Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - Long overdue for time in the spotlight, 24 black interior design firms in New York put their best work forward this summer in what may have been the country's first black show house.

An Edwardian-period town house in Manhattan's Harlem section was venue for the Harlem United Show House, the newest entrant in the show house field, where decorators and clients can find one another and consumers around the country can check out decorating trends.

"When I moved to New York from Los Angeles nine years ago, I realized there were lots of black designers working. But you would never see their work in show houses or shelter magazines," says show organizer Roderick Shade, one of the participating decorators.

Shade actively started working on the project about three years ago. "We felt it had to be a house in Harlem, the capital of the black world. But we were looking for an intact house, and many houses here have been split up and original details lost," he says.

The building selected, a four-story, limestone-and-brick, single-family house built in 1906 in beaux arts style, retains almost all of its original detail, including wood paneling, parquet floors and plaster ornamentation. "It was a bonus that Charles Blackwell, a well-known dancer, writer and stage manager on Broadway, had lived here," says Shade.

The family of Blackwell, the first black stage manager to work on Broadway, lent some of his collection of African artifacts for display at the show house.

Shade acknowledges that black decorative style may elude definition. "There is an ongoing debate about whether there is a particular African-American design aesthetic," he says.

This show house may not settle the question, but the designers have made heavy use of accessories, fabrics, art work and furnishings identified with the black American experience. The eclectic collection of art works includes masks, dolls, pieced quilts, contemporary paintings and prints by black American artists, as well as African carvings and furniture.

There's a strong emphasis on warm color schemes. As Shade puts it, "Black people don't look good in ice-blue backgrounds, and there isn't a gray or a blue room in the house."

Shade's own accomplished guest room "with African cues" combines neutral backgrounds, ethnic accessories, antiques such as a chest from Afghanistan, modern furniture, and textured wall and floor coverings.

The combination entrance foyer and sitting room decorated by Joan Gibbs has furniture of historic interest made by black Americans working in the 19th century, such as Thomas Day of North Carolina.

"I don't think you would find furniture by Thomas Day in another show house," says Shade.

A dramatic pairing of arts and crafts style and African art appears in the dining room, decorated by Cheryl Flanagan in association with Gail Green of Arcadia, Inc. Arts and crafts antiques and reproductions in rich dark colors share space with the African sculptures loaned by the Blackwell family. A straightforward tile treatment in the room's fireplace is repeated as an unusual cornice for the nearby window.

Every show house needs a room that's over the top. In this one, it is surely the parlor that Wilbert Louis Shaw decorated as homage to entertainer Josephine Baker. After gilding the ornate plaster wall ornamentation and installing large mirror panels, Shaw further embellished the room with pink ostrich feathers, one of Baker's signature props.

There are modest and usable ideas even here, such as inexpensive chandelier crystals sewn onto the borders of simple white sheer curtains.

"This is a house with affordable ideas for the middle class," says Edward J. Robinson.

Robinson's master bedroom has walls of grasscloth and Italian and African pieces and is accented with an African table carved from a tree trunk.

While this room is not particularly low-budget, there are plenty of affordable ideas elsewhere in the house.

Take the media room on the second floor. Three walls are covered with Homosote tackboard, and the fourth is bathed in magenta light produced economically with a fluorescent fixture wrapped with a cellophane-like colored gel, available from lighting supply houses. The Homosote is used as-is.

The only embellishment was to hand sand it to create a velvety texture, says Leyden Y. Lewis, who produced the room with Catherine S. Kim. Besides its low cost, the material also has sound insulating properties.

Another example of maximum effect with minimum outlay is the bedroom created by Steve Lowery for the daughter of the house. Her favorite color, purple, shows up in the faux-painted wall in subtle shades of purple and white behind the bed. A study area nearby is created with a fabric panel suspended from the ceiling on a curtain rod. Lowery used inexpensive items such as track lighting in the study area, costing less than $70 at Home Depot.

Costs in the glamorous kitchen were kept down by combining luxury materials such as black granite countertops with less expensive materials such as plastic laminate for kitchen cabinet fronts and walls.

Design and Development Group of Manhattan was able to create an unusual effect by using four different and unusual laminate patterns. The patterns are textured copper, acid-etched copper, cherry wood and chestnut burl.

The kitchen has been designed specifically for the current owner, who prefers not to be identified and who was to move in after the show house event was over.

While the show house, benefiting the Harlem United Community AIDS Center, may be the first for black designers, it won't be the last. The United Negro College Fund will benefit from a show house planned for fall in Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y. Another is slated for Washington, D.C.