Streams

Obama’s Harlem Apartment for Rent

Thursday, July 19, 2012

The two-bedroom Harlem apartment where President Barack Obama lived while he attended Columbia University in the 1980s is for rent.

The sunny two-bedroom railroad apartment on the Upper West Side with exposed brick, a galley kitchen and “generous closet space” is now going for $2,400 a month – a far cry from the $360 the future president split with his roommate.

“Live Like the President!!!” the CitiHabitats listing screams. “Barack Obama's former apartment is now on the market for rent. Be a part of history and live where the President lived while he attended Columbia University. Who knows, you just might end up in the White House one day.”

The future president had an inauspicious start in New York. He found himself locked out of the pre-war third-floor walk-up at 142 W. 109th Street when he first arrived in the city late one evening in August 1981, according to his memoir Dreams From My Father.

He described the neighborhood as empty with boarded-up buildings on either side – “a bulk of rectangular shadows,” he wrote.

He finally squeezed into the front door as a neighbor was leaving, pulled his luggage up three flights of stairs and started banging on the apartment door – to no avail.

“Again, no answer, just a sound down the hall of a deadbolt thrown into place. New York. Just like I pictured it,” he wrote.

He then went outside, sat on the stoop and began reading a letter his father had given him.

"Obviously, this is not a Mount Vernon or a Monticello," Zak Kneider, one of the Citi Habitats brokers listing the apartment, told the Wall Street Journal. "It's a typical New York City walk-up. A million other people in New York live in these type of apartments."

The Journal says Kneider had received nine inquires about the apartment by Wednesday evening.

Courtesy of Citi-Habitats
The galley kitchen in President Barack Obama's former apartment in Harlem.
http://www.citi-habitats.com/viewlisting.php?adID=613768&scroll=1
Courtesy of Citi-Habitats
A bookshelf near the galley kitchen in Obama's old apartment.
Courtesy of Citi-Habitats
The living room of Obama's former apartment.
Courtesy of Citi-Habitats
One of the two bedrooms in Obama's old Harlem apartment.
Courtesy of Citi-Habitats
Another bedroom in the apartment Obama rented with a roommate while he attended Columbia.
Courtesy of Citi-Habitats
Another view of the galley kitchen in Obama's former apartment.

Comments [5]

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Dec. 01 2012 03:09 AM
Andy

"That apartment is more Zabar's then The Apollo, substantively." --- But in 1981 it would have been more steal-your-hubcaps than cop-your-style (and blog about it).

Jul. 24 2012 11:51 AM
JJ

In his book, the Audacity of Hope, he mentions an apartment on 94th between second and first ave. Anyone know what address it was? The high rise apartments that are on both ends weren't there then, but there were plenty of walk-ups. Just curious.

Jul. 19 2012 02:37 PM
Rick

It is in the Upper West Side, not Harlem. It is south of Columbia which is in Morningside Heights, which is south of Manhattanville, which is south of Harlem.

Jul. 19 2012 02:32 PM
Commentator

Folks, that's not Harlem and the article is silly for reading so.

Harlem has fuzzy boundaries, perhaps, but anything south of 110th (the northern boundary of Central Park and west of Central Park West is the Upper West Side. That apartment is more Zabar's then The Apollo, substantively.

Jul. 19 2012 01:51 PM

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