{"id":285778,"date":"2026-07-03T12:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/285778\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T12:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:29:10","slug":"revisiting-madonnas-90s-new-york-city-apartment-designed-by-her-late-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/285778\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Madonna\u2019s \u201990s New York City Apartment, Designed By Her Late Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Queen of Pop<\/a>, Madonna, is back on the throne today with the release of her new album Confessions II, a follow up to 2005\u2019s Confessions on a Dance Floor. What better occasion to look back on the Grammy-winning singer\u2019s illustrious career and life?<\/p>\n

AD visited her New York City apartment for the November 1991 issue. The mother of reinvention first purchased the pad with ex-husband Sean Penn<\/a>, and later added two more units and gave the home a complete overhaul with help from architect Stephen Wang and her younger brother and frequent collaborator Christopher G. Ciccone. In later years, Madonna and Ciccone would have a falling out, though they found their way back to each other before he lost his battle with cancer in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I finally got the courage to go to New York to become a dancer, my brother followed, and again we took each other\u2019s hands, and we danced through the madness of New York City,\u201d wrote the singer in a tribute to Ciccone after his death. In a podcast interview last year, she confirmed that one song on Confessions II, titled \u201cFragile\u201d, is about Ciccone.<\/p>\n

Below, revisit the NYC home they created together, where Madonna once sent faxes from her office while looking at her Picasso.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I wanted most was just to love my environment,\u201d says Madonna of her apartment in an unassuming brick building on Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side. As conceived and executed by the creative hand of Christopher G. Ciccone, her younger brother and most trusted confidant, the apartment is a low-key yet glamorous sanctuary, a place that allows her, once inside, a temporary escape.<\/p>\n

Madonna entrusted her brother with the design of her Los Angeles house (she gave him ten days to do it) and never thought of having anyone else envision and execute the New York space. \u201cWho could I have more in common with than someone I grew up with?\u201d Madonna says of her choice of designer. \u201cWe like the same things, from music to what we eat.\u201d Although Ciccone has no formal art training, he designed the stage sets for the Blonde Ambition tour, which was the setting for the documentary Truth or Dare, and he is an artist in his own right. But he is wholly self-taught in the area of interior design.<\/p>\n

Ciccone knew early on what he wanted to do. \u201cI wanted to create a New York apartment. In Los Angeles the living spaces are big, wide open. There are loft-like attributes to them, and also the feeling of living in a penthouse. In New York I wanted to make a space for her that was elegant without being weak, peaceful without being boring. She prefers New York to Los Angeles because when she\u2019s here she can relax. There\u2019s a city here\u2014you feel you are with people, living with the rest of the world, not confined to an automobile. But it still had to be a place she would feel safe in. Even though there\u2019s a view of Central Park, you don\u2019t feel exposed to anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

\u201cSubdued elegance\u201d is how Christopher G. Ciccone describes the Art Deco setting he created for Madonna\u2019s apartment. The designer, who is Madonna\u2019s brother, by Tamara de Lempicka\u2019s Nue \u00e1 la Colombe, 1930.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Queen of Pop, Madonna, is back on the throne today with the release of her new album…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2408,7452,8699,3450,19768,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-285778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-celebrity","tag-celebrity-homes","tag-decor","tag-home","tag-home-tours","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}