The combination living/dining room, which measures a spacious 425 square feet, features fabulous park views along with prewar details like beamed ceilings and molding.
The enlarged eat-in kitchen (above) was created out of a maid’s room and butler’s pantry. It features a table with a base that’s an antique Singer sewing machine.
IN BLACK AND WHITE: Green composes on her piano.
When Amanda Green (lyricist, singer, composer, writer and daughter of the legendary Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green) and her husband, Jeffrey Kaplan, were looking for a home of their own, they had to bridge some differences.
Kaplan, an orthopedic surgeon, had been living on the Upper East Side, but Green didn’t feel comfortable there. She was raised on the Upper West Side and hoped to stay in that area. They searched all over the city until they saw a 1907 Central Park West co-op that just happened to be a few blocks from her childhood home.
“We walked into the living room, with its seven windows looking down on Central Park, and we knew immediately that this was it,” Kaplan says of the 2,200-square-foot three-bedroom, three-bathroom residence, which they moved into in 1998.
“It was a very early apartment house,” Green adds, “and it had a reputation that we loved. Lots of socialists and artists were said to have lived here. So, when we saw this place, it felt just like home.”
“The building had been a rental until the 1980s,” Kaplan says. “When we bought it, the apartment needed brightening up and re-imagining.”
So they rethought the layout. What used to be a full dining room was turned into his younger daughter’s room. (His daughter from an earlier marriage lives with them.) They created a combined living/dining room, which measures 23 by 18 1/2 feet. The master bedroom also was a combination of two rooms, and they added a bathroom. And one bedroom was turned into Green’s office.
But by far the biggest project was the kitchen. “The original kitchen was half the size,” he says. “We enlarged it — and made it into an eat-in kitchen — by using a maid’s room and bath and butler’s pantry. The cabinets were all covered with paint, and we were going to knock them down and put in new cabinets. But they scraped away the paint, and we saw they were made of beautiful wood.”
They also refinished all the oak doors and had custom bookshelves made with storage below the shelves. All that took about six months.
And then came their furniture. Several of their pieces are antiques from Green’s family, some things they bought at Housing Works (among them, a church pew), and each of them had special treasures from their previous lives.
Like the piano that came from Green’s parents’ East Hampton home. And a life-size leather pig that was a gift to Kaplan because he’s from Memphis, and Memphis “is the pork capital,” he says.
“Our furniture is a mixture of things that make us happy,” Green says.
And clearly they are happy. They’ve been married 14 years now, but their relationship left the Green family just a bit uneasy at first.
“When I told my parents that I was seeing a handsome Jewish doctor,” Green says, laughing, “the first thing they said was: ‘But does he understand show business?’ ”
After all, her father (along with his collaborator, Betty Comden) was a Broadway and Hollywood lyricist and playwright who penned such hits as “Singin’ in the Rain,” “On the Town,” “The Band Wagon” and many more. Her mother is a Tony Award-winning actress. And her brother, Adam Green, is the theater columnist for Vogue.
Green is no slouch herself. In 2012, she co-wrote the lyrics (with Lin-Manuel Miranda) for Broadway’s “Bring It On.” This year, she wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the music with Phish’s Trey Anastasio for “Hands on a Hardbody.” It’s currently in previews and opens March 21 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
“It’s the first score I’ve ever written,” says Green. “We did a production in La Jolla last spring, and now the whole cast is coming to Broadway. There was one song that I wrote thinking of Keith Carradine’s voice. He was my perfect dream to do it — and now he’s doing it in New York.”
“Hands on a Hardbody” might not sound like the most likely of Broadway musicals. It was adapted from a 1997 documentary about an auto dealership that sponsored an endurance contest to win a brand new Nissan Hardbody truck.
“We’ve worked on the show for five years,” Green says. “The thing about writing musicals is that, at some point, you have to say time’s up and put down your pencil.”
As for inheriting musical skills from her father? “I’ve always loved music,” Green says. “I went to all the shows when I was growing up, and I started writing song parodies at a very early age, for every occasion. I always wanted to make my dad laugh.
“This is what I’ve wanted all my life. I’m grateful every day. Working with people I respect and admire is exactly what I always wanted to do.”
Amanda Green’s favorite things
*Her border terrier, Roxy
*Letters of praise from Stephen Sondheim
*A photo of Green when she was 3 with
her dad, Adolph; she later wrote a song about it called “Daddy’s Shoulders.”
*A wedding photo in a silver frame, which is inscribed: “Hanging on by a thread.”
*A Jonathan Larson award for songwriting and MAC awards for songwriting/cabaret singing
*A sketch by Oliver Smith, the set decorator for “On the Town”
*A painting of the Chrysler Building by artist friend Tom Slaughter