The Manhattan Times

On the market: Park Terrace Gardens apartment a blast from the past

by Daniel P. Bader

This could easily have been Joan Cleaver’s kitchen, if the 1950s television sitcom “Leave it to Beaver” had been based in Inwood.

Apartment C29 at 65 Park Terrace East, part of the four-building complex collectively known as Park Terrace Gardens, is right out of the sepia-toned good old days.

The kitchen has a Cookmaster oven, built right into the wall across from the cooking range. The stainless steel antique gas oven has an analog clock and timer, and when it is opened, memories of every meatloaf your mother or grandmother ever made come wafting back with the screech of the hinges.

Shoulder high wooden-framed decorative screens serve as a door to the kitchen, which has bright green wallpaper patterned with white and orange flowers. Even the ceiling is seamlessly wallpapered in the same pattern.

“I lived in an apartment in Washington Heights in the 1950s and we had this exact counter space,” said New Heights Realty broker Rob Kleinbardt. The gray linoleum counter has a cutting board that slides to cover one or the other sink basins.

“[The apartment] still has the rotary phone,” Kleinbardt points out.

There, hanging knee-high, is a circa-1986 white telephone. It’s the kind with the real bell tone that many cell phones mimic today.

New Heights Realty is marketing the deliciously dated apartment on behalf of the co-op board as-is because of the great condition of the antiquated interior design.

“Step into this spacious two bedroom/two bath apartment and it’s like taking a step back in time,” reads the real estate flier for the apartment.

However, not renovating the space also keeps the $460,000 asking price down – an attractive feature given that identical apartments in the complex have sold for between $525,000 and $530,000.

“Here’s a chance to own the dream apartment you can’t yet afford,” beckons the flier.

The idea is that someone could move into the apartment and slowly renovate the space.

But the right kind of person might just keep it the way it is.

Until she moved out in June, the apartment was rented to Rita Salfeld, an original tenant in the 397-unit complex. She moved in when the buildings were brand new in the early 1940s.

Salfeld, who Kleinbardt guessed was in her 70s, moved to Florida because of rising rent. Had she stayed, the rent on the apartment would have been around $1,200 – just above the $1,050 maintenance fee that the new owners will have to pay.

The complex, which went cooperative in 1975 has a dwindling number of renters, just 28 remain.

Just wandering the apartment it’s evident that Salfeld had, at one time, put a lot of time and care into renovating her home, and she kept it in good shape.

Wally and the Beav certainly weren’t allowed to wrestle or track mud into this apartment.

Where blinds or curtains might be today, Salfeld built floor-to-ceiling sliding screens in front of the living room windows that match the smaller swinging ones in the kitchen.

Mrs. Salfeld, like her contemporaries, had an affinity for wallpaper.

The master bathroom has an almost modern, brown diamond-patterned wallpaper, and the main bathroom has a leaf patterned version. The second bedroom has a novel patterned texture that feels like cork when you poke it with a fingernail, but looks like a child’s velvet-like color-by-numbers arts and crafts picture.

The master bedroom is probably the most modern room in the apartment. It has lime green wall-to-wall carpeting to complement the two large closets and white walls.

The foyer and hall leading from the front door is covered in linoleum in a pattern that mimics marble, and the sunken living room has thick, light colored carpet.

The two materials cover original wooden herring-bone flooring.

“There was a period of time that hardwood floors were not appreciated,” Kleinbardt said.

Although hardwood floors are popular again, there’s something nostalgic in the apartment.

With the right kind of furniture, you can almost see Ward giving a fatherly lecture to Beaver. Maybe for a new home, the Cleaver’s place isn’t a bad start.