Luckily, the building kings of New York have clearly retained their crowns

When you move into a new building in New York, you quickly find out whether or not your neighbours are the Community Type or the Let’s Pretend None of Us Ever Experienced the Indignity of Living Here Type. In our old building, people definitely fell into the latter category, actively avoiding one another in the hallways and communicating only via passive aggressive Post-It notes on the building door (“If you leave this off the latch, don’t be surprised when your parcels get stolen!”) The most contact we had with the inhabitants of that place was when the software engineer from 5B poked his head out of a window and told us to “keep it down” when we were exercising on the roof in the morning, or when the woman in the flat above had her nightly screaming matches with her on-again, off-again boyfriend (and why Steve could never just listen is a question that will haunt me till the end of my days).

Imagine our surprise, then, when we turned up at our new building and were ambushed in the basement gym by an enthusiastic man who’d been jogging on the treadmill. As we turned to leave after some weight training, he hit the stop button and ran over to introduce himself. “I’m Will and I’m in the apartment by the library,” he explained, “and technically I’ve lived in this building the longest. Previous to me, the only living things in the area of my unit were raccoons!”

Days later, as I passed by the laundry room, Will appeared with a group of other masked members of the building. “Hi, Holly!” he called out to me, before introducing each friend by their name and then the number of their apartment. I’m always impressed by people’s abilities to recognise others while we’re all masked up – I once mistook a different tall white man in the bagel shop for my own partner – and Will’s confidence in doing so felt particularly noteworthy. As I inched my laundry basket onto the other arm, he told me to join the building’s Facebook group. Later, before I’d even had time to tell E about the meeting, he bumped into Will in the hallway, who told him: “Holly’s in the group now, so she can keep you up-to-date.”

Every building has its self-appointed monarch, and Will is definitely ours. Noticing the fact that four apartments changed hands in the past couple of weeks, he’s already organised an outdoor mixer for Thursday evening. In the library yesterday, he told us that every Christmas he also runs a building-wide Secret Santa (no mean feat, considering there are about 100 apartments altogether.) Barbecues are encouraged in one section of the garden, he explained, while dogs are expected to be walked on the other. There’s an etiquette for the sauna that he put in place and a list of local cafes he’s created for new transplants to the area. If you’re wondering how much to tip the doorman at the end of the year or whether you should ask delivery drivers to bring food up or leave it with the concierge, Will is your guy.

I’ve heard talk of Wills – bright, well-organised, all-American types – while living in New York, but never lived in a building large enough to experience one myself. Meeting him was oddly reassuring, like we’d stumbled upon a collective dad. “Will probably has a drill,” E and I said to each other as we tackled a particularly fiendish piece of Ikea furniture this week. (He did.) “Will can tell us who else has a cat,” we added, when our fluffy tyrant rejected some achingly expensive new food (he did, and we donated the venison broth to a very happy cat owner on the floor below.)

In Covid times, it can often feel like the world has changed irreparably. Luckily, the building kings of New York have clearly retained their crowns, and that means we can all sleep a little easier at night. Tomorrow will be Will’s first coordinated building social in 15 months. As they like to say these days: nature is healing.