuff,” said Morrison of the layout. “Everything is distilled.”

The traditional entryway.

Daring Color Combinations Define a Long Island Mansion

Beautiful details are everywhere in this 11,800-square-foot, Norman-style estate on Long Island that was expanded by local architect Norman Wax to make way for a second story, portico, and glass conservatory. Dorothy Draper & Company’s Carleton Varney and the late Laura Montalban handled the interiors of the 21 spacious rooms that showcase a vibrant palette. In the living room, for instance, red lacquered pagodas meld with green brocade sofas and glazed, appliquéd, and stenciled yellow walls. Hinting at all this color is the sinuous entrance hall staircase, which is topped with a hand-loomed runner and soars up from the geometric-patterned floor to a landing dominated by a 19th-century tapestry. Nodding to Old World New England is the glass finial at the foot of the stairs. “They always put a little piece of whalebone or tusk ivory on the end of the newel post to indicate that the mortgage was paid off,” Varney explained.

A coastal South Carolina home.

Ode to the South

“This is not what you would call a typical beach house,” said Ellie Culman, cofounder of the New York design firm Cullman & Kravis, describing the shingle-style residence and guest cottage that she crafted with Connecticut architect Mark P. Finlay for a New England couple off the coast of South Carolina. “The architecture is very robust and sculptural. A lot of the furniture we selected is heavier and darker than what we would normally use, so we contrasted that with a light beach palette in the majority of the rooms.” That color scheme of cream, beige, and terra-cotta helped give the 28-room, three-story house a more comfortable than fanciful feel, aided by dreamy porches, a gazebo, and a raised infinity-edge pool deck on the first level. This serene staircase, accented by a trio of abstract artist Sarah Hinckley’s paintings, a Christie’s chandelier, and an Elizabeth Eakins runner, opens onto the second-floor great room, complete with fireplace.

This wood staircase helps lead the way into the surrounding landscape.

Inside Sheryl Crow’s Very Personal Hollywood Estate

Sheryl Crow’s 11-acre compound in the Hollywood Hills is essentially a study in local architecture, encompassing a 1926 Spanish Colonial hacienda, a 1909 Craftsman bungalow, and a 19th-century cottage. The Grammy Award–winning musician designed all three, stitching them together with a bridge. Visitors will find plenty of quirky decor, like a 19th-century iron-and-wood “bone shaker” bicycle above the main house’s living room mantel, and a set of Art Deco club chairs sourced from a Paris flea market in the library. Crow and her guests maximize the verdant landscape of cacti and date palms by relaxing in a tent in the terraced garden, or making use of the walking trails accessible by a wood staircase. Designed by her groundskeeper, José Edis Aviles, the staircase includes a banister fashioned out of a sturdy tree branch. “This is an incredibly magical place,” Crow told Architectural Digest. “It has the best of everything California has to offer, but there’s also something deeper. The land has a fascinating energy.”

Modern sensibilities meet rustic decor elements.

A Living History Lesson in Malibu

Furniture from the 16th to the 20th century is what most captivates Richard Shapiro, who presides over the interior, architectural, and garden design atelier Richard Shapiro Studiolo. His own Malibu home is no exception. The once abandoned surf shack in Broad Beach, which he transformed with the help of local architect Douglas W. Burdge, has a decidedly Renaissance air thanks to frescoed plaster walls and treasures like a Cypriot fireplace and an Italian gilt-wood mirror from the 17th century. “I wanted this house to be imbued with mystery,” Shapiro noted, “to be a cocoon-like separation from Los Angeles, a portal to somewhere else.” Between the 18th-century Phoenician-stone Cosmatesque panels in the dining area and the 19th-century replica of an ancient Greek statue at the base of this oak staircase that twists its way up to the theatrical steel balustrade and mezzanine primary suite, it’s clear that Shapiro accomplished his mission.

An interior belonging to the fashion legend.

