The Real Deal

• Email this article
• print
• Comments(3)

Inside the home of Doug Steiner

Doug Steiner

Doug Steiner's aesthetic preferences are clear immediately upon entering his home in New Jersey: The real estate developer and CEO of Steiner Studios likes industrial chic, modern accents and clean lines.

His reverence for industrial spaces is what attracted him to the gritty Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1999 to develop Steiner Studios, his 305,000-square-foot film and television production facility, where the FX series "Damages" is filmed and where Julie Taymor is currently directing a film adaptation of "The Tempest." The studio plays a major role in the New York City film and television industry and was also where movies such as "Revolutionary Road," which starred Kate Winslet; the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading"; and scenes for "Sex and the City" were shot.

Steiner Studios is currently renovating a vacant building at the Navy Yards.

Steiner's respect for older structures also inspired the design of his new development at 80 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, a riverfront warehouse-style condo building with townhomes next door. The units have high ceilings, big windows and, in a nod to his studios, sound-proofing methods he learned from sound stage engineers.

But if his professional work builds on time-honored techniques, his home is about all things modern.

His 7,500-square-foot home, excluding the garages and basement, in Short Hills, N.J., is a one-story modernist structure, at the bottom of a steep driveway and surrounded by Old Short Hills Park and the 2,050-acre South Mountain Reservation. "I feel like I live in the woods, not the 'burbs,'" he said. "I liked the design of it — it's different."

Steiner bought the house after his divorce in 2000, when he set out to find something totally different from the home he once shared with his wife.

Asked how much he paid, Steiner smiled coyly and said, "I put a lot into it."

The house is stark, vast with white wood floors, white walls, floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights that flood the rooms with light. Steiner installed a metal roof, and during storms, the rain pelting the roof and the lightning flashing through the skylights makes the house feel like "a jungle," he said. "It's great."

Modern architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen built the five-bedroom, seven-bath house in the early 1990s for a previous owner, and Steiner, who once wanted to be an architect, was drawn to its open design and perfect symmetry.

Made of white stone, the house has high ceilings and four tall chimneys rising high above its roof. The rooms' pocket doors primarily stay open, and rooms seem to float into one another. The seclusion means Steiner has found no reason to install shades or even curtains.

At its arches, the ceilings are about 16 feet — high enough that Steiner's tallest ladder isn't quite high enough to hang a favorite mobile, in the style of Alexander Calder, in his bedroom.

The furniture is primarily antique teak from Indonesia, found by friends on salvaging missions, and includes old railroad ties fashioned into benches and tree roots that are now stools. But even with cushy couches in the living room — two big brown chenille divans, and sleek black leather sofas in the den — the decor is sparse.

"My aesthetic is really bare, but at the same time, I'm a hoarder," Steiner said, noting that while the rooms may seem sleek and clean, his basement and cabinets are full.

Missing from the house are any indications that its owner is the head of a major New York production studio. DVDs are quietly tucked into the egg crate-style bookshelves in the den and are surrounded by classic books — Steiner was an English major at Stanford University — and there are no framed posters of movies or gifts from directors, producers or actors he's worked with.

Those things stay at the studio, he said.

Instead there is art and the art is bright. Hanging in the foyer is a mural of three orange Tyrannosaurus Rexes, an aqua-blue oil refinery, and a veiled, naked woman with pink hair by Gary Panter, who once did the set design for "Pee-Wee's Playhouse," the children's television show.

Another gigantic mural, hanging in Steiner's dining room, is the magnum opus of contemporary artist David Sandlin. The painting, "Sorrow Falls," is a phantasmagorical depiction of the artist's life story as a play on a stage, and was the first artwork Steiner bought for the new house.

"Sometimes, I just sit here and stare at it at night. It glows," he said, noting the two spotlights painted at the bottom. "I can look at it still and find new things."

His other favorite painting, by Jane Dickson, is a scene of a parking lot at dusk, painted onto blue Astroturf that he has hanging above the couch in his den.

"I like disturbing art — challenging art, and disturbing," Steiner said, noting that his oldest son likes the pieces, and that they've grown on his other two children.

"I'm not really an art collector, but this house needs big art," he said. "I get stuff from my [art curator] friends. One friend tells me what to buy, but I don't always listen. Then I regret it."

If the house sometimes seems too big for one man, that's because it is. There's so much room that his two sons keep their hockey equipment in the otherwise unused maid's quarters, the formal dining room is home to an Art Deco pool table and the Sandlin mural and Steiner readily admits the walk-in closet is oversized.

"I'm not really a clotheshorse, but I don't throw anything out," he said, pointing to a row of suits he hasn't worn in years.

But the house fits him and his three kids perfectly when they hang out — he has the children, ages 13, 14 and 18, every other week.

When he moved in, Steiner replaced the house's sliding glass doors with floor-to-ceiling windows. Next was a roof renovation project, in which he installed the metal roof that sounds like "a jungle" during thunderstorms. The next house project is to landscape the yard. From the kitchen table, there are views of the nature reserve, and Steiner said he and his children regularly see deer and fox. He's not sure what he wants in terms of landscaping, but he'll use the same landscape architect he's using at 80 Met in Brooklyn, Richard Hartlage.

As much as he loves the solitude of the Short Hills house, Steiner said he prefers to be in New York.

He splits his time evenly between this house, when he has the kids, and a two-bedroom apartment he rents in the East Village.

"I like New York more, and I'm counting down the years until I can move back," he said. "But, the matter of changing schools is tough." His youngest, Isobel, is 13, and he said five more years in the suburbs will be okay.

"I live with a lot less stuff in New York," he said. "But here, nobody knows we're here. I like not seeing other houses."