A 1200 square foot Soho studio for $1350 a month?
An impossible find in 2013—but available 30 years ago (perhaps even without a fee!), according to this ad from the May 1983 issue of arts and entertainment monthly the East Village Eye.
It’s not the only rental that sounds absurdly inexpensive to New Yorkers conditioned to pay an average of up to $3,973 a month for a Manhattan apartment these days.
If you were willing to give “historic” South Williamsburg a try, you could score a two bedroom “modern” rental for $330 a month. Broadway and Marcy Avenue was probably a pretty rough place though.
An East Village subhed in the three digits per month? That was the going rate for this three-room place on Second Avenue and 10th Street, according to this East Village Eye ad from September 1984.
Tags: Downtown in the 1980s, East Village Eye, East Village in the 1980s, Manhattan rents, New York in the 1980s, renting an apartment in 1980s New York, Soho apartments, Williamsburg apartment ads
January 31, 2013 at 11:50 am |
I was paying $166 for a 4 room apartment on 13th St between 1st & 2nd Ave with rent control until 1998, that is when I had my stroke. Before then I had the place for years and years, very low, miniscule rent. Now it must be over a thousand bucks, if not more. Probably some NYU drunken students have it.
January 31, 2013 at 12:13 pm |
Oh, yeah? In 1992 I moved into a 900 sq. ft. two bedroom with excellent light, parquet floors and a sunken living room on Clinton St. a half a block below Houston for a measly $511.30/mo. Rent controlled heaven! The problem was that the naib, and Clinton St. in particular, was the epicenter for the heroin trade. At night the dealers would walk up and down the block between Houston and Stanton with that evening’s brand calling out “Poison! Poison! I got Poison!” Or “Works! Who needs works!?” Needles everywhere. I had friends who wouldn’t visit me. It was awful. The good old days. But then gentrification sank it’s fangs into the East Village. My building converted from apartments to condos and I sold my place to a trust fund kid whose family owned a major department store in London. For CASH!
January 31, 2013 at 12:47 pm |
Fascinating! When my mother and I came to NYC in 1984, we moved into a 4-room railroad apartment in the heart of Greenpoint that lacked central heat but cost only $270/month.
January 31, 2013 at 6:12 pm |
[...] Apartment-for-rent ads circa 1983 (Ephemeral New York) [...]
January 31, 2013 at 6:18 pm |
My first adult apartment in SoHo after graduation from FIT was a 2 room studio on Spring Street between W. B’way and Thompson for $750/mo. My windows faced the late towers. Sigh! There were no ATM in the neighborhood. I had to walk to Chinatown on Canal to get cash! The only thing that has not changed is there are still huge dog poo on the sidewalks after the sun has dawned.
February 1, 2013 at 1:19 am |
I rented a sunny rent-stabilized renovated studio on Christopher street for $700 a month in 1993 …and I was able to bargain them down. At that time, people were being nostalgic for the famous “$100 a month apartment” that you used to be able to get in the East Village and the lower east side until the 1980′s.
But then, there were also the squats, where if you had the skills you could live for free … although without heat or any kind of legal access to electricity.
February 1, 2013 at 1:19 pm |
The Williamsburg rental is from Creative Leasing Concpets. What’s a concpet?
February 1, 2013 at 3:49 pm |
it’s a pet with a conk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conk
February 2, 2013 at 5:10 pm |
I shared a two bedroom floor through on Union and Smith in Carroll Gardens which was 700$ in 1984. This was my first apartment after college. In that 700$ apartment I unpacked stuff I had boxed up (in the old Coogan building) prior to school. I uncrumpled an old Voice classified ad from 1977 that listed a one bedroom in the west village with a working fireplace for 350$!! And the me of 1984 became very nostalgic for 1977.
February 2, 2013 at 8:11 pm |
The person who answered that Village Voice ad in 1977 and scored the $350 apartment with the working fireplace might actually still live there . . . paying not much more!
February 4, 2013 at 12:31 am |
Comparable…in Midwood, Brooklyn, we paid $52,500 for our house (5 BR, big backyard, etc) in 1971. My dad sold the house in 1999 for $660K which I told him was too low. Now he could get an easy million for it,
March 13, 2013 at 2:44 pm |
Yeah but with inflation a $350 rent in 1984 would be well over a thousand $ now. $1200 maybe? I rented a 2000sq ft loft on 17th St off Union Sq in 1976 for $450 and it became rent stabilized by the Loft Board in the mid 80′s. When I left in 2004 I was paying $1175/mo & was paid for the kitchen and bathroom fixtures I put in @ 2004 $’s. But yeah,struggling new artists and misfits could live in Manhattan.
Oh, and back in ’68 I sublet an apt on E 3rd off !st Ave across from the gang that became the Hells Angels (ass hats!) for $80/mo with the sink/bathtub in the kitchen.