Hmm. you’re right. That is confusing though. When they said the Jeffersons lived next door, surely they didn’t mean in the other half of a duplex? If the Bunkers lived “cheek and jowl” with another family, surely they would have been mentioned somewhere along the line?
One would think so.
Despite what the credits show, everything in the show itself fosters the impression that there were two regular houses, on separate lots.
If the Jeffersons had lived in what was essentially the same building, separated only by a wall, I’m pretty sure that Archie’s reaction would have been even more extreme than it was.
Houses in Queens (standalone or part of a row) are a fraction of the cost of a condo on the Upper East Side. I have no clue what prices were like back then, but these days a house in Queens is probably a few hundred thousand dollars. A decent 2-3 bedroom condo on the Upper East Side would be a few million dollars.
Right. Having lived in New York during that time period, moving to Manhattan from the outer boroughs was seen as a huge step up (unless it was to one of what were the low-rent areas at the time like Harlem or the Lower East Side). People who lived in Manhattan looked down on the “BBQ” (Bronx/Brooklyn/Queens; Staten Island was completely off the map) crowd aka the “Bridge and Tunnel” crowd. If you lived in the outer boroughs you were probably just a working stiff and definitely not hip. (This was before neighborhoods like DUMBO in Brooklyn had become trendy.)
- Squee * The little sapling in front of the house is all growed up now!
I forget the specifics of the show, but yes. Moving from Queens to Manhattan (particularly Upper East Side Park Avenue) is a step up, both in terms of cost and prestige. It is a step up today, even with the recent gentrification of those neighborhoods.
I don’t know what it would have been in the 70s, but a modern Manhattan UWS “deluxe apartment in the sky” easily starts at several million.
If the Jeffersons didn’t rent, their apartment might have been a co-op (where the apartment owners own shares of the building). Although they may have had trouble getting the approval of the co-op board, given the racial challenges of the time. Again, I don’t recall if this is every specifically addressed in the show.
Apparently the Jeffersons bought the Banks’ house in the finale of Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Some might find this link on the subject interesting:
I’m not sure if the house is actually supposed to be semi-detached like the one in the credits, but I will say that it wouldn’t necessarily have been mentioned if it was. In large parts of Broklyn and Queens, living in a detached house is also pretty much “cheek by jowl” since there are only a couple of feet between houses.
These are some detached houses in my neighborhood.
I didn’t watch the show enough to pick up that kind of detail. The show was a clever idea for the time, flipping roles and circumstances established on All in the Family.
Heh. At one point my brother was renting in 110 Livingston Street and I wikied it, read “In 2003, the City of New York sold the building to Two Trees Management, a primary developer of the DUMBO neighborhood” and made some comment about him living in DUMBO. “I DO NOT live in DUMBO!” One of those word combinations you don’t expect to ever hear, especially so indignantly. OK, OK, you don’t live in DUMBO!
Looking at the All in the Family opening sequence gave me a shock when I realized that Edith doesn’t look as old as she used to. She only looks in her forties. So, you know what that means, don’t you, kids? It means I, myself have become old. :eek:
I think I’ve narrowly avoided having the vapors here.
Yeah, we had another thread a little while ago about how Archie and Edith were supposed to be 50 in “All in the Family” and were old, old, old. Well, now I’m 50 and I’m not old.
My response was that growing up during the Great Depression and then fighting in WWII is going to leave a mark.
… and the Meathead really was a meathead. This knowledge imparted courtesy of The Wisdom Of The Years.
I thought Maude (Bea Arthur) lived next to the Bunkers.
StG
Archie’s house is a duplex.
https://goo.gl/images/6nHc9f
I used to think it was a bit up scale for Archie. He was a foreman on a loading dock.
No, Maude was Edith’s cousin, and lived in West Chester County.
Tuckahoe specifically.
Not at all. Lots of working-class families in my neighborhood lived in houses exactly like that. And foreman on a loading dock would have been a union job in New York and paid relatively well for a blue-collar job.
Until the Reagan era it was pretty common for labor to be paid a decent, livable wage. And as someone else wrote it probably would be a Union job but not sure if they addressed that in the show (Unions seem like a topic they would have talked about at some point).
There was an series of episode where Archie’s union was on strike.
It was obviously a prestige move. The theme song sequence says that blatantly. One of the constant themes of the show was “fish out of water” especially in George Jefferson’s case. They even got a full-time maid, Florence, even though she hardly ever did anything just for show.