How did 9 By Design’s Cortney & Robert Novogratz get their start?

Robert and Cortney Novogratz are the husband-and-wife owners of the design firm, Sixx Design and stars of the new Bravo reality series 9 By Design alongside their seven children: Wolfgang, 12; twins Bellamy and Tallulah, 11; Breaker, 9; twins Five and Holleder, 4, and Major, 1.

Bob, 47, and Corteny, 38, are entrepreneurial urban hippies who take abandoned, run-down or even vacant properties and transform them into luxurious, multi-million dollar homes built with a flair that can only come from an unencumbered intuitive sense of design.

And that’s exactly what the Novogratz duo have in spades! Neither Cortney or Robert had any professional training in architecture or design when they took on their first design project in 1996: a decrepit home on West 19th Street in the then-undesirable Chelsea neighborhood. More on that later! First, a little background on Cortney and Bob.

Cortney and Robert Novogratz started with a run-down home in Chelsea

Cortney Beck was raised in Columbus, Georgia – about 100 miles south of Atlanta on the Georgia/Alabama border – and was the daughter of Lamar Beck, who founded the Goo-Goo Car Wash chain with his father in Anniston, Alabama in 1945. The youngest sibling of five, Cortney moved to New York in the early 1990s to study art and acting.

Robert Novogratz was raised mostly in Virginia in a military family that included father Robert Novogratz Sr., a retired Army colonel. Robert’s parents were also in the antiques business, which would have a great impact on Robert’s style sense later in life.

As far as when and where the couple met, there are numerous conflicting stories on the internet. BravoTV.com says:

Sixx Design first took shape in 1995, when Robert and Cortney were a married couple living in Georgia. Both from large families and both with parents who were decorating enthusiasts, the couple moved to New York City.

SixxDesign.com offers a slightly different version:

Sixx Design took shape in 1995, where Cortney and Robert were married in Georgia. Both from large families and both with parents who were decorating enthusiasts, the couple moved to New York.

That description seems to allow for the fact that the couple was already living in New York, but were married in Cortney’s home state, which seems to be supported by a number of stories about, and interviews with Bob and Cortney.

The Novogratz’ home at 5 Center Market before and after renovation

At MagnificentMe.com, Cortney says, “When I moved to New York I studied art and acting, and was taking acting classes and waiting tables when I met my husband Robert. We fell in love, and though we shared the same interests, we never thought we’d run a business together. He was in finance.”

1stDibs.com says, “When they met at a party in Charlotte, North Carolina, Robert was a stockbroker and Cortney an aspiring actress still in college. Love took shape immediately and they were married only months later.”

Huh? Charlotte? I give up. Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times about the couple’s beginning:

The Novogratzes met and fell in love when she was still in college and moved to Manhattan in the early 90s. He was one of seven children in his peripatetic military family; her parents ran a business in a small town and had five children. “We always knew we wanted lots of kids,” Ms. Novogratz said. She thought she’d be an actress, and took classes and waited tables; Mr. Novogratz became a stockbroker. He did well, he said. “But my first day I was like, I’ve got to do something cooler.”

And he did. MUCH cooler! As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, the couple got their start by purchasing a run-down house in Chelsea and living there while fixing it up. Here’s a great description of the project from the New York Times story:

In 1996, the couple found a condemned, mid-19th-century brick town house on West 19th Street, and bought it with owner financing for $450,000. They gutted and rebuilt it, and discovered they were not only skilled at doing so, but also that they enjoyed the process. “We liked the chaos, and we grew as a couple,” Ms. Novogratz said. At first, they rented out rooms to friends, then whole floors. Suzanne Vega was the first official tenant, taking three floors for a few years. In 1998, they used the equity from the house to buy a manufacturing building on Thompson Street, which came with a parking lot, for nearly $500,000. They remade the manufacturing building as a home, and built a new house on the lot, selling the two buildings a few years later for almost $7 million and $3.825 million respectively. Meanwhile, they bought and renovated four more houses on Centre Market Place in Little Italy, sold two, lived in one and rented the fourth.

And there you have Sixx Design!

Wolfgang 12, Bellamy & Tallulah 11, Breaker 9, Five & Holleder 4 and Major 1

I just watched the first episode of 9 By Design yesterday and it was great! Not only is the show produced well, but Cortney and Robert really come across as the prototypical entrepreneurial American Dream couple. They are borderline hippies in their mellowness and often called gypsies because of how often their family moves, but as evidenced by the success of their company, both of them are extremely smart, extremely creative and extremely practical when they need to be. Regardless of how laid back and not serious you may appear on the surface, there is no way you could herd the cats in the form of contractors, architects, zoning permits, supplies and real estate legalities if you weren’t a serious business person.

And the same thing goes for their parenting! On the surface the household seems to be in complete chaos without boundaries of any kind, but you can tell their herd of 6 cats (plus one!) are well-disciplined, and once again, that doesn’t happen by just doing what’s cool and fun.

I think what is most romantically attractive about the couple is that they were able to find something they really enjoy and are really good at and turn it into a very successful business in an industry full of people that went to school for years to be trained to do the same thing. Their intuitive and brilliantly creative sense of style allows for a brand of architecture that screams out above the crowd. Nothing is out of bounds and yet there is obviously a huge amount of careful editing in their choices. The term I use for it is “unrestrained restraint.” They think completely outside the box inside the box, a skill often lost on designers with extensive training training and/or education.

Here are some Season One Previews:

I look forward to the next 7 episodes of 9 By Design which include work on a beach house, a trip to London, the birth of Major Novogratz, renovation of The Bungalow Hotel in New Jersey and a book-signing party forDowntown Chic: Designing Your Dream Home: From Wreck to Ravishing, published by Sixx Design last year.

Be sure to tune in Tuesday nights on Bravo, 10/9 c!

Subscribe to Starcasm by Email