Fitting Alaska Into the Bronx

AS librarians and collectors, Eric Holzenberg and Henry Raine cared most about space. Between them, they had not only books, but china, clocks, Alaska memorabilia and extra furniture, including a disassembled brass bed that was, like all of their stuff, too nice to get rid of.

So their primary goal, when their tenure at New York University faculty housing came to an end, was to get the most space for the best price.

Mr. Holzenberg, 48, grew up in Alaska, where his father managed airports - hence his collection from Alaska. Mr. Raine, 46, whose mother is French, lived in Paris as a child, and then moved with his family to Bethesda, Md.

The two met 15 years ago at an American Library Association conference in San Antonio, maintaining a long-distance relationship between Chicago and Washington. Five years later, Mr. Holzenberg moved to New York for a position at the Grolier Club, a private club for book collectors, where he is now director. Mr. Raine landed a job at the New-York Historical Society, which began as a grant-financed position through New York University's division of libraries.

The two moved into N.Y.U. faculty housing - a one-bedroom of nearly 900 square feet in Washington Square Village. They periodically checked real estate listings, "always a depressing process," Mr. Holzenberg said. "Price, amenities, location - no way we could equal that on the open market," not when they had a ,250-a-month rental in a Greenwich Village doorman building.

Last year, the grant was not extended, as they knew would inevitably happen. (Mr. Raine kept his job, though as an employee of the historical society.)

"We weren't facing imminent eviction, but we wanted to make sure we were never in that position," Mr. Holzenberg said. They decided to hunt for a big place with a viable commute in one of the boroughs. Their budget allowed for 0,000 at most.

"The amount of space we were looking for was mostly driven by my acquisitiveness," Mr. Holzenberg said. He collects architectural pattern books, vintage Christmas ornaments and angel chimes, while Mr. Raine collects illustrated books from the German publisher Insel Verlag. To save space, they placed some of the books two rows deep on the shelves.

Mr. Raine was inclined to look for an apartment in the Bronx, where a childhood friend was from. So the two visited a five-bedroom, three-bathroom co-op at 1100 Grand Concourse listed at 9,000. It was plenty big but seemed to have had a slapdash renovation. The floor sagged, so they assumed there were structural problems. Whether or not the place was fixable, "it was just a little too much project for us," Mr. Holzenberg said.

They were encouraged when they saw another vacant unit that was much nicer inside, though it had already sold. "We thought, If this is here, other things are out there for us," Mr. Holzenberg said.

He mentioned their Bronx hunt to a member of the Grolier Club who is affiliated with Montefiore Medical Center. He, in turn, referred them to Dart Westphal, the president of the Mosholu Preservation Corporation, dedicated to improving the area around the hospital.

They could have considered Riverdale, "but they were going to get more space for their money if they were not living up the hill in a rich neighborhood," Mr. Westphal said. He suggested Executive Towers, a high-rise co-op on the Grand Concourse they had passed on their earlier scouting trip. Only convertible one-bedrooms were available. They loved the building and the neighborhood near Yankee Stadium, but it seemed they could wait years before a larger unit became available.

"In Manhattan, you can go to a big broker and get connected to someone who will show you places," Mr. Raine said, "but there is nothing like that in the Bronx as far as I could tell."

On the Foxtons Web site, they saw a two-story brick house in the Van Nest section of Morris Park. It looked as though nobody had touched the place for decades. They were charmed, except that everything about the house was small - kitchen, bedrooms, basement, yard.

"If we were going to trade Manhattan for the boroughs, we wanted a major payoff in living space," Mr. Holzenberg said. The house later sold for 0,000.

They found another intriguing listing - a one- and two-bedroom apartment combined - at Fordham Hill, originally built as a nine-building rental complex in 1950. The apartment, a co-op being sold by a divorcing couple, was a mess. The two disliked the bare-bones kitchen, with its antiquated and misaligned metal cabinets. But it was gigantic, with nearly 1,900 square feet. "Over all, the place in size and layout was more like a suburban ranch house than a city apartment," Mr. Holzenberg said. The asking price was 9,000.

They were hesitant about the lack of nearby stores and restaurants, and the distance from the subway. But they had no essential doubts, Mr. Holzenberg said. The more they visited the neighborhood, the more they liked it. They took a friend along, who said they would be insane to pass it by. They asked themselves, "Could we be happy here?" and concluded they absolutely could.

They bought the apartment last summer for 5,000. Maintenance is ,585 a month.

Then, "we did the thing that homeowners do when they own for the first time - we have color everywhere," Mr. Holzenberg said.

In the fall, their upstairs neighbor, a contractor who does much work in the complex, renovated their kitchen. They later redid the master bathroom.

The two have been happily surprised at how welcoming their neighbors are. They were used to a building where people didn't speak in the elevators. Here, "people stop by and we've been invited to their parties," Mr. Raine said. What's more, "it is liberating not to be tied to a place that was related to my job," he said.

Now, there's plenty of space for their collections. The reassembled brass bed is in the guest room. The third bedroom is the Alaska room. The books are no longer double parked.

The two are now on the waiting list for a storage unit in the building. When that becomes available, in perhaps three years, they plan to turn an extra kitchen into a laundry room. Right now, there's no space there for a washer-dryer. They use that room for storage, and it's filled with boxes.

E-mail: thehunt@nytimes.com