Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

The owners of R & Company have a particular taste for maximalism. In 2018, Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman opened a second design gallery at a scale that matches the extravagant pieces that they’re so good at selling: 8,000 square feet of bright, clean space across three floors of an 1869 cast-iron building on White Street in Tribeca, just around the corner from their longtime shop on Franklin. An atrium in the back had 40-foot ceilings. A wood-shelved library on the middle floor was worthy of their artist books. And the space gave them room for their first dedicated offices, which peer over the showroom.

Opening at 64 White also gave them the opportunity to buy in the neighborhood they’d helped to burnish, and it meant their first dedicated exhibition space. Meyers and Snyderman met in a group of performing glass artists, and started hawking antiques at the market on 26th Street, teaching themselves 20th-century design history and the particulars of the market. Their tastes — from postwar Italian lamps, clean-lined Brazilian chairs, and droll millennial ceramics — pushed and pulled the market. No. 64 was a museum-quality space for pieces that finally had the attention of museum curators. “We always take things further, I think, than most other dealers do,” says Meyers. Per Snyderman, “We kind of went over the top.”

The lower level of the triplex, looking toward the rear atrium.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

The space, which listed on Thursday with Esteban Gomez, at the Creatives Agent, was first developed by the Sorgente Group to serve as their own offices. (They ultimately decided to take the upper floors.) Architect Kulapat Yantrasast added a floating staircase of black-and-white marble that oozes down into the atrium landing, like oil into a pool. “The staircase is fucking insane,” says Snyderman. Yantrasast also added plywood walls, for easy hanging, and a built-in crane that made it possible to put up a 25-foot-long chandelier by glass artist Jeff Zimmerman or assemble a toylike 22-foot-high steel pavilion by designer Serban Ionescu. Even the bathrooms host art installations: One, by Zimmerman, has mirrored walls peppered with green chunks of uranium glass that glow when the lights flip off, turning the box into a night ocean of undulating jellyfish. The other, by the ceramic artist Katie Stout, is floored in a chunky mosaic and walled in her monstrous watercolors of floaty ladies.

Price: $12 million ($18,851 in monthly taxes and common charges)

Specs: 8,554 square feet of retail or office with a kitchen and three bathrooms

Extras: separate storage areas, mini-kitchen, floating marble staircase

Ten-minute walking radius: the Odeon, P.P.O.W. Gallery, Roman and Williams Guild

Listed by: Esteban Gomez, Compass

The main space of the gallery mutated regularly; Pierre Yovanovitch turned all three floors into a richly appointed faux-château with curvy furnishings and an eccentric, fictional owner. An opening for designer Luam Melake gave guests a chance to build tiny sets of furniture out of Jell-o. Regular exhibits of contemporary design would draw lines around the block. And the space ended up on “some kind of Instagram list,” Meyers said. How else to explain regular appearances from film crews that show up to shoot music videos? Or the women who seem to always show up on Fridays, in pairs, to take selfies. “It’s always interesting,” says Meyers, who is genuinely quite interested.

R & Company is putting the showroom up for sale for $12 million. The amount of space they currently have is “insane,” says Meyers, counting up 30,000 square feet if you include the triplex, their shop around the corner, and 16,000 square feet of warehouse in Brooklyn. And sure, the business has shifted away from New York, toward more art fairs. They’ve spent time, recently, in Berlin and Paris, Houston and Detroit. They  just came off a trip to Design Miami. Selling their space at No. 64 just made sense.

The exterior of No. 64. The 1869 building is one of several developed by the Grosvenor family in Tribeca.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

“We built this with a concept of what we think retail should become in the 21st century,” Meyers says. Snyderman doesn’t disagree. But he points out that even back in their flea market days, they were turning booths into elaborate, decked out rooms. “It doesn’t matter where we are,” he said. “We’re going to always do what we do.” And what they do is sell nice things when the market wants them. “We didn’t buy this space with the intention of then turning around developing it and selling it,” says Snyderman. “But,” says Meyers, “that is our job.”

The company lets staff furnish their offices with picks from their warehouse, and everything is for sale. A lighting fixture by Katie Stout hangs at the center of Snyderman’s office, and a 1966 sculpture by Gino Marotta (right) hangs over the desk.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

Meyers’ office is backed by a slab of Brazilian onyx. The rug is by Thaddeus Wolfe, and the light is from a collaboration between Jeff Zimmerman and James Mongrain. A photo (right) shows Roy Lichtenstein at work in his studio.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

The offices and library are on the central floor, and include warm woods to reflect their role at “the heart” of the enterprise, says Snyderman.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

“We built this with a concept of what we think retail should become in the 21st century,” Meyers says.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

A sitting area on the top floor looks over the atrium.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

A table laid out with ceramics.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

The gallery is currently showing a survey of 20th-century Brazilian design. The built-in crane makes it easier to hang large pieces.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

Even the bathrooms host art installations.
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

“The staircase is … insane,” says Snyderman, who points to the work of Carlo Scarpa as inspiration. “The idea was that that staircase outlives all of us and in 50 years people will be coming here to look at it.”
Photo: Edward Menashy of Evan Joseph

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