Bosch Stove Repair in Downtown Manhattan, NY

The tenement is the defining building type here, and it is worth understanding what that means mechanically. These buildings went up in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth as dense workers housing, with narrow lots, light shafts and small railroad style layouts. Kitchens were an afterthought, often occupying a corner of a main room, and over a century of renovation they have been fitted with progressively newer equipment squeezed into unchanged footprints. Twenty and twenty four inch ranges, under counter refrigerators and dishwashers that had to be plumbed into whatever supply was reachable are the standard result, layered on plumbing risers and electrical service that have been patched by many hands.

The East Village and Alphabet City add real housing diversity on top of that base. Alongside the walk ups sit large cooperative complexes, former public school and institutional conversions, several blocks of small prewar apartment buildings, and newer glass condominiums that have gone up on the Bowery and along the avenues over the past two decades. Housing tenure varies just as much: long tenured rent stabilized residents, student renters cycling with the NYU calendar, condo owners in new construction and co-op shareholders in older buildings can all live within one block of each other.

SoHo and NoHo are the architectural showpiece of the area. The cast iron facades along Broadway, Greene, Mercer and Broome are among the most photographed streetscapes in the city and sit inside a designated historic district, and the residential lofts behind them are enormous by Manhattan standards. Kitchens in these units tend to be renovation statements: professional ranges, built in refrigeration, wine storage and appliance panels matched to custom cabinetry. Access, however, is unforgiving. A single freight elevator with restricted hours, cobbled streets with no legal unloading, and buildings that require advance notice for every contractor entry are the normal conditions.