decent building, but loud courtyard
Pros
Rent controlled. Management is usually pretty responsive to e-mails. Lobby is clean and beautiful: old mirrors, painted details. Pest control is effective and timely: when I first moved in there were roaches, but a couple visits took care of it and we haven’t had a problem since. Had one instance of mice but that was also dealt with. Building itself is old but there haven't been any major issues. Elevator works 98% of the time. Security is decent (double door entrance), though there was apparently one incident in which people kept coming in and hanging out in the basement. People sometimes leave free stuff in the lobby as a sort of unspoken trading post. Every neighbor I’ve ever spoken to has been nice, if not overtly friendly. Street is relatively quiet. High ceilings, especially in the living rooms. Mailboxes work fine, but they’re not large enough for even small packages, so those will just be left at your door OR in the lobby. READ YOUR LEASE CAREFULLY and ask for new appliances if you’re eligible. We had someone new move into our 3-bedroom and they replaced our microwave, fridge, oven, and dishwasher all just because we saw that we could from closely reading our lease. Be careful though, because sometimes the new installations are worse than the old ones: our new dishwasher just feels cheaper, like it’s all made of plastic, and constantly stinks for mysterious reasons.
Cons
The super is friendly, but he doesn’t always come exactly when he says he will, doesn’t speak English, and doesn’t always thoroughly fix the problem. The heat is unreliable—in winter 2025 it’ll randomly turn off—sometimes at 1am when you’re trying to sleep and your bedroom is an ice box (they haven’t responded to emails despite multiple 311 calls). There is definitely mold in the building but they don’t care unless it’s a very toxic kind. Sometimes your packages will be stolen, though it hasn’t happened to us for several months (as of winter 2025). There’s laundry in the basement, but they’re all either broken, don’t work well, stink, or are just consistently dirty (and weirdly expensive for how bad they are.) No idea about any security video, but I doubt any of the little cameras work. The worst thing is the courtyard noise. There are people (mainly one woman) who sound like they’re yelling whenever they talk, sometimes with the addition of screaming kids. Both often occur very late at night. The voices echo up through the narrow courtyard, so if your bedroom opens to it (which most of them do), it’s like they’re right outside your window. It’s the worst in the summer. No one can do anything about it, seemingly.
Advice to the owners
Figure out the heat, ask residents to keep the noise down after a reasonable hour, and update the laundry situation.
Tenant
Pros
Quiet building Clean building
Cons
Stolen packages Buzz people in with knowing them
Advice to the owners
Na
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