Windsor Court

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/nyregion/19about.html?scp=1&sq=Windsor%20court&st=cse January 18, 2011 In Murray Hill, the College Life Need Never End By JOSEPH BERGER New York can be an intimidating place for young people fresh out of college. Some find they need to bed down for a few years in something more challenging than a dorm, though not much more. Among the steppingstone... [more]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/nyregion/19about.html?scp=1&sq=Windsor%20court&st=cse January 18, 2011 In Murray Hill, the College Life Need Never End By JOSEPH BERGER New York can be an intimidating place for young people fresh out of college. Some find they need to bed down for a few years in something more challenging than a dorm, though not much more. Among the steppingstone buildings in Manhattan are several tall apartment houses in Murray Hill, like Windsor Court. There, recent college graduates can find themselves among fellow alumni, meet up for familiar drinking rituals and flock to the frozen-yogurt shops and sushi bars that help them stay fit and find a mate for the next stage of life. Adam Greenberg, 23, knew when he moved into Windsor Court a month ago that he was already acquainted with more than 100 people in the neighborhood, many from the same high school (Wheatley on Long Island), sleepaway camp (Equinunk) and college (Syracuse University) he attended. “Everyone knows everyone,” he said. “If I don’t know them, I’m sure I have a friend who knows them.” Joshua Schwadron, who lived until recently in another of Murray Hill’s postgraduate hives, where he could claim Facebook friendships with half of the residents, put it this way: “You leave college and you think you’ll be nostalgic for your community, and you realize that the community never goes away — if you live in the right place.” New York, of course, is filled with anthropologically vivid neighborhoods. Murray Hill does not have the bohemian cast of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, but it has long been a singles haunt, a fact obvious to anyone who tries to navigate the swarming bar scene spilling onto Third Avenue on a Friday night in summer. There is even a YouTube video that mocks the neighborhood’s incestuous postgraduate character. Yet it turns out that the anthropology is even more finely sorted, with emblematic buildings like Windsor Court housing sharply defined subcultures. In a 2009 count of Windsor Court’s census tract, 70.5 percent of households were occupied by singles, and 79.5 percent of adults were college graduates. Windsor Court, which occupies an entire square block between Third and Lexington Avenues at 31st Street, has two towers with 710 apartments. Its lobby is rich with brass, mirrors, marble and brown leather. Colleges like Syracuse, Emory and Michigan seem overrepresented among the tenants, many of whom have their rents subsidized by parents left behind in the suburbs of Westchester County, Long Island and New Jersey. Parents appreciate Windsor Court because it has a driveway that allows them to drop off comfort packages without hunting for a parking space. Heather Katz’s parents — a dentist and a psychotherapist from Long Island — have dropped off her winter wardrobe, a television and a jewelry box. “For people like me it’s really easy,” Ms. Katz said, “because your parents take the tunnel and they’re right there.” Ms. Katz, 23, moved in after graduation because a Syracuse sorority sister needed a roommate to split the rent for a one-bedroom apartment (which generally go for $3,200). The neighborhood was immediately congenial. Seven friends from high school and 15 from her sorority live nearby, and she is three blocks away from her job at an Internet startup — Mr. Schwadron’s Betterfly. She liked the Windsor Court amenities: a health club for toning, a roof deck for sunning and a laundry room on each floor. Laundry rooms are crucial, even if commercial laundries are cheaper. “If I meet a guy in the laundry room of Windsor Court, he probably has a good job, probably went to a good school,” Ms. Katz explained. Windsor Court residents tend to do many of the same things together. They attend birthday parties on weekends as a pretext for drinking. If 50 friends live nearby, it’s easy to have a birthday party every weekend. Before going out, friends gather in apartments for so-called pregames, drinking there so they won’t spend as much at the bars. The next day, Ms. Katz and her friends gather at the Moonstruck diner for “the weekend recap,” to find out “who hooked up with whom.” Murray Hill can thus be considered one big Match.com, but in the old-fashioned, face-to-face way. Still, when Murray Hill residents do pair up, they often move away — to family neighborhoods. Celebrity can be fickle, and Ms. Katz said Murray Hill “is starting to lose its coolness.” Indeed, whenever she is asked where she lives, Ms. Katz answers Murray Hill, “but I say it with a sarcastic tone because I’m making fun of myself.” No one wants to be reduced to a cultural stereotype. Jim Dwyer is on leave. [less]