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Older, and Living in Manhattan
By Jennie Green, The New York Times
January 9, 2005
Frances Roberts for The New York Times
Toussia Pines, left, and June Nelson in Ms. Nelson's living room at the Esplanade, where meals and activities are also provided.
At a certain point, living without the regular company of others, or without a bit of support, no longer seems like the safest or most appealing thing to do. For those who are basically healthy, there are a number of places in Manhattan that offer "independent living," meaning apartment buildings where meals and activities are provided, or "assisted living," where extra help is provided for those who need it.
Eight Manhattan residences in those categories offer similar basic amenities and services, which include meals, housekeeping, daily activities and concierge services. Prices range from $800 a month for a studio in a residence sponsored by a nonprofit group to roughly $8,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in a luxurious for-profit building. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it is rarely a problem to arrange immediate occupancy of apartments that rent for $4,000 a month or more, while waiting lists for some of the most heavily subsidized units can extend beyond a year.
While some older people move to Manhattan for the first time, usually to be close to adult children, most are veteran New Yorkers who never left the city or are returning after first retirements in places like Florida or California.
Take June Nelson and Toussia Pines, classmates at Barnard College during the 1940's. After a 60-year hiatus in their friendship, they have met again at the Esplanade, on the Upper West Side. When Ms. Nelson, a writer, sold her home in Pennsylvania and moved to the Esplanade to be near one of her daughters, she asked Joan Weiss, the admissions director, if there were any other Barnard graduates among the residents. Initially, Ms. Weiss couldn't help. Shortly after the question was raised, however, Ms. Weiss overheard the word "Barnard" pop up in a conversation between two other women. One was Mrs. Pines, who revealed that she too had attended Barnard during the 40's.
One recent afternoon, the two women emerged side by side from the spacious ground-floor dining room, where they have lunch together daily. "We're really enjoying each other," Mrs. Pines said.
Independent-, enriched- and assisted-living facilities, which differ only in the level of care they provide, have evolved and proliferated over the past decade to fill a substantial void between living alone and having to enter a traditional nursing home, which is a medical environment.
"My biggest professional obstacle is preconceived notions," said Rita Files, a family adviser who handles numerous Manhattan properties for A Place for Mom, the largest senior housing referral service in the country. "So many people have images in their heads of old-fashioned nursing homes; getting them to see that independent and assisted living is totally different can be a real challenge."
Senior residences in Manhattan fall into two basic categories: for-profit and not-for-profit. Here is a look at the options:
The Hallmark of Battery Park City (North End Avenue) is an independent-living residence with a small assisted-living program. Owned and operated by Brookdale Living Communities Inc., which currently manages 60 senior residences in 24 states, the Hallmark opened in 2000 opposite Stuyvesant High School.
The Hallmark, which is near the Hudson River waterfront park and TriBeCa, has about 215 residents. Its common spaces are adorned with dark-wood paneling, polished surfaces and overstuffed furniture.
Frances Roberts for The New York Times
A RANGE OF SERVICES AND PRICES Ruth Rowen, 90 years old and a former librarian, leads a discussion in the Esplanade's ballroom on current events.
It also has an indoor swimming pool and whirlpool spa, a health and fitness center with a good selection of cardiovascular and resistance-training machines, a spacious arts and crafts studio and a library lined with bookshelves and comfortable chairs, with newspapers and two computers with free Internet access. There is also a hair and nail salon, banking, a 24-hour concierge and a health clinic (appointments are necessary). Private bus transportation around the city is provided for residents upon request.
Those who rarely leave the building have no reason to be idle, with figure drawing, tai chi, a Yiddish club and lectures on the birth of jazz on the schedule.
The food is elegantly served and of high quality. Recent entree choices included salmon with lemon and white wine, pot roast and Cornish game hen. Desserts included apple pie, chocolate mousse and brownie à la mode.
"And yet," says Elizabeth Gates, the director of sales and marketing for the Hallmark, "the one thing that people around here tend to gripe about is the food. As hard as we try to please everybody, our residents are sophisticated New Yorkers who are used to having their food prepared a certain way."
Apartments at the Hallmark are modern and a little boxy and include 570-square-foot studios, 700-square-foot one-bedrooms, and 1,718-square-foot two-bedrooms (good for visitors). The apartment and amenities plus weekly housekeeping, daily breakfast and dinner 15 times a month cost $4,000 for a studio; $4,500 for a one-bedroom; $5,700 for a two-bedroom; and $8,590 for a two-bedroom plus den, all with a second-person fee of $780 where applicable. Adding dinner every evening costs $200 a month more.
