Here's a part of a conversation I had with a friend last week.
WILLIAM: I live right there on 43rd Street.
ROBERT: You do? Where?
WILLIAM: In one of the brownstones.
ROBERT: Brownstones? On that block?
WILLIAM: Yeah, right there. With the fire escapes.
ROBERT: That's a tenement.
WILLIAM: Oh. Well, brownstone sounds better.
"Brownstone sounds better." It sure does. So does palace. From now on, I'm going to say that I live in a "mansion on Fifth Avenue" and, by that, I mean a one-bedroom apartment in a 54-unit building in Washington Heights.
Pictures of a brownstone and a tenement after the jump.
This is a brownstone on Perry Street (the one used in Sex and the City). It is a row house with a stoop (an architectural feature from the Dutch days) that utilizes a particular kind of sandstone quarried in regions around New York.
These are tenement buildings in Chelsea. Four floors of the tenement in the center are faced with brown sandstone...but, alas, that does not make it a brownstone.
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