Inside an Artist s Incredible NYC Townhouse House Tour

Again, from scratch? From scratch. Third time's the charm. Okay. I'm getting tired of my name. No, that's okay. My name is Klara Eich and I live in New York and I'm from Budapest, Hungary. I arrived here with $100 in my pocket and against basically on the will of my parents because you're not supposed to really live too young. I bought this building in 1978 and moved in 1979 and the whole building is just a labor of love. From the beginning on being a ruin, the roof, the floor was snow in the ground, sculptures were lying around, the roof was half collapsed and I said it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I love it and that was it. Love to the first sight. I hope this building will continue to have its history and remain in hands. They will appreciate it forever. Either for students to continue learning here or something worthwhile because the building itself has a history. It would be a pity to let it go. A lot of exciting things have been happening here in the past and presently as well and I just hope that it will carry on for years to come or forever. To get early and ad-free access to Clara's Home Tour go to homeworthyplus.com or scan the QR code on screen. I have been very, very lucky in my life because I had fantastic parents and my mother was an art historian. I had all kinds of dreams but she said no, I think photography would be good for you. Both my parents were very educated and very art oriented. We travelled to Italy, we travelled to see some of the antiquities. Then later on of course I travelled to Greece and everywhere else and art was always part of it, somehow my interest. And music, I have to say that too. And of course being a little bit of a nomad myself I just travelled the world. I see beauty in most of the things. Even if it's ugly, I think it's beautiful or something is interesting. So I was going around with some brokers and I did not like anything at all. Everything was just dark or boring or uninteresting. So the broker brought me in here and said well you might find an interesting place. So I brought it in and I said that's it. It was a total ruin. It was a ruin like to be torn down basically. The roof, the floor was snow in the ground. Sculptures were lying around. The roof was half collapsed. And I said it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, I love it. And that was it, love to the first sight. I had no idea how much work it will be. I have never been in construction. I just loved it. I didn't want to change anything at all. I said I wish I could just leave it as it is. With the pieces on the floor, it had its atmosphere and maybe I thought I'm in Italy or maybe I'm in Greece or in Turkey through the ruins I'm walking through. But maybe the reason was that it connected me to other places for some sort of fantasy, I don't know. But I just loved it as it was. After I walked in here and I saw all these plasters and I said well whatever I can keep, I like to keep. And there was already an issue at it because the broker was very smart and he already had a contract of selling the plasters. So I said to him if I'm buying the building, I must have the pieces. Otherwise I won't buy the pieces. That's sort of, I don't know why, was part of why I really belonged here. Well you are here at my salon, so to say, my living room as we call it. But it's not just living room, it's a community room. Many of my friends are coming here. We hang out here. There is great music is being performed. So this is the place where we are now and this is how it looked like. As you see the sculptures all over the place. There's snow on the ground. The skylights are half collapsed already. And this is what I tried to keep it as it was but it was impossible because I needed to have a place without dust and without dirt and all that. So I had to change it unfortunately but I tried to keep it as much as I could. And just showing a little bit here some of my work here which you see the graffitis. That was a project I worked on it for a while. And then the rest of the sculptures are whatever was left here and I managed to rescue it. And kind of funny, funny things here you find which I found on all kinds of places in the world. This is an auction, a little pipe here. This is from Africa. This is a fortune telling plate here. This is a beautiful corral necklace here which I bought with me back from Africa. So that is here. Surprised that it's still here and it's not ripped apart yet all these years. This is a funny little game here which I have found it on a tech sale in the Hamptons. But it's kind of sarcastic a little bit. But it's fun. There were two more of these fantastic plasters here. I don't know what had really happened to them. It was way at the beginning and they were in pieces on the floor. So I could not rescue it unfortunately. But all the other four are on and it's very much of interest life here. Comedy and tragedy. I should say that with a little sarcastic remark. This is life. Higher up there I have my favorite one is the lion. I have no idea where it was made for but I just love him. Many times for an evening we turn around the light and just lighting it up the lion. So that's my lion. Some of this beam had to be moved because it was too high up and the lights were... That was a major, major effort. So that beam was dropped down one foot. So I also had at least a chance to put things on it. I loved living with carpets and I guess I would love to be a nomad living only with carpets. On the wall, on the floor, on chairs. But it was a lot of work to keep the dust off. This is a very beautiful lamp which a friend of mine gave it to me. Her husband was Hindu, Indian. And when they moved and they had no room for it they said it's for me. So it's here. If you look at any of these little pieces I mean they're so adorable that sometimes I'm using them as... I used it as an invitation for a party invitation. I photographed it and I saw that it was just perfect. Look at this. So refined, the faces and the expressions. For a while I was sort of taken by