Skip to content

The 146th Street House

The 146th Street House was a two-family rowhouse in Hamilton Heights, Manhattan, where five Juilliard students rented two separate three-bedroom duplexes during the 2024–2025 academic year. Its residents and their friends usually called it “the house.”

Overview

The building contained a garden/parlor duplex and an upper duplex, each with its own lease and secured entrance. The main structure measured approximately nineteen feet wide by fifty-two feet deep, with a narrow extension at the rear. Dylan Abrams and Gavin Worth shared the lower unit and kept its third bedroom open while repeatedly encouraging Travis Yoon to move in. Brooke Kim, Sarah Chen, and Aditi Sharma occupied the upper unit. Although the duplexes were legally and physically separate residences, the two households treated them as connected parts of the same student home.

The lower duplex served as the group’s primary gathering place. Travis spent time there with his friends but continued living in Meredith Willson Residence Hall. Juilliard tuition and New York City’s cost of living gave him a practical reason to refuse the open room, but they were not his primary reason. Travis privately believed that most people tolerated him rather than actively wanted him; he interpreted his friends’ repeated invitation as kindness he could not safely treat as permanent welcome.

Location and Property Context

The house stood on West 146th Street between Convent and Amsterdam Avenues in Hamilton Heights. It retained the narrow proportions and vertical circulation of a late-nineteenth-century Manhattan rowhouse. A deep stoop rose behind black iron rails to the main entrance, and the pale limestone façade included carved stone details. The outer door opened into a compact shared vestibule with separate locked doors to the lower parlor and the upper duplex’s private stair. A secondary entrance beneath the stoop opened at the lower unit’s garden level.

The garden/parlor duplex had use of the backyard. The two households had separate leases and entrances, but residents moved between the units often enough that their social life extended through the building rather than stopping at either front door.

Physical Layout

The lower residence occupied the garden and parlor levels, while the upper residence occupied the two floors above. Each duplex contained three bedrooms. The interior retained original molding, heavy doors, tall windows, decorative fireplaces, and hardwood floors that had worn unevenly and sloped in places. Painted-over repairs remained visible against the older woodwork, and the steam radiators clanked when the heat came on.

Garden/Parlor Duplex

The lower unit’s parlor floor remained entirely communal, with the living room at the front, the dining and study room in the center, and the kitchen at the rear. The bedrooms and bathroom occupied the garden level.

Front Living Room

The lower unit’s parlor-level door opened directly into the living room. A shallow coat recess and narrow landing marked the entrance without creating a separate foyer. A secondhand gray sectional anchored the seating and gave the group enough room to gather or spread out with coursework.

The room’s nonworking fireplace retained a carved dark-wood mantel, a dark green glazed-tile surround, and an iron summer cover over the firebox. Secondhand bookshelf speakers and a small turntable sat on a low cabinet. The room had no permanent television; residents unpacked a portable projector for movie nights and aimed it at a cleared section of wall.

Dining and Study Room

Broad original pocket doors connected the front living room to the dining and study room. One door dragged badly in its track, and the pair usually remained open. A long, scarred oak table filled the center of the room, surrounded by mismatched wooden chairs. It seated six comfortably or eight tightly and gave the household a shared surface for meals, scores, laptops, and study materials.

An enclosed stair began along the center-right wall, viewed from the front entrance, and turned down beneath the upper duplex’s staircase.

Rear Kitchen

The kitchen occupied the back of the parlor floor. Its 1990s rental renovation included off-white laminate cabinets, butcher-block-pattern laminate counters, a white gas range, and speckled sheet vinyl that curled slightly near the radiator.

Garden Level

All three lower-unit bedrooms and the bathroom occupied the garden level. Dylan and Gavin used the front and main rear bedrooms, leaving the smaller bedroom in the rear extension available for a roommate. The empty room had a window facing the backyard, and a narrow passage beside it continued to the yard rather than cutting through the bedroom.

Upper Duplex

The upper duplex occupied the two floors above the parlor level. Brooke, Sarah, and Aditi used its three bedrooms.

Accessibility and Adaptations

The front approach included a deep stoop. The lower duplex also had an under-stoop garden entrance, although movement between its living spaces and bedrooms still depended on an internal stair. The upper duplex was reached by its private stair from the shared vestibule.

Occupancy and Domestic Use

Dylan and Gavin’s lower duplex held most group visits, shared meals, and study sessions. Its empty bedroom made the invitation to Travis concrete. His friends meant the offer and continued treating the room as an available place for him; Travis heard their persistence as politeness and did not trust himself to test whether they truly wanted him there.

After Travis’s death, the group began preparing the unused bedroom for a new tenant. Sarah was away on a trip with her family that day; her absence was logistical, and she mourned Travis alongside the rest of the group.

The upper duplex gave Brooke, Sarah, and Aditi a separate household while keeping them close to the lower unit’s gatherings. The three women were best friends and called one another soul sisters. Aditi and Gavin were dating during the 2024–2025 academic year but maintained bedrooms in separate duplexes. Together, the two units allowed the five friends to live off campus in gender-separated households without breaking the group into unrelated apartments across the city.

Associated Residents

Dylan Abrams and Gavin Worth

Dylan and Gavin rented the garden/parlor duplex and hosted most of the group’s time at the house. They reserved the third bedroom for another roommate and consistently encouraged Travis to take it.

Brooke Kim, Sarah Chen, and Aditi Sharma

Brooke, Sarah, and Aditi rented the upper duplex. Their unit remained a separate residence, although the women shared the larger social life of the house with Dylan, Gavin, Travis, and the rest of their Juilliard circle.

Travis Yoon

Main article: Travis Yoon

Travis was a frequent guest rather than a resident. He considered moving into the open room and cited the cost of private-market rent alongside Juilliard tuition when he declined. The expense was real, but remaining in campus housing also allowed him to avoid testing his private belief that his friends merely tolerated his presence.

Settings Residences New York City Locations