#TBT: Monica and Rachel’s Pad vs. Joey and Chandler’s Apartment in ‘Friends’

Anyone who watched the ’90s sitcom “Friends”—and who had also set foot, even once, in a New York City apartment—knows that Monica and Rachel had a great, ginormous pad and a sweet, sweet deal (aka an illegal sublet). It was quite a contrast to Joey and Chandler’s humble abode across the hall.

Monica and Rachel’s two-bedroom apartment (where, at one time or another, each cast member took a turn living) at their purported address of 90 Bedford St. in the West Village featured a real kitchen, a balcony (which conveniently looked out to the apartment of Monica’s brother/Rachel’s boyfriend), an open floor plan (quite rare for nonrenovated apartments in old buildings), and a seemingly way below-market rent courtesy of sneakily taking over Monica’s grandma’s lease. It even had purple walls! It was a suspend-your-disbelief, too-good-to-be-true home for a couple of 20-somethings even back then. But what would a similar apartment look like now?

Address: 175 W 13th St Unit 17FG, New York, NY

Rent: $10,000

And this one doesn’t even have periwinkle paint!

Monica and Rachel’s rent: $300. That’s how an occasionally employed chef and a waitress could live in such luxury, especially since average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in lower Manhattan in 2000, in the middle of the show’s tenure, was $4,045.

Joey and Chandler’s apartment, on the other hand, was a bit more realistic—barely big enough for the foosball table they used once their kitchen table broke. (That said, plenty of New Yorkers have never seen a normal person’s apartment large enough to house a foosball table.) The two-bedroom apartment had mousy parquet floors and an older-model stove and fridge—much more typical for NYC.

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Address: 15 Charles St Apt 4A, New York, NY

Rent: $6,000

A furnished pad with a doorman, laundry, and garage, the modern-day (and upscaled) equivalent of Joey and Chandler’s pad.

There are plenty of buildings in Manhattan that include both large and small, renovated and untouched apartments, but apparently at the TV version of 90 Bedford St. there was a huge disparity. It’s surprising that Joey and Chandler weren’t constantly suffering from severe real estate envy. (Or maybe they were.)

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Address: 29 Cornelia St, New York, NY

Rent: $4,200

Now, that’s more Joey and Chandler-like.

Of course, their bachelor pad had its merits. Rather than serve as a gathering spot for the gang, according to the “Friends” wikia page, it was “a sanctuary for its two residents, where they could drink beer, watch ‘Baywatch,’ relax in their barcaloungers, and play games such as foosball, video games on a Nintendo 64 or PlayStation, ‘hammer darts,’ ‘fireball’ and the less-popular ‘ultimate fireball.’”

Surely you know that Monica’s massive apartment would cost a small fortune these days—if only we all had a grandma with such real estate savvy and weren’t afraid to break the law—but the humble two-bedroom across the hall wouldn’t be cheap, either. Average rent for two-bedrooms in the nabe: $6,416.

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