Joey Ramone in the East Village studio in 1992.
Photo: Bruce Gilbert/Newsday/Getty Images
The intersection of East 2nd Street and Bowery is known as Joey Ramone Place — it was where Joey and Dee Dee Ramone lived during the band’s early years, at creative director Arturo Vega’s loft at 6 East 2nd. But after a few years there, the punk front man moved about a ten-minute walk away into a studio apartment at 115 East 9th Street, a 20-story postwar high-rise. While other band members left the neighborhood over the years, Joey remained in the East Village and the studio until his death in 2001.
The studio has been gut renovated by the seller, who purchased it from Joey Ramone’s brother in 2018.
Photo: Yoreevo
A photo of the apartment, as seen in 2018 listing photos, before the renovation. The space still looks similar to when Joey lived there.
Photo: Douglas Elliman
The studio, which his brother inherited from his estate in 2014, is now on the market, asking $575,000 — studios in the building generally sell in the half-million range. It’s unclear when Joey, born Jeffrey Hyman in Forest Hills, Queens, bought the apartment. But he was living there in 1987, and a few years later, in 1992, when he was photographed on the sectional couch in the living room/main room, decorated with framed band posters and a golden record, with a row of south-facing windows along one wall. Other photos of Joey in the apartment show his towering frame almost reaching the ceiling of the main room and crouched in the kitchen. It’s possible that he may have been renting when the building was converted into co-ops in the early 1980s.
When his brother sold the apartment to the current owner in 2018, it appears to have been empty for some time. James McGrath, a broker at Yoreevo who has the new listing, says the owner discovered a cache of Joey’s papers wedged behind the kitchen cabinets when he renovated the apartment. Among them were fan mail, scribbled lyrics, copies of reviews, and a long letter from a student at Boston College upset about the school’s cancellation of a 1987 Ramones concert. The student, who was the chairman of the programming council concert committee, detailed the reasons the administration had given for canceling the concert, “to highlight for you what kind of idiots make the decisions around here.” (In short, the administration thought that the punk band was, well, too punk.) Apparently, the letter resonated, and Joey and Marky Ramone attended a student rally in Boston. “We’re here to uphold the honor of the students,” Joey said at the time. “I mean, you guys pay to go to school here, so to me this is just total absurdity.”
Some handwritten lyrics, discovered behind the kitchen cabinets.
Photo: Yoreevo
McGrath says that the seller will pass along the memorabilia with the now fully renovated apartment — in addition to the kitchen and the bathroom, pretty much everything else has been overhauled. While it’s been redone with sleeker finishes and new wood floors, the apartment still looks fairly similar to when Joey lived there. The full-service building, near the border of Greenwich Village and the East Village, also has a full-time doorman, storage, and a laundry room. Location-wise, it’s less than a block from Wegmans and the Astor Place subway station. It’s pet-friendly and allows sublets, but not pieds-à-terre. Whomever buys Joey Ramone’s old place will, at least, be a full-time New Yorker.
A letter to Joey Ramone from a Boston College student, upset about the school’s cancellation of a Ramones concert.
Photo: Yoreevo
The seller also found clips of reviews and stories.
Photo: Yoreevo