Moving to New York City requires a leap of faith for almost anyone. Relocating four kids and setting the goal of decorating your new home (from scratch) in just three months? A Herculean undertaking. But for Courtney Grow, it was the only option.
The fashion and lifestyle influencer, her husband Wyatt, and their children moved to Brooklyn from Park City almost two years ago. After a brief stint in a fully furnished rental, a turn-of-the-century carriage house came on the market, and Grow knew she had to live there. With a solarium, garden, and magnificent original details, it was a no-brainer—but its location, a stone’s throw from Truman Capote’s previous residence where he penned both Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, sealed the deal. With three months left on their old lease and three months until they could move into their new home, the Grows got to work.
Interior designer Olivia Snow was tapped to collaborate on the project. Having worked with the couple on their residence in Utah, she was already attuned to Courtney’s vision. “At one of our first meetings she said, ‘My home isn’t for everyone, it’s for me. I don’t care if it’s a little polarizing,’ and those words have become a core part of my design philosophy,” Snow tells Vogue. The four-bedroom, two-story home offered ample opportunity to create an imaginative world the family could inhabit. “I’m a client who’s very willing to take chances,” Courtney says.
The solarium is a prime example of this. The previous tenant hired Miles Redd to decorate the room, and featured ceiling-to-floor blue fabric wall coverings that channeled Southern prep. Rather than taking it down, she pivoted toward a ’70s aesthetic by placing a monochromatic Nordic Knots rug on the floor. “We balanced out the palette with a little bit of rattan, a little bit of velvet,” Grow says. Vintage artwork and gold-toned objects are also peppered throughout the room, cultivating a lived-in quality. “We made vintage finds the central focus because they’re actually the things you can get in a timely manner because they’re readily available,” she explains.
Unlike the solarium, the rest of the house had been freshly renovated, and was more or less a blank slate. The galley kitchen and separate dining room lent themselves to the Grows’ affinity for hosting. “It keeps it quite social when you’re cooking and everybody’s together, but when it’s time to eat, I love to turn off the lights and leave the kitchen behind,” she says. A benefit of not having an open-plan concept, she rightly points out.
For the dining room, artist Alley Bell was commissioned to create a whimsical mural to highlight Grow’s growing collection of portraits. “Most of the art I was finding was portraits of women, so we kept this room very feminine,” she says. She didn’t want to paint every surface, but Bell’s mural added the illusion of architecture to the room, and outlined the French windows that lead out to the garden. “Those windows bring me such happiness every day,” she says.
While they kept the living room walls white, a bounty of color, pattern, and texture gives the space plenty of visual interest. Antique chairs sit in dialogue with a custom Pierce Ward sofa, an abalone shell mirror hangs above the fireplace, and a smattering of vintage books and magazines line the windowsill. “We wanted the whole thing to feel a bit like a Champagne bucket, bubbly and fizzy, while still feeling old and lived-in,” Grow explains.
One of Grow’s favorite corners of the house is upstairs in the master closet, where Bell painted a mural of the family’s various astrological signs (Courtney is a Pisces). In the bedroom, custom nightstands and a canopy bed steal the scene. "We used the most gorgeous stripe called Belmondo by Dedar and had some dear friends and upholstery makers bring it to life,” she says. On the wall adjacent to the bed hangs a rotating collection of her favorite fashion pieces: a sheer beaded slip dress, a gleaming Paco Rabanne bag, a baroque floral shift dress. “The bedroom is a very special room to me because we were able to display my other affliction—fashion—and use it as art.”
Now, after a couple of years into living in New York City and having found their groove, the couple is reflecting on their cross-country move. “The birth of our twins was a very hands-on period, and it wasn’t until they were around three we could even have a conversation about relocating,” Grow remembers. “I’m just so happy to be here. I really do feel like it’s a moment in our lives to be in this city.” The Grow children have gotten into a good rhythm with the house as well. “At one point during the shoot, Courtney’s son said, ‘My house looks like a hotel! I love my life,’” Snow says. “It sounds so small, but we almost cried. Kids feel it. They know when a home reflects the people who live there.”
