(Renters)
When Jeff Karliner and Henry Johnson retired in 2017 and closed a jewelry business they had run together in New Paltz, New York, they decided to find a pied-à-terre in New York City.
They had lived in New Paltz since the 1970s, when they both arrived in the upstate town as freshmen at SUNY New Paltz, and they loved their five-bedroom Victorian house, but they were eager for a more energetic environment.
“We’re not Florida people,” said Johnson, who was a high school biology teacher, explaining that afternoons spent poolside and balmy winters held little appeal — for decades the couple had kept the thermostat of their drafty house, which they shared with two cats, set to 61 degrees. “What we wanted was a place we could spend weekends at, in the city. We’ve always loved film, theater, dance.”
“Well, we did seriously consider Hawaii, where we went every Christmas for 15 years,” said Karliner, a jeweler and metalsmith, who ran Jeffrey Allen Jewelers with Johnson, and also taught technology classes at a high school in Kingston. “But New York is New York.”
They decided to test the waters by renting a Manhattan studio and wound up at the Nicole, a Gotham Organization rental building on West 55th Street.
“It was just the perfect fit for us here,” Johnson said. “All the other places we saw, the buildings were so massive; there were like eight concierges in the lobby.”
“They try to lure you with things like a bowling alley in the building,” Karliner said. “But what we really wanted was a place where the concierges knew us. We’re not coming to New York to bowl in the building. We’re coming to New York because of the people.”
But if the building was a perfect fit, it soon became clear that a studio apartment wasn’t. Shortly after signing their lease in May 2017, the couple began spending more time there than they anticipated.
Johnson would travel to New Paltz to pick up the mail and check on the house, only to find himself heading back to the city 15 minutes later. Karliner had come out of retirement for the third time to teach at a high school in Orangeburg, New York, a 30-minute reverse commute from their Hell’s Kitchen apartment. The drive from New Paltz, though, was an hour and a half.
“The studio would have been OK if we were just there every few weekends, but we were living here full time,” Karliner said. “We don’t think the cats were happy there, either — they couldn’t get away from each other. And we couldn’t get away from each other, either.”
Upgrading to a one-bedroom seemed an obvious solution, especially after a penthouse apartment in the building became vacant. Delighted to not be so cramped, Johnson started going on “shopping expeditions” to their house in New Paltz, bringing back artifacts from the 57 countries they visited together.
With their curios around them, a growing number of New York friends and a Hudson River view from the kitchen — a feature especially prized by Johnson, who loves to cook and tries to find a cooking class whenever they travel — New Paltz beckoned less often.
Karliner still visited for long spells in the warmer months, as he loved to lounge by the pool.
But as for Johnson, “I’m not a lounging type,” he said. “When I’m there, there are only a few things to do. Here, there are so many things to do.”
By last fall, there was no denying that their pied-à-terre had become home. Karliner, who had retired again at the end of the school year, was spending more time in the apartment, developing a photography practice. Johnson wasn’t visiting New Paltz even once a month, and their cats, who spent many contented hours staring at the traffic and the pigeons, hadn’t left Manhattan in more than a year.
In October, the couple moved again, into a sunny two-bedroom one floor below their penthouse apartment. While not approaching the dimensions of their place in New Paltz, which has 48 windows and a three-story turret, their current apartment feels like the right size for a full-time residence.
“All the windows make it feel bigger,” Karliner said. “We love that the cityscape is part of the decoration here.”
The new apartment also has nine closets — six more than in their house. There are so many, in fact, that they were able to dedicate one to the litter box and another to Karliner’s shoes. And after living in a Victorian for 35 years, moving into a relatively new building — the Nicole was built in 2003 — has been a nice change in other ways, as well.
“Our house in New Paltz has lots of oak furniture. It’s very comfortable, very antique-y,” Johnson said. “We were looking forward to having something with a completely different feel.”
When they had a Christmas party, they were surprised to find that their friends from the building outnumbered their friends from New Paltz. But they aren’t inclined to put their upstate house on the market anytime soon. At least, one of them isn’t.
“He’s ready,” Karliner said. “I’m not.”
— Details
$5,845 | Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan
Jeff Karliner, 64, and Henry Johnson, 64
Occupations: Karliner is a former high school teacher and a retired jeweler and metalsmith, who used to own and operate Jeffrey Allen Jewelers; Johnson is a retired high school biology teacher who helped run the business. On being close to the Port Authority: Catching a bus to New Paltz is a breeze, and they love being close to the city’s performing arts scene. “We saw one show that was so close to our apartment that if the bathroom line was too long during intermission, I could have come back here,” Karliner said. Making friends: The building’s monthly events have been a great way to meet and hang out with their neighbors. Anniversaries: The couple met in college and have been together 43 years. They married in New Paltz in 2004, when the village mayor married a number of same-sex couples before it was legal in New York. They married again, legally, in 2009 in Connecticut.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.