I gotta say I lucked out with probably the best apartment in 1915 2nd ave s. 3rd floor a million windows. However, any maintenance requests I made had to be repeated over and over including an incident where a squirrel chewed through the back of one of my cabinets and felt free to roam around my apartment. It literally took a full week for someone to come and fix the problem.
Then, there is showergate. I lived at this place for a full year without a working shower. It would occasionally blast me with freezing cold water and sometimes not come on at all. Other times it slowed to a trickle in the middle of my shower. When I made repeted requests to have this fixed they would come and change my shower head. Not the problem it was the PLUMBING. WHen I finally told them i had enough they said "Well no one else in the building has a problem so we can't fix it". I literally went door to door and got every resident in the building to sign a form stating that they were having the exact same problem. When I sent that letter with all the signatures attached the problem was fixed within a few weeks. Some residents claimed the problem had existed for at least SEVEN YEARS.
This is also the HOTTEST apartment I have ever lived in. I had two a/cs going and it barely helped. Yes, brick building, etc,etc. The problem is the deplorable state of the windows and lack of insulation. Also, the floors are in terrible shape. This could be a great place and worth every cent of the CONSTANTLY RISING rent but not in it's current shape.