Obama's college apartment not so wildly popular in Manhattan
Manhattan may have voted by a landslide for Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections -- they voted for him 4 to 1, to be precise -- but that hasn't translated into wild popularity for the president's old college apartment in Morningside Heights on the Upper West Side.
On the contrary: The third-floor walkup where he lived one semester at Columbia University just knocked $200 a month off its price, the New York Post reports. It's now offered at $2,300 a month, though it was asking $2,500 as recently as a few months ago.
The listing touts Unit 3E as a two-bedroom with "hardwood floors, exposed brick, high ceilings," but Curbed New York notes that one of those "bedrooms" is actually a windowless office.
In 2010, Obama's former apartment was renting for $1,900 a month.
In 1981, Columbia junior Barack Obama chipped in half the rent along with his roommate, fellow junior Phil Boerner. They each paid $180.
Boerner, described the apartment in the "Alumni Corner" section of Columbia College Today in 2009: "Our sublet was a third-story walk-up in a so-so neighborhood; the unit next door was burned out and vacant. The doorbell didn’t work; to be let in when I first arrived I had to yell up to Barack from the street. It was a railroad apartment: From the kitchen, you walked into Barack’s room, then my room, and lastly the living room. ...
"Barack has said that he spent a lot of time in the library while at Columbia and one reason for this was that our apartment had irregular heat, and we didn’t enjoy hanging out there once the weather got cold. The radiators in our apartment were either stone cold, or, less often, blasted out such intense heat that we had to open the windows and let in freezing air just to cool things down. When the heat wasn’t on, we sometimes sat with sleeping bags or blankets wrapped around ourselves and read our school books. We also didn’t have regular hot water and sometimes used the Columbia gym for showers."
Click here or on a photo for a slideshow of Obama's old apartment for rent.
More blasts from the past on Yahoo Homes:
• Crumbling mansions for less than $100,000
• Chelsea Clinton gets a penthouse neighbor: Jennifer Lopez
• Sheryl Crow sells compound ripped from the history books
