Tom Beebe, a creative director and window-display wizard, didn’t have much time to find a new apartment when he learned he had to leave his 800-square-foot aerie in the West Village this past September. The fifth-floor walk-up with rooftop garden and wood-burning fireplace he had called home for the past twenty years was a place he never wanted to leave. So Beebe, who wears multiple rubber bands on his wrist (“It reminds me to stay flexible,” he says), called sales agent Hercules D. Kontos of M. Woods & Associates, who ended up unearthing a treasure. Here, Beebe’s collection of clocks on his new mantel. Photo: Wendy Goodman
These sweet, lacquered paper doves came from the estate of the costume designer Alvin Colt and live on the mantel. Virtually everything in the apartment has come from Beebe’s family in Mamaroneck”where he grew up, one of eight kids, in a Colonial stone house”or from friends. Photo: Wendy Goodman
Beebe’s great-grandparents’ table and chairs provide intimate seating for dining and fit just below the kitchen pass-through. Photo: Wendy Goodman
The Maxfield Parrish print in the kitchen was a wedding gift to Beebe’s grandparents”and is still in its original frame. Photo: Wendy Goodman
The picket fence in the bedroom originally stood outside in Mamaroneck and was made by Beebe’s brother. In his last apartment the picket fence divided the kitchen from the living room. He also had his great-aunt’s mailbox on display. Photo: Wendy Goodman
The screen door that once graced his great-grandparents’ house gives the illusion of leading out to the garden. Again, it is uncanny how it fits perfectly between the windows in the bedroom. Photo: Wendy Goodman
This is the quickest way out to the little back garden. Once a footstool is placed under the window, you just hop out. There is a regular door outside of the apartment that leads to the garden, but this is so much better. Photo: Wendy Goodman
Beebe is a master stylist and window designer, after all, so improvising a lock for a window latch came naturally. Photo: Wendy Goodman
An original Al Hirschfeld drawing of the late Quentin Crisp, a good friend of Beebe’s, hangs on the other side of the bedroom. Then there’s the mahogany furniture, which used to be in Beebe’s parents’ Mamaroneck center hall. “I have only lived here for three weeks,” he says, “but I don’t even remember my roof. Isn’t that weird? To go from the roof to the garden is extreme, but I embrace extremes and I embrace the balance that the calm of the garden gives me.” Change can be a very good thing. Photo: Wendy Goodman
