No matter where you look in New York City, there’s always something to feast your eyes on. Postcard-perfect street corners, sparkling skylines, a sea of the world’s best-dressed people. Yet the most fascinating sight, in my opinion, is the tease of a beautiful home from a parlor window. All across the city, townhouses and brownstones parade glowing Noguchis and de Gournay-wallpapered mudrooms. Sidewalk dawdlers like myself can’t help but sneak a glimpse into these secret, fabulously furnished worlds.
Before you call me a creep, let it be known that “looking in” is a growing phenomenon — one that’s supported by onlookers and homeowners alike. Americans who earn more than $150,000 are almost twice as likely to leave windows uncovered compared to those making $20K to $29K, as noted by The Atlantic. Beautiful homes are status symbols, and New York City is flush with them, given that a person needs to earn over $200,000 annually to own property.
“It’s class voyeurism,” anthropologist and NYU assistant professor Gabriel Dattatreyan tells InsideHook. “The domestic spaces we want to see tend to be that of the wealthy.”
If you’re unable to stroll through a multimillion-dollar New York City neighborhood on a whim, there’s always the internet, with its instant access to the pantries and walk-in closets of strangers all across the globe. Youtube series like Architectural Digest’s “Open Door,” which is specifically about celebrity homes, and Vogue’s “73 Questions,” which usually takes place in celebrity homes, are massive hits. Personally, my morning screen time includes checking up on whatever artist’s duplex or sun-drenched loft ballerina-turned-real estate agent Eva Alt is listing on her Instagram, Prewar Eva. After all, I’m part of the generation that leisurely browses StreetEasy and Zillow listings as if they were our For You pages.
This begs the question: why are we so obsessed with other people’s homes? Does it simply boil down to humans being instinctively weird and nosy? Or is this fixation a reflection of the worries of my younger generation: a way of assuaging the dreadful reality that we’ll never own property the same way our parents once did at our age? Thankfully, it’s not all that cynical, and it’s not exactly new, either.
According to Dattatreyan, using popular media to peer into the lives of others goes back decades. In the 1930s and ‘40s, advertisements between radio shows would feature middle-class housewives describing their kitchens and the products they use. Consider even further back, to the Victorian novel: the Brontë sisters revealed 19th-century ways of life for different social classes, from home design to food preparation, through their books.
The only difference is that today we don’t need to read Jane Eyre to learn about the domestic lives of strangers, we just need to watch a five-minute TikTok from Caleb Simpson. By now you’ve probably come across one of his famous first-person home tours; but in July, one went especially viral: a look around designer Rebecca Hessel Cohen and entrepreneur Todd Cohen’s Manhattan townhouse. Their home boasts hidden bars on every floor (with chandeliers in all of them) and a staircase meant to mimic Parisian hôtel particuliers. The real kicker? A converted carriage house the size of most people’s apartments in their backyard.
You can’t look at these videos without being overcome with awe. “Anything beautiful instinctively brings out excitement and inspiration, and a home is top of the list,” says Tania Fricke, a lifestyle consultant and interior decorator. Humans are curious creatures with a natural affinity for beauty. “Seeing how people live and what their homes look like is a representation of what defines them. Naturally, the more beautiful [the homes] are, the more intrigued we become.”
An attractive home can also be a source of aspiration, a chance to live vicariously through others. This is especially true on the internet where we’re seeing more and more young people represented in beautiful spaces and expensive neighborhoods. At the end of the day, it’s not the houses we’re gawking at — it’s the life.
Whether this positively or negatively affects the onlooker is up to them. Professor Dattatreyan offers this toss up: “Is [looking at another person’s life] a distraction, pushing you away from your reality? Or does it inspire you to feel closer to that potentiality, maybe motivate you?”
Take It From a Woman: Your Apartment Is Scaring Us. Here’s How to Rectify That.
Kenzie Elizabeth saves you from yourself with her interior design expertiseAs obvious as it may sound, Dattatreyan reminds us to be cognizant that the internet isn’t reality. Pay attention to what’s not being disclosed. Who’s keeping the place spotless? Who’s tidying up after the kids? “It’s part and parcel of how wealth gets displayed,” he says. “There is still some partial concealment.”
When I first watched the Cohens show Simpson around their sprawling property, I admittedly wasn’t thinking about what they were concealing. Instead, it seemed to me they might be oversharing. Home tours are, by nature, invasive. That’s part of their appeal. But I wondered whether the flex of a home tour is worth the risk of something more sinister. When does a spectator become a trespasser?
The same week the Cohens’ home tour was posted, a “Subway Takes” video shared my unease: the take of the day was that giving a home tour on the internet is a great way to get robbed. “I think the Bling Ring was a warning!” says the interviewee, referencing the real-life group of teens who used the internet in the early 2000s to track celebrity whereabouts and rob their homes while they were away.
Even when they’re not giving tours to AD (and thus to all of us), celebrities and their multimillion-dollar homes continue to be at risk of overexposure. When Taylor Swift momentarily lived in a New York City rental, crowds set up camp outside on Cornelia Street, its narrow cobblestone pathway constantly swarmed with fans. Eventually, Swift jumped ship and bought a $50 million compound in Tribeca with its own private driveway so you’ll never get to see her exit on the street again.
And yet, it turns out that the people whose homes we’re all desperate to peer into are, in a way, just like us. On the song “I Look in People’s Windows,” from Swift’s latest album, she sings, “I look in people’s windows / Transfixed by rose golden glows / They have their friends over to drink nice wine.” There’s something reassuring about a megastar sneaking glances, just like me. No matter how different our property portfolios, we all experience the human desire to imagine ourselves in other people’s living rooms. There’s no need to shy away from the innocent joy that comes with it. Even billionaire pop stars can’t resist a peep.
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