graffiti and everywhere I looked what's happening in New York and where are the latest graffitis which I had discovered in Brooklyn, in Queens, in Long Island. So on times when we were not busy with my assistant we just took off with the car. It was a 4-5 camera, it's all on film. And we just were covering it. I have about over 100 different pictures. It also had a show. And then when it came back from the show I didn't know what to do with it so I hanged them, some of them, I hanged them up on the wall. And here they are. There's many more but I have no room. I have no wall, no wall space. So here they are. Whatever I can. I enjoy them. Having this picture was just an accident that there was a blue car right there. That was a pure accident and it just had to wait. These three kids were playing balls there and I just asked them to sit on it. They were comfortable. So that was actually a lot of fun. That was a great project because the people we have found they all enjoyed it. Working and being modeling it and give them Polaroids. We were shooting Polaroids before and they were getting the Polaroids. So these were some now they're memories but they can be anytime a show if there is someone interested. Having many more, a couple of them more on the wall here. So now this is everything is sort of a little bit of hodgepodge as they say coming from various parts of the world. This carpet has a little story that's why I'm bringing you here. I was in Amsterdam and I saw a store there and they had carpets and I went in there with a friend of mine and there was a very, very nice gentleman there and recommended me to take that because he said that's very valuable. I don't quite know that much about it but I trusted it. He sold it to me and he did not ask to pay. He said when you back to New York and you received it, that's when you pay. So that was the most elegant, most noble way to be a salesman in a place your own place because I would just go back again to try to find him and get another piece. Then what else is here to say then is this piano here which is very special for me because it's also a friend of mine who is no longer with us left this piano here for the studio it is 130 years old and I was told that it has a very beautiful sweet voice and it's in perfect shape and it's been performed in a number of concerts here and what you see on the top of it is just kind of fun, just kind of little hobbies of additional instruments but you would not believe they've been steadily being used because if there is somebody here, another musician who is here and has no instrument picks it up right away and does some music with it. Musicians always find a way to play music, whatever even if it's two forks or a knife or whatever, they just beat it and that's exactly some of them this is a little child's guitar but it's perfect actually it works. I love music I am a big music aficionado I live actually almost with music all the time. That's why all my friends are either musicians or something this is from India, that piece here a friend of mine was going to send some Indian furniture here in order to have America representing him here and it never really worked because the furniture cracked when the time it arrived so I landed up with it which is great, it has a few cracks in it which I like because it makes it more antique and so we have that piece here and then all these pieces on it, I got them in Indonesia in Bali, Garuda this is the area of a music area for me which is very important because all my CDs partially my CDs because there's so many more, unfortunately many of them have been packed up at some point when I was in this theater performances here and they never got unpacked and also there's no more room anymore so I have to start figuring out where else putting more CDs on it many times I organized it but that's just kind of was a dream it never stayed like that people were coming and coming and taking some out and they just left it there and what you see above it it is, this is the painting of my father who at that time lost his sister and there was a funeral at the restaurant and he had this expression on his face which I thought it was very haunting and I photographed him and a friend of mine made a painting out of that photograph so this is how his hair here with me, he was of course a big smoker so there's always a cigarette in his hand but he has an expression of looking sort of far away and memory and then next to it it's a, which is very memorable for me Joel Bishop O'Brien was a great friend, a fantastic musician and he wrote a piece of music for me and we have it also recorded, I have it on CD as well. These are some earlier drawings of a friend of mine who did it from me while lying in a swimming pool and a portrait of myself this is one of my German Shepherds so it's a little bit of a family here, the drawings and the portraits from Alex Rutsch and I did a book with it and photographed him a lot, he was a great painter and I still know the family very well. So this lamp it is very, very beautiful for me. A friend of mine who moved and I looked at through her, basically her garbage in the basement which she was going to leave behind and this lamp was just in pieces and I said what is this, what is that and she said oh you can have it and so I took it and I had it fixed up and I love it since I don't quite know exactly, we tried to figure out the writing it is from Libya or Tripoli or there was all kind of remarks on it but it was unsure about it but it's definitely decorative and I love it and at nights when there is where the place is fairly dark and just some candles then it lights very beautifully. Well I was born in Budapest in Hungary and that was shortly in war times and after war times and the family had a lot of difficulties political difficulties and I'm not that happy to talk about it because most people don't even know what was going on in the 50s in Hungary and the family has been deported because we were not part of the existing government at the time. Father was arrested and all that is a lot of sad stories behind it but