Zach Bryan Turns a Historic Manhattan Townhouse Into an Oklahoma Song

Zach Bryan's latest record, With Heaven On Top, opens with a line about the house itself: "Bought a house from a man in New York." The Manhattan home he bought a couple of years ago—a historic building with wood-burning fireplaces—now anchors both his songwriting and his life with his wife Samantha.

The album's opening poem recounts the building's past. "This house had four small apartments in it when he bought it in '78," Bryan says. "Said he didn't change the wooden floors for 16 years 'cause he knew where each scuff came from."

How fast did Zach Bryan's rise happen?

Eight years ago, Bryan was serving in the Navy and posting acoustic, lo-fi songs recorded in the barracks to YouTube. He made his first album, DeAnn, in a rented Airbnb while still on active duty, using pillows and mattresses on the walls for better acoustics. Before his honorable discharge in 2021, he had signed with Warner Records, with whom he has since produced several multiplatinum studio albums. Last year, he broke national records for the largest single-ticketed concert.

The success has kept him and Samantha in New York City more and more. "I'd walk through the neighborhood, past all the brownstones, and think how beautiful it would be to own a home here and sit in the park," Bryan recalls of his early days in the city. Of the building he eventually chose, he says: "The creaky wood and the old architecture made me feel attached to it."

Who designed the house—and how?

Bryan lived there for a year with his dog, Jack, a roaring fire, and the bare necessities before mutual friends introduced him to Alan Eckstein of Somerset House. Eckstein DJ'd for a decade and cofounded the clothing line Timo Weiland before turning to interiors.

"He's an old-school artist who does it all himself," Eckstein says of Bryan. "He does it his way. And right from the get-go, he laid out what he wanted with the house." The brief: unpretentious, relatable, comfortable for friends passing through. "They wanted character. They wanted patina."

Eckstein clad the walls in stained white oak and chose furniture in leather, iron, copper, and timber—raw and refined in roughly the same proportions as a Bryan song. One of the first pieces they sourced was a pair of rare 1920s pendants by Poul Henningsen. "They've been through almost a hundred years of life, and that kind of set the tone," Eckstein says.

What personal history is built into the rooms?

The house reads like an index of Bryan's life and lyrics. Samantha says:

• Dark woods evoke Oklahoma, Bryan's home state, where he recorded With Heaven On Top in three different houses, preferring domestic settings to a studio
• An oil portrait of a sailor recalls his Navy years
• An artwork by his friend Ian Felice hangs in the living room
• A guitar given to him by Bruce Springsteen leans against the striped sofa
• An Eagles sticker sits on the piano; family photos hang throughout the home

"He really pulled themes from throughout our lives and embedded them into the space," Samantha says.

Bryan's favorite design element is the wool-wrapped bed frame Eckstein designed to match the wooden walls. But the songwriter's room matters most. Eckstein placed a substantial midcentury Jacques Adnet desk—"a splurge," he admits, trimmed in red saddle-stitched leather—in the bedroom corner, looking out the window. Bryan writes there for long stretches from a 1970s Pierre Chapo chair with the ad hoc look of a backyard woodworking project.

For Bryan, though, the furniture is not the point. "The way the sunlight hits the room makes it feel like home," he says—a home that now doubles as the setting, and the subject, of some of the biggest songs in American country music.