BEST OF THE REST: This elegant sleeping area is one of three bedrooms in the Harnicks’ 2,530-square-foot home. (Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance)
PILLAR TALK: The dining room is next to the family room. (Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance)
ON EXHIBIT: Margery, a painter/sculptor/photographer, covered the co-op’s walls with art. (Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance)
The 1929 stove (above): “We use it all the time,” Margery says. (Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance)
It was 1965, and lyricist Sheldon Harnick and his brand new bride Margery (a musical actress at the time) were looking for a home.They’d heard about an apartment in a 1929 Emery Roth designed building on Central Park West and decided to check it out.
It had three bedrooms, three bathrooms and two small maid’srooms in its 2,530 square feet. It had a nearly 500squarefoot living room, 10foot ceilings, herringbone floors, arched doorways, crownmoldings andaworking fireplace. Another selling point was the original 1929 stove — the same stove the Harnicks use to this day. The apartment seemed ideal.
“We just fell in love with it,” Sheldon recalls.
But there was a hitch. The building had just gone coop, and the price for the apartment was a daunting $48,000. “I was very worried that we wouldn’t be able to pay for it,” Sheldon says.
His most recent Broadway show, “Fiddler on the Roof,” had just opened the previous fall. Now all Sheldon and Margery could do was hope it would run for a while.
They couldn’t know it then, but “Fiddler” would go on to play more than 3,000 performances. It would be nominated for 10 Tony Awards and would win nine (including Best Musical and Best Composer and Lyricist). Then it would be awarded another special Tony in 1972, when it became the longest running musical. It would have four Broadway revivals (and more Tonys), be turned into a movie (which won three Academy Awards in 1971)and would become a staple of school and community productions.
Ohyeah, theycould pay for it.
“We chanced it,” Sheldon says now. “We moved in and we’ve been very happy.”
“It was so big,”Margery remembers.“ When we first got married, Sheldon saidwe’d get someone in to help me clean. Isaid, ‘No,no,no!’I came from three tiny rooms and didn’t know what was involved.That first week, I lost five pounds.”
That’s when they hired someone to help out.
They also asked a decorator for suggestions about the design.
“It was his idea to put up pillars in the large [close to 300 square foot] dining room to divide the room,” Sheldon says. That gave them a full dining room as well as another space that they use as a family room.
Margery eventually took over the decorating herself. “Sheldon and I choose things together,” she says. “Our taste is very much alike.”
The couple had two children (a son and a daughter) in their early years in the apartment, and that impacted their style.
“With two growing kids,”Sheldon says, “we were reluctant to buy any really expensive furniture because we knew food was going to be spilled, things were going to be torn.”
And though today their children are grown and out on their own, the couple has stuck with the same color choices—primarily rich browns and earth tones—and eventhe same furniture. Margery notes,“We’ve never gotten new furniture,but we’vehad it all recovered.”
She filled the walls with her artwork (she’s a painter/sculptor; and a recent exhibit of her photographs ran at Guild Hall in East Hampton) and the work of their friends.
One of the standouts? A selfportrait by ZeroMostel.
Another wall is covered with posters of all the shows Sheldon and Margery worked on, including “Tender loin” (where theymet), “Fiorello!” (for which he wonaPulitzer Prize), “Greenwillow,” “She Loves Me” and, of course, “Fiddler on the Roof.”
He’s 88, she’s in her “early 70s” (“But I’ve been lying about my age since I was 14,” she says), and they’re still hard at work. Their first book together, “The Outdoor Museum: Not Your Usual Images of NewYork” is a blend of Margery’s photos—unexpected views of the city — coupled with Sheldon’s poems. (It also includes a CD of Sheldon reading his work and a foreword by director Mike Nichols.)
They’re hoping to do another book together soon. “I’m working everyday,” Margery says. “I pick certain areas of the city, and I keep going back until I feel I’ve seen enough and taken enough photos. And then I move on to another area.”
Meanwhile, Sheldon recently finished a musical based onMolière’s “ADoctor in SpiteofHimself.”Thehope is that it will be produced next season by the Classic Stage Company.
He’s also fixed something that always bothered him about “Fiorello!” Even back when the showwas first produced in 1959, Sheldon felt it needed a new song for Act II. Now that NewYork City Center’s Encores! is doing are prise of the show next January for its 20th anniversary, he wrote a new song for that spot.
As for both working out of the same apartment, Sheldon tells a favorite story of the time he felt he had to comment on their “companionable” silence.
“It’s so nice,”he said to Margery, “the times we have together sharing silence and music and doing our work.”
An annoyed Margery sniffed: “For your information, for the past week, I have not been speaking to you.” Hearing that story again, Margery suddenly leans over, kisses Sheldon on the cheek, and says: “I love you.”
It’s just another day in their long life together on Central Park West.
SHELDON & MARGERY’S
FAVORITE THINGS
* Their book, “The Outdoor Museum,” with poems by Sheldon and photos by Margery
* Margery’s paintings
* Black-and-white photos of the couple by Richard Avedon
* The view of Central Park from their living room windows
* The 1929 stove: “We use it all the time,” Margery says.
* A bronze Paul Freeman sculpture of a piano
* The hallway gallery with posters from all the shows they’ve worked on
* The score for “Finian’s Rainbow” inscribed by lyricist E.Y. Harburg: “To Sheldon, for whom I predict great things.”