When Maggie Betts bought a multifamily town house in Greenwich Village 15 years ago, she did what any recent college grad would do: She invited her friends to move in. Barbara Bush settled into one unit. Entrepreneur Jessica Joffe, restaurateur Kyle Hotchkiss Carone, and AD100 architect William Sofield rotated through others. Maggie herself occupied the garden duplex, playing landlady and hostess-in-chief. “It was very much like a sitcom,” she recalls. “But then the house’s problems beat me to the ground.”  

The eat-in kitchen features an antique cherry dining table and the house’s original chandelier; chairs and chest fromCupboards & Roses Swedish Antiques.

Photo: Max Burkhalter

In 2015, the filmmaker—who was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and currently has projects in the works for HBO and Amazon—returned from a business trip in L.A.to discover that a pipe had burst. She fell to the floor weeping and immediately phoned her father, Roland, a developer who cofounded Chelsea Piers, the sports-and-entertainment complex. “He’s a real estate guy, so he’s my adviser,” she says, noting she grew up in the same Upper West Side brownstone that her dad purchased as a young man in the 1970s and later renovated into a single-family home. (Her parents live there to this day.) “He was like, ‘The only way to do it is to gut it now.’" 

The library’s antique French seating is covered in a stripedPeter Fasano fabric.

Max Burkhalter

Betts added a glass-enclosed extension and balcony to the house.

Max Burkhalter

Out went the roommates and in came architect James G. Rogers III of Rogers McCagg, her father’s trusted associate; Paris Grant, the Betts family’s longtime interior designer; and, at the helm, Maggie’s mother, Lois, a decorator by passion if not profession. “The idea was to restore the town house to its authentic Victorian self,” Maggie notes of the mid-19th-century Anglo-Italianate building, one of two twin structures erected by a stonemason for his daughters. Over the years it had been subdivided, but original carved-stone mantels, inlaid mirrors, and paneling remained. The rest Maggie and the team have faithfully replicated—with some liberties taken. A balcony and glass-enclosed extension, for example, were added to the rear façade, while the kitchen moved into what was the dining room’s traditional spot on the parlor level. And they installed a dumbwaiter that’s so generous and sturdy, Maggie says, “I could climb in if I wanted to.”

In the living room, a Katherine Bernhardt painting hangs above a sofa and bench clad in aPeter Fasano velvet; 1850s chandelier fromCarlos de la Puente Antiques and 19th-century Aubusson carpet.

Max Burkhalter

When it came to decorating, her mother and Grant took charge, pulling pieces from the family’s Berkshires estate. “We took stock of everything, then determined what we needed to buy,” notes Grant. “Lois loves French neoclassical, Empire, and Restoration furniture, so her style melded perfectly with Maggie’s house.” It’s no accident that there’s an air of timeworn chic. When Maggie asked Lois about the plans for the living room, she replied: “I’m going to move my living room here and give myself a new one.” And so she did, reupholstering the furniture in custom Peter Fasano fabrics. When, at Lois’s behest, Grant found an antique Aubusson carpet with the right dimensions that also dated to the same year as the house, they took it as an omen.    

The Alpha Workshops enlivened the master bath's walls with Venetian plaster and Benjamin Moore’s summer blue paint; cabinet, mirror, and sconces all byRH; chair byPottery Barn; photograph by William Klein.

Max Burkhalter

Grant worked with the team to select a ceiling medallion that mirrors the carpet’s pattern and tapped the artisans atThe Alpha Workshops to finish the walls in complementary Venetian plaster. “Not only is it beautiful but you’re supporting the careers of people in need,” says Grant, who sits on the board of the nonprofit, which provides decorative-arts education to adults with disabilities. 

Betts takes in the view from the dining room’s balcony.

Max Burkhalter

While Maggie is the first to admit she took a hands-off approach to the project, her own point of view comes into focus through the art. “I wanted modern, edgy, somewhat confrontational stuff to balance out the formality,” she says. Provocative pieces by female artists (Marilyn Minter, Katherine Bernhardt, Mona Kuhn) take the forefront, along with a number of images by photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks. “It takes a long time to build a collection,” notes Maggie, who, having started so young, has time on her side.