Atria 86th Street (between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive) is a private independent-living facility owned and operated by the Atria Senior Living Group.
Like the Hallmark, Atria 86th Street caters to affluent residents by offering a wide range of luxuries, activities and conveniences, down to reflexology and massage. Unlike its downtown counterpart, however, Atria serves not two but three high-quality meals every day, prepared in an on-site kitchen by a veteran chef who enjoys taking requests and trying to recreate favorite recipes as much as he likes to experiment with specials like pork stir fry.
Atria 86th Street, which allows pets, occupies a large prewar building with penthouse terraces that overlook rooftop gardens and the Hudson River. High ceilings with moldings, spacious bathrooms and wide foyers lend Atria apartments a sense of charm. Studio apartments start at $3,750, one-bedrooms at $4,750 and two-bedrooms at $6,800.
Olga and Leslie Gruenberger, who are from Czechoslovakia, fled the Nazis shortly after they married in 1937. After living in Riverdale, where they worked and raised their family for nearly 28 years, they moved to Florida for about 12 years and then back to New York, where they now rent a sun-flooded two-bedroom apartment on the 20th floor of the Atria. The Gruenbergers, both 93, made the move because they felt safer with the 24-hour concierge, emergency pull cords and sign-out sheets than they did during the last years in their Florida condominium. An added benefit is proximity to their son, Peter, who lives in Manhattan.
Although most of the residents are retired, not all are. Dr. Solomon Estren is an 86-year-old hematologist who catches the crosstown bus from Atria 86th Street to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he continues to teach and attend conferences part time. He looked into the Hallmark and the Esplanade before settling on Atria. Like many of his uptown contemporaries, Dr. Estren dismissed the Hallmark because of its downtown location, and the bustling atmosphere of the Esplanade didn't appeal to him.
The Esplanade (West End Avenue between 74th and 75th Streets) is an independent-living community, with a secure Alzheimer's unit on the seventh floor, which is leased to Hearthstone Alzheimer's Care.
The family-owned Esplanade is more like a big, lively house than a staid hotel, yet the impressive prewar residence oozes as much prewar charm and sophistication as Atria 86th Street. Its inhabitants tend to be quintessential West Siders who vote Democratic, subscribe to The New Yorker and take full advantage of nearby resources like Lincoln Center and the American Museum of Natural History. Some residents describe the food, which is kosher and is served three times daily, as "institutional." Still, nobody goes hungry. Those who don't like the serviceable bagel can walk over to H&H Bagels for something far better. Considering the well-educated and cultured population at the Esplanade, it also seems odd that there are more bingo games than erudite lectures on the weekly activity schedule. But when asked why they chose the Esplanade, several residents offered a heartfelt response: "It's the people who work here and run the place. They're wonderful!"
Spacious and high-ceilinged studios and one-bedroom apartments are the only apartments offered at the Esplanade. Single- and double-occupancy studios rent for $3,750 and $4,750 respectively, and one-bedrooms go for $4,750 and $5,600.
Carnegie East House (Second Avenue at 95th Street) is a luxurious nonprofit residence where 20 percent of the apartments are subsidized and set aside for moderate-income residents. Depending on the size of the apartment that a person takes, the income ceiling for those wanting a subsidized apartment is between $27,432 and $45,216. Unlike its for-profit counterparts, Carnegie East House is also licensed as enriched housing by the New York State Department of Health, which means that each resident is entitled to three and a half hours of personal care per week at no additional charge.
Common areas are clean and bright, all tasteful shades of rose and beige. There are three appealing meals a day (recently, bowls of mushroom soup were stuffed with freshly sliced mushrooms, and broiled salmon was cooked to medium-rare perfection), housekeeping and a host of other amenities. The unsubsidized rates for the pristine studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments, which were recently designed and built from the ground up to accommodate older residents, range from $3,900 to $7,900, whereas the subsidized rent for those same apartments is $1,905 to $2,441. While there is only a short waiting list for market rate apartments, there is a three-year wait for subsidized ones.
The Lott Residence (Fifth Avenue at 108th Street) was known until recently as the de Sales Residence. It is one of the few facilities in Manhattan that is solely an assisted-living program.
