In 2001 he paid $245,000 for a sunny corner one-bedroom at the top of a sixth-floor walk-up in the West Village. “I loved that apartment,” said Mr. Moreno, who moved to Texas in high school from Venezuela. And seeing his name in the New York phone book for the first time was a thrill. But whenever friends or family visited, it meant hauling suitcases up five flights of stairs. So in 2003, he upgraded to a two-bedroom one-bath in an elevator building. Then he found sharing a bathroom with guests wasn’t ideal.

That took him to Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House on SoHo’s western fringe, where in 2007 he bought a two-bedroom two-and-half-bath apartment for $2.35 million. Not only did the place have that extra bathroom and a clean modern aesthetic bathed in tons of light, but it also represented the success he had always dreamed of achieving.

“That made me happy,” he said. “It cemented me feeling like I belong in the city, and I was able to make it happen here for myself.” He felt as he had when he had found his name in the phone book all those years ago. “It was that kind of thing again,” he said.