In Julie Macklowe’s Fifth Avenue Apartment it’s all about the Breathtaking Central Park Views

In Julie Macklowe’s Fifth Avenue living room, two Florian Maier-Aichen photographs hang above a Philippe Starck M.I.S.S. sofa from Cassina. The Calder coffee table by Minotti is from DDC; the round Maxalto side table is from B&B Italia. The rug is from Stephanie Odegard Collection. Macklowe (right) stands next to a Saarinen side table from Knoll.

In 2005, when Julie Macklowe was working as a hedge-fund manager, she learned from a colleague at a conference in California that he was moving out of his Manhattan apartment. Just one quick phone call later, her husband, Billy, had put a bid on it. “You don’t even want to see it,” he told her. “It has to be gutted, but it’s a full floor on Fifth Avenue. That’s all you need to know.” She trusted him. After all, Billy knows real estate: He founded and runs the William Macklowe Company, one of New York’s most successful real estate development and investment firms. Her response? “Okay, sure.”

Luckily, Julie, who has since left the world of finance to create the beauty product line VBeauté, agrees with her husband on most things, including the design of their living spaces. Despite the “gilded gold glitzy” style of their new 20th-floor apartment and its awkward five-bedroom layout, they loved the light and the views of Central Park over the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And both wanted the apartment to be “super modern,” she says, in keeping with the building’s provenance. The controversial 1980 structure, with its postmodern Philip Johnson façade, is decidedly out of step with its older, more ornate neighbors, many of which tried to block the building’s original construction.