The Strangest Things About Newman’s Apartment on ‘Seinfeld’

There’s been a lot of online chatter over the years concerning the various irregularities of Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment on Seinfeld, from its apparent spatial impossibility, to the bookshelf full of Nintendo games and bootleg VHS porn. But Jerry’s bachelor pad isn’t the only abnormal apartment to be found at 129 West 81st Street.

In addition to the M.C. Escher-like weirdness of Jerry’s place, and the hot tub-equipped code violation nightmare belonging to Kramer, Jerry’s neighbor and nemesis Newman also rented a distinctly bizarre unit.

For starters, fans have noticed that Newman’s apartment, which has been confusingly referred to as both 5E and 5F, at one point had a pet bowl, despite the fact there’s no other reference to him having a pet. Most likely this unseen creature was a cat, considering that Newman has a passionate distaste/homicidal rage for canines.

The production design behind Newman’s apartment is a chaotic feast for the eyes, full of odd, constantly-shifting details. In later episodes, the pet bowl is seemingly gone, but suddenly Newman owns various food-themed posters, including one featuring the image of a baked potato drenched in butter. Oh, and he has a photo of a monkey pinned to the wall for some reason?

He also has some kind of food nutrition chart in his living room, accented by a VHS copy of the martial arts B-movie Ulterior Motives starring Karate Kid Part III and Cobra Kai baddie Thomas Ian Griffith.

Speaking of his VHS collection, Newman’s apartment also contains several Castle Rock-owned films, like The Princess Bride and Needful Things. Which isn’t so surprising. What is surprising is that he owns what appears to be a tape of the ‘90s Baby-Sitters Club TV show.

The Seinfeld team also placed several dinosaur-themed items onto the set, including dino pillows and a Tyrannosaurid poster, presumably as a nod to Wayne Knight’s role in Jurassic Park.

And we haven’t even mentioned the myriad eclectic props that populate the rest of the apartment, including a kitschy duck lamp, several street signs, ice cream paraphernalia, decorative masks adorning the walls, a vintage postage stamp vending machine, what appears to be a police siren, ceramic pigs and, of course, a cow print slow cooker. Oh, and the hot dog phone. How could we forget the hot dog phone?

There may be a very good in-universe explanation for Newman’s wide assortment of crap. As one fan suggested on Reddit, Newman could have easily acquired all of that stuff if it came to the post office with no labels, because, as the veteran postal worker explained to Jerry in “The Label Maker,” when unmarked packages arrive at the post office without an addressee, they’re considered “freebies.”

So it seems more than a little likely that this is how Newman was able to accumulate this vast collection of junk. Hell, he probably never even had a cat, but just found that pet bowl in an unmarked package.

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