(Renters)

NEW YORK — A year after moving to New York, Michael Dellon and Christos Livanos felt almost as if they were still living in their suburban hometown, Armonk, New York.

“I don’t think there was a day that went by that we didn’t see someone from high school,” Livanos said.

With at least four people from their old high school living in their Kips Bay apartment building, that wasn’t surprising. But they were also constantly crossing paths with acquaintances from college — Dellon went to Syracuse University and Livanos to Cornell University — and craved some of the distance that usually comes with a move to a major metropolis.

“It had a very dorm vibe,” Livanos said of their building. “Which is OK the first year out of college, but we definitely wanted a little bit of an upgrade.”

At a social gathering at the apartment where Livanos’ older brother lived, they found out that one of his close friends, Andrew Cataldo, was planning to leave his place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, because of the impending L train shutdown (which has now been canceled). Cataldo also grew up in Armonk, but was two years older and part of a different social circle, so he seemed like a good fit for the more adult lifestyle they were seeking.

As they soon discovered, however, while they could leave their building in Kips Bay behind, the dormlike atmosphere was likely to follow them, as most Manhattan doorman buildings in their price range had a similar feeling.

“We were finding a lot of flex three-bedrooms,” Dellon said, describing the common practice of allowing renters to create an extra bedroom by putting up a partition. “But that usually means cutting off the natural light in the living room.”

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$6,041 | FINANCIAL DISTRICT

Andrew Cataldo, 26; Michael Dellon, 24; Christos Livanos, 24

Occupations: Cataldo is a product development and innovation manager at Mastercard; Dellon is an ad sales executive at Zillow; and Livanos is a new market specialist at Mint House, a hotel startup.

Being down by the water: After the bustle of Kips Bay and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, all three appreciate the calm of living at the bottom of Manhattan. “The Seaport is one of my favorite parts of the city,” Livanos said. “Something about the cobblestones and smelling the ocean really brings me away from downtown Manhattan."

Not that it’s a ghost town: “There’s a big happy hour scene and a bunch of good restaurants,” Dellon said.

Best apartment feature: The popcorn-maker Dellon’s mother bought as a housewarming present. “We use it all the time,” he said. “It’s great for when you watch a movie, and kind of healthy."

The hangout apartment: “When people come in, they always say, ‘Wow, it’s really nice,” Cataldo said. “I think there’s always an unspoken agreement amongst your friends about who has ‘the apartment’ — the place everyone wants to hang out.”

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Some management companies also seemed wary about renting to three men in their mid-20s. At one luxury building, they were passed over for an apartment that they qualified for financially. “We noticed that the building had an older demographic,” Dellon said. “I think they didn’t want three young guys living there.”

Then Cataldo toured an apartment at 20 Broad St., a new rental building next to the New York Stock Exchange, in the financial district. (Before it was converted into apartments, it housed offices for the Stock Exchange.)

“It was so much nicer than any other place we saw,” Cataldo said. The building was also eager to have them: As it had opened just a month earlier, the management was offering concessions to tenants who signed while some of construction was still being finished.

In many ways, the space was ideally suited to their needs. At about 1,400 square feet, it was much larger than other places they had seen, with a large living room that had good natural light. The apartment also had a quirk that other renters might find unappealing, but that didn’t particularly bother them: It was technically a one-bedroom, with a large master bedroom that had an en suite bathroom, and two windowless “home offices.”

“We were skeptical at first about not having windows in two of the bedrooms,” Livanos said. “But we realized we’d mostly hang out in the living room. And sunless alarm clocks are only, like, $20.”

They moved in last September, signing a 24-month lease with two months free, bringing their rent down to $6,041 a month. Cataldo, the resident elder statesman, got the master bedroom, as he is two years further along in his career and could afford to pay more.

But Livanos and Dellon agreed that sharing the other bathroom still represents an upgrade from their previous place, where three people shared a single bathroom. And the bathroom has two sinks, which they see as a nice touch. Having a washer and dryer in the apartment is another.

The open kitchen is far more high-end than those in the other apartments they saw — a feature much appreciated by Cataldo, who moonlights as a private chef when he is not working in product development at Mastercard. “Kitchens are usually kind of an afterthought in New York apartments,” he said. And the roommates have already had several dinner parties, with Livanos and Dellon acting as sous-chefs.

Wanting the décor to rise to the level of their new apartment, they laid out everyone’s wall art soon after moving in and decided what to hang in the common spaces. An iron wall sculpture that Livanos’ parents bought years ago at the Armonk art show got a prize position above the sofa; two autographed Yankees posters and a poster from the Newport Jazz Festival are also in prominent places.

One thing that gave them pause was a print of a wolf in a suit, with dollar bills in the background, passed down from Livanos’ brother. It seemed a little too on the nose for three guys living in a former Stock Exchange building, they agreed.

“We didn’t want to be the bros who put ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ up,” Cataldo said.

Still, it seemed a shame not to hang the wolf somewhere, so they compromised and put him at the end of a hall.

At a New Year’s Eve party they gave this year, their friends didn’t hesitate to embrace the cliché, bringing bottles of Fireball whiskey, which now clutter the otherwise tastefully stocked bar cart.

“Everyone was taking pictures in front of the wolf,” Livanos said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.