Nancy Zeckendorf renovates Museum Tower pied-à-terre

The former ballerina filled the home with art and added a broom closet

Nancy and William Zeckendorf and Museum Tower
Nancy and William Zeckendorf Jr. and Museum Tower

The memoir of the late William Zeckendorf Jr., “Developing: My Life,” comes out this fall. But for his widow Nancy Zeckendorf, the building has never stopped. Nancy Zeckendorf, 82, just completed a renovation of her two-bedroom pied-à-terre at Museum Tower on West 53rd Street.

“The idea was to bring the outside in,” Zeckendorf, the former ballerina, told the New York Times. Zeckendorf says she decorated her apartment with contemporary and antique furnishings, and added a broom closet built to the hall by the living room.

“You have to have someplace to put a ladder. I have all my tools here. I love hardware stores. This is my pride and joy,” she said.

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She tells the Times that her dance career is reflected in her décor, such as fragment of the gilded proscenium from the old Met that frames her powder room, sketches of sets for the ballet “Les Noces” and the opera “Don Giovanni.”

“We bought this in Ischia, an island off the coast of Naples, where I would go every year for mud baths when I was dancing,” she says of a sculpture of a dancer in her home. “I loved her because she reminded me of Eurydice from one of my favorite operas, ‘Orpheus and Eurydice.’”

Zeckendorf travels between NYC and New Mexico, but will be travelling to promote her late husband’s memoir this fall. [NYT]Christopher Cameron