Dimitrios Petsas’s love for downtown Manhattan ran so deep he couldn’t bring himself to leave. “I never lived above Bleecker,” he said. “I took great pride in it — and I can actually recite all of my apartments.”
There was Murray Street and William Street, two different apartments on 80 John Street and the place in Tribeca Tower. “That was when 9/11 happened,” said Mr. Petsas, 55. “I lived on the 49th floor, so I saw everything.”
It was the mid-90s version of TriBeCa that he really loved. “It was no man’s land. No tourists. I would go rollerblading at night, it was amazing.”
Over the years, Mr. Petsas periodically left New York, always instigated by work, for short stints in other cities — Los Angeles, Houston, Singapore, Tokyo, London. “I’ve been in New York on and off all my life, mostly on. And friends make fun of me because they say I’m a creature of habit, which I am. I find a restaurant and never switch. But I don’t have a problem just picking up and moving countries.”
With each return to New York, he renewed his allegiance to the same quaint radius of downtown Manhattan.
That is, until Lucy came into his life.
$5350 | Gowanus
Dimitrios Petsas, 55
Occupation: Vice President of Global Brand Voice at Estée Lauder
On professional fidelity: Mr. Petsas’s long career in advertising not only spans across cities but also several agencies. “I started out at Ogilvy but I worked at a number of places — McCann, Grey, Leo Burnett, Deutsch, Saatchi & Saatchi,” he said. “I like to joke that there were no other agencies to sleep with, so I moved on to the brand side.” He joined Estée Lauder in 2022.
On long-distance relationships: Mr. Petsas’s husband, Hiro Takata, works as a United Nations diplomat and moves from post to post, all around the world, with little time in New York. Next stop: Abidjan, Ivory Coast. But the couple make a point to see each other every four to six weeks with daily video calls sustaining them between reunions. “There are definitely moments of loneliness,” Mr. Petsas said. “But it’s a lifestyle that suits us. We’re both very self-sufficient and independent.”
He met Lucy on a trip to his hometown, Athens, in 2023. “I was walking with my sister,” he said, “and we saw something and thought it was a rag on the ground. We realized it was a kitten. We almost stepped on her.” Mr. Petsas picked up the malnourished animal and took her to a veterinarian.
“Immediately the vet said, ‘I don’t know if she’s going to make it.’ She was almost dead.”
Initially Mr. Petsas’s sister brought Lucy to live with her. She was the one who named the feline in honor of Lucille Ball. “It was because she was funny and expressive,” Mr. Petsas said. “And somewhat of a klutz for a cat.”
But his sister soon discovered that her partner was allergic to cats. So, Mr. Petsas stepped in. “I said, ‘All right, I’ll find her another home.’”
A few days later, Mr. Petsas was flying back to New York with Lucy. “That was not the easiest part of my life,” he said. “She was not a good traveler. She might have been blacklisted on United Airlines. She crawled out of her carrier, passengers on other planes could hear her. She was so loud, it was comical. But we made it.”
Mr. Petsas’s plan to find another home for the feline was soon abandoned. “Of course, I fell in love with her,” he said, “so she ended up staying.”
There was just one problem. “It was a very quirky living situation because my apartment was a big open space, and she kept waking me up in the morning. I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
He knew he needed to find a new place — somewhere with a door that he could close at night — and he started looking for a suitable one-bedroom in his building.
Nothing came up. He branched out to other buildings in the neighborhood but wasn’t having luck. Everything was either too small or too expensive.
He looked for a couple of weeks. Early mornings brought the zoomies for Lucy and sleeplessness for Mr. Petsas.
Then one day an ad caught his eye: rentals in a building in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. “I said to myself, ‘Well, why not?’”
It was a big decision but the passage of time had made it an easy decision. “I think one of the reasons was because after the pandemic, the neighborhood had changed so much,” Mr. Petsas said of downtown Manhattan. “It had become more crowded and a lot more impersonal. It had lost a lot of its texture and color and I was missing that.”
So he made an appointment to look at a unit he’d seen in the ad. “I liked the neighborhood but I was not that crazy about the building.”
On his way home, 655 Union had caught his eye. “I’m very lazy, so I liked the fact that it was right next to the R train station,” he said.
He came back the next day to look at a couple of units. “I liked how much thought had gone behind the design,” he said. “There was a finesse to it. Also, I am very spoiled, having lived in Japan and Singapore, where everything is just insanely pristine. I was kind of chasing that and it usually does not exist in New York, no matter how much you pay.”
Gowanus also made him feel right at home; it reminded him of what TriBeCa was like in the 1990s. “It has a little bit of grit, a little bit of color. Right across the street from me there are auto body shops and there’s graffiti. I do enjoy that.”
Mr. Petsas and Lucy moved into the building in March. The beginning was challenging. “She was a little unhappy with the closed door the first couple of nights,” he said. “There was a little bit of meowing, a little bit of scratching on the door, but then she was fine.”
Now they’re both comfortable. “I’m happier just having my own room and having my nine hours of sleep every night,” he said. “And she’s just very happy to see me in the morning.”
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