Like many university graduates, Hattie Kolp needed two things above all: a job and an apartment.
Born and raised in New York, Ms. Kolp always knew she would come back. After four years away from Los Angeles, she decided that life in California wasn’t for her. Her west, she realized, would always be the Upper West Side, where she’d lived in the same apartment since she was ten and where the ballet, opera, art shows, and Broadway shows were only a few blocks, a train ride, or… away a taxi ride away. Central Park, she likes to say, “was basically my backyard.”
She wanted that ghost back. With no money and no job, she did what any other 20-year-old would do: moved back in with her parents.
She had many fond childhood memories of the two bedroom pre-war rental. Their parents — Her father worked at a non-profit organization and her mother was an art historian and later a kindergarten teacher — “loved throwing a good party” She said. Returning to the “busy, cramped apartment” was easy.
That was in 2014. And Mrs. Kolp is still there.
Why? This is the stuff that New York’s urban legends are made of — the stuff that makes New Yorkers swoon or loathe, the stuff that’s brought Ms Kolp some fame, 241,000 followers on TikTok and 230,000 on Instagram.
Her parents’ apartment was rent-secured, and when they retired and moved to Virginia in 2018, they turned the apartment over to her.
Ms. Kolp now earns her living as a content creator. Followers are drawn to the dream of living so cheaply in an apartment that Ms Kolp knows can sleep one, but her fan base has grown as she explored the intersection of interior design and content creation.
$1,300 (Maybe a little more. Please stop asking her.) | Upper west side
Hattie Kolp, 31
Profession: Mrs. Kolp is a full-time content creator in the field of home decoration.
Regarding keeping the apartment in the family: Although Ms. Kolp has no children, she wants to keep the rent-stabilized apartment for future generations, she says. “I will definitely always keep the apartment. And if I have children who would also like to keep it, then definitely. I would love it.”
On life on the Upper West Side as an adult: “A lot of the things people want to come to New York from never interested me. I just don’t like this whole hectic culture. I want to be as far away from all this as possible. I don’t want to be in trendy areas, I don’t want to go to a trendy restaurant. I just want to live my life, so I love that the Upper West Side is just quiet and quaint and feels like a neighborhood.”
Content creation is her job now, but it has taken her a while to get to this point.
After graduating from college, Ms. Kolp took a job as a home salesperson for a real estate agency, a notoriously brutal and often unstable profession in a city like New York. She estimates that she only made $1,000 during that time. “I had never had any real estate experience in New York City as an adult before, so I just had no idea,” she said in an interview.
She did that for two months and then became a teacher – her degree was child development – another job that barely paid the bills in New York. Even as she went back to Hunter College for a degree, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should be doing something else.
Although she was uncertain about her career, she was sure that she had figured out her living situation and told herself that she would be “insane if she didn’t take over the lease” while her parents prepared to move out of the rental property. In New York City, rent stabilization generally applies to apartments in buildings with at least six units built before 1974, or newer buildings that receive tax breaks. A board of nine decides the percentages by which landlords can legally increase rents for such apartments.
The apartment is about 1,200 square feet and stays in the low four figures in a neighborhood where the average monthly rent tops $4,500.
When her parents left, she began making it her own. She’s ditched her “boho” theme, she said, and taken inspiration from the European-style architecture of the Upper West Side. The apartment is now more like an apartment in Paris. “I think I really left the architecture of the neighborhood and the framework of my apartment – It’s really just the aesthetic – it drives my design choices.”
She started blogging about her experiences and sharing her changes to the apartment in real time. While many Americans sat in their apartments with sourdough appetizers, copies of “Animal Crossing” and far too much alcohol, Mrs. Kolp tore down walls.
People watched, and then more people watched. It seemed like the whole world knew she only paid $1,300 in rent, so much so that she hates talking about that part. She wouldn’t tell the New York Times how much her rent has increased since 2021.
Instead, she focused on the development of the apartment: the pink walls that colored her childhood bedroom are gone. Originally used as a guest room for her parents and friends who came to town, it is now her personal library. The bookshelves are filled with knick-knacks and books from her childhood. The butler’s pantry (who can say they have one of those?) was painted a dark green hue to convey a “very atmospheric space” resembling the entrance to a speakeasy.
She used self-adhesive tiles to create a splashback in her kitchen. A quick glance up reveals their sticky, copper-colored paper cover. She also restored a fireplace, exposed pocket doors, added crown molding and replaced doorknobs, making changes that returned the apartment to its “intended condition,” she said.
In between DIY projects, she quit her job as a teacher and last year became a full-time content creator. Fans (and haters) follow her apartment updates scrupulously.
Although it may seem intrusive to reveal to the world the intimate details of the place where one sleeps, socializes and cries, Ms Kolp said it helped her find a global community.
“Opening up my life on social media and sharing what I love with the world,” said Ms. Kolp, “has resulted in me having so many great friendships and contacts that I would never have made otherwise.”