somehow with children my sister and myself again we took it with a lot of happiness because we were in the country and there were animals there and it was not so bad for us, for children for the parents was another story and then of course it came the Hungarian revolution and shortly after we managed the family to come out to Vienna, to Austria. I wanted to go to an art school and I was already drawing and doing some paintings and I thought that I'm just going to be an artist as I said but my mother thought that I might not be strong enough as an artist and she suggested to me a photographer, would I be interested and I said yes, of course, why not I didn't even have a camera in my hand before so she chose the right profession for me and I will be forever grateful in her memory it kept my interest going it kept my artistic interest going plus my little bit of being a nomad I enjoyed traveling the world with a camera so I was very lucky as I said again, fantastic parents, even in the difficulties, even the situation in Austria where we were just coming out after the revolution and started to stand on the family on its own feet again it was wonderful that I had great guidance so this is another part of the house and that's where I really live these days this is my great grandfather, it's a beautiful marble piece, my mother packed it, I was in Vienna asking what can I bring back with me so I have something from the family and my mother said to me well, what would you like to have and I said well, I'd like to have this sculpture and there was a frame downstairs and a few things which I pulled together and that was one of them and we were very much worried that it might not arrive in one piece but it was very well packed and it did arrive, it was also with me in the apartment and it moved with me so it's here. This one you have to see, it's from a friend they were designers and when they moved they gave they gave me whatever they didn't want whatever they about to throw away but the whole thing is absolutely the most beautiful workmanship so I don't even know how anybody can these days even think about to make these designs this is all probably was done in the 19th century at least the reason why there is a glass door here and there is also a railing because I had a client where I had to shoot down on carpets and on all kind of products and they had to be high enough without a stepladder to go up there and shoot straight down so now this is why this railing is removable but you have to watch it where you stand and so that is why we have the glass and then of course the other thing is that later on I could separate it so I can the different heating systems in the house this floor has its own heating system and I could keep it warm here and not to heat the light studio so this is a little bit of the family here it is my sister my sister my nanny my mother, my father here and sort of the little gallery great grandfather in an Austrian hunting outfit this is a gamelon Balinese instrument which is absolutely beautiful I love it when I never learned it but I always wanted to go to the Indonesian council they have a Balinese performances there so I wanted to always learn all Indonesian well the most important thing is what I think you have to see this incredible the Last Supper here and I'm just standing there and they did a really absolutely beautiful job for a model here it would be worthwhile to make bronzes out of it I would almost love to do that and also the little cherubs up there singing these are two of my special pieces I love them very much at first it was all offices here while the studio was really working as a photo studio with printers and assistants and meeting place that was not a living place here I extended a little section here from here to there so that's new the place was too short I did not want to have a big bathroom here a huge block here so I had to figure out what to do and I had an Indian architect who was working with me a little bit on this one we had to figure out how to make this possible that there is not a block in the bathroom so this is it was a major effort I should not say that but it really was a major effort it was welded here and I was very much worried that the sparkles are going to be all over the place then it was an effort to try to find the glass which is secured glass and not see through and on and on and on so it was that was really work of love here but I really love it this one fits in very nice and then the other part here that I have found it just on my in one of the stores and I have found out who is the one who doing it and I went there somewhere out in in the boondocks and I have found that he had one stuck and I bought it here and then this was the shower place that was another ordeal everything was an ordeal in this place because this is glass had to be done and then I had to find the bronze here I had to have it bend it and fit in exactly and that was the architect was very helpful this one was another thing is actually a fireplace screen which I am using here as a curtain here the fireplace works here so because I don't know why I had just visualed myself that I am I am having a beautiful bath here in front of the fireplace and then I have my bed right away going to bed and then the whole thing is all together and I don't have to go from room to room to a bathroom and to a fireplace and to a bedroom so I wanted to put them all here things together which it did the fireplace works beautifully and then of course there is more just endless plants throughout the years and they they are here with me for I don't know how many years by now but they are still alive this is my favourite bed of course it came from Bali and came in million pieces and was very heavy and for a long time I didn't know what to do with it, it was in the back of the studio because I did not live here and I had a place up town and it was just sitting there and sitting there but when finally this place became my living quarters then we managed to put it together and ever since it's here and I love it, it's very stable and it's a