The floor-through apartment that photographer Duane Michals has lived in since 1965 looks very much as it did when he and his partner, the late architect Fred Gorree, moved in — plants and all. “For as long as I’ve lived here, I’ve watered them every Friday,” he says. After settling in, Gorree painted the walls with trompe l’oeil moldings. “We cheated,” Michals says. “We did that instead of redoing all the plaster.” Walking through the apartment, Michals points out highlights from his and Gorree’s collection. “I could tell you a story about everything in this place,” he says. Like the abstract sculpture near the window overlooking the street: “It’s a wooden angel, who saved my soul. Mary Frank is the artist and gave it to me as a gift.” The mannequins leaning against the wall were found at Paula Rubenstein’s Bond Street store. “Paula always revives my failing spirits,” he says. In the front room, by the table, is a barrel-back wood chair that Michals and Gorree bought at an auction in Hoosick Falls. “That was Fred’s chair,” Michals says. “It was from an old, abandoned mansion. The minute Fred saw it, he loved it. It has a crack that we never repaired.” Gorree passed away in July 2017 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. “The apartment is my nest, and I have feathered it with all the things that emotionally support my life,” Michals says. “It’s not a show-off apartment, and it’s not a decorated apartment.”
