Niall Dennehy has been fully booked every night since he arrived in New York. It was Dublin, his hometown.
“Friends of friends and family members all said, ‘You really need to meet this person,’ and it became a kind of serial friend dating,” he said. “This can be great when you move to the city for the first time. You don’t know all of these people really well, but you know the people around them and that gives you a connection with them and you start to form your own groups.”
Mark Stokes stood out. A fellow Dubliner, he had arrived in New York six years before Mr. Dennehy. Technically they didn’t know each other at home, but that didn’t matter. “We’re Irish, we all know each other,” Mr Stokes said. “Dublin is so small – everyone is a mutual friend. If an Irish person I know moves in with me, I’ll get in touch. It can be difficult to get around – and find your friends.”
Mr. Stokes took Mr. Dennehy on a bar crawl in Hell’s Kitchen shortly after Mr. Dennehy arrived in January 2022. “It was the first time we hung out one on one,” Mr. Stokes said. “It helps that we can drink at the same pace. But it’s also important that we can sit together and, because we’re Irish, talk without feeling like, ‘Oh, I have to explain this context and this background.’ There’s a lot of things that you just understand.”
Mr. Stokes knew he would end up in New York when he was 15. “I didn’t have a plan or idea how to make it happen,” he said, “I just knew I wanted to live there.”
After a short stay in London, his job at a CEO consulting firm took him to New York in January 2018. Mr Dennehy arrived on a work visa from his technology company. While their quickly developing friendship was partly made up of memories of Dublin, the other part was a shared connection to New York.
“It’s hard to get here,” Mr. Dennehy said, “and it’s hard to stay here – all the visa work and hurdles you have to overcome.” But if you put in the effort, the city becomes much more to you hand back.”
Mr. Stokes not only appreciates that the city has so much to offer, but also that he always feels welcome. “In London you had to be in the circle to get the invitation to the party,” he said. “Whereas in New York you can just go out, meet someone and God knows where it will lead. It’s usually fun and you’ll always get a good story out of it. A friend invited us to a fashion week party.” Such encounters would not happen in Dublin, said Mr. Stokes.
Mr. Stokes and Mr. Dennehy spent a lot of time in the West Village — and ended up looking for one-bedroom apartments in that neighborhood when their leases came up for renewal. But when they saw how small the spaces were that fit their respective budgets, they began to question their connection to the neighborhood. “You have the West Village on your doorstep,” Mr. Stokes said, “but you have nothing behind the door.”
Given that neither of them would be able to get what they wanted on their own, they settled on a two-bedroom apartment and started thinking about other parts of the city. They knew they wanted an apartment that felt like home, with enough space to put their feet up at the end of a long night—and enough room for a washer and dryer to do laundry the next morning. If they were going to share an apartment, what they wanted above all was for the layout to preserve a sense of privacy for each of them.
A friend who worked in real estate public relations suggested a dozen new construction projects where they could find the space and amenities they were looking for, and the two friends took just three days to find the perfect place .
“It was a military operation,” Mr. Dennehy said.
$7,250 | Downtown Brooklyn
Niall Dennehy, 31; Mark Stokes, 32
Profession: Mr. Dennehy is a global strategy and operations leader for a technology company. Mr. Stokes is managing director of a CEO consulting firm.
On the Brooklyn Tower atmosphere: “There’s something different about this building,” Mr. Dennehy said. “It’s not like any other high-rise.” He particularly likes the main entrance through the old Dime Savings building. “The bench is phenomenal and it really anchors this building in the neighborhood.”
About the design aesthetic: Mr. Dennehy describes his taste as modern and Mr. Stokes’s as colorful. “Mark likes every color under the rainbow, so that presented some challenges for him,” he said. To which Mr. Stokes replied: “Cream and brown, cream and brown, cream and brown – that’s what he likes.” The two friends claim to have visited almost every furniture showroom in the city to find options they could agree on . The hardest part was finding a sofa – an event now known as “sofa-gate.” “Finally we found a navy that works,” Mr. Stokes said.
Equipped with spreadsheets on their iPads and an established ranking system for each possibility, Mr Stokes and Mr Dennehy began their search for a two-bedroom apartment with a whirlwind tour of sightseeing.
One of the last apartments they saw was in the Brooklyn Tower. After being unsure about the first unit they saw with two bedrooms stacked right next to each other, they looked at a second floor plan with two bedrooms at opposite ends of the apartment, each with its own bathroom.
“I remember walking in and thinking, ‘This is it,'” Mr. Stokes said, “and I looked at Niall and hoped he had a similar thought process.”
His friend wasn’t easy to read at the moment. “We had a trial,” Mr. Dennehy said. “It’s easy to get excited early on, so I tried to keep my poker face.”
However, he admitted that “we both felt a little dizzy” as soon as they walked out.
When the two roommates showed up with their moving truck in May, the finishing touches were being put on the lobby and they realized they were the first to move in. “When we arrived there were no tenants,” Mr Stokes said.
Nevertheless, a familiar tone greeted them at the entrance. “The first doorman we met was Irish,” Mr Dennehy said. “We thought, OK, here we go. The world is so big and yet so small.”
The employees, who had just settled into their roles in the vacant building, were ready to assist with the move. “Everyone was very excited,” Mr Dennehy said. “It felt like the entire staff was in our apartment within the first hour.”
Maintenance workers even offered to recycle their boxes. “They said we’ll just leave them at the door and we’ll come get them,” Mr Stokes said.
“They were excited, which added to our excitement,” Mr Dennehy added. “When you’re first, you get that feeling. I don’t know if I will ever have this experience again in my life. It was very interesting for us as first-time residents. There was a real development and a real sense of energy in the building. It was cool because we got to see the journey of the building.”
At the end of each day, when Mr. Dennehy’s head finally hits the pillow, he leaves his bedroom window blinds open. He loves to fall asleep looking at the Empire State Building and the Manhattan skyline.
“That building was an anchor,” he said, “and a feeling of, ‘Oh, maybe we can make it here. Maybe it’s possible.'”