The decorator Susan Forristal lives in one of the six landmarked buildings on East 10th Street that were once part of Stuyvesant Farm. Her floor-through on the parlor level features some turn-of-the-past-century architectural details, to which she has added a pastiche of furniture and objects drawn from her former life as a model and gallerist.
The George Smith armchairs in the living room belonged to the English antiques dealer and designer Geoffrey Bennison. Forristal asked him to design the living room of her then-home on Central Park West with Lorne Michaels in the 1980s, around the same time that Bennison worked on Marie-Hélène and Baron Guy de Rothschild’s New York apartment.
“He was not only a wonderful friend, but I learned from Geoffrey,” Forristal says. “And then when I was still with Lorne, Geoffrey died.” At Bennison’s estate sale in 1985, Forristal bought an Oushak rug and a settee, which she used to furnish her own apartment in the East Village after she divorced Michaels.
