When painter Philip Pearlstein moved to Manhattan in 1949, he and his college pal Andy Warhol subletted an dingy eighth-floor walk-up on St. Marks Place and Avenue A.

“The bathtub was in the kitchen and it was usually full of roaches, incredible roaches,” Mr. Pearlstein once said of the apartment. Nor did their lot improve when they relocated to a West 23rd Street loft a few months later.