Grayson Altenberg doesn’t look out the window. He has no window.
Grayson Altenberg doesn’t have a kitchen (unless a hot plate, mini-fridge, and microwave count). He has “a very, very giant kitchen at Lincoln Center.”
Grayson Altenberg doesn’t have a living room. He says, “My living room is Central Park.”
Grayson Altenberg also doesn’t have a table, a chair, or a closet (Grayson, if you’re reading this, email us). He has four walls, a floor, and a ceiling.
Does Grayson Altenberg live in a college dorm room?
No. That would be an upgrade.
So where does Grayson Altenberg live?
He lives in an Upper West Side apartment. An apartment so small that “you can’t have three friends over at the same time,” “you can’t gain weight once you move in,” “there’s a bumper on the front door to keep it from hitting the back wall,” and “you have to move the bed just to open and close the front door” according to the apartment’s listing on StreetEasy.
Just how small is the tiny apartment that Curbed NY called “so sad it hurts”?
100 square feet.
Is Grayson insane for choosing to live in an apartment that’s barely bigger than two prison cells combined, and only 10 square feet larger than Mary Helen Rowell’s 90-square-foot West Village apartment?
No. Like many of us, “I made the sacrifice of space to be living in Manhattan,” and “commuting an hour and a half or walking five minutes to work was the deal maker,” said Grayson, who’s now a chef at Lincoln Ristorante. A chef who pays $1,100 a month in rent for a 7-foot-by-11-foot studio, which although sounds ridiculous (because it is), is actually less than half of the average monthly rent of $2,848 for a studio on the Upper West Side.
Grayson lacks space, but like Mary Helen Rowell, he makes up for it with smart storage solutions. He stores his clothes and laptop on wall-mounted shelves, he hangs cooking supplies from a chandelier, and he stashes his eating utensils in Mason jars to name a few.
Tour Grayson Altenberg’s 100-square-foot NYC apartment and learn the rest of his space-saving storage tips by watching the video below. He says to the camera “Welcome to my crib,” which sounds about right.
