New York apartments come in a variety of genres. Most New Yorkers recall their first-ever shoebox with fondness, remembering brick wall views, beds touching at least three walls, steep walk-up flights of stairs, and perhaps an exterminator visit or two. Those who stuck it out til their second apartment may have been stuck with still essentially a box for a slightly larger shoe, while others were granted elusive amenities like doormen and dishwashers. Each subsequent apartment comes with its own unique ups and downs–neighbor personalities, finicky appliances, laundry situations, roommate dynamics, and varying sizes and numbers of closets.

Having spent a few years here now, and having spent an alarming chunk of that time scrolling on StreetEasy, I’m pretty familiar with the standard features of New York apartments. I’m keen on things like stylistic markers of each neighborhood, what you’ll get for your money where, and which scams are worth falling for. But I’m often left wondering about apartment buildings’ origins. What did pre-war buildings actually look like pre-war? Was your apartment used for something else entirely before you (or anyone) decided to stick a bed in it? What used to lie beyond that weird sealed-up door? And, in the curious case of one of my own past homes, why is there a toilet from 1899 in the lobby?

The classic New York apartment genres actually have very intriguing architectural roots. Architect Michael Wyetzner breaks down many famous apartment styles in this Architectural Digest video. 

If you live in a “railroad” apartment (where you have to pass through one room to get to the next), your building was likely a tenement centuries ago (meaning an entire family lived in each of said rooms). Air shafts were inserted between buildings in an attempt to curb the spread of disease, creating the spooky brick vortex you might have stared down while drinking on a Lower East Side rooftop. 

If you live in a “classic six” or “classic seven” uptown, it’s likely that the first family to inhabit your space had live-in servants, to whom the smallest bedroom and bathroom belonged. You can thank the people of the olden days’s general lack of material possessions for your general lack of closet space.

Your Soho loft likely used to double as a studio for a young artist–and in fact, due to zoning laws, that artist probably had to register with the state of New York as an “artist in residence” in order to live there. If you live in a studio apartment, especially one with high ceilings, there’s a good chance that it, too, used to be a literal studio for a wealthy young artist. 

The word “stoop,” used to refer to the staircases leading up to a New York brownstone, comes from Dutch. Stoops used to bustle even more than they do today as places for neighbors to interact, city kids to play games, and families to hold yard sales.

It’s possible your apartment building used to be something else entirely. There are New York buildings that used to be banks, schools, hotels, offices, branches of the New York Public Library, and more.

I highly recommend doing some research on your building’s past. Looking up your home address on a site like Urban Archive might send you into an existential spiral, or it might just offer a poignant reminder that many New Yorkers lived in your space before you (and many more will after you leave and get that dishwasher). The biggest moments of someone else’s life happened right on your block (maybe even in the spot where your couch is now). And someone, at some point, definitely used that antique lobby toilet.