For several years, Marco Roth and Nina Dudas were what they like to call “nomadically bi-urban,” splitting time between two diminutive apartments in Brooklyn, New York, and Philadelphia. In 2011, Dudas, an architect, and Roth, an author and co-founder of the magazine n+1, were ready to shake off their regular I-95 commute for a permanent residence.
Settling on Philadelphia as home base, their search was brief—really, just a one-day event. Three showings in, they visited an apartment in a row of Greek Revival townhouses in the city’s Washington Square West neighborhood. Designed in the early 1800s, it was now-named for their most famous former inhabitant, noted Philadelphia architect William Strickland.
The buildings originally had two four-story sections—one for families, one for staff—with a grand staircase at the center. The residences were later turned into nurse dormitories for nearby Jefferson Hospital, then redeveloped into apartments in the 1960s, and finally were transformed in the 1980s into condos with a shared pool.
Though the place “had been the victim of several bad renovations,” says Roth, and “the rooms had all been narrowed and the ceiling had been dropped,” the couple was drawn to the apartment’s intriguing portal windows, which Dudas suspected were repeated in the attic (she was right). Plus, a massive bank of built-in bookshelves in the living room delighted both of them, as did the space’s ample natural light.
“We knew that there was all this space hiding inside this apartment waiting for the right person to design it,” says Roth. Within days, they decided to take it. “It fit what we were looking for—an oasis, or an aerie, and it had the best of both of those,” explains Roth. “It felt like it had the potential to be extremely sheltering, but also open. We were sort of nesting above the city, but within the city.” The courtyard sported a swimming pool, a plus for Roth’s daughter, who, at the time, was seven.
“[The apartment] was an ugly duckling when we saw it, but we knew it would grow into a beautiful swan,” adds Dudas.
The couple worked lockstep to imagine and guide the apartment’s renovation. “The whole process was design-build because everything was very fast,” Dudas explains. “We had just two months to make everything ready for move in, and we lived with construction for about two weeks because it was not done in time.”
The hallway at the back of the space was a small, dark passageway, and they wanted to open it up, but elements of the building’s ventilation system ran through its walls. Once the vents were exposed, the couple chose to wrap these pipes and vents in marine twine, giving them an aesthetic link to the space’s porthole windows. They also removed the attic, and took down all the doors in the home except for the bathroom.
Dudas visited the site every day during the renovation, knowing their pre-move-in timeline was contracted. She didn’t want the apartment to be “based off drawings.”
“I wanted to feel it,” she says. “I wanted to make sure that when we made decisions, we knew how light was going to affect [the space], what time of day it was going to look good in, and how I feel in the space.” Dudas adds that some decisions arose as a direct result of these drop-ins to chat with the contractor and workers, like adding a lofted playroom for Marco’s daughter in a part of the former attic.
The couple repurposed the ceiling joists they removed during the renovation in various portions of the apartment: as flooring, countertops, and to create an island in the kitchen; as benches and crossboards in the bathroom; and for a DYI Shoji screen. Budget also guided the couple “to see where we could stop and where we had to keep going,” says Dudas. “It really helped with what we allowed ourselves to add back into the apartment.”
The couple incorporated recycled insulation, which helps keep the space cool even with a wall of windows in the living room, and laid handmade Mexican tile in the bathroom and as the backsplash in their kitchen.
For the interiors, Dudas said she relied on Roth to add spirit through furnishings. “I came here from Serbia with a laptop,” says Dudas, noting that her minimalist nature has permeated her work over time. Roth, on the other hand, is a self-proclaimed packrat, toting various pieces of traditional furniture with him throughout life.
“I came into a bunch of furniture at a young age,” he says. “When one of my parents passed, I found myself trundling heirlooms along with me, even in some insane ways.” What he calls his “remarkably stubborn loyalty” has led to a mahogany dresser, once his mother’s, that’s moved with him to four different cities—and six apartments—and a table from his aunt that was his childhood desk and is now their dining table.
Their daily rituals, like eating a meal or bathing, are influenced by seasons, the couple reports, and the amount of light in the apartment.
“The feeling that I had with designing our home was that not everything has to be perfect, things can be left to time,” she says. “There’s an idea that a home has to be finished and somehow perfect, complete. A lot of the personality” in the couple’s home, says Dudas, “comes precisely from allowing things to not be perfect or fully complete.”