[3][4] Her family purchased a farm in 1882 along the Delaware River near Milford, Pennsylvania, to serve as a weekend and summer home.

[4] Against her father's desire for her to go into medicine, she pursued a career in the decorative arts and worked toward mastery of metalworking.

[6] Over 25 years, Zimmermann worked ten to twelve hours a day to master all of the different crafts she wanted to use in her art.

[8] At the age of 33, she designed a large family vacation home in Pike County that shows the rustic elegance of the Arts and Crafts movement and is now a historic site.

[7] Inspiring by Cellini and Michelangelo to master a wide range of media and techniques, Zimmermann designed metalwork in a wide range of media (gold, silver, bronze, copper and iron), vessels, daggers and irons, light fixtures, stained-glass windows, garden gates, furniture, and jewelry.

Much of her eclectic work was inspired by diverse historical precedents, including ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, and Chinese forms.

[12] Zimmermann was an avid fisher and hunter, and lived for over forty years with her life partner Ruth Allen (1884–1969), a former actress and screenwriter.

[7] Zimmermann won the Logan Prize for Jewelry and Silverware from an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1924.