Photographer Jay Maisel purchased 190 Bowery, a six-story, 72-room, 35,000-square-foot building, 42 years ago for $102,000. He still resides there with his wife and daughter. Today it's worth anywhere from $30 million to upwards of $70 motherfucking million. That is an insane ROI.
Along with the usual financial difficulties faced by artists this Manhattan neighborhood back then "was where people ended up, not where they aspired to live." And when Maisel moved in "the main floor was knee-deep in garbage and coated in soot." Despite its unassuming and graffiti marked exterior, today:
The house now feels like a dream world, or a benign version of the vast hotel in The Shining. Hallways go on forever. Rooms are filled with projects in various phases of completion. The renovations, mostly done by Maisel, are very “artists live here.”
I want to live there.
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