A look inside Miss Piggy’s creator’s art-filled Brooklyn duplex

Our Cool Place series brings you into cool places. For this inaugural edition, we’re visiting Bonnie and Wayde Harrison in their duplex apartment near the Brooklyn waterfront.

Bonnie moved to New York in 1961 from her hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, where she’d gone to art school and hung out in Dinkytown with a young Bob Dylan. He became her neighbor in Greenwich Village.

During her first year in New York City, Bonnie lived in seven different apartments, picking up temp jobs before landing a full-time gig as a theater costume designer.

In 1973, she left her Lower East Side tenement — which featured a bathtub in the living room, as well as coal deliveries hauled up to her stove each week — and moved into the Brooklyn apartment she still lives in 50 years later.

At that point, she was already working for Jim Henson, who’d seen her portfolio and put her in charge of the Muppet Workshop in 1972. While there, she created iconic characters, including Miss Piggy and Statler and Waldorf.

Bonnie says the two cantankerous old Muppets arguing on their balcony were inspired by the Yale Club in Manhattan.

“If I worked late, which was often, Jim would let me go home in a cab,” Bonnie said. “Every time I did that, I would go down Park Avenue around Grand Central and look into the Yale Club. And I had this vision of these two old men sitting there having their brandy and their cigars.”

The characters are named after two storied Midtown hotels — the Statler Hilton and the Waldorf Astoria.

Bonnie met Wayde through friends in their Brooklyn neighborhood. At the time, he was working as a researcher at Sloan Kettering, and they discovered his hospital and the Muppet Workshop were two blocks apart.

“So we rode the subway together, and one thing led to another,” Wayde said.

“It didn’t take long,” Bonnie adds.

The couple married in 1977 and started their own business, making toys and puppets for performances and TV commercials.

In 1978, when the Philadelphia Phillies approached Henson about a mascot, he passed them along to the Harrisons, who created the Phillie Phanatic that year.

To their surprise, sports mascots became the biggest component of their business — they’ve created more than a dozen, including Youppi! (Montreal Canadiens) and Dandy, a short-lived Yankees mascot, between 1979 and 1981.

Bonnie handles the creative side of the partnership and Wayde manages the business end. During a renovation, they created dedicated work spaces in their apartment. Wayde’s “World Headquarters,” which swivels to hide from view, is reminiscent of a ship’s cabin within, complete with portholes.

While the Harrisons have works from blue-chip names, including Alice Neel and Chuck Close, they have a proclivity for finding art wherever they turn, or teaming up with friends to create it in everyday moments.

They love folk art: A wire sculpture in their guest room is from a man who lived on the street on the Upper West Side and created his work on the sidewalk.

In the hallway beside the kitchen, a panel of sprinkler controls is hidden behind a painting of a fire extinguisher made by their friend, the New Yorker cartoonist Charlie Hankin.

The Harrisons also love thrift shops and curiosity boutiques — their apartment is a veritable gallery dedicated to New York bric-a-brac emporia that have closed over the years. They also visit galleries and bid in online auctions by Artsy or Swann.

“I do love this stuff and I love sharing how we found it,” Bonnie said. “As you can tell, there’s a story with everything.”

“Bonnie is an extremely talented artist and creator,” Wayde said. “She will not tell you that, but I will tell you. Her ability is unique and special, and that was why we were able to start a business and make something happen.”

“I love you Wayde,” Bonnie replied.

After buying the neighboring apartment and combining it with their older one into a duplex, the couple decided one part would be the modern wing and the other, including the master bedroom, would be their “country house.”

The house’s “garage” contains a clothes closet and the “front porch” leads up to the master bathroom.

While reflecting on their careers, Bonnie recounted a story she heard about a young child asking Jim Henson how he made his puppets.

“Get a group of people around you that you love, and that love you,” Henson apparently said. “Give them an idea that has enough empty space in it that they can make it their own. When you get it back, it’ll be better than you ever thought possible.”

“His answer was just so Jim,” she recalled.

Do you know a cool place you’d like to nominate for the series? Write to us at tips@gothamist.com with the subject line “Cool Place.”