"The place looked dated," Watergate resident Myrna Fawcett says. "But we couldn’t resist the view." Designer Lori Graham installed a mantel with clean lines and bookshelves on each side to define one of the focal points of the large living space.

The Washington Post / ERIK JOHNSON

WASHINGTON — Before there was a break-in and a national scandal, the Watergate was known solely as one of Washington’s most luxurious and modern apartment complexes.

When the contemporary Watergate East building opened in 1965 as part of the 10-acre riverfront development in Foggy Bottom, it had the latest for upscale living: open-plan layouts, balconies, marble vanities, maid’s rooms and harvest gold Formica counters. Remember, this was the 1960s.

Forty-two years later, Myrna and Arthur “Chip” Fawcett bought their two-bedroom, two-level penthouse Watergate apartment primarily because of its sweeping vistas of the Potomac River. The couple were crazy about the location, not so much the eight-foot ceilings, pinkish marble floors, boxy rooms, padded silk walls, low banisters and clunky radiators.

“The place looked dated,” Washington lawyer Myrna Fawcett says. “But we couldn’t resist the view and the wonderful light.”

Fawcett says they recognized that the Watergate was a place where many original owners had lived for decades. But baby boomers and families with young children were moving there. “The demographics were changing, but it had always been a strong, self-contained community,” she says.

The Fawcetts hired designer Lori Graham to rework elements of what was modern in the 1960s into what looks fresh today.

She remixed furnishings they owned and created seating areas to relax in while gazing at the sky and water. Chip Fawcett, who died in November, had a particular interest in the Potomac and the boat traffic that is part of its daily panorama, especially the rowing shells that regularly glide by. The sport was a lifetime passion of Fawcett’s; he was a skilled rower, college crew coach and longtime president of the Potomac Boat Club.

Graham worked closely with the couple in adding contemporary design to their many traditional pieces. “I tried to make the place look modern again,” she says. “There was lots of refinishing, reupholstering and replating.”

She remade what she could, sending a massive Italian brass chandelier to an auto body shop to be sprayed coral and salvaging the original brass hardware throughout the apartment by having it replated in nickel. A black Naugahyde wing office chair that once belonged to former Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas was given a new life.

“I loved the shape of the chair, but it was falling apart,” Graham says. “We lacquered the frame white and did brown mohair upholstery.”

The Fawcetts, who married in 1987, had artfully combined their antiques, black-and-white photography, stacks of old books and 19th-century watercolors. After they bought a weekend house in Annapolis, Md., they realized how much they enjoyed living by the water and decided to move to an urban apartment along the water’s edge yet near downtown.

The Watergate’s controversial curving lines and saw-toothed balconies took hits from architecture critics over the years, and the hotel was recently in foreclosure. But the complex of apartments, office space, hotel and underground stores has endured, becoming the home address of many members of Congress and administration officials. For the Fawcetts, it wasn’t the Watergate mystique or its high-voltage residents, such as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tenor Placido Domingo and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who just sold her place), that sealed the deal. It was the lure of the river.

The Fawcetts told Graham they wanted a budget-friendly makeover using many existing pieces. They realized she could do nothing about the low concrete ceilings and decided it would be prohibitively expensive to replace the marble floors, which cover both levels of the co-op.

Graham, who started her Washington firm in 2004, knew her biggest challenge was the main living space, a long room meant for entertaining, reading and dining. She defined the spaces by installing three different 1960s-inspired crystal chandeliers. To camouflage what she calls the “nasty old behemoth heating and cooling units,” she designed ventilated radiator covers topped with seat cushions, creating cozy places to curl up with a book.

The room was painted Blue Fog by Pratt & Lambert, a moody bluish-gray that reflects sky and water. Graham mixed a touch of the color into the white ceiling paint to create an illusion of greater height.

The project presented challenges common to many apartments built in the 1960s and 1970s. Her work involved opening up doorways and installing sconces because recessed lighting wasn’t practical.

A bronze coffee table base was replated in nickel for a more contemporary look. She updated the metal stairway to the second level, where a small home office and reading alcove spill out onto a large terrace. In the master bedroom (painted Benjamin Moore’s Palladian Blue), Graham exaggerated an alcove behind the bed to create a visual headboard, using a bold chocolate brown and turquoise wallpaper.

Graham found the project intriguing on several levels. “The Watergate holds a lot of mystique for me personally, as I’m sure it does for a lot of political junkies in Washington,” she says. The Fawcett apartment was her first job there.

“I think it’s really coming back into its own, and younger people are moving there,” Graham says. “The view is something you can’t get anywhere else.”