A Collector of "50s Décor Finds an Apartment to Match Bruce Buck for The New York Times The Herman Miller credenza on the right is Cullen Meyer's only "nice" piece of 1950s furniture, he said. He usually goes in for kitschier things, like the Majestic lamps sitting on top of it. CULLEN MEYER began collecting 1950s décor at 12, starting with a lamp adorned with the face of a Nubian princess (he goes in for kitsch), and by the time he turned 25, two years ago, he harbored the great dream of any collector: finding a place to display his stuff. For Mr. Meyer, a men's accessories designer and fashion trend forecaster, that meant an unrenovated midcentury rental in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Those who are familiar with the New York real estate market will appreciate the extent of that challenge. Landlords tend to renovate apartments after long-term tenants vacate, and even preservationists have a hard time embracing pink bathrooms and aqua-flecked linoleum. And real estate agents usually aren't eager to take on time-consuming low-profit assignments. "Most just laughed, wondered why I would want that, or told me I would never find it," Mr. Meyer said. But he was persistent (he ran a Craigslist ad and checked the site's apartment listings every day) and lucky. One day several months into his hunt, he was contacted by a broker who said she had a listing for an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that he needed to see immediately. "He was really astonished that I was telling him that I had something that hadn't been touched since the beginning of time," said the broker, Annette LaMatto. He moved like lightning. Mr. Meyer signed the lease on the top-floor apartment, in a three-story building that had been owned by the same family for decades and recently sold. It had a kitchen with 1950s-era tile, cabinetry and linoleum, and a pink bathroom. Even the window valances in the living room were original. Of course, the unit was slated for updating, but Mr. Meyer persuaded the building's owner to preserve the details. Then he began moving in his collections of Majestic lamps, Carlo of Hollywood paintings and pinup-girl calendars and figurines, along with bigger pieces like a wet bar he found in Texas and a Herman Miller credenza. "My landlord jokingly asked if I was a hoarder," Mr. Meyer said recently, sitting in a kitchen that did little to dispel the notion. Every surface was crammed with some knickknack or flea-market find, and the walls (what was visible of them) were painted in the yellow and red of a McDonald's French fries box. With the chrome trim on the counters, it makes for a spectacularly kitschy design, like a tailfinned 1959 Cadillac reinterpreted for the home. Although the apartment was "50s to its bones, Mr. Meyer took the design even further, building vintage-looking radiator covers, buying a Youngstown kitchen sink that his landlord agreed to install, and covering various surfaces in vintage linoleum he has collected over the years. He also added linoleum rugs. Even new additions, like a ruby-red microwave and the black-and-white tile in the kitchen, have a period look. "If they had microwaves in the "50s, it would look like this one," said Mr. Meyer, who is almost a walking time capsule himself with his suspenders and pomaded hair. By consulting old issues of Better Homes & Gardens to make sure every last detail fit the period, he said, he has made his apartment a "visually extreme" version of what a real 1950s home probably looked like. Mr. Meyer was so fixated on finding an original "50s apartment, however, that he overlooked pragmatic concerns, like location and proximity to stores and the subway. It turns out that he lives a stone's throw from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which explains the tremors that rock the building every few minutes. "I have the cliché shaky apartment," he said. But it's a minor price to pay, he added: "I finally have the space and right backdrop to display things."