great size and sort of overlooking a little bit the view is not the greatest but it is what it is so this is St. Stephan who is actually was the one who made Hungary civilized when the Huns had arrived and they were wild and he was the king and he is the one who was right here I could not believe that you see the Hungarian crown on him so that is that was really unbelievable so that's when I knew that this is my place here so my father also I got this painting from Vienna so I asked for this painting and they had sent it to me it was at the First World War he was a Hussar and he still went to the First World War with a horse so this is how and he is wearing his Hussar uniform and it's amazing I heard all the stories from him from the First World War how it was in Italy and on and on and on so I am very fortunate to have that painting it was a 7th Hussar regiment which was very rare and very precious kind of this is another grandfather and a grandmother in front of me and actually her name is Klara Eich so this is how I got my name the fixing up was really a scenario so to say because before the closing somebody told me it's going to cost you at least $100,000 at that time I looked at $100,000 I had $10,000 and I that is not going to take me too far but I said it doesn't matter I will just do the minimum and then it slowly as I have worked it's going to fix it up more and that's basically what happened then I applied for a loan, a small business loan so then the small business loan took another 3 months or 4 months till it came through then I could at least do the floor and the ceiling so little by little if you really like what you do you succeed you just have to want it once you really know what you want you will make it, it doesn't matter the building has 6 working fireplaces but only 2 of them have been relined and the other one has to be relined too but it was so far not necessary this would be very necessary to do that and that's the next project there's always a project in this house but they have to open it all the way up and it's a lot of mess and a lot of complications so anyway other than that pieces are all here this is Bahus whom I love very much he has a naughty look on his face if you go close up on it look at his smiling and that's what I think I don't know, I named him I have no really history on him but I accepted it some of these lamps were from Indonesia and I love them but the problem is that everybody knocked them over and now they have to be repaired and that's getting to be a bit of a problem they're not very stable and if there's a party there's a lot of actions here my old apartment on 84th street was photographed at House and Garden and this is a spread in it and it's also my German Shepherd in there which is at least somewhere and the most beautiful fantastic fireplace which is still it's a Stanford White building I think anyway and this is still from Hungary my parents gave that to me, I brought it over and this is the major floor here my apartment was the spread here very high ceilings a beautiful floor and it was a small apartment it was very sad to give it up but there was just too much going on here so I had to the ceiling has all the wood here is original except this section this is the section I extended it from just above you where you see the sheetrock on it the rest is all this section is all original it was all kind of painted over and the paint was coming and I scraped the whole thing all the wood so the whole house I had to scrape it off so that was another major dust and dirt and just work, plain work and so many small little pieces were left here I couldn't part from them and I just hung them everywhere where I could, whatever I could save I saved it I hung them in very very funny ways some of these pieces that's from Bali from Indonesia these doors I got it from a friend of mine they had a design studio and when they moved they were so tall that they had nobody else to give it to so I said I can use it so I can also open them up and close them then here some of my photographs from the Himalayas North India I traveled them many years ago so this is my office this is always in a chaos even if I'm steadily trying to straighten out between the filings, between the cabinets and extra books they arrive here whatever I first thing I put down here when I come in from outside and it takes some time still I'm putting it away again computers left from the country papers and bills and what not this is a painting which I'm very fond of it's from a friend of mine who is unfortunately no longer with us Bernard Childs has a lot of important work also in the museums and I photographed a lot of his paintings and afterwards he gave me what I, I can choose it so I chose this one which he called it the mole I saw something else in it but that's beside it the umbrellas is my my genius design because there was always dust here on the table so when I found these umbrellas on an auction there's a great auction next to me upstate I have a small little place upstate in the area right back Red Hook and George Cole is his name and he has always some unusual pieces so when I saw these pieces I said well that would be, if I hang them then I get rid of the dust here and it worked, I don't want to know what's inside how many years of dust sitting there but let's not move it and leave it just there this frame my parents sent it to me because at some point they sent it to me one box of quite a big container of a few things I wanted it from Vienna and from Hungary and this frame was, it came in pieces and then I put it together and then of course I had the problem trying to find a glass maker who puts a glass in it which doesn't look too new so I guess a little bit of a patina but it's an and then this one was from my old apartment so a lot of things are just from there and there and there. I worked for a fashion photographer in Vienna who was the best actually and she told me if you ever want to be a good photographer you have to see the world so she was again somebody who supported me in my professional life and she told me that she