Comments by "" (@hewitc) on "New York’s Smallest Apartment Has No Bathroom…" video.

  1. It's like a dorm room but bigger
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  2. In most pre-war luxury coops there are many rooms like this in on the basement level. Some are adjacent to or part of larger apartments. Small narrow rooms with a tiny corner sink. No kitchen facilities at all. Toilet in a separate room. Shower and/or bathtub in separate room. These were put in for live-in maids and butlers employed by the tenants. Some people still use these for live-in staff but I believe that's pretty rare. Most are now rented out for storage, but you will still find tenants who aer not "live-in staff" but want to live on the Upper East Side but can't afford it and are willing to put up with the common facilities. Usually there are separate Men's and Ladies' toilets and shower rooms. So this is not a "lower east side" weird/funky thing. It's an Upper East side ultra luxury Pre-war building thing. And there are many of them.
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  3. I've seen them and actually rented one (but for storage) on the Upper East Side, Sutton Place, all the "best" expensive neighborhoods. They were for live-in staff but most coop residents don't do that anymore so the building rents them out. I don't know how you go about finding them. Usually they are a little wider than this one. Small fridge and hotplate allowed. Sharing the bathroom facilities is like living in a college dorm.
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  4.  @653j521  Andrew Alpern has some books on pre-war NYC apartments with plans that show the maids rooms but usually as part of the main apartment. I haven't seen anything that talks about the basement level complexes of servant rooms and baths that in in the bigger coops. Lots of this space has been converted to storage or exercise rooms, but I've met people who were (non-servant) tenants. I've seen many many such rooms in high end coops, but even the middle class of the 1920's sometimes had live-in help (usually young Irish women) before the minimum wage laws were enacted by FDR in the 30's. I lived in a place where the maid's room was converted into a laundry room. The plumbing was in place.
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