What Can a Half-Century-Old Magazine Teach Us Today?

“Believe it or not, your next home could be in a dentist’s office,” a popular shelter magazine declared, referring to underused New York City commercial buildings that were being turned into apartments.

The year was 1979, and the magazine was Apartment Life, a monthly dedicated to young Americans who had moved out of their college dorms and were settling into urban studios and one-bedrooms instead of houses in the suburbs.

Founded in 1969, Apartment Life was a vivid time capsule of macramé, wicker, houseplants and furnishings whipped together from boards, pipes and scraps. It was stuffed with information about rent-control regulations, low-cost tropical getaways and how not to be intimidated by French cuisine. It brandished terrible puns in its headlines: “There’s No Place Like Foam” (about sofa material) and “Fanfare for the Uncommon Pan” (about cookware). In 1981, it morphed into the more urbane Metropolitan Home.

Apartment Life’s 800,000 readers typically lived on their own or with partners. They were determined to explore the worlds beyond colonial-style bedroom suites and meatloaf — albeit on a budget. They postponed marriage and child-rearing to entertain their friends in shoe boxes that they could arrange to express their identities and values.

Today, we know this group as baby boomers on the road to affluence. But “it’s a cycle of life that continues no matter in what era,” said Amanda Dameron, the chief content officer of A360 Media (formerly American Media). Ms. Dameron is working to bring back the old Apartment Life, in its original guise, as a special-interest publication. She sees its cluttered, lively ethos as an antidote to the chilly perfectionism of Instagram and finds relevance in its message to young people today.