Julianne Moore Downsizes to a Village Duplex in a 1920s Building

Julianne Moore and her husband, director Bart Freundlich, have traded their West Village town house for a two-bedroom duplex perched on a high floor of a 1920s residential hotel in the center of the Village. An eight-month renovation, their sixth project with Moore's brother-in-law, AD100 architectural designer Oliver Freundlich, followed.

The couple, empty nesters with two grown children, had long felt the pull toward smaller city quarters. "For years I wanted to live in a town house, but that desire morphed as the kids got older. Lives change," Moore says. Their children now measure "five-ten" and "six-foot-two," she notes with a laugh, and a larger house in Montauk replaced the family cottage — freeing them from the need for a big city place.

How did Moore find the apartment?

"I had always wanted this apartment," she confesses. "I had spotted it when I was wandering." After what felt like looking at every apartment in the neighborhood, she landed the duplex when it came on the market. The building, constructed in the 1920s as a residential hotel, has a social texture she prizes. "Most of the units are studios or one-bedrooms," she explains. "Because of that, there's a diverse group who live here, lots of young people in small apartments or older people who have been here for years. It's super funky."

Every window frames the cityscape she loves — water towers, decorative brick and tilework, arches, columns and rooftop gardens — while sprawling terraces eased the loss of the lush town house garden she created with designer Brian Sawyer.

What did the renovation change?

"We hit the ground running," Moore says. The previous owner, who had lived there for 20 years and worked with color expert Donald Kaufman, "had exquisite taste," so most changes were cosmetic. "The trick was to make the place functional but without losing any of the magic," says Freundlich. "We didn't change the layout, though we did a lot of editing, reducing patterns, simplifying, adding storage." The kitchen, ringed by original steel-framed windows and lacking upper cabinets, gained an adjacent pantry; the angled primary bedroom wall was solved to fit a closet, a king-size bed and bare floor for Moore's yoga practice.

Which pieces made the move?

The furnishings mix old and new:

• The Paavo Tynell kitchen fixture, carried over from her former home, with shades sewn from former curtain fabric
• Dining chairs bought in Paris in 1995 — "they've been in every house I've had since," Moore says
• New acquisitions: a Pierre Chapo entry table, a Raoul Guys kitchen table, and living room seating by Charles Pfster for Knoll

The lacquered taupe library bookcases nearly came out; Moore and Freundlich instead chose to work with them. A dramatic Valentine Schlegel-style mantel gave way to a geometric, softly finished marble version, now topped with Moore's own cast-bronze objects.

Moore, whose Academy Award sits discreetly on a shelf in the entry/library, next appears in Jesse Eisenberg's film The Debut as a housewife turned struggling method actor. "It feels very serene here," she says of the new apartment. "I wanted a sense of history, of time, of all the people who have lived here before us. We're just passing through. That's the magic of New York City."