Soho Duplex

"One could reasonably expect Patricia Herrera Lansing, the creative consultant and society fixture, to reside in a historic prewar building in an apartment that’s spacious, warm, and richly layered—and indeed she does.The fact that it is in Little Italy, tucked behind a graffiti-splashed brick exterior that once housed a holding cell, just goes to show that you can’t always judge a book by its cover. “I haven’t lived uptown since school,” notes Patricia, tracking her journey from Caracas, where she was born, to the Upper East Side, where she spent her formative years, to the West Village and, finally, this residence, where she joined husband Gerrity Lansing after their engagement. Constructed circa 1871 smack in the vortex of what was then the crime-infested Five Points slum—think Gangs of New York, minus Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz—the building originally served as a precinct station for the New York City Police Department. Sometime in the early 1980s, Gerrity’s art-collector parents purchased part of it to warehouse their collection. (Like Patricia, he was raised on the more genteel Upper East Side.) When Gerrity finished college in 1995, he requested the keys and has lived there ever since." [Architectural Digest, May 2019]