The 'Bingo' Heiress's Fantastical Duplex

Design editor Wendy Goodman takes you inside the city’s most exciting homes and design studios. [Design Hunting]( A visual diary by Design Editor Wendy Goodman The revolving mirror door between the library and living room. Photo: Evan Joseph “YOU MUST, MUST, MUST SEE THIS APARTMENT” Isaac Mizrahi texted me five years ago, attaching photographs of an Alice in Wonderland fantasy with a winding staircase strewn with flowers and walls depicting a scene out of a madcap Fragonard painting. I called him back immediately. “Who owns this apartment and how do you know them?” I asked. “My cousin is married to a son of the late Richard Maidman, Gail Maidman’s second husband,” Isaac explained. Gail, who died in 2016, had lived in this apartment for 44 years, and Richard passed away a few months after she did. And so began my odyssey into the story of one of the most fantastical, obsessively renovated homes in New York City, revolving around the leading lady Gail, who took her mother Jeanette Lowe’s dictum to heart: Every room must have drama. That would only begin to explain the story behind the jaw-dropping confection of rooms Gail created over a decade, one unrelated to the other except for the fact that they are all in the same 14-room, 5,000-square-foot duplex on the Upper East Side, tucked away in a discreet 1928 building. Gail became the heroine of her own movie; the apartment was the setting that was her masterpiece of self-realization, along with so many other things she did. [Take a tour]( Best, Wendy Goodman Never miss a detail: [Subscribe for unlimited access to New York.]( This Week in Design 1. [This Park Dancer Is Literally an Ad for NYC. The NYPD Keeps Shutting Her Down. NO STOPPING NEW YORK, the poster says, promoting recovery. But Kanami Kusajima’s park experience says otherwise.]( 2. [A $375K Forest Hills One-Bedroom and an Airy Carroll Gardens Loft Plus a 1910 Cypress Hills rowhouse with a mint green bathroom.]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Read More on Curbed]( Introducing [My Week in New York](: a brand-new newsletter from the editors. [Sign up]( to get the next edition this Saturday. [GET THE NEWSLETTER]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe](param=dh) | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on e-mail newsletters please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 11th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2021, All rights reserved