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WITH A PROFUSION OF GLAMOROUS DETAILS AND CONTEMPORARY ACCENTS, AN UPPER EAST SIDE TOWNHOUSE IS INFUSED WITH A DOWNTOWN VERVE.

- Celia Barbour

IT’S SAID THAT, IN THE END, you regret the things you didn’t do, not the ones you did do. By that logic, a certain couple deserves to feel quite contented. Their newly renovated Manhattan townhouse is the result of “saying yes to everything,” as the wife puts it.

“Everything” in this case includes not just decorative elements, like a gold-hued Venetian-wax ceiling in the living room with lined and interlined silk curtains, but also major structural changes, such as steel casement–window walls on each floor that open onto a series of stepped terraces that cascade down the house’s backside. It all happened thanks to a fruitful collaboration between the interior designer Alecia Stevens and architect Nate McBride, who together conjured up a home that is at once luxurious, exhilarating, and utterly comfortable.