Design Hunting – 54 Years on Washington Square North

The bohemian apartment of John Githens and artist Ingeborg ten Haeff.

- By Wendy Goodman. Photographs by Annie Schlechter

John Githens's Desk – The sand cast relief is one of the maquettes artist Constantino Nivola did for a large work he installed on the Olivetti showroom in New York. Above, at right, is a drawing done by Willen de Kooning.

"Well, I Married the apartment," John Githens says of his home of over five decades in a 19th-century townhouse overlooking Washington Square Park.

The Study's Fireplace – The painting is by Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer. The tile to the right on the mantle is by Cuban artist René Portocarrero. The relief of two figures on the left is by Airline Wingate.

In 1968, Githens was a 30-year-old professor teaching Russian at Vassar College when he met and fell in love with the German-born artist Ingeborg ten Haeff, whose second husband, the architect Paul Lester Wiener, had died the year before. "She was 22 years older than I was," Githens says. "But there was nobody like her." He found himself spending more and more time in her Washington Square North apartment and soon moved in and never left.