In Inwood: And Rabbit Makes Seven

NEW YORK — A three-bedroom with double living rooms and a sunroom in Inwood would seem like a dream apartment to many New Yorkers. But once you fit in six people and a rabbit, perhaps not so much. In the Trader/Wolma family, however, you won’t hear anyone complaining.

Jackson Trader, 14, shares a bedroom with his brother, Wesley, 12, and stepbrother, Jonathan Wolma, 15. The tiny third bedroom in their apartment belongs to their sister, Chloe Wolma, 17, and the living room is occupied by a rabbit named Max.

“Moving here was a big sigh of relief. It’s been really freeing,” Jackson said. “Things are a lot less cramped.”

Four years ago, when Rick and Dana Trader combined their two families, Rick and his sons, Jackson and Wesley, moved into the Battery Park City two-bedroom that Dana shared with her two children from her first marriage, Chloe and Jonathan.

New York City children are used to sharing bedrooms, and even if squeezing four to a room was less than ideal, they made it work with a loft bed for Chloe and a bunk bed with a pullout trundle for Wesley, the youngest. To address disagreement over TV channels, they installed a TV-watching nook under Chloe’s bed.

“But when we moved in together, the kids were so much smaller,” Dana Trader said. “In a few years, they doubled in size.”

“There was not a lot of breathing room,” Jackson said. “And Chloe had to get up for school at 6:15.”

Asked if it was difficult to agree on decoration with three younger brothers, Chloe laughed. “There was no decoration. It was less about aesthetics than, ‘How can we make it work?'”

They considered chopping up the master bedroom to carve out a room for Chloe, but concluded that it would be easier to move. At the time, they were paying $4,500 a month — Dana Trader had moved into the Gateway Plaza building in 2007, and their rent-stabilized unit was considerably below market rate.

Still, that amount, they figured, would go a lot further in a neighborhood that did not have Gucci and Burberry stores, recent arrivals courtesy of the Brookfield Place renovation. Even their bodega had been replaced by Le Pain Quotidien.

But Manhattan is not a place with an abundance of reasonably priced family-size apartments.

“Once you go up to something in a family-size range, stuff skyrockets,” Dana Trader said. “A three-bed is, like, twice the cost of a two-bed.”

And cramped though it felt, they soon learned that their two-bedroom was actually spacious by the standards of the borough.

“People had taken one-bedrooms and hacked them into two-bedrooms. Some of the places we saw calling themselves four-beds were really two-beds,” Dana Trader said. “We needed one where the living room was big enough so at least six people could sit down at once.”

After a brunch with friends in Inwood, they walked past Inwood Hill Park, and Dana Trader mused that she would move in an instant if a place in one of the town houses along the park ever opened up. Rick Trader had lived in nearby Hudson Heights years earlier, and they had initially been optimistic about finding a sizable place nearby, but the inexpensive, sprawling apartments of his youth had disappeared, replaced by awkwardly laid out one- and two-bedrooms.

“That was more discouraging than anything else, to know that that model was gone,” he said.

Then, hunting through StreetEasy on a family vacation, Dana Trader saw a listing for a “huge three-bedroom” in a “rarely available full-floor town house” across from Inwood Hill Park. Rent was $3,300 a month. She immediately called the broker, Lincoln Wettenhall of Douglas Elliman, and was relieved to find out that she did not have to fly back to secure the apartment, as showings wouldn’t start for several days.

“We said, ‘What do you need? We’ll bring cash. We’ll pay the year upfront,'” Rick Trader said. “We were the first ones in to look at it.”

Dana Trader added: “And still, somehow someone got in front of us. We were amazed.”

Fortunately, the competition dropped out, and the Traders moved in a little over a year ago.

While the addition of a tiny third bedroom might seem a modest improvement, their new apartment’s layout is airy, with a sizable kitchen, a sunroom overlooking the park and, crucially, double living rooms, so the children have one of their own, with their own television and couch.

“Growing up in the Midwest, everyone hung out in the basement,” Dana Trader said. “Until they got older, I didn’t realize how much they needed a space where they could breathe without us hanging over their shoulders.”

And while the family misses many things about Battery Park City — the movie theater, the Shake Shack, going ice skating at the Brookfield Place rink after a half-day of school, the community garden and the short commute for Jonathan, a sophomore at Millennium High School in the financial district — there are ample advantages to their new home. For instance, a shared backyard where they grow tomatoes and basil.

And using Inwood Hill Park as their front yard — “Manhattan’s last natural forest,” said Chloe, who is happy to have a room of her own, at least for now. She will most likely be assigned a roommate when she starts college next fall.

Who, if anyone, will be allowed to take her space when she leaves is a matter of some contention.

“We’ll try to be as fair as possible — probably drawing straws and rotating through,” Dana Trader said. “But Chloe’s always quick to remind us that she’ll be coming home again.”

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