6 Things to Know Before Moving Into a Prewar Building

If you're house hunting in New York City, chances are you've seen the term "prewar" on a listing or 20. Obviously, that would mean the building was built before a war, but what war and what it actually means may not be as obvious. According to apartment search engine StreetEasy, prewar apartments were built just before WWII, in the years of 1900 to 1939.

Coming off a population jump in the city in the 1880s, many new buildings began to crop up, all in the same style. These exclusively New York buildings were designed to be sturdy and to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of people in the city, while also incorporating the luxury of the time period. Some of New York's most famous buildings are in the prewar style, like The Apthorp and The San Remo (pictured), both in the Upper West Side neighborhood, which is where probably the largest collection of these buildings can be found.

There are a handful of features of prewar buildings that you should know about if you're considering moving into one. Read on to see six of them.

This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Prewar buildings often have oddly shaped rooms that will add character but can also be problematic when fitting your furniture into a weird corner. Buildings were built to suit the lifestyle of the time, and efficiency was not a part of it. When apartment hunting when I first moved to New York, I saw an apartment in a prewar building with a bedroom that while not small was so oddly shaped that it would have only fit a twin bed. That being said . . .

While the apartment I looked at could barely fit a bed because of the shape, it was still large, and bedrooms in prewar buildings tend to always be big, which is not something that can be said about a lot of New York City apartments. However, on the flip side, bathrooms and kitchens are very small, because at the time these buildings were constructed, kitchen and bathroom space weren't of any importance.

These features are very common in these older buildings. You can also expect to find ornamentation on the ceilings and walls. These particular features not only added monetary value to a property but also spoke of a level of luxury that was very purposeful in these homes.

Prewar buildings will most likely not have central air conditioning, unless they have been recently completely renovated. Plan on relying on a window unit or a fan. Heat will usually come from a rickety radiator, which provides a certain charm and potentially some noise, as those old appliances are anything but quiet.

These buildings have all the features of a place that was built to show grandiosity. High, beamed ceilings are just one aspect of this. These buildings also usually have an ornate wood floor, arched doorways, and plaster walls, which will work excellently to keep out noise. The hallways and foyers of these buildings are also often larger to give the space a larger feel. This all started to fizzle out with the stock market crash of 1929 and then stopped at the beginning of WWII. Postwar buildings that started to go up in the 1950s had different design elements like white brick, parquet floors, and lower ceilings to suit the tastes of the people in that time period.

Fireplaces are not something you often see in apartment buildings, but many prewar apartments do have them, though they're mostly ornamental. A fireplace was just another design feature that signified high class and luxury, so they were a common element of prewar buildings.