Diane von Furstenberg’s Urban-Glamorous New York Escape

Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg’s studio and flagship store are housed in a six-story, 35,000-square-foot building in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan, adjacent to the beloved High Line that she and husband Barry Diller were instrumental in bringing to life. To make it a truly immersive live-work environment, local architecture firm Workac capped it off with a penthouse that unites a pair of Victorian red-brick structures. There was a gap between the two then, but now there is an appropriately industrial-style concrete staircase, a curtain of steel cables sprinkled with some 3,000 Swarovski crystals alongside it. “We wanted a shaft of light that would cut through the building diagonally,” Amale Andraos, cofounder of Workac, explained, “and we knew it needed to originate at the top of the building. We were inspired by the bold faceted jewelry Diane was doing at the time.” The stairs connect the ground floor to the rooftop living area brimming with furniture and artworks from such luminaries as Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol, and above it, the 900-square-foot primary suite with a terrace, bed tucked into a bamboo pavilion, and freestanding teak bathtub.

Here a Kehinde Wiley work backs a modern stair.

Darren Starr’s Bel Air Revamp

Eager to give his Los Angeles home a fresh sheen, Darren Starr—the mastermind behind the television series Sex and the City, Melrose Place, and Beverly Hills, 90210—enlisted architect Mark Rios, creative director of Rios (then Rios Clementi Hale Studios) and Waldo Fernandez of Waldo’s Designs to spruce up the interiors. Originally designed in the late 1930s by John Byer, the Bel Air house underwent a modernist-meets-Art-Deco face-lift in 1960 by James E. Dolena. This time around, “the goal of the renovation was to make the place cleaner, hipper, and more unified in its design language,” Rios commented. Along with weaving in furniture like a custom roll-arm sofa and Edward Wormley–designed trapezoidal cocktail tables as well as artwork by John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha, the garage became a double-height family room with a bronze-clad fireplace, and there is now a grand hall demarcated by this floating staircase, which Rios crowned with a circular skylight.

Bright green and animal skins carry the day inside this space.

A Proper Green Room Brings Whimsy to a French Quarter Cottage

Adman Peter Rogers, a native of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, headed back down south, to nearby New Orleans, after retiring from his New York firm, where he oversaw high-profile clients like Bottega Veneta. There, in the French Quarter, he decided to live out his golden years in a Creole cottage that local restoration expert Chuck Ransdell and Baton Rouge interior designer Carl Palasota helped make his own. One of the first orders of business for Rogers was to reimagine the formal dining room running the width of the house into a garden lair, sparked by actress turned designer Elsie de Wolfe’s country home in Versailles. “Ever since I first visited Villa Trianon, I’ve wanted a treillage room,” Rogers pointed out. And he got one. Painted the same shade of mellow green as one of his favorite linen fabrics, Rogers’s treillage room combines black-and-white tiles, a cocktail table that once belonged to the late actress (and his dear friend) Claudette Colbert, and this centerpiece staircase brightened with a leopard-print Stark runner and an array of celebrity photographs shot by Richard Avedon and Bill King for Rogers’s Blackglama fur advertisements.

A sweeping white staircase in the home of Nancy Gonzalez.

South American Chic, Personified

Views of the Andes mountains are amplified from handbag designer Nancy Gonzalez’s duplex apartment in western Colombia. Gonzalez, whose creations are a hit with celebrities, joined forces with Paris designer Jean-Louis Deniot in her 16,000-square-foot space located in a hilltop building. Gonzalez’s flair for fashion manifests in numerous ways: the gilded Empire daybed plucked from a flea market in Paris, the television room’s walls upholstered with horsehair, and the parchment-clad pocket doors. It’s all balanced, however, with a cool simplicity found in the glass walls, the French limestone extending to the terrace pool from the indoors, and this spare, sculptural white staircase invigorated by a Michele Oka Doner sculpture. “Nancy is part minimalist and part maximalist,” Deniot reflected. “She likes when a space feels empty, but at the same time, she prefers lush materials and rich finishes.”

