Intelligencer - Good Modernist Bones at U.N. Plaza

James Spindler and John Vitale had been living together in what had been Vitale’s bachelor’s pad — a Union Square loft that had a translucent wall between the shower and the kitchen and living area. They wanted more room and also thicker walls: After Vitale retired from his job as executive vice-president for merchandising at Bloomingdale’s in 2016, he took up the banjo. “Banjo is a loud instrument, and it accelerated the search, I would say,” Spindler, the executive creative director of RadicalMedia, says. Their friends, architect David Mann and his husband, Fritz Karch, lived at the U.N. Plaza, the austere side-by-side steel-and-glass towers, which opened in 1966 on the East River, and when they saw this 23rd-floor apartment, they not only bought it but hired Mann of MR Architecture & Decor, along with Brendan Sanchez and Kimberley Frederick, to renovate it. The place had been owned by one of the building’s original residents and “was a total maze” with an enclosed foyer and formal dining and living rooms. “It had an almost rococo design,” Spindler says.

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