Her Side Is a Stuffopolis …

Her side includes the family kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms, with every surface accommodating the ongoing repository for any number of collections, including hose nozzles, stamps, beads, buttons, souvenir buildings, a pie safe, dental cabinets, tiny toys, and a salvaged Corinthian-column capital.

Dorothy moved around a lot growing up, so she wasn’t able to accumulate much. Then she met Stephen, and they made forays to auction houses and vintage stores near his parents’ house in Bucks County. “This was back in the ’70s, and I ended up buying a little dental cabinet and a chest, and I have all this commercial stuff, and, I don’t know, I just have always just loved objects. I think that working at the Cooper Hewitt—well, first I was a summer intern at the Smithsonian, and I spent a lot of time in storerooms all over the place—you know, the world’s largest collection of pickled fishes, bird skins—and I love the taxonomy of how things are sorted and stored, and I also learned about conservation.”

What does she think of Stephen’s side? “I love it. When was a kid, I lived in Japan for a couple of years. I love going in there. I just sit quietly.”

Her Storage Chest “This is my Wooton desk,” Dorothy says of the late-19th-century piece. It holds her rubber-stamp collection, albums, small stationery, and more.

Her Kitchen “Not being a cook, a fancy kitchen is not really a priority for me,” says Dorothy.

Her Indoor Skyline The models range from a silver Tiffany MetLife Building pencil to a penny bank of the Empire State Building. “The ships and docks are a set of cast-metal toys by the British company Tri-ang,” she says. “The modular docks were irresistible.”