To find high-end furniture in New York, look up

The city's designer decor showrooms are hidden from foot traffic, sometimes on higher floors, making shopping feel like visiting a speakeasy

- Craig Kellogg

NEW YORK - Thirty years ago, a New Yorker with a sharp eye and a strong back could still find and rescue an Eames chair from a mid-town dumpster.

Those with greater means and less patience might buy marble pedestal tables and Swedish flat-woven rugs at furniture dealers, like Lin-Weinberg Gallery and Wyeth, that were wedged between ice cream shops and eyewear boutiques in the city's walkable neighborhoods.

Recently, though, rising rents and a desire for intimacy have pushed high-end decor upstairs and out of view.

Always a treasure hunt, shopping for designer furniture in New York has become more like grabbing drinks at a speakeasy: If you know, you know.

In 2022, Mr. Alan Eckstein, 39, moved his furniture showroom, Somerset House, from a storefront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—where he could expect 300 visitors on weekends—to a cheaper warehouse on a desolate block in Long Island City, amid small residential buildings and a gated carpark.

The grandson of a decorator, Mr. Eckstein got into the interior design business six years ago, amassing inventory at the Design Within Reach Outlet, at auctions and flea markets, and via Craigslist. He began using the pieces to decorate listings for local real estate brokers.

Shoppers at his warehouse find his inventory displayed for sale in artful groupings. The brick walls are freshly painted ecru, and new oversize picture windows splash sunlight onto the furniture, like a 1950s coffee table with fanciful Jacques Blin tiles on top and some inevitable scuffs on its wood legs (US$8,200 or S$10,600).