Metropolitan Diary

The Childhood Apartment in New Hands

Dear Diary:

In her letter Nov. 9, Jenny Rubin wishes she could sit in her old apartment one more time. My sister (Ruth W. Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president) and I sort of had that experience.

When my mother died in 2001, my sister and I had to sell the Upper West Side co-op apartment in which we grew up and in which my parents had lived since 1942. They had done almost no work on the place since about 1950 as far as I can recall. My sister, being the one who lives in New York City, went to the closing of the sale.

All was going well when, as she reported, she told the buyer that there was “one more little stipulation” that she wanted to put in. His face fell. She said that she and her sister would love to see the apartment when it had been renovated. He kindly agreed, and a few years later when I was visiting New York, we called and he invited us over.

It was lovely. They had been creative about making it a much nicer space, but they had kept all the (many) built-in bookshelves, which we loved and which, they said, had sold them on the apartment originally.