Photographs by Annie Schlechter
Donald Oresman can’t say exactly how many books line the shelves of his midtown pied-à-terre. What he does know is that the selection here makes up but a fraction of the 10,000 or so tomes he’s amassed over the years (the rest are stored in his house in Larchmont). In the late sixties, during his tenure as executive vice-president and general counsel to Gulf & Western, Oresman and his wife bought this one-bedroom overlooking Central Park South in the landmarked Gainsborough Studios. The place was “awful,” says architect Richard Sammons of Fairfax & Sammons. “It looked like a racquetball court—cold and gloomy.” To brighten things up, Sammons designed a Renaissance-era library using pale maplewood instead of darker, more traditional mahogany or teak. It took about nine months to add the coffered ceiling and replace the original space’s white and mirrored walls with a mezzanine gallery and library built to house some 2,000 books and 1,800 works of art. Oresman, a lifelong reader and son of a magazine editor, said it was never his intention to create a shrine to his books. “I am not a collector, and I am not interested in books as objects,” he says, adding that books are meant to be read. He buys most of his from Madison Avenue’s Crawford Doyle Booksellers, and when he can’t find what he’s looking for there, he’ll have his son help him find it online. Oresman doesn’t own a computer, a cell phone, or anything that starts with an i, for that matter. “I am happy,” he says, “to live in the nineteenth century.”
The Library
The north-facing, light-flooded study houses retiree Donald Oresman’s impressive collection
of books”most of which he’s actually read. (He insists on finishing titles even when he doesn’t like them.)
Photo: Annie Schlechter
Art Storage
All unframed prints are stored in these sliding shelves. The Oresmans exclusively collect pieces that depict reading.
Photo: Annie Schlechter
The Fireplace
The original mantel was replaced with a classical-wood surround and painted with a faux-marble finish. A stone carver from the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine inscribed the hearthstone with a quote from Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Photo: Annie Schlechter
The Library
Photo: Annie Schlechter