Operated by the not-for-profit de Sales Assisted Living Operating Corporation, the Lott Residence provides assistance with every aspect of daily life (including dressing, transportation within and outside the residence and personal hygiene) at no additional cost. If a person can prove that assistance is needed and that he or she has virtually no assets, Medicaid will cover the cost of medical care, much of which is provided at Lott or arranged through Lott.
It has 126 bright studio apartments, many overlooking the north end of Central Park. Ten percent of the residents pay the full $4,000 per month, at least until their money runs out, at which point they may qualify for Medicaid and then just have to cover the cost of the rent, which is $884. Residents are diverse. Jews from the North Bronx, Hispanics from the South Bronx, blacks from Brooklyn and Koreans from Queens mingle over breakfast and in the lounge. There is often a short waiting list, but right now, there is none.
The Village at 46th and Ten (10th Avenue at 46th Street), operated by a nonprofit corporation, Village Care of New York, was designed to accommodate moderate- and low-income seniors who have found it increasingly taxing to manage on their own but who do not require 24-hour-a-day skilled nursing care. The Village specializes in "supportive living," which includes three hours a week of personal services available to all residents, which can be used for anything from help with shoe shopping to assistance with dressing and personal hygiene. The building is not luxuriously furnished; it is bare, bright, and boxy, yet imaginatively laid out with a staircase that ascends from the middle of the ground floor lobby into an airy second floor common space that opens at one end into a wide dining room.
There is nothing fussy about the food at the Village, which serves standards like chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Artists, musicians, schoolteachers and college professors coexist easily with retired mail carriers and bricklayers. In the dining room or the lounge, it is typical to find residents engaged in vigorous discourse about everything from international politics to cinema to race relations. According to the director, Joellen Mickley, "Our residents tend to be salt-of-the-earth types who are attracted not only to our reasonable price structure, but also to the lack of pretense."
Individual apartments, which are basic but perfectly functional, with white walls and carpeted floors, come in two varieties: studios rent for $2,700 per month while two-bedroom units rent for $4,500 per month. The two-bedroom, two-bath apartments were designed to accommodate not only married couples but also pairs of friends or siblings. Residents' individual annual incomes may not exceed $70,000, and while there are currently a few vacancies, there is a three-year wait to move into one of the 19 units that provide "enriched" care, which includes some personal services.
The 74th Street Home (Amsterdam Avenue at 74th Street), managed by a nonprofit organization, the West Side Federation, is a no-frills place. Activities are limited, space is tight, food is serviceable and individual rooms are small. Unlike most of the other Manhattan residences, the apartments do not have kitchenettes, while some residents share bathrooms and others share rooms. Rents range from $1,500 to $3,000 per month, with a small percentage of the units set aside for low-income residents whose rent is paid by a government program.
The 74th Street Home is an assisted-living facility, which makes its lack of access for people with handicaps seem incongruous. Nevertheless, residents say that the staff of caretakers, cooks, housekeepers and administrators is terrific, and residents seem to feel safe within the environment.
The Williams (West End Avenue at 95th Street), which is owned and operated by the Salvation Army, provides comparatively affordable housing for older people.
The ground-floor common space is filled with overstuffed sofas and potted plants, and the eclectic nature of the residents might best be reflected on the monthly schedule, which includes a writer's group, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bible study, a Yiddish club and bingo among the many offerings. In some ways, the Williams is like an Esplanade for people who have a little less money, with all the diversity of the Village. There are no subsidies, but rents are not sky high. A small single room without a kitchenette rents for $800 a month; a two-room apartment with a kitchenette is $3,154, or $3,554 for double occupancy. Three meals a day are served cafeteria style, which means that residents have to be able to move through a line on foot. But the menu is varied and imaginative. And the Williams has the biggest and best reading library of any senior residence in Manhattan.
Although moving at any age can be difficult, most transplants to independent- and assisted-living buildings seem to find the environment that best suits their personalities and their needs. Dr. Estren, the 86-year-old hematologist who reluctantly moved at the suggestion of his daughter from his beloved house in the Fieldston section of Riverdale into Atria after a complicated illness, summed up the experience:
"If you catch me on a good day, I'll tell you that Atria is very nice. And if you catch me on a bad day, I'll tell you that we're a bunch of inmates. But that will have nothing to do with reality. I loved my big house, and I miss it, and it's not a lot of fun to get old."
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