The apartment in New York where Kissinger spent his first years in America

On a quiet street in Washington Heights, tucked among a collection of yellow-brick apartment buildings, a dry cleaners and an Indian restaurant, stands a nondescript building where Henry Kissinger spent his first days in the United States.

The Art Deco building was the Kissinger family’s first permanent home after they arrived in New York City as refugees from Nazi Germany in 1938. After living with relatives for a short period and staying in another apartment nearby, the family settled in the 800-square-foot rental home on Fort Washington Avenue in 1940. Mr. Kissinger’s mother, Paula, lived in the building until her death in 1998.

Kissinger, the former secretary of state who reshaped America’s approach to the Cold War, died Wednesday at the age of 100 in Connecticut.

By Thursday morning, news of his death had reached the building on Fort Washington Avenue. According to the apartment’s current resident, Alexei Gonzales, the neighbors were old enough to remember Mrs. Kissinger. Mr. Gonzales said he had lived in the apartment for 11 years but did not know the Kissingers had lived there until about seven years ago.

“I knew he grew up in this neighborhood,” said Mr. Gonzales, 44, adding, “That’s nice, that someone he knew was here.”

Niall Ferguson, a historian, noted in his biography of Mr Kissinger that the family, which included Henry, his parents and his younger brother Walter, had lived in a five-bedroom apartment in Germany but had to make do with two bedrooms. in New York City. The boys, both teenagers, slept in the living room.

“I can’t imagine how I did it,” Mr. Kissinger says in the book. “We had no privacy.”

Mr. Kissinger’s father, Louis, suffered from ill health, and his mother became the main breadwinner and started a catering business.

When the Kissingers arrived in Washington Heights in the late 1930s, about a third of the neighborhood was Jewish, mostly from Austria and Germany, said Leah Garrett, director of the Jewish Studies Center at Hunter College.

“It was often called Frankfurt on the Hudson,” she said.

In 2021, nearly 68 percent of Washington Heights residents identified as Hispanic, according to the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University.

Today, the experience of growing up in Washington Heights is different than it was for Mr. Kissinger, said Shaun Abreu, the city council member who represents the area immediately to the south and grew up about 20 blocks from the Kissinger family’s apartment.

Mr. Abreu’s parents were immigrants, like the Kissingers, but they came from the Dominican Republic. The family was evicted when Mr. Abreu was nine after his parents fell behind on rent, and he was held back in fourth grade.

Mr. Kissinger graduated from George Washington High School, as did Mr. Abreu, and then attended Harvard. The high school was once called a “country club” and had amenities such as a swimming pool, but by the time Mr. Abreu was a student, the pool was used for storage. Mr. Abreu took evening classes to supplement his education and gain admission to Columbia University.

“I think struggles in school and struggles for housing security are things that are very essential to growing up in Washington Heights,” Mr. Abreu said.

Regardless of the neighborhood’s evolving demographics, Mr. Gonzales said his apartment remained largely unchanged — he suspects the crown moldings date back to the Kissingers’ era — but it was a cramped room for a family.

“It would have been very tight,” he said.

When Mr. Gonzales has guests, he noted, they often sleep in the living room.

Kitty Bennett research contributed.