By Luis Paez-Pumar
Note: Confused and frightened by your housing options for next year? Fear not, we got you. We’ll be covering important details on every dorm that’ll help you choose. Check out every post in our Guide To NYU Dorms here.
Location: 14th St, between 3rd and 4th avenues
Room Types: Four person suites with two double rooms, five person suites with two double rooms and a single
Cost: $15,645 for single, $13,438 for double
Palladium is the most convenient NYU dorm. There’s no other way to put it. Unless you need to be within 5 minutes of “campus”, you can’t beat Palladium’s location and amenities. It’s the hip, more knowledgeable brother of University Hall, with an unmatched level of convenience and services. The pictures above don’t sell you on “Pallades”? Read on for some things to keep in mind before you start planning your move to Union Square.
PROS:
1) Palladium is the center of the NYU dorm universe.
Seriously, you have everything in Palladium. Need to work on your hot bod? The Palladium gym is there for you, and you don’t even have to brave “outside” to use it (suck it, U-Hall). Food? Pallades has your back, too, with (in my opinion) the best dining hall of any dorm. Palladium brunch will make you believe that NYU cares about you (ha ha, sucker).
2) The living room is big enough to host a party or a makeshift baseball game (trust me, I’ve done both).
While the bedrooms may be a bit small (see below), the living room doesn’t fall into that trap. Spacious enough for a small gathering (no alcohol, that’s illegal!) of up to 12 people semi-comfortably, a Palladium living room can be your next party destination. Get creative with how you use the space. Who knows? You could be the next room to get written up for breaking the fire detector with a well-hit baseball.
3) Study lounges, music rooms and a huge laundry room? Floor 3 is your BFF.
Hiding under the hundreds of rooms in the building lies the 3rd floor, with all its useful wonders. Study space is plentiful (and open all night), and the music rooms are available for practicing your flourishing skills. The laundry room is massive, so you should barely ever have to wait for a machine. Bonuses include vending machines and a TV room (reserve it and play Mario Kart on the huge screen. Thank me later!).
4) Union Square is your neighbor.
We discussed Union Square in our U-Hall post, and Palladium is no different. All of those benefits carry over to Pallades, with the added benefit of being closer to 3rd avenue and all its wonderful(ly awful) bars. If you don’t know Nevada Smith’s yet, you will soon.
5) A ridiculous amount of your friends/acquantences/people-in-your-classes/crushes will live in Palladium.
As one of the biggest and most popular dorms at NYU, Palladium draws in a lot of people. What that means is that you will rarely leave the dorm without running into at least one person you know. This is mostly a pro, but know that you will invariably run into people you wish to avoid. Deal with it.
6) Trader Joe’s is right next door.
If you don’t know, now you know (you know).
CONS:
1) The bedrooms are tiny.
You better really like your roommate, because there’s not much room in the actual bedrooms. I could lay down with my head on my bed and my feet on my roommate’s bed. Sitting at your desks simultaneously will prove an intimate experience, as your chairs will most likely be touching.
2) The walk from Union Square can be a pain if there’s inclement weather.
Walking 15 minutes in the snow/rain/hail/locusts can be an uncomfortable experience, especially since the main two streets to walk down (4th avenue and Broadway) are wide and wind-tunnel-y.
3) Floors have around a hundred people on them, so it’s hard to foster a “floor community”.
Despite the RAs’ best efforts, you will not know everyone on your floor as well as you would in, say, a 40-person floor. Most likely, you’ll befriend your immediate neighbors and call it a day. If knowing everyone’s birthday on your floor is important to you, you’re weird. But also, you may want to choose another dorm.
4) The kitchen fits one person at a time, if that.
Best piece of advice: cook in shifts. You can’t fit more than one person at a time, giving a low threshold for the expression “too many cooks in the kitchen”.
5) The NYU ID-activated door can be a cruel mistress.
Palladium is “hi-tech” in its door system, using your NYU ID and a code to let you into your room. Sounds awesome, right? No more losing keys! Yeah, well, there’s a dark side to your convenience. The mechanism sometimes decides that your code ISN’T 6969 anymore. You will struggle against the keypad, and people walking by will judge you for forgetting your code.
image (via)
