The boiler area is especially dolled up right now, since the ebullient Mr. Cross, a former department-store display director and owner of the beloved but now defunct Chelsea store La Maison Moderne, is turning his home into a shop for three days this weekend. And in his Christmas retail tradition, he said, he plans to be decked out in a red fez and black-and-silver silk paisley robe.
Kein Cross: Sultan of Stuff, Pooh-bah of Presents — what else to call a fellow whose home has such a lushly appointed backyard tent?
But we digress from the boiler, which even without the merchandise piled beside it — the large foo dog ($500), the demitasse spoons ($25 for a set of six) — has to be one of a kind. The adjacent ceiling is covered with wooden hatches painted in black-and-white stripes, a favorite Cross combination, harkening back to 1890s Paris; they drop open for the obligatory meter reading.
Next to the boiler there’s a white platform (“Perfect for doing Bikram yoga,” Mr. Cross says), a wall of mirrors, a metal filigree lantern from Morocco dangling from the ceiling and sliding doors that can be used to close the space completely.
The floors in this and the other basement rooms — which include Mr. Cross’s dressing room, bathroom and sleeping nook — are, of course, marble.
“And you know what’s great about being in the basement?” he says. “Touch the floor.”
One stoops to find the marble is warm.
“People pay a lot for radiant heat,” he says. “I’ve got it. It’s nice on the tootsies.”
Do you think less is more? Do you like your homes and holidays understated, with perhaps only a single silvered branch in a vase? Then Mr. Cross, who is 48 and makes frequent trips to Paris to find things for his clients, is not your kind of man. He redecorates twice a year and holds close to his heart the words of a dying friend: “The only things you’ll regret in life are the ones you didn’t buy.”
Were he an animal, he would be one of those fluffy ones that leap straight up in the air with excitement when they see something they love. (“Italian glass pomegranates!” Boing!) And he is excited frequently.
The wreaths on his front door are made of peacock feathers and from there, you can hear the Village People playing inside.
“To me, Christmas is silver and pink,” Mr. Cross says. “I just like to have fun and enjoy it.” The disco, he adds, is only from noon on — in the morning, it’s Handel’s “Messiah” and “The Nutcracker Suite.”
When it comes to home design tricks, there’s a lot you can learn from a department store display artist. Mr. Cross’s apartment, on the corner of Barrow and Commerce, two of the prettiest streets in the Village, was hardly an ideal space when he moved into the building in 2004. His ground-level studio apartment was 9 feet at its widest point and 60 feet deep. Two basement apartments divided by a hallway, which Mr. Cross would eventually take over, were the same width, and backed by the boiler room. Unused for 70 years, they had fallen into disrepair; sections of the floor were mud.
The width of the rooms remains the same, but the eye is tricked by the use of mirrors, inside and out. To make maximum use of the three-foot-wide air shaft outside his windows on the basement level, Mr. Cross affixed mirrors to the walls of the adjoining building, put in some of the fake foliage beloved of stylists — in this case, fake boxwood hedges — and added real Spanish moss.
“Spanish moss is nature’s fringe,” he says. “And I’m big on fringe.”
Even the smallest spaces are used: a three-by-three-foot dumbwaiter in the basement was converted to a full bathroom with a shower, with toiletries in recessed nooks. The backyard is now home to Mr. Cross’s all-weather tent with a fireplace and television, a cocktail table from Radio City Music Hall and cashmere throws. Outside the tent are a table and chairs and a silver-sprayed bust of Louis XIV, and this space, too, has been expanded with a wall of mirrors and more Spanish moss.
Mr. Cross estimates that he has put about $300,000 into the apartment — which is particularly impressive when one learns that it is a rental. His renovations include installing a marble staircase that links his two floors, and covering the basement ceiling in silk.
Decorating is simpler for him than it is for the average person because, as a designer, he employs two crews. (“Everyone should have a crew,” he says.) But it is also his great pleasure.
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