It's funny how many replies you're getting from new yorkers pointing out that seinfeld/friends actually had much larger than average apartments. The fact that a

It's funny how many replies you're getting from new yorkers pointing out that seinfeld/friends actually had much larger than average apartments. The fact that all those years later you still think of them as "small" means the cinematic trick worked! But why did Seinfeld/Friends engage in this trick? My guess: Seinfeld/Friends was aimed to appeal to a mass american audience, which is why I imagine they had such large apartments -- they wanted something that still looked "small" to middle americans and outer suburban dwellers, but it still obviously had to be much larger than real manhattan apartment sizes, because filming in a realistic 350sqft apartment set (1) would have been awkward to even shoot (2) would have seemed so small as to be hard to believe or at least steal the scene focus when the apartment is supposed to just be a backdrop.