In real-estate parlance, small can imply efficiency, tidiness, and charm. Usually, though, it has less appealing connotations, something decorator Alex Papachristidis understood when he got his first glimpse of the Manhattan apartment of his niece Samantha Rudin, an aspiring actress. "It couldn't have been uglier, but it had wonderful views," Papachristidis says. "There was no entrance hall at all, no gra-ciousness. You opened the front door and stepped into the living room." Not anymore. Papachristidis and architect Alan Orenbuch have equipped the 1,000-square-foot one-bedroom flat on Lower Fifth Avenue with the good looks and high-society chic of a covetable prewar abode: Neoclassical-style cornices crown the walls. Sturdy wood doors with recessed panels mark the entrances of each room. And best of all to Papachristidis's mind, a floor plan that was too bare and exposed (the building was constructed in 1952, not a particularly propitious moment in American domestic architecture) now has old-fashioned intimacy, thanks to some inspired tinkering.
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