City Cosmo
Designer Jay Jeffers transforms a San Francisco bachelor’s home into a simple, contemporary refuge—complete with parrots in the backyard.
Jay Jeffers, one of the rising stars among San Francisco interior designers, describes his style as “sophisticated fun,” adding, “You don’t have to take it too seriously.” Yet people in the know take Jeffers quite seriously. He was named one of House Beautiful’s top 100 designers of 2005, earned compliments from the celebrities who hung out in the private lounge he designed for the Screen Actors Guild Awards show, and has attracted commissions for residential and commercial projects all over California.
In San Francisco, he found the perfect client in real estate developer Peter Dwares. “Peter does a lot of entertaining,” Jeffers says. “Sometimes the parties are fundraisers for Pathways for Kids, a nonprofit he founded to get professionals talking to kids in schools. Sometimes a chef comes in, and people like to watch him cooking and to talk to him. It’s always fun.”
Dwares wanted the ideal space for parties, but he also wanted to keep his new apartment very simple. “He’s a bachelor, with a big dog and two cats, and he didn’t want anything fussy.”
The apartment occupies the top two floors of a building Dwares owns on the Filbert Steps, where he shares the trees and shrubbery with the avian stars of the acclaimed documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. For decades, the shingled structure had been an apartment building. Dwares started using some of the one-bedroom apartments as office space, and then decided to remodel all four floors for himself. The project involved gutting most of the interior of the building, but leaving an interior staircase that Jeffers conceived as a gallery for art. Dwares’s collection ranges from Vasarelys and Chagalls to paintings he picked up on the street in Thailand. The works are a lively distraction for guests walking up four flights to the living room.
They may be out of breath when they get there, but visitors inevitably react to the spectacular, wraparound views. To the east, windows reveal an expansive bay view, from Alcatraz to the Bay Bridge. Toward the south is the bright-lights–big-city view of the Financial District. Jeffers built bookcases around the windows and installed upholstered window seats below them, details that seem to intensify the impact of the view, as a well-chosen frame enhances a painting.
The room has been designed for maximum comfort. At the opposite end of the room from the open kitchen, a sofa is covered in washed cotton and leather, as soft and sturdy as a favorite pair of jeans. Cantilevered chairs, Angelo Donghia’s version of the Mies van der Rohe classic, beg to be bounced on. Instead of antiques, vintage modern designs from the middle decades of the 20th century, such as the glass-topped coffee table with curving chrome legs, fit perfectly into Jeffers’s goal of design that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The owner didn’t want anything busy, so Jeffers kept bold patterns to a minimum, emphasizing instead interesting textures and colors. The ceilings are only eight feet high, so he kept trim to a minimum, removing the crown molding and painting the walls a pale shade of tan with slightly darker trim. Some of the windows have no coverings at all; others have simple fabric shades. A tufted wool rug, bound in brown leather, lies on floors of smooth, cinnamon-tinted bamboo.
“Peter is not afraid of color,” Jeffers says, and neither is he. Explosions of intense color brighten the neutral background. The dining room chairs are upholstered in a grid-textured gold velvet, and a few pieces of bright blue handblown glass by Blenko Glass in West Virginia cluster gracefully on the coffee table.
On special occasions, like a rare warm night in San Francisco, guests are invited to climb one more flight of stairs to the outdoor living room on the roof deck. Thanks to the expanding range of fabrics designed to withstand sunshine and rain, Jeffers was able to upholster sectional sofas in cheerful red and white stripes. Sturdy wooden tables provide space for drinks and plants. At night, the Transamerica Building and surrounding skyscrapers provide a brilliant display of lights and silhouettes.
“It’s the perfect place to watch the Blue Angels,” Jeffers adds. “You feel as if they’re going to fly right through you.” It’s also the perfect place to watch fireworks, or simply to take in the dark shapes of ships gliding through the shimmering water on a moonlit evening.
When the party’s over, Dwares goes down to the third floor to the master bedroom. In the morning, going to work is as simple as walking downstairs to his offices on the second floor. A guest suite is located on the first floor, and cars have a home a few steps away in another building that Dwares owns. Views, parking, comfort, wild parrots—what more could any San Franciscan want?
|
