Thirty years ago, a New Yorker with a sharp eye and a strong back could still find and rescue an Eames chair from a Midtown dumpster. Those with greater means, and less patience, might buy marble pedestal tables and Swedish flat-woven rugs at furniture dealers, like Lin-Weinberg Gallery and Wyeth, that were wedged between ice-cream shops and eyewear boutiques in the city’s walkable neighborhoods. Recently, though, rising rents and a desire for intimacy have pushed high-end décor upstairs and out of view.
Always a treasure hunt, shopping for designer furniture in New York has become more like grabbing drinks at a speakeasy: If you know, you know.
In 2022, Alan Eckstein, 39, moved his furniture showroom, Somerset House, from a Williamsburg storefront, where he could expect 300 visitors on weekends, to a cheaper warehouse on a desolate block in Long Island City, amid small residential buildings and across from a gated parking lot. A rabbi and his family live in the loft apartment upstairs.
The grandson of a decorator from Great Neck, N.Y., Mr. Eckstein got into the interior design business six years ago, amassing inventory at the Design Within Reach Outlet in Sunset Park, at auctions and flea markets, and via Craigslist. He began using the pieces to decorate listings for local real estate brokers. A 25-foot wide Cobble Hill brownstone he is staging for Lindsay Barton Barrett, the Brooklyn broker, will list for over $20 million next month.
Shoppers — who can visit Mr. Eckstein’s warehouse space on Fridays or by appointment Monday through Thursday — find inventory not used for staging displayed for sale in artful groupings. The exposed brick walls are freshly painted ecru, and new oversize picture windows splash sunlight onto the furniture, like a 1950s coffee table with fanciful Jacques Blin tiles on top and some inevitable scuffs on its wood legs ($8,200).
In July, Somerset House will be moving again, this time to double in size. Mr. Eckstein said that he has come to appreciate “being off the beaten path” and has chosen an even less accessible location close to the Queensboro Bridge, a Long Island City address he called “even more speakeasy.”
In Lower Manhattan, Nick Ozemba, 33, is a co-founder of the concept space Quarters, where you can order designer furniture or a cocktail in a decidedly hospitable environment. It is far from “a white-box space,” he said. Indeed, the entrance on Broadway uses a fire stair, leading some who pop up to Quarters, on the second floor, to fear they’ve trespassed in a private home.
In 2023, Mr. Ozemba rented 8,000 square feet on what he termed a “rugged” block south of Canal Street, then used that raw loft space for his wedding to Ben Wagner, a design director for Warby Parker. Then he gut-renovated the loft with his Rhode Island School of Design classmate and business partner Felicia Hung, 34. They opened the fully furnished model rooms and an adjoining vest-pocket bar to the public a year ago.
“We wanted it to feel cozy and moody,” Ms. Hung said. Current merchandise ranges from a Roma Heirloom Tomato-scented candle by Flamingo Estate ($60) to a new In Common With flush-mount chandelier of fused glass and leopard wood ($42,000). The partners have hosted intimate parties for Loewe, Birkenstock and Tom of Finland, to attract a fashionable clientele. But running a store that looks like a rich friend’s apartment hasn’t been without hiccups: Guests once climbed onto a bed display. And a thief pocketed a decorative tiger figurine.
A mile north of Quarters, the presence of the new Lawson-Fenning furniture showroom is announced only by the small print on the building’s intercom directory. “You really have to know where you’re going,” Glenn Lawson said. He and Grant Fenning, 57, opened this Manhattan outpost of their original Los Angeles showroom in a 4,500-square-foot Lafayette Street loft in February.
“We’re not hitting you over the head with design,” said Mr. Lawson, 52. The loft was once used as an apartment, and its finishes looked dated. The renovation by the New York interior designer Josh Greene, 45, has earth tones and rusty marble kitchen counters, a spalike bathroom and a powder room.
Mr. Lawson said the décor signals a shift in style for his company, toward the polish and panache of 1930s New York. “We’re actually looking at Art Deco chairs and lampshades with fringe,” he said. As in California, he will sell contemporary ceramics and vintage-inspired sofas off the floor.
Nickey Kehoe, another Los Angeles interiors shop, expanded to New York last year. As at Lawson-Fenning, Amy Kehoe, 48, and Todd Nickey, 58, opted for a former residential space, in a brownstone on East 10th Street that was once home to Jackson Pollock. Mr. Nickey said he fell in love with the neighborhood years ago, while working on an apartment down the street in a townhouse where the actor Parker Posey owned the top floor.
New York Customers enter the Nickey Kehoe brownstone through the household shop in its basement, where the wares include wineglass brushes ($12) and a Marie Antoinette-shaped pink ceramic candle snuffer ($90). Up a dimly lit staircase papered in a floral stripe grasscloth, the imposing parlor floor salon is a surprise.
“It was too good to be true,” Ms. Kehoe said. Original marble mantelpieces are buffed to a high shine, and two Venetian glass chandeliers predate Nickey Kehoe. The domestic illusion is so cinematic and seamless that a customer could wonder if the polished brass 19th-century umbrella stand ($1,200) and midcentury French concrete bust ($975) are for sale.
For his part, Mr. Nickey said, “all I see is hanging price tags.”
An offbeat address adds even more exclusivity to offerings from the furniture manufacturer Lulu Lytle, whose space is open by appointment only. Ms. Lytle said by telephone from London that her intention in choosing a discreet location for Soane Britain was to “see less people but engage on a deeper level.” Her Madison Avenue showroom offers classic handmade seating, lighting and woven rattan furnishings in an upstairs suite with windows that look north across 65th Street.
For Ms. Lytle, 53, the lack of foot traffic may be a plus for high-profile customers keeping a low profile, since neither she nor they seek crowds. “We’re not trying to pile it high and sell it,” she said. Her prices are steep, but she noted that they support English traditional craftspeople in dying trades. “Without our American clients, there would be no rattan industry left in the U.K.,” she said.
In the Flatiron district, an abandoned tech office was filled with desks before it became Temple Studio, which opened this spring to show fabrics and rugs from independent makers.
“You had to have your magic glasses on” to see the potential, said Kate Temple Reynolds, 44, who opened the studio with Amarlies Gonzalez, 48.
Ms. Reynolds called the 4,500-square-foot penthouse an art gallery for textiles. “We wanted to be a charming, hidden spot,” she said. The drab building elevator opens to reveal showroom walls hung with Alice Sergeant’s riotous hand-printed brocade in pink and ocher. Hooks and shelves brim with saturated color and adventurous patterns. “We show people how to layer and combine them without clashing,” she said.
Around the corner, West Out East, a furniture store open to the public six days a week, has a duplex loft. West Chin, 56, a residential architect, was born in the Bronx, where his father was an architect of social housing.
In 2014, Mr. Chin opened a Long Island location for European furniture and branded it with his distinctive first name plus the local shorthand for the area, where he digs clams on the beach and has a house. The Manhattan location opened in 2021. “I bleed New York blood, so Manhattan was a mountain I wanted to climb,” he said.
In the Flatiron location, the layout is curated like an apartment, making it easy to envision the pieces in a home. “This is a duplex my clients would buy on a higher floor,” Mr. Chin said. Furnishings from Living Divani, Boffi and Porro live in the second-floor loft for a year before moving to sister locations in East Hampton, Miami and Westport. Everything is functional and livable, he said, for children who eat ice cream on the couch, and for their parents who drink red wine.
Mr. Chin flies his shop’s logo over the sidewalk, on an oversized flag, but some customers venture upstairs only after their designers insist. “The city has no idea we exist,” he said.
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