A rent-controlled apartment is a rare thing, and so is the family that shared their home with students and refugees, rent-free, over the decades.
In 1938, Jonathan Slon’s grandmother found the perfect apartment. So perfect, in fact, the family never moved out.
Mr. Slon and his children represent the fourth and fifth generations to call the place home.
At different points, various combinations of generations have lived together in the Upper West Side apartment over the past 86 years.
When Mr. Slon’s mother, for instance, went off to Vassar College, her room was given to her grandmother — that is, Mr. Slon’s great-grandmother, Alice R. Botsford, who was born in 1856.
Mr. Slon, too, left the city for college and work, but when he came back to visit his grandmother, Mildred Alice MacInnis, in 1983, he saw that she was having a hard time getting through the day on her own. “I noticed she had a lot of sadness when she was alone,” he said. So he moved into the apartment and looked after her until she died.
When Mr. Slon and his wife, Renee, had their own children, he asked his mother, Jean MacInnis Slon, who was a widow living in her own Manhattan apartment, to move in with them. “I didn’t want to tell her I was worried about her living alone,” he said. “So what I said instead was, ‘I need you.’ And it was true.”
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