09/18/2024 General, English & Continental Furniture & Decorations, General Furniture & Decorative Arts, Boston / New England
BOSTON, MA -- Doyle is honored to offer property from the Collection of Hal Langell as a highlight of the Boston Collects auction on Friday, September 27, 2024 at 11am. Hal was a highly respected, even revered, interior design consultant professional to hundreds of private and commercial clients in the Boston area, Cape Cod, and Florida for over 60 years.
After spending his entire young life in Eastern Michigan, and receiving his degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 1953, Hal moved to Boston to pursue a career in architecture. However, his extraordinary talent and eye for aesthetic design creativity landed him a job instead with John H. Pray & Sons Furniture, a Boston institution for over 100 years. His reputation for insightful expertise that enhanced the success of selling quality furniture grew quickly, resulting in his being hired away by Paine Furniture in November 1959. It was at Paine that he met many of his most appreciative well-to-do clients, who regularly entrusted him to re-decorate and renovate their luxurious properties. Although Hal was not a salesperson, per se, his influence on the success of Paine Furniture for decades was undeniable. At the urging of a number of his most ardent clients, he left Paine in 1983 to start his own interior design consulting business—H. Langell Interiors. His new firm flourished, and he continued to be actively engaged in hundreds of projects for his many clients until 2019.
His extensive travel throughout the world with his longtime partner—and personal relationships with countless artisans of all kinds—served to deepen his knowledge of, and appreciation for, beautifully created objects of art. He was glad to share his boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for the importance of including these objects in the lives and living spaces of his clients. An avid collector himself, he incorporated museum-quality pieces throughout his beautiful 19th century row-house home in Boston's historic South End, a neighborhood for which he fought so actively to save from the Southwest Corridor highway project in the early 1970s.
At the height of his career, Hal was completing over 30 projects per year, so it’s likely that his design creativity made a significant impact on over 2,000 properties during his lifetime. In recognition of his extraordinary contributions to the profession, Hal was recognized by the National Society of Interior Designers (since renamed the American Society of Interior Designers) with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Boston Auction Friday, September 27, 2024 at 11am
Boston Exhibition September 21 - 24
The Collection of Hal Langell comprises almost 60 lots of Old Master paintings, Continental furniture, porcelain, silver and more from his elegant townhouse in Boston’s historic South End.
