Today we began our apartment hunting sprint! After having our German bread for breakfast and a quick coffee & tea in the neighborhood at Cafe Mogador we had one viewing we scheduled on our own, which was quite a disappointment, quality- and space-wise.
We met Rosemary at noon in the East Village and looked at around eight apartments in Manhattan. None of those really struck our eye – the spaces were quite small, had little light and things like for example the finishing on appliances was not what we envisioned. Of course we knew that we had to size down and make some compromises compared to Berlin where prices are comparably low and we had a >100sqm apartment (ca. 1100 sqft) with 4m (ca. 13 ft) high ceilings for a fraction of the prices in New York.
After a quite unsuccessful morning in Manhattan , we passed the East River to look at some apartments in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Before coming here, we always said to ourselves that we have to live in Manhattan because we want to really experience living in New York City at full speed. However, we were impressed by the apartments in Dumbo – a lot of light, new appliances and open beams.
Dumbo is short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Back in the days the area was a ferry landing and characterized by 19th- and early 20th-century industrial and warehouse buildings. Basically the entire area located directly at the East River between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge was bought by one man: Developer David Walentas (and his company Two Trees Management). He paid $12 million for the entire Brooklyn neighborhood in 1979. During the years the area was then remodeled into an upscale residential and commercial community—first becoming a haven for art galleries, and currently a center for technology startups.
Forbes magazine and Wikipedia
Read more about Dumbo and David Walentas here.
In short: Compared to the morning in Manhattan the viewing was a delight and we put in an application…viewed in retrospect, mostly out of desperation and not because we could envision our future home here.
After the apartment hunt we returned to the East Village and had one more viewing close to Tompkins Square Park we scheduled ourselves. To reflect on the day we had a full pie Pizza at Stromboli (we overheard some people saying this is a great place for Pizza) and actually had our first doubts regarding Dumbo – the East Village has a more lively and „real“ vibe than Dumbo, which is a bit smaller, more polished and way more noisy due to the trains crossing the Manhattan bride every two minutes.
