When Richard Zoglin married in 1992, he and his wife, Charla Krupp, rented a one-bedroom on the Upper West Side. Four years later, for $435,000, they bought a two-bedroom co-op in a 1915 building in the West 80s.  They put up with an assortment of features common to old buildings, including squeaky floors and — the worst for Mr. Zoglin — a draft from the windows holding air-conditioners. Over time, the building levied some assessments; the monthly maintenance fee rose to almost $2,750 a month.  The couple briefly considered moving in 2011. “Charla was kind of antsy for something new,” said Mr. Zoglin, 67, a contributing editor at Time magazine and its theater critic. But she was ill with cancer, and died a year later. Her death, Mr. Zoglin said, “was devastating to me. She had been such a force.” Ms. Krupp was a magazine editor who also wrote the best-seller “How Not to Look Old” (Grand Central Publishing, 2008).  She had been the one who had tended their home. “I felt that if I ever moved, it would be so hard for me because Charla wasn’t there to pick the apartment, to design it, to decorate it,” Mr. Zoglin said.  Nor was it easy to relinquish the place they had shared. But Mr. Zoglin knew he didn’t need so much space. Last winter, he decided change would be good for him. “I thought, gosh, it’s been almost four years and I haven’t done any cleaning out,” he said. “I didn’t want to be one of those people who stays and stays out of sheer inertia.”  He considered buying a one-bedroom. But moving was difficult enough, and “I didn’t need the extra stress of finding a place to buy,” he said. So with the co-op on the market for $1.595 million (it sold for $1.65 million), he decided to hunt for a rental in a different part of the Upper West Side.  He wanted a new building prone to fewer maintenance issues than the old, a doorman to receive his many packages and a gym on the premises. He preferred a relatively low floor, lest he be trapped by elevator failure or have a ride so fast and high it caused uncomfortable ear popping.  “The dividing line for me was I didn’t want another window air-conditioning unit,” he said. He needed enough space for his upright piano and round dining table, on which he wrote a biography of Bob Hope called “Hope: Entertainer of the Century” (Simon & Schuster, 2014). He is now working on another book, on the evolution of the Las Vegas show as a distinctive form of American popular entertainment.  For his budget, around $4,000 a month, and the kind of building he wanted, an agent advised him he could do the hunting on his own. He could skip the agent’s fee by going directly to the building or calling its management company.  He found Riverside South, the tower-filled enclave along Riverside Boulevard below West 72nd Street, too far from public transportation. Some of the buildings there run shuttle buses to Columbus Circle, “but I am always in a rush,” Mr. Zoglin said. He couldn’t fathom waiting for a shuttle bus.  He liked Aire, the glassy 43-story tower with a grand lobby that opened in 2010 on West 67th Street. But when he measured, he realized his furniture would not easily fit in the one-bedrooms available. And he thought the rents for them, from around $4,000 a month to the mid-$5,000s, were on the high side.  In many new buildings, he found a lack of room, including limited closet space. He avoided buildings where the elevators were slow or crowded. And he stopped reading building reviews online. If he heeded those, Mr. Zoglin said, “I would wind up eliminating every building.”  In general, however, “I saw nice places in nice buildings,” he said. “I didn’t have that depressing feeling that some people have when they are on a more limited budget.”  Mr. Zoglin was “seriously tempted” by one of the few prewar buildings he visited, on Central Park West in the mid-80s. But the 1931 building had window air-conditioning units, and he decided that it was too similar to his old one.  At One Lincoln Plaza, a 1969 building near Lincoln Center, he saw a few different one-bedroom layouts, and returned several times. The apartment house seemed to offer the best combination of price, size and location. He selected a sunny mid-building one-bedroom there for $4,025 a month. The place had the requisite doormen, central air-conditioning and gym. He received one month’s free rent, and negotiated a waiver of the gym fee.  “I might use the gym just once a week, but that once a week means a lot to me,” he said. (The building has a pool, too.)  Mr. Zoglin arrived in the winter. He is still setting up the apartment, with plans to replace the sofa with a sleeper and add a rug to the living room.  He misses some of the small shops in his old neighborhood, especially the Broadway Farm market, open all night. “What do you do when you want just some O.J. and milk?” he said. He makes do with the nearest options — a tiny deli and the grocery section of an enormous Duane Reade.  His new building is a bit fancy for him, with staff at the ready to open doors and carry bags. “I am not a person who needs pampering,” Mr. Zoglin said. “When I come in with luggage and boxes, I want to carry them up myself. There’s quite a few older people and I’m sure they appreciate that, but I don’t really need it.”  He worried about disturbing the neighbors with piano noise, but has received no complaints. Recently, his piano tuner taught him about the mute pedal. “I didn’t know you could lock it, so you can keep it on permanent muffle,” he said. Now he does.  He hears scraping chairs from a neighbor upstairs. Fearing he might be doing the same thing to his neighbor below, he added padding beneath every single chair leg.
After years in a building that dated to 1915, it was time for Richard Zoglin to try a home on the newer side.