Thor Stove Repair in Harlem, NY

The row house is Harlem's architectural signature and it is exceptional stock by any measure. Late nineteenth century brownstones and limestones fill Central Harlem, with several designated historic districts including the St. Nicholas Historic District, known as Strivers Row, and the Mount Morris Park area, along with the landmarked rows of Sugar Hill in Hamilton Heights and the distinctive Astor Row houses with their wooden porches. Many were subdivided into apartments or rooming houses over the twentieth century, and over the last few decades a substantial number have been converted back into single family homes or two and three family houses. That history means kitchens sit in unexpected places and plumbing stacks carry configurations from three different eras.

Alongside the row houses run long avenues of prewar apartment buildings, five and six story walk ups and elevator buildings from the 1900s through the 1930s, many of which are now cooperatives. Harlem has an unusually large number of limited equity cooperatives created through city programs, where shareholders own their apartments in buildings that operate on tight, self managed budgets. That is a distinctive service context. There is often no building maintenance contract and no staff plumber, so when a refrigerator or a range fails the shareholder calls a company directly and cares very much about the price being honest.

East Harlem and the northern stretches add the large public housing developments that are a defining feature of the area, along with newer mixed income and condominium buildings, particularly around 125th Street where redevelopment has been steady. The result is a neighborhood where an eighty year old walk up apartment, a recently gut renovated brownstone with a professional range, a limited equity co-op unit and a two year old condo kitchen all sit within walking distance of each other. We stock and staff for that whole spread rather than for one segment of it.