The 7th Floor–8th Floor Marriage

The 7th Floor–8th Floor Marriage His furniture is from Uline. Her taste is more traditional. The couple who splits their lives between two apartments. By , a contributing writer at Curbed and author of the Substack newsletter Café Anne Sarah and Len in Len’s apartment on the eighth floor, where they often have lunch and dinner most days. Photo: Anne Kadet Sarah and Len in Len’s apartment on the eighth floor, where they often have lunch and dinner most days. Photo: Anne Kadet On a typical morning, Sarah Crichton wakes up at 6:30 and heads out for a long walk, leaving her husband, Len Berman, snoozing in bed. When she returns from her stroll, she checks on Len in the bedroom before heading downstairs to her own apartment, where she makes coffee for two. A bit later, Len wanders down to her place for coffee and their morning round of cards. The couple, divorcés in their 70s who met on OkCupid in January 2020, both maintain their own apartments in the same Brooklyn Heights co-op building. Len owns unit 8J; Sarah’s place, unit 7G, is one flight down. When they first met six years ago, Sarah was living alone in her Boerum Hill brownstone; Len was subletting a place on the Upper West Side while his new Brooklyn Heights apartment was being renovated. The city went into full lockdown, and as their relationship progressed, Len moved in with Sarah so they could continue seeing each other. “But he clearly didn’t feel at home,” says Sarah. “Also, my ex-husband had lived there, and that was uncomfortable.” It took two years to renovate Len’s apartment, which he bought following the end of his 35-year marriage. When he finally moved into his new home in the spring of 2022, “he was so excited,” says Sarah. “He was obsessed with his apartment.” Len, a retired IBM research scientist, began spending the day at his own place, then staying there overnight. However, the couple missed each other, and Sarah began staying over at Len’s more often. That fall, they got married and she started living at Len’s nearly full time. While his one-bedroom was perhaps a quarter the size of Sarah’s brownstone, “we were in love and happy, and it was like having a cute little aerie,” says Sarah. But then it was Sarah’s turn to feel uncomfortable. “This apartment reflects Len so powerfully. It’s the apartment of somebody who intensely loves the things he loves and also never had an apartment of his own to express himself. But it doesn’t reflect me,” she says. The first time she saw Len’s home, she recalls, “it was the apartment of a mathematician. It’s all these geometric shapes, and the wall was a total reflection of his mind, which I found charming.” “It’s got a lot of geometric stuff in it,” Len agrees. “It’s kind of an orderly sort of apartment. Except it’s totally unorderly. And the more intensely mine it is, the messier it gets!” On a recent evening, the couple offered a tour of Len’s apartment. With its stark white walls and endless expanses of tile, industrial shelving, and storage units ordered from the Uline catalogue, it looks like a gallery crossed with a Costco warehouse. The rooms are hung with wire grid-wall panels typically used for retail displays. “It lets you move things around, in theory. Not that I’ve ever moved anything,” says Len. Len with the gridded wall system he installed in his apartment on the 8th floor. Photo: Anne Kadet A closer view of Len’s desk area and gridded wall organizer. Photo: Anne Kadet Among the items on display: a Mad Hatter top hat; a series of small, cartoonish paintings; Christmas lights; a fly swatter; bungee cords; retractable tape measures; exercise bands; sunglasses; and a sack of dog biscuits. “Sometimes a dog will visit,” says Len. “And I like to be prepared.” His furniture tends toward the ad hoc; his desk consists of a used slab of countertop laid over a pair of ancient filing cabinets. The restaurant cart alongside it displays a dust buster, an industrial mixer, and a bucket of vintage Altoids containers. Sarah’s taste leans more traditional. She’s a book editor who’s drawn to warm colors, Central Asian patterned rugs, sleek cherrywood cabinets and mid-century-modern furniture — what she describes as “classic New York.” And it’s far less cluttered. Sarah in her apartment downstairs from Len’s, where they do most of their entertaining. Photo: Anne Kadet To give each other their own spaces, the couple first considered buying a two-bedroom apartment together or renting a studio that Sarah could use as an office. But about six months after they got married, Sarah was browsing StreetEasy and spotted an open house at noon for an apartment downstairs from Len’s. “We hadn’t really figured out what we wanted to do,” recalls Sarah. “And then we walked in, and I whispered to Len, ‘I want this!’ So we bought it that afternoon, basically.” Because their co-op is entangled in an unpredictable land-lease situation, the units sell for about half the cost of what’s typical for Brooklyn Heights. Buying and maintaining the two units costs less than they’d be paying for a typical two-bedroom in the neighborhood, they say. For a couple who maintains separate homes, Sarah and Len spend a lot of time together. After their morning coffee and cards at Sarah’s place, Len heads back upstairs to work on the sci-fi novel he’s been writing while Sarah works in her bedroom downstairs, which she’s converted into a home office. It has a fold-out sofa instead of a bed; the couple’s overnight guests always stay in Sarah’s apartment. Sarah in her office in her 7th floor apartment. Photo: Anne Kadet Around noon, Sarah heads upstairs to Len’s apartment, often for the rest of the day. She works on her laptop at the dining table while he works at his desk. “We get lonely,” says Sarah. “I like her to be here,” says Len. “I mean, I’m glad she can go, but I’m glad when she’s here. If she was downstairs and didn’t come up here to make lunch, I’d probably come down.” Since they typically eat lunch and dinner together at Len’s, that’s where they keep the everyday food — they stash the overflow in Sarah’s kitchen. And because Sarah’s more formal place has the long dining-room table and all the big pots and roasting pans, they use her place for entertaining, including last fall’s Thanksgiving dinner for 16. But it’s impossible to plan everything perfectly. “We do wander up and down with pots of food and stuff like that because we have different equipment,” says Sarah. “I finally got a Cuisinart in Len’s apartment because I just can’t live without a food processor.” Following dinner and another game of cards, Sarah likes to read and watch TV in Len’s bedroom before conking out early (they always sleep in Len’s bedroom). Len stays up late working at his desk. “I don’t like to watch TV, period,’ says Len. “And in bed? I’m just not going to do it.” If they watch a movie together, it’s downstairs in Sarah’s office. From left: Sarah’s living room. Photo: Anne KadetLen’s living room with a gridded wall system behind one arm of the couch. Photo: Anne Kadet From top: Sarah’s living room. Photo: Anne KadetLen’s living room with a gridded wall system behind one arm of the couch. Photo: Anne Kadet They typically take the stairs rather than the elevator (unless they’re carrying something heavy) and don’t knock before entering each other’s homes. In fact, they had the same lock installed on both of their front doors so the same key opens both units. “I didn’t want to have to carry two keys, and Sarah can never find her keys, so having one key was bad enough,” says Len. Each maintains their own bank account and pays the mortgage and maintenance for their own home. But they split the cost of groceries and the weekly housekeeper who cleans both their apartments through a joint account. Sarah sorts and starts the laundry in the building’s basement laundry room. Len, who is better at folding, does the rest. This has been their routine for two years. When people hear of their upstairs-downstairs arrangement, no one is shocked. “Everyone goes, ‘Oh my God, that’s just the most ideal situation,’” says Sarah. “And it is!” “We both get to express ourselves without oppressing the other,” says Len.There is a danger, of course, that the separate spaces might enable separate lives, so they established a firm rule early on: They never sleep alone. That prospect only came up once during a squabble — when they were staying in a vacation rental in Cape Cod. “I put my foot down and said, ‘We don’t do that,’” says Len. “Sleeping separately would be a crime against the marriage, against the relationship,” says Sarah. “But certainly, there are times when you get on each other’s nerves, and it’s fantastic to be able to go downstairs. When one is upset, one wants to be comforted by objects or things you look at. There’s not a lot of my stuff in Len’s apartment that feeds me that way, except for Len and the cat.” That’s beginning to change. Despite their ideal of maintaining separate identities, Sarah’s sensibilities are slowly encroaching on Len’s space. She had the TV installed in the bedroom. The hallway is lined with her favorite books and the entryway features her late mother’s Che Guevara poster. When Len wanted to hang more industrial grid over his living-room sofa, Sarah nixed the plan. “Enough with the grid!” she says. She is hoping they’ll find the perfect oversize painting to hang over the couch. “I want to get a tripod and a projector and use that wall to watch movies. That would be perfect,” counters Len. Perhaps a third apartment is in order? Apartment 8G is for sale. Chefs on Bunk Beds, Bartenders on Boats Building a ‘Mommune’ in Harlem The Pair of Pieds-à-Terre Shared by 12 People See All The 7th Floor–8th Floor Marriage Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale. Manage preferences.