High Design, Downscaled

NEW YORK

Here's a reality check on ballrooms and 14-foot ceilings: The Kips Bay Decorator Show House, that long-standing barometer of top-tier American design, is suffering from recession blues. The 36th annual show house that opened last week reflects the hard reality of a real estate market that is souring even for hedge-fund traders.

The widely spring event is known for glittery transformations of $50 million Upper East Side mansions that are featured in glossy decorating magazines. For the first time, the event is being staged in an apartment building, the block-long Manhattan House on East 66th Street. The 1952 white-brick modernist icon of 583 units is undergoing a conversion from rentals to condos. The 22 participating designers took on modest rooms characterized not by soaring spaces, crown molding and marble fireplaces, but by boxy windows, 8 1/2 -foot ceilings and scuffed-up parquet floors.

"We had trouble finding properties this year," said Jennifer Skoda, a spokeswoman for the event, which last year raised $1 million for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. "We wanted to find something extraordinary, but the real estate market is tough, and sellers didn't want to tie up a house."

Perhaps because the digs were humble the designers went out of their way to make the rooms more theatrical than usual.

"Downscale shouldn't mean less luxurious or less dramatic," said designer Larry Laslo, who did a glamorous penthouse with mid-century touches and a view of the Chrysler Building. He used a faux gold brick that he bought for $79 at Conran's last season as a recession-proof doorstop. "We're trying to make ordinary living look good here," he said.

Nancy Ruddy of Cetra/Ruddy imagined a fashion editor's salon with a black patent-leather chair and silver-leafed linen walls. For Ellen Ward Scarborough and Madeline Ward Roth, inspiration came from a pineapple-shaped cookie cutter that they morphed into the design for a headboard in a young woman's bedroom. Designer Philip Gorrivan imported a stretch polymer fabric from France that acts as a ceiling mirror to make the gray master bedroom look bigger and absorb sound.

Despite a more down-to-earth setting, the designers are not exactly slumming it. Spiffed-up luxury condos at the landmark building, originally designed by Gordon Bunshaft for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, are selling for a small fortune. Studios start at just under $1 million; a 6,000-square-foot penthouse is $20 million.

At those prices, the fantasy of keeping a small pied-a-terre in Manhattan will remain for most of us just that: a fantasy.

Kips Bay Show House, 200 E. 66th St., New York, N.Y. Open daily through May 22. $30 admission. More information at 718-893-8600, Ext. 245, orhttp://www.kipsbay.org.