The New York Apartment Actually Came from Paris

by Unknown 07:06 0 comments

The urban idea of stacking people's homes one on top of the other is very old: The Romans thought of it; so did the Egyptians. In European cities and in New York, by the early 1800s, the constraints of space meant squishing rooms for the lower classes into tenement buildings a few stories tall.


Apartments, though, were different. They were something in between — not the stand-alone homes and townhouses that were, in the 19th century, becoming the province of the urban rich and at the same time not a couple of rooms for large families, with a shared bathroom in the hallways. Apartments were for the middle class, the creative class. They were kind of cool.