Artist Jack Ceglic and Architect Manuel Fernandez-Casteleiro didn’t do deep renovations when they moved into their apartment in a 1905 building on lower Fifth Avenue. They repainted — the walls, they say, were tobacco stained — and redid the kitchen and bathroom, but otherwise kept it as is, and filled it with their lives. There is a wall of black-and-white charcoal drawings Ceglic calls his “Matzo” series — they are from his “My Mother’s Store” show at the FiveMyles Gallery in 2014. They have a Knoll sofa “that has traveled with me since 1959; I got it at Lord & Taylor,” Ceglic says, pointing out that the faded silk velvet upholstery used to be emerald green. A craft-looking table was once used for mah-jongg in a Miami hotel slated for demolition; Ceglic bought it and had it shipped to the city. The dining room is hung with photographs by Joel Grey. “We’ve been friends way before Cabaret,” Ceglic says.
