I lived in the Nash for three years. My apartment certainly had character, plenty of room, beautiful hardwood floors, completely tiled bathrooms, and stained-glass windows. I don't think any two apartments are the same. Plus the location is excellent (if you like living in the middle of a noisy city. I did!). I have a lot of good memories of living there.
Then there's the rest of it...
This building is old. I know, a lot of buildings in Philly are old, but take a look at the elevator and you'll see what I mean. It's pretty ancient. And although maintenence was generally on top of requests, this building has a ton of maintenence problems that come just from being old.
For example, we had to hammer the windows whenever we needed to open them becase they had been painted shut so many times. The wiring was so screwey that we had to turn the bathroom light on for the kitchen outlet to work and, until we convinced the office that we weren't crazy, flicking the hall light on set off the fire alarm. I'm not kidding. Also, the building's fire alarm went off so often that when there actually was a fire, we thought it was another false alarm... until we smelled smoke. That was a mess, but luckily nobody was hurt. The fire escapes are wood. They empty into a central courtyard with no exit except through the buildings. Very safe, I know.
Sometimes it would take as long as 20 minutes for the water to heat up. If someone above or below had been running the water you might get lucky and have hot water immediately.
Our kitchen appliances were out of the dark ages. It's hard to describe the freezer in our refrigerator, but it was kind of like a little metal box that gathered frost faster than the North Pole.
To their credit, they had an exterminator come once a month and if you keep your place clean, vermin shouldn't be a problem. But the building, like most in Philly, does have them. Most of the thumb-size roaches we saw were dead on the basement laundry room floor, but one time my roommate thought she heard a person walking down the basement stairs. Nope-- it was a giant roach. We started doing laundry at the laundromat next door instead. (Cheaper anyway.)
I guess there was a water leak in the wall by the stairway. The mushy, moldy plaster spread like a cancer over the wall so they would just chuck out the wet stuff and plaster over it without fixing the real problem-- the piping. So it would just happen again . And again. And again. By the way, the piping is lead. And this, ironically, is not illegal as long as they tell you about it. You'd definately need to get a water filtration system like Brita. Also, the piping (steam heat), is loud. So if things that go bump in the night freak you out, you'd probably want to live somewhere else.
Most importantly, there's no rent control. Our rent was raised approx. $100 a month each year. So what started out as $780 a month ended up being $980 a month by the third year, a considerable increase when you think that the apartment wasn't magically becoming more impressive in that time frame.
There's more, but I think I've rambled on long enough.
So if you can deal with the problems that come with living in an old building, you might like living in the Nash. If you want modern amenities like central air or a dishwasher, go find a cookie cutter apartment somewhere else. But that's just my opinion.

Your thoughts? Post a response to this review. Display my response: with my username anonymously Responses appear below reviews and one response per user is permitted.

   Free estimates on moving trucks      Find apartment share/roommates