"All this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything." -William Shakespeare
Nan Croley was born May 28, 1939. She lived in Cleveland, Ohio the only child of English parents, Rose and Preston Croley. Growing up Nan was a Girl Scout, an athlete, an academic, a singer, a yearbook editor, and a student government leader. As a multi-talented National Merit Finalist, Nan could have attended a more prestigious university, but family finances precluded that. She graduated from Lake Erie College, a women's college in Painesville, Ohio. She studied painting, art history, and theater. Nan spent her junior year studying in Dijon, France.
In 1963, Nan married Nate Horowitz, a jazz musician she had known in high school. They lived in NYC during the Beat Movement. After their divorce, Nan took the unusual step, for that time, to go back to school; she graduated from the Pratt Institute, School of Architecture in the early 1970's. Three decades later Nan wrote, "finding and sticking with architecture after floating through the first 30 years of my life is one of the accomplishments I am most proud of."
One of Nan's first jobs as an architect was designing brownstone apartment renovations in Manhattan. However, she returned to Lake Erie College as an instructor in theater scene design and as a gallery director. A few years ago Nan confided that it was difficult for women to find work in architecture at that time.