STEPPING into the Upper West Side penthouse apartment of the multi-careered Linda Dano is kind of like delving into a magician’s bag of tricks. It’s full of surprises.
What seems to be an entrance to a hallway leading to another wing turns out to be a strategically placed mirror. The fireplace — complete with weather-beaten logs and hissing flames — is actually fake, with glass logs and a lit can of Sterno tucked underneath. Then there are the “solid” ends of cabinets, which turn out to be hidden doors that open to secret storage.
“I’m an illusionist,” Dano says with a sly grin. “It’s all a lot of tricks.”
She certainly leads a magical life. Dano, 66, an Emmy-winning actress, is probably best known for playing Felicia Gallant on the NBC soap “Another World” and Dr. Rae Cummings on ABC’s “One Life to Live.” But she’s also a decorator, who’s frequently on QVC with her Linda Dano Home Collection, and a fashion consultant (company name: Strictly Personal). And she’s authored the books “Living Great” and “Looking Great.”
Dano knows plenty about how to live well. The 1,100-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op that she and her late husband Frank Attardi bought in 2002 boasts a wraparound terrace that blooms with life come spring.
“I love the outdoor space,” Dano says. “I’m a gardener, and I’ve planted the terrace. I’m out there a lot. Friends come over, and we have dinner out there. There’s a gazebo; I grow clematis over it. You could get married out there.”
Dano also decorated the home’s interiors, but her husband, an advertising executive who died in 2004, did the reconstruction.
“The apartment was beautiful when I first saw it. And then my husband made it so much more beautiful,” she says. “We paid a million to buy it and added at least another couple of million on the update.”
Attardi put in molding throughout, squared off curved doorways and built the marble “faux” fireplace. And he added lots of mirrors — mirrors to make the space look bigger and mirrors to hide storage. Like the 5-by-4-foot Ralph Lauren mirror that slides on tracks to reveal a flat-screen TV behind it.
Dano had a few tricks up her sleeve, too. Take the quince branches where, when the flowers died and fell off, she laboriously pasted on silk flowers to make it look like they were thriving. (“I’m handy,” she says. “I love handy.”)
And the coffee table was originally black lacquer, but she had it painted to look like wood. Atop it sits a spray of fake orchids that look real because Dano added dirt and tiny stones to the pot. (She’s including the orchids in her next home-decorating line for QVC.)
While the living room feels very contemporary — with white furniture (covered in Sunbrella, a washable fabric) and a modern, hand-blown glass chandelier — there are several antique touches, too. Like the 19th-century ceramic rooster on the coffee table.
“We bought that in Sicily,” Dano says, “and hand-carried it all the way back home.”
And the English cheval mirror from the 1800s that stands in one corner of the room.
“My husband didn’t want [the mirror] in this apartment,” Dano says. “He wanted to get rid of it, and I wanted to keep it.
“Finally, I got a friend who works at Ralph Lauren to come in and look at it. He said, ‘Oh, this is to die for!’ Frank said, ‘Really?’ I never heard another word about that mirror again.”
In the foyer is a zebra rug Dano calls “Harvey.”
“I had to trim him down to get him to fit in there. So now he’s a lot thinner than when we first moved in,” she says.
The bedroom is elegant, with Ralph Lauren fabric lining the walls to make the room soundproof. More Ralph Lauren: a huge armoire that, in order to get it into the apartment, had to be dismantled, delivered in sections and then put together again.
“Don’t even ask what that cost!” Dano says.
Behind the bed is an antique Asian screen with hand-carved gold inlay that perfectly suits the room’s rich decor.
“This was the first apartment in the city we ever bought,” says Dano, who also has a home in Connecticut. “When Frank and I bought this, we bought most of the furniture for it. We just created everything for this space. And this is how it turned out.”
Linda Dano’s favorite things
* Mr. Moto, her Lhasa Apso
* The wraparound terrace
* Harvey, the zebra rug
* The fireplace
* The coffee table, which Dano and her late husband bought as newlyweds
* A ceramic rooster from Sicily
* An antique Asian screen
* A 19th-century puppet they bought in Orvieto