The walk-up was a building with no elevator and the number of flights you climbed was the measure of how much rent you could not afford. The first floor was the most expensive. The sixth floor was the cheapest. The sixth floor was also the hottest in summer and the coldest in winter and the farthest from the street and the closest to the sky. The walk-up sorted people by their willingness to climb. The top floor was for people who had more legs than money.

You learned the walk-up with your body. Your knees knew which step creaked. Your hand knew which banister was loose. Your lungs knew which floor the air changed from cooking smells to cigarette smoke to the particular silence of the top landing where nobody went except the people who lived there. The walk-up was a vertical neighborhood. Every landing was a border crossing. The sounds changed floor by floor. The smells changed. The rules changed.

Moving into a walk-up was a community event. The couch did not fit in the stairwell. It never fit in the stairwell. Every walk-up had a couch story. The couch that got stuck on the third floor landing for six hours. The couch that had to come in through the window on a rope. The couch that was abandoned on the second floor and became building furniture. The walk-up tested every object you owned. If it could not climb the stairs it could not live with you.

I lived on the fifth floor of a walk-up on East Seventh Street and I carried my guitar and my amplifier up and down those stairs every night I played a gig. The amplifier weighed forty pounds. The stairs were narrow and dark and the light on the third floor had been out since 1965. Nobody fixed it. You learned that stretch of darkness by feel. Five steps in the dark. Then the light on the fourth floor. Then five more flights. The walk-up was a workout and a meditation and a test of commitment to wherever you were going.

The walk-ups have elevators now. Or they have been replaced by buildings with elevators. The climb is gone. The knee-knowing and the hand-knowing and the lung-knowing is gone. The elevator takes you from the lobby to the sixth floor in eleven seconds and you learn nothing about the building on the way up. The walk-up taught you the building one step at a time. The elevator teaches you the number of your floor. The walk-up was a relationship. The elevator is a transaction.

See also: Tenement Window, Rooming House