When hotelier Jason Pomeranc set out to design 60 Thompson, the first venture of Thompson Hotel Group, which he cofounded with his father and brothers, the native New Yorker felt it was imperative to highlight the architectural splendor and artistic spirit of the SoHo neighborhood.
“It has an energy that’s very unique to New York City,” he says. “There’s a character there that appeals to me. ” An established sense of place became a hallmark of Pomeranc’s projects from the get-go, and he continues to raise the bar for aesthetic quality in the hospitality industry as owner of SIXTY Hotels, a collective consisting of five supremely stylish properties in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles.
The eclectic mixture of finishes and furnishings that adorn Pomeranc’s ultraluxe hotels can be found in his personal residences as well, including his sunny Hollywood Hills home and his recently revamped loft in the heart of SoHo.
“In a subconscious way, my homes are laboratories that become components of the hotels later on. It’s almost a way of meditation in order to get clarity on my commercial projects,” he explains. Though he settled into his cast iron–fronted building in lower Manhattan over a decade ago, the space didn’t truly fit his lifestyle until recently. “I wanted to turn the apartment into something that had the palette and the reference of how I actually live,” he recalls. “The only way to do that was to white-paper it and start from scratch. ”
Pomeranc opened up the wall between the kitchen and an adjacent dining room to create a prime entertaining space.
The boxy space required a full reconfiguration to improve flow and make use of the windows lining either end of the unit. “There’s a tremendous amount of light, but you weren’t able to feel that because it was so chopped up,” he says. “We opened it up and created a line of sight so that the light permeates from front to back, which is a real luxury in SoHo. ” Aside from some original beams and columns, the place was gutted down to the studs.
Breathing life back into the space began with a unique compilation of furnishings from midcentury design greats like Jean Prouvé, Vladimir Kagan, and Frank Lloyd Wright – all influences in Pomeranc’s work and personal style.
Successfully melding such a diverse collection called for the expert eye of the famed interior designer Jim Walrod, a longtime friend of Pomeranc’s who worked with him on properties that include 60 Thompson and Gild Hall. Their collaboration on the SoHo loft was one of Walrod’s final projects before he passed away unexpectedly last fall.
“Jim was a unique character in that he didn’t have an architectural background,” Pomeranc recalls. “They called him ‘The Furniture Pimp’ because he had an encyclopedic knowledge of furniture from an array of periods and could put together a palette like no one else. ” The combination of distinctive pieces prevents visitors from pigeonholing Pomeranc’s aesthetic as one style – and that’s how he prefers it. Through architectural details, highly finished surfaces, and a balance of vintage, contemporary, and custom pieces, the richly layered final product evokes the grit and glamour of the city he grew up in, while still feeling entirely his own. “It has a sense of timelessness and a lot of subtlety that comes together in a nice way,” Pomeranc says. “To me, it’s how the apartment always should have been. ”
The apartment entry is partitioned off from the living space by a screen of oblong, walnut slats, custom-made by Pomeranc’s millworker. “There was no separation between the elevator and the rest of the apartment. I thought the slats were a nice way to create a soft foyer,” Pomeranc says.
