By Alison Gregor
Shortly after Robert Futterman, the chairman and CEO of Robert K.
Futterman & Associates, was divorced, he was featured in a 2006
magazine piece celebrating the new freedom recent divorcés had to
decorate their own places.
And Futterman did indeed explore his true colors. He showed off a
purple, or eggplant-colored, living room in his Greenwich, Conn., home,
where a black pool table was paired with a photograph of a Chinese man
in a tub surrounded by women.
A similar sense of liberation pervades the retail real estate
broker’s newer apartment in the Porter House, a West 15th Street
condominium in the Meatpacking District.
The three-bedroom, three-bath condo — which, according to the
property deed, Futterman purchased from Us Weekly editor Janice Min for
$3.15 million in 2005 — is where he rests his head on Mondays, Tuesdays
and Wednesdays, when he is not staying in Greenwich.
Before he founded RKF in 1998 at the age of 39, Futterman worked at
Garrick-Aug Associates, where he started in 1983 for $250 a week as a
retail store canvasser, which meant relentlessly trekking the city
looking for vacant retail space to lease.
Futterman, who never graduated from college, quickly rose to become
senior managing director at the firm. And he has now built his own
company into one of the country’s largest independent firms
specializing in leasing retail space. Currently RKF has 107 employees
and four offices nationwide.
Since he started his real estate career, Futterman says he has completed more than $3 billion worth of leasing transactions.
His Manhattan space is filled with dramatic artwork, the rewards of
that successful career. He converted one of the bedrooms in the
apartment, where dark blue and black colors predominate, into a home
office where he has hung a large, realistic painting depicting a nude
woman.
In the living room, a statue of a group of street thugs with
death’s heads for faces is made of fiberglass and tinted dark purple
with auto-body paint.
Futterman said he even briefly considered buying a Damien Hirst skull.
“At the time, I thought I was going to buy one,” he said with a
laugh. “Then I thought, a single guy living in Chelsea with a skull —
isn’t that a little bit too much?”
Futterman, 49, seems to have struck a balance between the
freewheeling and the functional in his “crash pad,” which is 2,271
square feet, and has a bedroom shared by his two sons, Jesse, 15, and
Kevin, 13. (He shares custody with his ex-wife.)
The apartment also has a Valcucine chef’s kitchen, Viking
appliances and Jatoba wood floors, which Futterman had stained to a
near-ebony shade.
But, despite the top-flight kitchen, which was installed by Us
Weekly’s Min, Futterman said he chose the neighborhood, in part, for
its variety of restaurants and entertainment options.
“I used to live on the Upper East Side, before I moved to
Connecticut, and if I went out to restaurants or out to meet friends,
it was always Downtown,” he said. “And I kind of gravitate towards the
West Side more than the East Side.”
Chelsea also affords Futterman an easy commute to his office at 521
Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th streets. That helps for someone who
proclaims to be “obsessed with work.”
The neighborhood also helps him keep in close touch with one of New
York City’s thriving retail neighborhoods: The Meatpacking District.
In fact, Futterman’s sixth-floor condo in the Porter House looks
south over the cobblestone streets of the Meatpacking District (and
also has western views of the High Line and a slice of the Hudson
River).
“You can see a lot of the buildings that we’ve leased,” Futterman
said, including the Apple Store at 401 West 14th Street, right across
the street. “We’ve made a big push in the Meatpacking District, and a
lot of it might have to do with the fact that I live here.
“If they’re within my purview, the landlords know they can’t hire anybody else but me,” Futterman added, laughing.
Futterman has chosen to decorate his apartment — which has the tall
arched windows of the 1930s brick Renaissance Revival warehouse it
formerly was — with furniture of modern design and contemporary art. As
retail has grown inextricably entwined with fashion and art in recent
years, perhaps it makes sense that Futterman has gotten seriously into
art collecting since he bought his Porter House apartment. He works
closely with art consultant Andrea Hazen of Hazen Partners Art
Advisory.
“Robert really engages with all of this,” Hazen said. “He really
loves to learn about the art. He’s not just buying it because, ‘Oh
yeah, I need to have this because I’m successful.’ He’s actually
interested in the art and the artists.”
For example, the nude study in his office means more to Futterman
than simply a depiction of aesthetic beauty; there’s a backstory.
“The artist is Christian Jankowski,” said Futterman, whose
72-year-old mother is a painter. “And I’ve actually met the guy, had
dinner with him. The concept in this painting was actually really well
thought out.
“I was as interested in the person who did the art as I was in the piece itself,” Futterman said.
Futterman’s living room, dining room and kitchen are all one
loft-like space, and several distinct artworks draw the eye. One is a
blue neon sign that says “Modus Operandi” in script, done by the
artist-philosopher Joseph Kosuth.
“That was sort of the key piece that things grew off of,” Hazen
said. “It was really exciting when Robert went for it, because it’s not
a picture. It’s new media; it’s very conceptual. I think it really
reflects him, his M.O.”
Futterman was so keen on the piece that he also purchased a book by
Kosuth written in Latin, which he said he cannot read, along with a
book of the philosopher-artist’s ideas on conceptual art in English —
which he has read.
“It’s one thing to know the art,” said Futterman, who has stacked
books about art and other subjects throughout his apartment. “It’s
another thing to read writings by the artist; to get into their head a
little bit. Even though it was very difficult to get into [Kosuth’s]
head, you sort of were able to pick up some bits and pieces of his
conceptual art.”
Though drawn to the contemporary, Futterman can also be charmingly
retro. For instance, the round dark blue couch in his living room,
behind which he keeps his electric guitar and bongo drums, is paired
with a circular coffee table in acid-etched bronze, pewter and enamel
depicting warriors, noblemen and steeds. Done by father-and-son
sculptural team Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, the table, which sells for
about $10,000 to $11,000, was made around 1960. (The electric guitar is
not just a dated display either: Futterman learned to play it as a
teenager and seriously considered becoming a rock concert promoter
after college. He still plays.)
Futterman’s decorator, Tatum Kendrick of Tatum Kendrick Design,
also helped him find a large blown-glass sphere lamp, made in Italy in
the 1950s, which hangs over the dining room table. The unusual lamps
over his bed also came from 1950s Italy. Balls of glass on the ends of
a tangle of metal tubes, the lamps look a bit like a cluster of
molecules.
“None of these things are new; they’re all old,” Futterman said.
“It is a little retro, because it sort of sticks out with all the
contemporary furniture.”
Art in the bedroom, which is complete with a walk-in closet, includes a giant photograph of a library by Candida Höfer.
“I felt like I was almost adding a room by having that piece,” Futterman said.
Futterman’s collection of art serves as a backdrop when he entertains, which he likes to do from time to time.
He threw a surprise birthday party recently for colleague Karen
Bellantoni, an executive vice president at Robert K. Futterman &
Associates. As many as 60 people, plus a catering team, can be
accommodated in the condo.
Futterman said that, though he only uses the apartment part-time, he doesn’t see himself selling it any time in the near future.
“This really serves my purpose,” he said. “If I were to trade up
from this, it might be for something with outdoor space — an apartment
where you could actually open a door and walk outside. But for my
purposes, I didn’t really feel I needed that.”