The White-Haired Harbinger of Gratitude
Timothy George Hare, R.A., M.A., Architect
©HARE 2009 - All Rights Reserved
"If I can't have fun living in the West Ward, I'm doing it wrong!"
This week's letter of the Gratitude Alphabet: "H"
"H" is for "Haven"
(OK, "Haven" or "Artist Mecca,"
it's the same difference to me,
twenty-five years later!)
My husband Earl and I are grateful that the West Ward has been our Haven from New York City these past twenty-five years, when the prophetic article above was written. To consider this imperfect West Ward neighborhood a Haven from that nearby emerald isle Manhattan is a concept many might find strange?
However, anyone familiar with real estate realities in Manhattan these past thirty-three years since we first moved to Manhattan would well understand.
We know many West Wardians who live in their West Ward Haven for that sole reason, whether or not they admit it like we do. We're all refugees in that same boat, escaping the humanity-crushing real-estate reality called Manhattan, whether in boom times or these busted times.
We've faced and accepted it - we're either willing or unwilling exiles. We're boat- or car- or bus-people! Although after 25 years since our exodus from NYC, Earl and I still think of here as "out here!"
We lived in Manhattan from 1976 to 1984. Back then, it was standard for Manhattanites to snidely label people like those who we've now become, "Bridge-and-Tunnel-Trash!" We weren't being provincial, oh no, not us. We were simply, then and forever, sophisticated New Yorkers.
Coincidentally (there are no coincidences in Life), just last Sunday, we visited our former abode in Chelsea. We loved it - it looked as gorgeous as ever! This architect-designed (Emery Roth, 1938) luxury apartment building was everso lovely, but now seems sooooo teeny.
Our 480 sq. ft. Art Deco studio apartment, with doormen and roof garden with sweeping panoramic views of the entirety of Manhattan island, today sells for "only" $499,999, down a whopping $12,000, thanks to the current meltdown? It comes with a monthly maintenance fee of nearly a thousand dollars.
Wow, some bargain - thank you collapse of capitalism! Where's my checkbook?
With mixed feelings, we returned later that day to our magnificent Haven in the West Ward. Once back home, we could have kissed the ground!
In 1976, when we were in our late-twenties, we moved to Manhattan from Easton. It was so exciting to move into our first home together in the heart of Greenwich Village on Bleecker St. Our rent was $255 per month, including everything but parking, which was OK since we didn't have or need cars to get through a day or a life.
While that rent might seem cheap today, a mortgage on a College Hill mansion would have been much less, and we were told so by visiting Eastonians, often. But we were now New Yorkers, and they weren't, so there!
Two years later, on Christmas Eve, our landlord left a voicemail announcing our new rent would be triple, take it or leave it. We left it. Suddenly we began to find out what was so bleak about Bleecker St.! Already we began to see the writing on the wall, and it spelled out "panic."
We were doomed, but didn't really know how doomed we would become in the distant future. Today, that very apartment costs $5,000 per month, which we learned when we stumbled into an open house about a year ago. The first $15,000 gets the lucky tenant 30 days ($5,000 fee, $5,000 deposit, $5,000 first month rent).
The open house was like a feeding frenzy of (young, with trust funds) sharks, each frantically cellphoning, in many languages, their trustee demanding a quick withdrawl to snap up such an incredible bargain.
The only visible change in that 'railroad style' apartment in the 32 years since we first moved in was that it seemed so much smaller, probably due to the thickness of many layers of glopped-on paint since the day we moved out in a huff in reaction to the indignity of tripling of our rent.
To be fair, the appliances were newer, and the bathtub in the kitchen is now replaced with a shower stall in the corner. Nice touch in a kitchen! The toilet is still in the same cramped closet, still requiring sitting side-saddle (but maybe the umbrella required to shelter from the leaking toilets above is no longer necessary?). But we were New Yorkers!!
From that first apartment, we boldly moved out that very outraging Christmas Eve to a sublet, leaving our decorated Christmas tree sitting pitifully in the corner, how sad. While subletting for six weeks, we endured a day and night ever-depressing and shocking education in the new New York real estate realities.
