Boston Condos for Sale and Apartments for Rent
New real estate trend: Living above where you work
I’ll say one thing: the commute is easier.
A new generation of workers are embracing the once-common practice of living above the business they also own, the New York Times reported.
“For centuries, in rural and urban settings it was the common thing around the world for people to live and work in the same place,” Howard Davis, a professor at the University of Oregon and the author of the book “Living Over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life,” told the Times.
The Industrial Revolution led to a major shift where people separated where they worked from where they lived as a means of showing financial and social status.
Those who lived above where they worked typically were immigrants in urban settings, such as Manhattan and Brooklyn, who did not have the means to live elsewhere.
But even store owners by the 1950s began living elsewhere and traveling back into the city to run their businesses, the Times reported.
The trend, however, has reversed, at least a little, with owners and co-owners of a bar, a restaurant, bakeries, a bookstore, a coffee bar and nightclub, and a theater, among other things, choosing to live above where they work.
“People only want to escape when they have work lives they don’t enjoy,” Daniel Nardicio, who lives above his coffee shop in the city, said to the Times.
Paul Longo, co-owner of a bar in Queens, chose to live above his establishment because he believed his landlord would have a hard time renting out the apartment due to the business’ long hours and the din.
One of the founding members of the Blue Man Group, Chris Wink, owns and lives above the Astor Place Theater, the off-Broadway venue where the company has operated out of since the early 1990s.
Source: New York Times
Update: I just heard FTX founder Sam Bankman-Friend’s also lived above where he works. Below is the video of Sam Bankman-Friends’s $40,000,000 penthouse. I assume the individuals in The New York Times article aren’t living like this