Paneled walls and a traditional banister give this Sandy Gallin–designed Malibu home an East Coast feel.

Designing a Second Act in Malibu

During the last decades of his life, Sandy Gallin—the devoted talent manager of stars like Cher, Dolly Parton, and Nicole Kidman—embraced his flair for design, dreaming up homes for such entertainment industry bigwigs as Jeffrey Katzenberg and Jimmy Iovine. As his good friend Calvin Klein put it at the time, “Often what even great interior designers do is create a space that isn’t as comfortable and warm as what Sandy does, and that is the essence of why people like his work.” Gallin’s interest in design began back in the 1970s, when he started buying houses for himself and decorating them as a mere hobby before flipping them. Then, in the mid-1990s, he began collaborating with the then nascent architect Scott Mitchell. Dark-stained wood floors, tables festooned with candles, and expansive bathrooms were all hallmarks of Gallin’s layered approach, but he also possessed a love for staircases. Case in point? This stately splendor in a double-height entrance hall of a house he owned in Malibu. Those crowded bookshelves on the landing are yet another Gallin signature.

Bold color in a Brazilian hotel turned home.

Rehabbing a Brazilian Hotel From the 1700s

“My friend Alberto adored gilding and glamour, but he also was a master of simplicity and appropriateness,” recalled a loyal client of the late Paris-based designer and photographer Alberto Pinto. One of the last projects Pinto completed before his death, an 18th-century hotel turned home in the Brazilian seaside town of Paraty, articulates that fusion. Designed for a longtime client, the abode is packed with antiques that explore Brazilian history. The open blue staircase in the entrance hall—its hue corresponding to the neighboring 17th-century Delft and 18th-century Rouen plates on display—meshes well with a dramatic 19th-century chandelier and red-and-white-check Iberian sofa, as well as the Spanish carpet from the 1950s. From there, guests are welcomed into the other homey spaces, where Meiji-period ivory lobsters perch on a Ceylonese table and 19th-century Portuguese mahogany folding chairs surround a Carrara marble pedestal table.

A shining example of pared-back sophistication.

Pierre Yovanovitch’s Paris Office

Prolific designer Pierre Yovanovitch moved his firm into an 18th-century hôtel particulier in Paris’s Sentier neighborhood a few years ago. “I didn’t want anything over the top. This is the spirit of French design,” he mused. “Very chic but restrained, minimal in its way but still warm.” Consider the main staircase, which appears even taller in the presence of Yovanovitch’s 45-foot-long vertical light fixture, an assemblage of three black rods that descends through the four stories. Travertine walls, Scandinavian furniture, and Yovanovitch’s own designs, including a ceramic table for his office and chunky Ours chairs, heighten the mood.

This image also graced the cover of AD.

Contemporary Connecticut Style, Chez Krakoff

Fashion designer Reed Krakoff and his wife Delphine, who runs the interiors firm Pamplemousse Design, own a number of homes, but their estate in New Canaan, Connecticut, has a particularly zany history. Built in 1937, its prior owner, Huguette Clark, the eccentric artist and copper mining and railroad heiress, never spent a night there, choosing to live in hospitals for two decades instead. Le Beau Château, as the 52-acre property is known, was completely revived by the couple. A set of 60 Allan McCollum drawings covers a living room wall, Queen Anne chairs are gathered around a Corian-and-aluminum Martin Szekely table in the dining room, and a colossal Paul Cocksedge light fixture mingles with Louis XV beechwood chairs in the library. One of the focal points is its meandering staircase, which previously sported a wrought iron balustrade. Nestled underneath it is a soothing vignette composed of Diego Giacometti chairs and a Jean-Michel Frank lamp atop a Demakersvan table. “A house tells you what it wants to be. Here we wanted to celebrate the light and views by keeping the decor more restrained than in any of our other homes,” Delphine Krakoff shared with Architectural Digest.

Colorful tiles pair naturally with the surrounding landscape.