We finally found a very nice Chelsea apartment. It was smaller than the former Village apartment, and almost double the rent, but was incredibly Art Deco, not to stereotype our taste. It provided elevators with polished ornamental brass doors, stately doormen, and a vast laundry room in the basement! We had finally arrived, we were set for life! It was our Chelsea Haven.
Five years later the landlord set a fleet of lawyers on us! At least it wasn't Christmas Eve - no, it was Easter, how kind. They demanded we immediately vacate the apartment because they discovered we owned a property in Easton (our summer-weekend home on Bushkill Street) and therefore no longer qualified for our "rent stabilized" apartment.
Besides us being turned out, it also turned out that the building would soon go "co-op," meaning that the landlord could sell it out from under us for huge bucks. "Co-op" is NYC-speak for "You get to 'buy' shares in a building, but not the apartment itself."
"Co-op" really means that you are then forever subjected to the extravagant whims of the increasingly-wealthy neighbors/voters on the co-op board of directors who want to get scum like us out the door, fast! Hey, we've been called much worse, from so-called caring folk! Not our first time at that name-calling rodeo!
In a "co-op," when the wildy-rich board votes to gold-plate the lobby, laundry-room, roof and sidewalk, you get a bill, due in 30 days, for twenty squillion dollars! Of course that's a mere drop in the bucket for those who just paid $2.5 million pocket change for their teeny apartment that's identical to yours, except that you 'bought' yours for $20,000 five minutes ago in the wildly escalating world of Manhattan real estate prices.
Suddenly, yet again, it's time to move out, but where? Where's the Haven now? All of Manhattan had instantly become available only to the super rich. Seemingly overnight, NYC became a pricey "world" market, though still dirt cheap compared to the likes of London, Paris, Hong Kong, etc.
That's when, and why, the West Ward became our Haven. We wanted a place near enough to our careers, yet a place without the stigma named New Jersey.
Manhattanites could forgive almost anything else, but, New Jersey??
Pennsylvania was off the stigma-radar-screen. It was not even an "outer Borough." The admittedly-huge Lehigh Valley stigma named "Easton" doesn't extend eastward to Manhattan. Back then, "Pennsylvania" to New Yorkers sounded charming, historic, remote, rural, Bucks County-ish, weathy, tasteful. Perfect for our resumés!
So we moved out of Chelsea and commuted to our NYC careers from our downtown Easton townhouse on Bushkill Street.
Soon thereafter, we earmarked the amount of rent we had spent in Chelsea and bought three buildings in the West Ward instead, including our present home. We were flippers who care and later sold those properties, investing the profits into our formerly-condemned hovel that's now our Haven.
We call our Haven Ravenwood since we're painting it all Raven. It was tempting to name it Ravenhaven, because that's what it really was, and still is!
Yes, we loved living in NYC. To this Today, it's our favorite island off the west coast of Europe. We visit there weekly, for 'culture,' churchchat, brunch, and ambling afterwards. Sometimes we stay at a Chelsea B&B that costs, for one weekend, what we spent for our entire month's rent.
I'm grateful that many West Wardian neighbors have migrated along that same westward escape route to find a Haven here. Manhattan and its boroughs have discovered the West Ward, bringing their creative energy, enthusiasm, talent, and spirit. NYC's drain is West Ward's gain.
The boom years drove many to escape, while these bust years motivate many New Yorkers to sell low and buy even lower, here. In the West Ward, they can still keep their hope alive for NYC careers. Kansas doesn't offer that, nor do many places just a few miles west of the West Ward. Every minute counts bigtime on that commuter line to Manhattan.
Many new West Wardians have become entrepreneurial in Easton, finding here a welcoming Haven.
These days, from my West Ward Haven, I stroll five minutes to my huge NYC apartment-on-wheels, complete with bathroom, views, nice neighbors, and WiFi, called Transbridgebus.com. The rent is $19.00, r/t for us senior citizens!
Onboard, while surfing on my iPhone, I silently hum the Beatles' song "Daytripper" all the way. Later that day, I'm always grateful to be transported back to our wonderful Ravenwood Haven. Here, from my spectacular West Ward perch, I can safely, and spaciously, gaze eastward to watch the grim inhumanity of Manhattan real estate sink ever-higher out of my reach. Ciao Manhattan!
".... though one can dine in New York, one could not dwell there." Oscar Wilde
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