Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Mantello

A walk-up Chelsea apartment with standard ceiling heights, human-scale rooms, and drywall construction — the living room, dining room, and bedroom are all intimately proportioned with no architectural pretension.

Every surface radiates warmth: worn Oriental rugs layered on wood floors, linen and velvet upholstery, terracotta tones, wicker baskets, carved wood figures, and a working fireplace — nothing cold or hard anywhere.

Densely layered with folk art, crosses, devils, skulls, drawings, books, textiles, and Mexican objects that maintain coherence through a shared palette of reds, ochres, and earth tones and a consistent folk-art-meets-bohemian sensibility.

The apartment was built in the 1840s and retains some period character in its fireplace mantel and proportions, but the furnishing is a free cross-cultural, cross-era mix of Mexican folk art, Indian figures, and contemporary comfort with no commitment to a single period.

Objects genuinely accumulated from Baitz's childhood in Brazil and South Africa, Mexican travels, and artist friends like Tom Slaughter and Jan Falconer — the article confirms furniture was given by colleagues like Ron Rifkin, and the 1937 Spanish Civil War poster in the bedroom reads as a real find, not a decorator's purchase.

Mantello explicitly describes it as a place to 'relax and put our feet up' after theater work; the apartment is designed entirely for the residents' private retreat, with no entertaining spaces, guest rooms, or public-facing circulation evident.

Curl-up sofas piled with pillows, books stacked everywhere, a 'pell-mell, catch-as-catch-can' philosophy articulated by Baitz himself — this is a space that invites you to take your shoes off and sink in.

Entirely self-curated with no designer credited; the article describes everything as personally accumulated with 'no intention whatsoever except that there be no intention,' and the asymmetric, seemingly random arrangements confirm organic personal collecting rather than styled vignettes.

Nothing here performs for an audience — the art is by personal friends, the furniture was given by colleagues, the folk objects come from genuine biographical connections to Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico, and the overall effect is intimate and private rather than impressive.