Since we've already had a Stanford White mention this morning, why not peer into the real estate musings of another famous dead New Yorker? Via the Hotel Chelsea Blog and historian Sherill Tippins, we learn that sometime hotel resident "William Dean Howells' income was about $850 per month [his salary equaled about $200,000 per year today], so a $250 apartment would have cost less than a third of his monthly nut." Still, of his stay at the Chelsea, the literary editor and realist author (at right, age 18, doing his best Rufus Wainwright impression) wrote:
I watch my money flow as a stuck pig its life-stream. It's horrible to spend so much but I seem bound to it hand and foot.Click through for more on what rooms were going for in the late 1800s and the blog's sweet but unlikely wish that this tidbit might spark readers to rush back to WDH's oeuvre.
· Historian Unearths William Dean Howells' Rent Receipt [Living With Legends]
· William Dean Howells [Wikipedia]