A Mexican-Made Showstopper at the Mérida Studio of One Artist

Cuban-born artist Jorge Pardo’s studio is in Mérida, Mexico, an ideal place for him to track down the cheerful ceramic tiles that are a definitive part of his oeuvre. His property there, for instance, features them on an exterior staircase in shades of light blue, yellow, and green—buoyant colors that reinforce the 7,000-square-foot home’s light, breezy aura. The site spans three structures, all strung together by greenery and the pool, scenery magnified in patterned geometric windows. “I wanted to make a place where you didn’t ‘go’ to the garden, but you’re in the garden,” Pardo noted. “I love the idea that you have to walk through the entire garden every day as you go in and out of the house.” Beyond the vegetation, the interior teems with eye-catching items like the giant rendering of a Willem de Kooning painting and clusters of Pardo’s bright laser-cut pendant lamps that take their shape from Latin American fruits.

Color, color, everywhere.

Maja Hoffmann’s London Town House

Paris-based designer India Mahdavi united two neighboring structures to conjure Swiss art collector Maja Hoffmann’s posh and colorful London town house. In it, vintage furnishings from the likes of Jean Royère and Jean Prouvé are abundant, a pool room is enveloped in gleaming mosaics, and garden and terrace levels bring the outdoors in. The entry staircase makes a strong impression, with an Olafur Eliasson chandelier that illuminates it from above, but this additional stair in the mews is just as spectacular, if quiet. With its bands of soft pastels rising up to arches, the feeling is distinctly spiritual.

A decor scheme to make Arcimboldo proud.

A Secluded Bunker on the Fringes of Milan

Despite its brutalist concrete shell, this house just outside Milan, built by AD100 talent Vincenzo De Cotiis, is anything but austere. Ample natural light, a façade integrating painted wood and brass, and an inviting outdoor space all instill the home with warmth. Privacy was paramount to the owners, prompting De Cotiis to note that the biggest challenge was creating “an architecture that comes to life inwards while screening its exterior, giving a sense of protection and intimacy.” Inside, the three stories are chock-full of texture, incorporating the owners’ collection of art and 20th-century furnishings, including a pair of Marco Zanuso Lady chairs from 1951, as well as custom pieces by De Cotiis, like a dining table and suede-and-brass seating in the lounge. Swathed in linen, the primary bedroom is reached by two flights of stairs. The first one, made of black iron and dressed with vintage vases, ceramic busts, and a cast-brass bowl by De Cotiis, morphs into cantilevered concrete treads.

A tour de force of color.

Jorge Pardo’s Part-Time Brooklyn Home

Artist Jorge Pardo divides his time between Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and New York City, where he converted an early 1900s carriage house in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn into an animated pied-à-terre. After adding walls of windows to the rear and allowing the back garden to function as a courtyard, it now has an ambience similar to that of his airy Mérida property, down to the ceramic tiles and groupings of vivid lamps inspired by nuts, seeds, and sea creatures. But this arresting scarlet spiral staircase definitely lends the old outbuilding its own brazen personality. “The lamps and most of the color gestures are kind of eccentric,” Pardo noted, “but at the same time, it’s a very comfortable house.”

Les Touches, meet two leopards.

Cara Delevingne’s Wonderland

“Cara is a creature of pure delight. This place is her ultimate expression of home—a Cara-style fantasy filled with references to the many things that turn her on,” said Nicolò Bini, founder of local firm Line Architecture, regarding the Los Angeles residence he completed for supermodel and actress Cara Delevingne. The white-brick building, constructed in 1941, is now a collision of nature and sheer amusement, flaunting Gucci wallpaper emblazoned with large-scale herons and a tented poker room alike. Other surprises include a disco ball burrowed inside a chandelier and a malachite bar, but guests are most likely keen to steal away to the attic, where parties unfold alongside a tasseled swing and beneath a mirrored ceiling. A walk up these stairs, aptly punched up by Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper and Diane von Furstenberg’s climbing-leopard rug for the Rug Company, will lead you there.

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