NYC Apartment Life: 240 West 64th Street
My wife and I lived at the residences at 240 West 64th Street (also named “63 West”) for a long time. Four years or so, 2002-2005/2006. Our apartment as 240 West 64th Street was 3C; right there in the meaty part of the discussion. Not too high up, not too close to street level. The view we had from our third floor apartment was a lovely view of more housing and a dingy courtyard/pit area where people were allowed to, but barely did, pass through. Throughout this time, we were scrounging for different condo for sale to make a move from this place.
I will always remember 240 West 64th Street for what it could have been: A great neighborhood institution, a place where family could feel comfortable sending off students to go to school, safe in the knowledge that they would always be well taken care of by the kind and attentive staff. A place my then girlfriend/now wife and I could and still do call home for their fair rental increases and no nonsense services. Sadly, none of that is true.
240 West 64th Street is a freely passed-through place full of the dregs of society. Our downstairs neighbor used to clog the vents with marijuana smoke and would always start laughing when I’d plead with him to smoke out another window. Still, every time I passed him in the halls or the elevator, he’d act as though we were good friends. “Jessssssseeee!”
The service staff at 240 West 64th Street is not at all on top of things. One winter weekend, on Friday, our living room wall near my computer desk began filling up with water. Alarmed and glad that it was still late morning on Friday we had figured someone would be able to show up before the end of the day. Front desk instead told me that there would be no way to get anyone out at this late an hour (aren’t there 24 hour emergency services for this kind of thing? Or is ‘someone else’s busted pipes and my wall filling up with someone else’s bath or toilet water’ not enough of an emergency?) They assured us that they would work very hard to get someone out by Monday for an emergency fix.
In fact no one ever showed that weekend or ever. Once the laminate paint filled like a bubble, my genius wife decided we should pop this thing and ‘drain it’ ourselves. That’s what we did and the water continued briefly. When the maintenance staff said they would come have a look at it and get the necessary tools to fix it, they never did. The wallpaper hung over that wall like discarded lard on a jelly-fish and was never repaired. We stayed in that apartment for another year and were always reminded of the apathy of our building management; forced to live side-by-side with this floppy, exhausted, flushed out wallpaper.
I’m now looking at apartments and I happened back across their website. Looks like the same guys running the joint. While their current web presence is a lot snappier than when I lived there, that doesn’t fix sub-par management. I actually happened by there the other day (early) and woke up their front desk/overnight guy. The insides of the office look new, but some things never change. I’d heard that 240 West 64th Street was a lot more interested in marketing itself as something of a temporary-stay hotel type situation with some furnished rooms accommodating for a large part of their business.