was in America and she worked for a photographer and she will write to him and she wrote to him and his name was Hans Namuth and he said well you come here if I need somebody I might hire you but I cannot promise so I arrived here with a hundred dollars in my pocket and against basically on the will of my parents because you're not supposed to really live too young at least you have to be 21 years old and so I worked for him as an assistant which was fantastic My impression was very interesting because I came in with a bus in the evening and I was just sitting there and I said there was a whole new world and I felt very free of course finally leaving the family which I shouldn't say that but when you are 21 years old and you're suddenly suddenly free then it's just a great feeling and then I saw that the place where I stayed at her, they gave me a summer to take care of I was a photographer for the animals and I already started to take care of the dark rooms while he was travelling in Europe and so I saw so many people they were so tired looking, so worked worked, their faces were so joyless they just were running on the streets and I said this is funny I was so up and so energetic and I saw so many people just kind of worn out and kind of sad and I said wow this is strange but I wasn't thinking too much about it because life was just moving forward and then later on I worked for other photographers I became a freelance assistant which was the best training for me working with different photographers on different assignments so slowly I started to get assignments our directors liked working with me because I sticked with the job and I delivered it on time and that was very important most important at least in the eyes and little by little I started to get a lot of cosmetic jobs and I moved a little bit to another place to find a little studio and it was difficult because you don't have really money you need equipment, you don't have equipment you need to rent a space but it somehow it moved forward with a lot of will and believe in it myself somehow that I just wanted to show my parents that I will not go under that I will succeed and it was very important the first assignment I did get and it was printed immediately I sent it home to make sure that my parents see that I'm ok so that was very important for me to prove myself because my mother did not want to leave me and something was not very nice but she said that I might go under so to say a young girl in a big city. Years back when I moved in here the neighborhood at that time was called very bad and they said you were going to be robbed here you should not come here and your clients will not come here and I didn't thought so, I thought it was a neighborhood that was absolutely perfect, there was nothing wrong with the neighborhood there was a lot of Spanish speaking people, they were very nice old gentlemen they're still talking about it the two gentlemen are still around, rather old but they remember when I came here and I set it up a table for them outside and they played cards in front of the house and I went out there and I bought them coffee and beer and it was very homey, it was almost like a little family and there was another photographer down the road there was a fortune teller on the corner of 3rd Avenue it was a neighborhood it was very very charming so I was never afraid everybody just called me Clarita, Clarita and it was great I kept this floor kind of empty because I was going to do fashion shooting here and I needed empty walls so it remained more a little bit in the contemporary style and I didn't put up too many things here, so now the pulley is, really it was used they used it, it goes all the way down here we can lift this up here I made sure that this is working and it goes down all the way down and it's working, everything is moving here in every direction and then this way they were moving the sculptures from here this was a storage room here this is where they had all the sculptures here, they put up the staircase there, and there is a bathroom there and a sauna there so on that one, and this one was they used this here they were and myself, we moved we moved everything from here when I came here, this was unlivable here, so it had to be emptied out, and we emptied it and moved it down here it's still underneath the old floor here, so this is on top of the old floor, so this I had to change I could not keep the old floor there, so for me, when I came to New York, New York was the place I mean, that was the town of where I will be learning, where I can enjoy myself, or whatever grow up, my second part of my life, I didn't plan to stay here forever, at some point I thought I will be back in Vienna but it just never happened, I started to get assignments, and so I just stayed, and then of course I fall in love with this building, and that was the end of it, that it became a project of life now I don't know where I would go now, because that's why I'm here all this time, and New York had all this versatility, the city is amazing at least at the time, now I'm not so much aware of it but very lot of unusual buildings and it's a very exciting city in a way, it was for me, at least at the time, I just, actually I do love New York otherwise I would have left already I hope this building will continue to have its history and remain in hands, they will appreciate it forever either as a theater or either as a place for music, either for students to continue learning here, or something worthwhile, because the building itself has a history it would be a pity to let it go as for myself, as life will go on, I'd like to still finish up many of the existing projects I still have in the drawer, and I did not have time to work on it, but maybe now, little by little I have more time and I can finish it up if it's a book, if it's a video, if it's a short film, which has been all a little bit part of it so I hope that will be a continuation until I'm especially I'm here in this planet Thanks for watching, go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content and shopping guides