New Yorkers are long accustomed to living in close quarters — starting with tenements in the 19th century. The term SRO, or single room occupancy, was coined here in the 1930s, referring to a confab of tiny bedsits with shared bathrooms.
And despite laws setting the minimum size for some apartments at 400 square feet, the city has finally boarded the tiny-home train, realizing that a building of tiny apartments can help combat a trifecta of issues: scarce land, high rents and massive demand for urban living.
Renters are moving into City Hall-championed Carmel Place, at 335 E. 27th St., with specially designed studios between 260 and 360 square feet apiece from $2,650/month.
Last month, Mayor De Blasio’s sweeping zoning overhaul was approved, lowering the mandatory minimum to 300 square feet. Not that we need the official permission, of course — city slickers have always come up with ingenious ways to turn bland boxes into cozy little dwellings full of personality.
Here are six examples of diminutive domiciles, from the Upper East Side to Bed-Stuy, and the proud New Yorkers who call them home.
The Downtown Loft, Chinatown
Allison Heim, 30, has been happily renting a 184-square-foot Chinatown studio for the last five years. “Yes, I live in a tiny little closet,” says Heim, an ad sales manager for Amazon who also performs in four different music ensembles. “But it’s my tiny little closet, and I love it so much.”
Two years ago she hired a consultant from Affordable Interior Design to help her optimize the space. “It’s wildly different now,” she says; there’s room for two bikes, a bass drum, clarinet, a lofted bed, a petite stove and a loveseat.
“I’ve been thinking about having the world’s tiniest party because I now have seating for six.” For Heim, the location makes the size worth it. She’s out every night at rehearsals, concerts and engagements all across the five boroughs, and she can get pretty much anywhere (and then home again) in about 30 minutes.
The $1,500/month rent helps, too. “I love living in New York. I love New York passionately,” she says, “and that life is outside of my apartment. When I come home, all I need is a shoebox to call my own.”
The Collectors’ Lair, East Village
The 350-square-foot East Village home of Dana Isaacson, 51, and Damon Garcia, 39, is chockablock with beautiful things. “Our approach is very maximalist,” says Isaacson, a book editor.
“We’re not afraid of color or big furniture; we just cram everything in.” Much of the décor comes from Garcia’s antiques business, like a Chinese carved wooden chair, a Syrian table and an Indian kutch embroidery, all from the late 18th century.
The bedroom walls are thick with layered Oriental rugs, and the cupboards, walls and ceilings feature art by the couple and their friends.
“We contemplated hanging pictures on the ceiling,” Isaacson says. “But you really might go completely loony without any empty space at all.” Items that are out of rotation get tucked away under the couch or bed, along with off-season clothes and other nonessentials, but the bedroom is so tiny that in order to get anything out, the entire bed has to be dismantled.
Isaacson has been in the apartment for 25 years, and though he declined to share the rent, he acknowledged that it’s “significantly below market rate.” When asked what the couple would do with just a little more space, Isaacson said he’d add more shelves: “There’s always a battle between books and knickknacks around here, given that we’re a book lover and a person who adores old figurines of Mallorcan saints.”
The Garden Studio, Bed-Stuy
Hannah Messler, a 36-year-old comics artist who works at Williamsburg’s Crest garden center, is used to living in small spaces, going back to spending her college years in a tiny room off her grandmother’s Florida home.
Now she lives in a 280-square-foot, $1,200-per-month garden apartment in Bed-Stuy, which she says is exactly the right size. “All I do at home is sit at my desk and draw, or sit in my bed and eat,” Messler explains. “But I’ve always eaten in bed, regardless of the size of my apartment.”
The compactness suits her loves and hobbies as well, including a “lifelong fascination with miniatures” and the tiny worlds she creates while gardening or in her comics.
It also helps streamline her life: “I’ll tell myself I need to clean the apartment before I draw, but that only takes five minutes. In a larger place, I would waste my whole day sweeping.”
