Colonel Robert Magaw Place. Winter 1988
How we found an apartment in New York City in 1988 in one day
Colonel Robert Magaw was a staunch patriot that defended Fort Washington, New York City during the Revolutionary War. The Fort fell, he was captured, and then the British released him in a prisoner exchange. Maybe that is why his street in Manhattan is only half a block long? (actually, the street used to be one of the entrances to the Fort). He later took up civilian life as a lawyer in Carlisle, PA and stayed there until his death - small world.
I was moving to Manhattan.
"If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you
New York, New York"
Brian had been accepted at Columbia Law School and asked if I wanted to come with him to New York City. I had just finished a contract position in DC and was only doing part-time teaching. I needed a change. So without a job, I moved to New York City, hoping for the best. My current "old" self still cannot believe the guts required to move to New York City without a job and without a plan. I was 27, maybe my final year of feeling "anything was possible".
In the "olden days", how did people find apartments? The newspaper. The motherload of New York City apartment searches was the Sunday Times. We started to look at the Sunday Times weeks before heading to New York to understand the lingo and the neighborhoods. The "apartments for rent" section of the classifieds had a language all its own, like a precursor to the texting abbreviations in use today. Confident we "understood" the vocabulary and the landscape, on the first train early on an August Sunday, we headed north to the City.
Good apartments in New York have always been a rare commodity. Stories abounded of places advertised in the Sunday Times with rental contracts being signed before noon that very day. It was intimidating. We heard that Washington Heights was a "chill neighborhood" in the north of Manhattan and since there were two subway lines that connected it to Columbia University, we decided to look there. Of course, we would have loved to live in the Village or the West side, but the budget was just not there. The area right around Columbia was just scary, period. Oh to be young and poor again...
We arrived at Penn Station, bought the Sunday Times, and took the subway to 72nd Street. Still holding out some hope we might find something on the West Side near Columbia, we went to a restaurant, ordered breakfast, and poured over the classifieds. The field was narrowed to a few candidates. Then it was time to go to a pay phone (!!) and make calls. The only place finally available to view was up in Washington Heights. We got on the subway again and headed north. [For years after, Brian and I remembered the very pay phone on Broadway and 72nd where we found our apartment - it represented the start of an era]
First impressions mean a lot and around Washington Heights 181st Street A train station they were decidedly bad. The area looked more like something out of West Side Story rather than a "chill neighborhood". No choice, we were committed. We found the place as pictured above and went to see the apartment. Our hearts sank when we entered a very filthy lobby with equally filthy stairs and corridors. We met the current occupants. The guys living there had actually renovated it thinking they would stay long term. Redone hardwood floors and painted, the place looked amazing. Unfortunately for them, one got a job offer out of the City and they had to leave after investing all that time and money. Fortunately for us, we found it! From the dingy, grimy hallway, entering their apartment was much like Dorothy opening the door into Oz (not exaggerating). The neighborhood got low marks but the apartment looked great. Our options were limited AND we had to find a place that day - there was not going to be a return visit. We wrote a deposit check and signed a lease. No credit checks - on the spot with the owner - it was done.
Washington Heights was SO NOT the musical version. In fact, the backstory of the place dates back to the 1930s. A lot of German Jews saw the writing on the wall with the rise of the Nazi Party and started immigrating to the USA. A contingent of them settled in Northern Manhattan, then called "Washington Heights". After Kristallnacht, a flood of people arrived until that section of Manhattan became a famous ethnic neighborhood. Like all of New York, the place has a very long history of immigration and the German Jews were just one group who left their mark as they moved through that northern tip of Manhattan. There had also been a large Greek community in the past and, of course, when we were there, it was largely Dominican. Washington Heights was divided by Broadway into "the hill" and "the flat". The hill was the highest natural point in Manhattan crowned by my favorite New York City park, Fort Tryon [See: Fort Tryon Park] . Down the hill, across Broadway was a completely different neighborhood (where I suppose "The Heights" is more accurately portrayed).
They say it's all in a name. When we lived on Magaw Place, Washington Heights was basically anything north of 168th Street (Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital). One neighborhood within the Heights at the very tip of the island, Inwood, more accurately fit the original description of "a chill place" we had heard about. West of Broadway and above 181st Street was the last remaining enclave of the German Jews and they were renting out their six floor walk-ups to young professionals. Our neighbors in the area included Broadway actors and Lincoln Center musicians. So far removed from the rest of Manhattan (at the time), there were not even any decent restaurants other than "Seinfeld-esque" diners and pizza places (which were not as good as those "down south"). We had to take a long subway ride to dine at any of New York's famed restaurants or go to the theatre or a movie. The place was a world unto itself. With the gentrification of Manhattan, realtors decided that "Washington Heights" was never going to attract buyers, but "Hudson Heights" would. As all those old apartment buildings went coop and condo, the area transformed and rebranded itself. We, however, never lived in Hudson Heights. We had lived in Washington Heights.
We stayed there for a total of three years - three of the most formative of my life. No regrets at all either. I look back on the Magaw Place years as some of the best. We lived the real "Friends" New York experience before that series was even a concept. I landed a good job and later, Brian graduated and became an international corporate lawyer with a blue chip firm.
We did "make it", Frank.