Space Venture: The Ahmet Ertegun Town House In New York: ‘Why Imitate When Now Is New?’
was originally published in the August 1969 issue ofVogue.
Ahmet and Mica Ertegun are comets in the peopled New York sky.
Mica Ertegun, on a curved staircase in the living room of her New York townhouse, wearing pink pantalons with a magenta bolero jacket by Adolfo. Directly below the staircase are a sofa and armless chair upholstered in white fabric; several striped throw pillows rest on the sofa. In the foreground is a table with an ostrich-shell centerpiece. On the wall above the sofa is Ellsworth Kelly’s 1959 painting “York”.
The house, like its owners, sparks the senses.
Shafts of light fall through skylights onto sculpted concrete curves, windows yawn over two floors.
“The house influenced my whole outlook on painting,” she said.
A corner of the library in Atlantic Recording Corporation president Ahmet Ertegun and socialite Mica Ertegun’s New York Townhouse. A banquette covered in green-printed cushions surrounds a low glass table under a set of glass shelves set into the wall, holding numerous artifacts from Eastern Europe (including an icon from Romania, in the upper left corner), pre-Columbian America, and Anatolia, and Rene Magritte’s 1929 painting “L’Heure”.
“I started going to galleries and collecting because of necessityall those white walls!
Now it is a major passion.”
“It’s called Mac II,” she said, “which sounds like a trucking firm.”
The library. Bookcases are set into one wall, displaying a collection of books and miscellaneous objets d’art, and an 18th-century print of Istanbul. A backgammon table, of dark wood with brass-ferruled legs, sits between two suede-covered Louis XVI chairs. A Persian rug, decorated with multicolored squares, covers the parquet floor.
He seems a glossily incongruous figure in the soul-rock world.
Stories about him aboundfew seem to be apocryphal.
Mrs. Ertegun likes the diversity of their interests, the way their many worlds meet.
Mica Ertegun, seated on a table in her New York, wearing a magenta bolero jacket ornamented with gold coins over a pink turtleneck and pantaloons by Adolfo. Hair by Marc Sinclaire.
“In one way I lead a double life,” she said.
“Ahmet can forget his work when he comes home, and does.
Mrs. Ertegun puzzles many people.
Looking from the garden through a pair of doors into the dining room. A pair of red stone L-shaped sculptures by Stephen Porter flank a step leading to a field of pebbles. Two tables surrounded by metal chairs sit on a patio paved in black slate tiles. A wide opening leads to the dining room, with an 18th-century Italian banquet table surrounded by leather and steel chairs by Laverne, and a pair of carved wooden doors from Mexico.
“Sometimes I think childhood in Romania was ghastly, although I love Romania.
But I don’t know how much being Romanian has made me what I am.
When I go back there now, I know I could never stay there.
Mica Ertegun’s desk, a modern thin black slab on steel legs, beneath a sloped skylight in the library of her New York townhouse. A polished steel swingarm desk lamp sits on one corner of the desk.
“Everywhere I have been has changed me.
Although everywhere I travel I clutch a little ikon with mewhich is a totally Romanian characteristic.
But in general I have little feeling for possessions, hate little objects everywhere and fussiness.
“Why imitate when now is new?
I don’t see how one can live in New York and not be affected by it.
In ten years' time I may want a totally different house.
