What if your home was a furniture gallery?
David Rosenwasser and Elisa Medina-Jaudes’ Philadelphia townhouse is also home to his furniture gallery, Rarify.
For David Rosenwasser, working from home also means living at work. He and Elisa Medina-Jaudes, who plan to wed next year, share living space with his vintage and contemporary furniture gallery Rarify.
The arrangement is unusual, but satisfying.
“We couldn’t afford to have a fancy-schmancy nice gallery that was huge, and we also couldn’t afford a fancy-schmancy nice house that was huge,” Rosenwasser said. But “We could afford to buy a 2,600-square-foot building that needed a gut job.”
The gallery occupies the basement and first floor of the three-story townhouse.
The second floor, which includes the couple’s kitchen, living room, dining room, and a bathroom, also serves as an entertainment and extended gallery space for hosting work-related events. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms make up the third story.
In 2023, Rosenwasser discovered the space, which at the time, was an architect’s office.
“It needed a pretty full gut,” he recalled.
Over the next 18 months, the couple served as architects and designers on their own property. They moved into the home in November 2024 and opened Rarify the following January.
The kitchen is an essential shared space for the couple and the business. Rosenwasser is the family chef, and Medina-Jaudes is the baker.
Because the kitchen is also used to host gallery events, the aesthetics were important.
“We intentionally compromised a bit of the functionality to make it clean and attractive,” Rosenwasser said. “For example, all the upper cabinets are at the exact same height with the vent hood hidden underneath. That was an aesthetically driven choice so that everything was flush.”
They purchased many of their high-end appliances secondhand, including a Sub-Zero refrigerator and Bertazzoni range. The white cabinets from Reform in Fishtown are offset by small format navy blue ceramic tile from Nemo Tile in Old City.
The pair installed an 11-foot island for cooking and baking prep, as well as seating. The island top is made out of Laminam, a large-format compressed ceramic material.
“The facade on the first floor of the gallery is actually the exact same material as all the countertops and the bathroom vanities,” Rosenwasser said. “It’s impressive stuff because it’s indoor/outdoor grade, and it’s super resilient.”
The couple’s design style is “intentionally minimalist and white,” Rosenwasser said. Solid white oak is used for the floors, staircases, and handrails. The color scheme gives a nod to the De Stijl movement, which includes Mondrian’s color palette of primary colors, red, yellow, and blue.
Bits of those colors appear throughout the house. Yellow is the star of the bedroom that serves triple duty as a guest room, shared office, and music room. Rosenwasser plays guitar and bass guitar while Medina-Jaudes plays the cello. Custom yellow cabinets from the USM Haller collection sit against a yellow wall.
Medina-Jaudes is more interested in color than her fiancé, especially in the tchotchkes she enjoys — at times to Rosenwasser’s dismay. Their compromise is designer tchotchkes, they joke. Her favorite is a colorful quirky duck on their bookshelf that she received from an architect friend who handcrafted it.
The dining room set from PP Mobler was designed by Hans Wegner, for whom they named their 2-year-old gray cat. Many of the home’s walnut and burled wood furniture pieces, including in the primary bedroom and on the first floor, were crafted by New Hope-based woodworker Mira Nakashima.
“Since I was a teenager, and running this furniture business online, year by year I’ve been putting some money aside and investing in Nakashima designs piece by piece,” Rosenwasser said.
Despite the use of their home for Rosenwasser’s business, Medina-Jaudes finds a retreat in their private spaces.
“I am super introverted, which does not always go along with having events in the house,” said Medina-Jaudes, who is also an architect. “The third floor of the house is the most private and intimate for the two of us.”
She added: “Living above a storefront has its charms, but also its quirks and occasional consequences.”
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