Urban Sophisticate

Dennis Duffy never intended to move from the home in South Boston where he had lived and worked for ten years. The interior designer was simply answering a call from Dinny Herron, sales director for the Residences at the Intercontinental Hotel in Boston. The twenty-one-floor luxury hotel that was to feature 130 condominiums was in its preconstruction phase in 2005, and Herron wanted Duffy to bring in his portfolio to show to potential clients. Duffy has been designing interiors and furniture since the mid-1980s, and recently opened D Scale, a home-furnishings store in Boston’s South End. “Dennis arrived at the sales office and started to look around at models and floor plans,” says Herron. One condo—a two bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath unit on the fifteenth floor—seized his attention.”

“The floor plan was so cool,” Duffy says. “The gallery space and split bedroom plan, the location—everything was here.”

Originally from New York City, Duffy loved the future high-rise’s urban environs. “It reminded me of New York,” he says. Today, the 1,860-square-foot condo overlooks the new Rose Kennedy Greenway, a twenty-seven-acre strip of public parks along Atlantic Avenue that connects Boston’s North End, the Wharf District and Chinatown. It was the first home Duffy had lived in that didn’t require any structural changes. “All I did was finish it,” he says.

INTERIOR DESIGN
Dennis Duffy