Is the Laundry Room Doomed?

Wine cellars, pet spas, golf simulators, social rooms, gyms, pools, even relatively prosaic bike storage spaces – these are the sorts of high-end amenities that are becoming the new normal in New York City co-ops and condos, both in new buildings and in retrofitted older ones.

As the high end keeps getting higher, the bottom is beginning to fall out of the low end, with the good old laundry room showing distinct signs that its days are numbered, the New York Times reports. At the Grand at Sky View Parc in Flushing, Queens, for instance, each luxury condo apartment has its own washer and dryer, eliminating the need for a laundry room. Not to be outdone, each apartment at 70 Vestry, a new Tribeca condominium, will have two washers and dryers.

But all this convenience comes at a price. The laundry room was the closest many New Yorkers ever got to a backyard fence – a place for exchanging news and gossip with neighbors, for building the subtle social bonds that turn a building into a community.

Next on the endangered species list is the trusty microwave, soon to give way to the “speed oven,” a technological marvel that can roast a whole chicken in 20 minutes. Do amenities get any New Yorkier than that?