Although she acknowledges that it might be nice to have a proper kitchen, she is thrilled with her little abode. “If my life were not full of great good fortune, I might think differently,” she says.
“But I don’t have debt. I don’t have a child. I don’t have any of the burdens that could make living in a tiny home on a small salary not feel like a wonderful gift every day – which is just what it feels like.”
The Nautical Space-Saver, Upper East Side
Husband and wife Ahmed Tigani and Jen Shoenthal, an urban planner and media developer, respectively, are about to leave their tiny home.
The couple, both in their early 30s, have lived in the 407-square-foot Upper East Side abode for three years, paying $1,450 monthly to owner Tony Archino, who bought the unit for $125,000 in 2002.
For his part, Archino added many ingenious space-saving flourishes inspired by his boat-building practice (and also made from its wooden leftovers), like a mantel over the bed that’s also the back of the bathroom’s medicine cabinet.
Even so, Shoenthal and Tigani have had to make plenty of adjustments, like taking turns dressing in the living room, the only place with enough space to do so. “We used to have two computer chairs, but we share a desk now,” says Shoenthal. “Really, we share everything now.”
This extends to how the space is used: “In our last apartment, the kitchen was the kitchen,” Tigani says. “Here, when it’s time to eat, every part of the space is dedicated to that.” But both feel the compromises have made them stronger.
“For a newly married couple, it’s like being put into a relationship accelerator,” Tigani says. They’re expecting to bring many of these patterns with them to their next apartment.
The Glittery ‘Playhouse,’ Chelsea
When Sherry Smith moved into her 242-square-foot Chelsea studio more than 20 years ago, the rent was a seemingly impossible $600 per month.
And it’s still a fantastic deal: she’s currently paying $1,171 in a neighborhood where the average rent for a unit like hers, according to brokerage MNS, is nearly $3,000.
Unlike many small-space dwellers, Smith is no ascetic; in addition to a piano, wall-to-wall art, a Howard Finster sculpture, action figures, and endless bits and bobs, she owns more than 50 pairs of shoes, plus the dozen or so she’s selling on eBay at any given time.
Smith, a fortysomething who works in PR, describes her glittery, densely decorated abode’s aesthetic as “micro-maximalist,” citing “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” as her design inspiration.
When people come over, “they’re usually speechless for a minute or two while they take it all in.” She views the studio a bit like a game of Tetris: “My piano is in a terrible place, but anywhere I move it would mean moving the bed, and then I’d lose the floor space where I do my yoga and kickboxing.”
With so much stuff, Smith has become a master of creative storage: she uses stemless wineglasses to save cupboard space, and stores other items inside her bed. She jokes: “I have shelves in places you would never think shelves could go.” (Like the tippy-top of her closet.)
The Artists’ Salon, Bed-Stuy
By comparison, 500 square feet might seem positively luxurious. But for Lucas Bucholtz, a 37-year-old art handler, and his girlfriend Alessandra Norman, a 26-year-old graphic designer, their three-room Bed-Stuy apartment encompasses not just their home, but also a print shop and art gallery called Gesamtkunst Werkshop.
Norman is herself a printmaker, working in etching and relief, wood blocks, linocut and intaglio. Bucholtz handles curation — they have mounted seven gallery shows so far — and coordinates Gesamtkunst’s residency program, whereby printmakers can use the couple’s shop to produce their own work.
For Norman, the size of the apartment isn’t such a challenge, but its many uses can be. “We have to be adamant about not having chemicals in the kitchen, and covering art supplies when baking,” she says. “Otherwise, grease in the air could damage the press.”
To Bucholtz, a former military man who grew up in a bed-and-breakfast, cleanliness is second nature: “My kitchen is always basically ready for inspection,” he says. He’s also accustomed to the semi-public life of an apartment gallery, with artists and collectors coming by at all hours.
“As kids we were always making small talk with strangers, engaging with interesting people,” he says. “I love that. I love entertaining. I want this to be a salon-type environment all the time.”
Forget the high-rise apartment, a recent study shows it is actually a deathtrap for residents: